Paulette Jiles - News of the World

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News of the World: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Overview: In the aftermath of the Civil War, an ageing itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multi-layered novel of historical fiction from the author of Enemy Women that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honour, and trust. In the wake of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence.
In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna’s parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows. Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act “civilized.” Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forming a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land. Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember—strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become—in the eyes of the law—a kidnapper himself.

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Time, he said. Two o’clock.

Time, Kontah.

When the little hand is at three, I will be back.

Then he put it in her palm. He was almost persuaded that she understood.

Then he dropped more coins in the pocket of his old canvas coat and walked into town. The edges of his coat pockets were dark with grime. Soon he would have to throw the coat away and get another. When he was rich. Durand had a main street and board sidewalks. Otherwise the town was scattered out among the woods and the little rises. Cottonwood catkins had burst and the silky cotton was drifting down the street and piling up in the corners of anything and anywhere.

First he arranged for a reading space at the new mercantile building. It was very long and narrow, with glass cases full of knives, china shepherdesses, and silverware and handkerchiefs. On the walls were shelves of shirts and suspenders. Farther back were readymade shoes and boots, work jackets and bolts of cloth. The men’s and ladies’ underclothing were no doubt hidden below the counters. It would do. The man accepted his dollar in coins.

He put up the handbills everywhere and was followed by urchins in galluses and straw hats, some with shoes, up and down the dirt streets of Durand. The Captain said to leave him alone or he would twist their noses. He asked the tallest boy if he could read the bill.

I could if I wanted to, the boy said. But I don’t care to.

A man of independent thought, said the Captain. It says I am going to saw a woman in half tonight. A fat woman.

They hung back with dubious looks and he walked on.

He tacked his bills up at the livery stable, the school, the Feed and Provisions for Man and Beast, the wool warehouse, the post yard piled high with cedar posts, at the wagon maker’s, and at the leather repair. He handed one to a man in a black sack coat and a vest and a pair of modest side-button black shoes. The man carried a gold-headed cane. He glanced down at the Captain’s riding boots. They were well-made and showed it.

Very good, the man said, and lifted his hat. He read the bill. News. We have so little of it. Are you come from Dallas?

I am.

And what are the conditions there with the Davis appointees?

Captain Kidd sensed danger but he had no choice but to plunge on. I have no idea, he said. I merely bought my newspapers, the latest come from the East.

So you will read from the Daily State Journal ?

I will not. It is mere propaganda.

Sir!

It is opinion only. I refuse to be an unpaid mouthpiece for the powers in Austin. Captain Kidd could not make himself back down, it was not a thing for which he had any aptitude, nor had he ever, and it was far too late in life to change. He said, So understand this; I read of events. Events from places far removed so that, indeed, they have a fairy-tale quality about them and if you do not care for that sort of thing then stay home. He stood over the man at his full height, dignified in his threadbare duck coat and his disreputable traveling hat.

The man said, I am Dr. Beavis, Anthony Beavis, and I do not consider the Daily State Journal to be composed of fairy tales. It is in fact a valuable contribution to the current debates.

I didn’t say it was full of fairy tales, Doctor. Captain Kidd lifted his hat. If only it were. Good day to you, sir.

AT THE BROOM and stave mill Johanna had busied herself with domestic chores. The man making brooms stared with narrow eyes at the blankets strung on lines and the harnesses flung over the gunnels of the wagon and the black beans and bacon simmering on the tiny stove. He regarded the Curative Waters gold lettering and the bullet holes with serious doubt. He said that the girl had taken the horses out to graze along the banks of the Bosque.

There’s something wrong with that girl, he said.

And what would that be? said Captain Kidd. He sat on the tailgate with his stack of newspapers beside him and a flat carpenter’s pencil. He decided on different articles from the ones he had read in Dallas. Something more soothing. He had the AP sheets with news of floods along the Susquehanna and railroad bonds being passed in Illinois to fund the Burlington and Illinois Central. Surely no one could object to railroads per se. He had his London Times and the New-York Evening Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Milwaukee Daily News (the “Cheese and Norwegian Tatler” as Captain Kidd called it), Harper’s Weekly. He had Blackwood’s, and then of course Household Words, out of date but good for any time, any place. None of them mentioned Hamilton or Davis or Negro suffrage in Texas or the military occupation or the Peace Policy.

Captain Kidd hoped to get out of Durand with his finances refreshed and an unperforated skin. He had to. Johanna had no one else but himself. Nothing between her and this cross-grained contentious white man’s world that she would never understand. Captain Kidd looked up and enviously considered the chickens—so daft, so stupid, so uninformed.

Well, for one thing, she don’t speak English.

The man had a broom handle socketed into the hub of the machine and he rotated it as he tied on wet bunches of broom corn. The fool sat there and did that all day long and probably considered himself an expert on the English language because it spilled out of his mouth like water from an undershot brain and he didn’t even have to think about it.

So?

Well. She looks English.

Do tell.

Captain Kidd drew thick lines around various articles in the Inquirer. Must be careful here. Philadelphia meant Quakers and Quakers meant the Peace Policy, which was getting people killed in North Texas and even down this far south of the Red. He chose a daintily written fluff piece about ice-skating on Lemon Hill, a spot apparently somewhere on the edge of Philadelphia. Here, read and believe, they are building bonfires on this ice and ladies are skating about on it, their hoop skirts swaying. They are safe and life is quiet, the ice is firm and holds them up above the sinister and lethal depths.

Well, what is she, then?

The man’s face was broad and low, like a soup tureen. Hens pecked at his feet. Here Penelope, here Amelia, he said, in sweet inviting tones. He held down his hand and the hens pecked broom-corn seeds from it. Captain Kidd looked up in irritation. He was trying to care for a semi-savage girl child and fend off criminals who would kidnap her for the most dreadful purposes and at the same time make enough money in the only way he knew how so they might eat and travel and on top of that evade the brutal political clashes of Texans. A tall order.

Why don’t you just shut the hell up and tend to your brooms? Kidd said. I haven’t asked you for your mother’s maiden name, have I?

Listen here, the man said.

Spare me, said the Captain.

He opened Blackwood’s. He closed his eyes briefly and asked for calm. Then from beyond the rail fence that enclosed one end of the stave mill yard he heard shouts and shrieks. He closed his eyes again. What now, what now. It was Johanna’s particular Kiowa high-pitched continuous stream of tonal words and a woman shouting in English. It came from the direction of the Bosque River. He threw down the carpenter’s pencil and grabbed a blanket, for he had some idea of what might be happening.

Johanna was in the shallows among the Carrizo cane, naked except for the tattered old corset and sagging drawers one of the ladies in Wichita Falls had given her. A woman with a wooden bucket in one hand was chasing her. They ran over the stones and shallow places, both of them spewing water. Johanna flung herself into a deep hole at the lip of a small rapids, screaming at the woman. Her wet hair was in dark ropes over her face and you could see the row of white bottom teeth as she yelled. She was calling down the dark magic of her guardian spirit upon the woman and if she had had the kitchen knife in her hand she would have stuck it in this good woman of Durand.

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