Paulette Jiles - News of the World

One day John Calley of Durand came riding into the town and stopped to visit with the Captain. His memory of the dignified old gentleman shouting for silence and reason in the mercantile store in Durand had never faded. He stood with his hat shading his face in the hot street named Soledad at the Betancort double doors. Then the small door set inside the big one came open. A short maid peered out and behind her stood a slender girl of fifteen or so with thick yellow hair braided in a crown. She had blue eyes and a scattering of freckles across her nose. She wore a dress in dark gray with a yellow figure in the weave, a long sweep of hems. Her nails were shell pink and perfectly clean.

Y qué? said the maid in a rude and suspicious voice. Hágame el favor de decirme lo que quieres, señor.

Yes? The girl said. Ah you looking for someone?

For a moment he was at a loss for words. Finally: Would you be Johanna, the captive girl the Captain was returning?

Yes, I am Johanna Kidd. She had a small, dubious smile for this stranger in tall traveling boots and a worn duster over his arm.

Calley took off his hat. He couldn’t stop looking at her. This had grown out of that grimy ten-year-old staring like a wild animal over the dashboard of the spring wagon, her hair in ragged braids. He remembered how she had slapped the taffy out of his hands.

He said, Ah, yes, well, I stopped by to pay my respects to the Captain. I, ah, happened to be in San Antonio to see about, well, cattle. He paused. Yes, cattle.

Cettinly. She stepped back and lifted one hand to the interior of the old house. She said, He is in the patio just now. Please come in.

He paused with one boot in the air. He said, Do you by any chance remember me?

She regarded him carefully. He stood large and travel-stained and entranced in the cool of the tile-floored hall as she raked him over with a blue stare. I am so sorry, she said, but I am afraid I do not. This way.

His boot heels clicked on the tiles as he followed her and in the sunlight of the patio he saw the Captain reading a thick leather-bound book. After he and the Captain had conversed there in the cool shade of the mimosa, the old man still straight as a wand, he asked if he might call again and so he did. And when he did he brought several newspapers for the Captain and a small, intricate arrangement of dried roses he thought Miss Kidd might like.

Johanna, she said, is very well to call me.

Calley sat down at Elizabeth’s small piano and played “Come to the Bower” and “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and did not look up from the keyboard but waited to see if she would come to him and before long she stood at his shoulder. He moved over on the piano bench and after some hesitation she sat down beside him with a graceful arrangement of her skirts and for the first time smiled at him. He taught her the songs, picking them out note by note.

It was for him a long and magical afternoon: the cries of the milkman coming down the street with his quiet gray horse shouting Leche! Leche bronca! and somebody calling for Timotea at the big wooden Veramendi doors and the Devil’s trumpet vine with its blatant red cornets drooping over the closed shutters and making shadowy gestures as the wind came up off the river behind the house. Calley sang in his off-key raspy voice, She walks along the river in the quiet summer night . . . and then forgot the lyrics but was fairly sure it had something to do with stars, bright. After a while he stopped and just sat and looked at her.

The Captain stood at one of the tall windows, a window that started at the floor and went up to nine feet, and watched the milkman and his horse walk past one of the old Spanish houses that were being demolished, past the new brick buildings around the Plaza de las Islas, into the hot afternoon, into history.

When Calley finally had to leave at sunset she stood at the door with his hat between her two hands like a great felted cake.

She said, carefully, Heah is you hat. We would be very heppy if you would come to dinnah.

John Calley decided to remain in South Texas and gather wild cattle out of the area around Frio Town, south of San Antonio in the brush country, in the notorious Nueces Strip. The reason few people did that was that it was an area devoid of law and not for the faint of heart, but if a man could stay alert and live long enough he could gather enough wild cattle to make a small fortune. It depended on how well you could shoot and how deeply you did or did not sleep. He hired men like Ben Kinchlowe who was hard as nails and spoke both English and Spanish and was accomplished in the handling of both cattle and revolvers. He branded all he gathered with a road brand and went north and after two trips John Calley was a made man.

He and Johanna were married in the Betancort house according to the old Southern custom of being married in the bride’s home and in January. Johanna and the Captain sat up in her bedroom, on the bed, waiting to be called downstairs. There Calley waited in a stiff black cutaway and striped ascot with the Episcopal minister from St. Joseph’s. Her hands were shaking.

She sat close beside him as if for protection against an unknown future; she smelled of the whitebrush blossoms that grew along Calamares Creek and orange water and the starch of her gown.

Kontah, she said. Her voice quavered. Tears stood in her eyes unshed.

It’s all right, Johanna.

I have nevah been marriet before.

No! Really?

Pliss, Kep-dun. She pressed with a trembling hand at her elaborate braiding and the veil pulled over a rim of beaded wire. Don’t make chokes. I am faint. John has never been marriet before eithah. Her round face was red and the freckles stood out like spotting on a hill country peach.

By God let us hope not.

Kontah, what is the best rules for being marriet?

Well, he said. One, don’t scalp anybody. Two, do not eat with your hands. Do not kill your neighbor’s chickens. He tried to keep his tone light. His throat was closing up and he made harsh noises as he cleared it. As for the positive commandments, you two will figure them out for yourselves. It will be all right, it will be all right.

He slipped the old gold hunting watch out of his pocket and clicked it open and held it out to her.

She wiped at her eyes and looked down at it and said, It is eleven. Time, Kontah.

Elizabeth called up the stairs and then ran up, holding her skirts. She put in her head and she was smiling. Johanna, she said. Are you ready?

Johanna turned and put her arms around the Captain’s neck. We will come to visit often, she said. You are my cuuative watah. Then she began to sob.

Yes, he said. He shut his eyes and prayed he would not start crying himself. And you are my dearest little warrior. You must not cry. He pressed the watch into her hand. I would like for you to have it. Time seems to have been sweeping ahead very fast these last years. How many years I worried about you and also delighted in your company. And now it is time for me to give you away.

AFTER SHE AND John Calley were married she went with him on the next drive, all the way to Sedalia, Missouri, driving a light four-wheel buggy. It was a life she could love. And so Johanna and John Calley rode the cattle country of Texas together into the next century. And lived to see an airplane land in Uvalde. They held hands alongside their two grown children to see it strike the Texas earth and the pilot walk away from the wreckage as if he had done it on purpose.

The Captain drifted into a very old age and worked again at the Kiowa dictionary until he found it hard to see. Often he remembered her cry at the Great Brazos River Ten-Cent Shoot-out. It had been a war cry, and she had been only ten, and she had meant it.