Paulette Jiles - News of the World

He paused, went back, and blotted it out from “and thus” to “Burning” with a corner of torn paper, then struck through it, held the paper slantwise to the light, and saw that it was unreadable. Good. No dreadful memories or things that would induce weeping.

The recent houses of Senate and Representatives of the State of Texas have passed a law forbidding the population to carry sidearms, that is handguns, but at present . . .

He started to write about the Comanche and Kiowa raids across the Red River, but saw that once again his news was falling into the alarming, the frightening, and he wanted his daughters and Emory and the children to come back to Texas. They had lived through enough. Their journey to Texas would be difficult as most bridges in the South had been blown up or burned during the war and the railroads and rolling stock shelled to pieces. There was no public money to rebuild. It was not only Sherman. It had been General Forrest who had blown up most of the railroads between Tennessee and Mississippi to keep the Yankees from using them. At any rate, they were all in tatters. Food and clothing were still scarce. They would have to apply for passes from the Union Army to travel the rutted and cratered roads, probably in two wagons with only one man for two women and two children and that man with only one arm. They would have to cross the Mississippi at Vicksburg if there was a ferry. They would have to carry money to buy food and forage while the roads were crawling with highwaymen.

. . . but at present we do well without sidearms and there is no legal constriction against smoothbores and so from time to time I enjoy a supper of Quail and Duck. The trumpeters and the whooping cranes are coming back and settle on the Red in their passage. Now my dearest ones enough Gossip, I must come to the important part of my Relations to you which is that I consider you would all do well here in Texas rather than in the Ruined and Devastated States in the East and please consider the land owing to your late Mother. If you all were to return I would be happy once again in the company of my daughters and son-in-law and my grandsons, and since Elizabeth has always been enamored of the process of Law she could begin the legal Discovery and then turn it over to a lawyer adept at fixed-asset litigation.

Yes I know the Spanish land has long been a Chimera in our family but indeed it is there and requires much research. If you would begin the process by writing to Sr. Amistad De Lara, Land Commissioner and archivist of the Spanish Colonial Historical Records, Bexar County Courthouse, and be sure you spell your mother’s maiden name correctly, Srta. Maria Luisa Betancort y Real, and the inherited land is una liga y un labor, which means, and I hope you remember your Spanish, both grazing land and garden land, which was legally separated from the Mission Concepcion, that is, Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepcion de Acuña (spell it correctly and remember the accents) for Sr. De Lara is a stickler. We have the casa de dueña in San Antonio still as it has been continuously occupied by Betancort descendants who are there now, aged as mummies and complaining because they cannot get white bread and must subsist on tortillas.

Your mother’s grandfather, Henri Hipolito Betancort y Goraz, bought the liga and the labor from the mission but the laws of the Spanish Crown said that all titles had to be registered in Mexico City, a journey of two months at least so it was never registered there and so there are problems with clear title. Not to speak of the fact that after 1821 the Land Registration offices in Mexico City then fell under the Republic of Mexico, notoriously corrupt and I have heard extremely careless with their filing systems. So a shaky title to these lands here came under the Republic of Texas and then the United States and then the Confederacy and now the United States again. There are stacks of moldering papers in Sr. De Lara’s offices. You will love it, Elizabeth. You were born to be an ink-stained wretch, my dear.

I believe the labor is on the San Antonio River 5 mi. south of Concepcion and the liga is on the Balcones Heights amounting all told to more or less three hundred English acres. The Valenzuela family were running sheep and goats on it but last I heard they had deserted the area.

Kep-dun!

He heard a low sobbing. He bent his head to the paper. He thought Indians never cried. It pulled him away from these legal land questions. It tore his heart.

He closed his eyes and laid down his pen and tried to calm himself. So much had fallen to the old since seven hundred thousand young Southern men were casualties of war. Out of a population of a few million. He must arrange for his family to be together again, he must enter into litigation, he must make a living with his readings, he must deliver this child to her relatives who would no doubt be utterly appalled by what she had become. For a moment he was completely at a loss as to why he had agreed to take her to Castroville.

For Britt. A freed black man. That’s why.

In the next room, something broke. More quiet tones from Mrs. Gannet, the unflappable.

No use trying to write anymore.

Your affectionate father, Jefferson Kyle Kidd.

He heard the loud objections in Kiowa as the girl was dragged down the hall to the bathing facilities. One cannot think with a ten-year-old Kiowa-German captive throwing soap and ceramics. After a while they came back and there was more sobbing. Then Mrs. Gannet began to sing.

He bent his head and listened. She had a good voice, a clear light soprano. She sang “Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross” and then “It Is Well with My Soul.” He slowly shifted the letter paper and began to fold it. When peace like a river attendeth my way . . . very good. At age seventy-one he deserved peace like a river but apparently he wasn’t going to get it at present. The town of Dallas beyond the window raised up its new raw-lumber buildings and the air was woven with crashing wheel noises and shouts of the men at the ferry landing. What must the girl think of these man-made bluffs and rigidly straight byways? The sobbing died down. Mrs. Gannet sang “Black Is the Color.” Not an easy song to sing unaccompanied. An old folk song in the Dorian mode. The girl was listening. It was much closer to the Indian way of singing. The unexpected turns and strange Celtic intervals. He wondered why he had not in the past year offered his attentions to Mrs. Gannet and then he knew why. Because his daughters felt he should remain forever loyal to the memory of their mother and if they found out about it Olympia and Elizabeth would have had a galvanized tin hissy, one apiece.

At last it was quiet on the other side of the deal board wall. He turned down the kerosene lamp. Nearly eight. Showtime.

ALOW TRAVELING TIDE of gleaming white clouds told of more rain to come. There was good seating at the Broadway. That meant people were more comfortable and would therefore be patient and listen longer. The Captain brought his own bull’s-eye lantern as always. He set it on a plant stand to his left, opposite to that of right-handed readers, and trained the light on the dense gray print. He laid down his small gold hunting watch at the top of the podium. At the front double doors two U.S. Army men were stationed, as there were whenever there was a public meeting at any time. Texas was still under military rule.

This might end in a few months if Washington would seat the Texas delegation. The recent election for Texas governor had not been between the old Southern Democrats and the Union-loyal Republicans. No indeed. The old Southern Democratic party was finished in Texas. The fighting was between two factions within the Republicans. The one led by Davis was extreme in its demand for dictatorial powers. The one led by Hamilton, not so much. Both were robbing the state blind. There was no point in appealing to one’s congressman to help clear up land titles in the state. They were too busy lining their pockets. Clearing the Betancort land title would take up Elizabeth’s time for years. She would enjoy it very much.