The Truth Against the World, page 20
I tell myself to put that out of my mind and return to my devotions, sliding my hand down the long sleek peninsula of his face.
“So, Pharaoh, what say ye on the savagery of the civilized? Are we doomed?”
A horse blanket lies draped over the stall’s partition—not much of a bed, but once I lay it down on the floor-strewn hay, it beckons like paradise. Shortly Pharaoh settles in himself, thumping down, sprawling onto his flank with a great harrumphing sigh.
Behold us now, horse and human, ready for the simple charity of sleep.
It doesn’t come, of course. Instead I’m set upon by memories, the ones I’ve been trying to hold at bay ever since we crossed the state line.
The Woman in the River
“The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future, too. We all try to lie out of that but life won’t let us.”
—Eugene O’Neill, A Long Day’s Journey Into Night
—44—
No sooner has the Confederacy surrendered than rumblings arise among the Irish veterans regarding an invasion of Canada, with hopes of strongarming Britain into conceding the homeland’s freedom.
At the same time, Fenian recruiters infiltrate the decommissioned ranks, mustering volunteers, whispering of an uprising planned back home.
To be sure, though the war’s carnage has decimated our number, the drumbeat of rebellion against the Crown remains insistent. Nor am I immune.
But the sight of so many wounded and dying, Union and Confederate both, their cries for Mother or God or swift mercy, continue to haunt my mind.
Despite centuries of battle, what I’ve witnessed over the past four years stands apart: the scientific efficiency of “modern” war, the ingenuity of its weapons, the sheer wicked speed at which so many souls get churned into meat.
Needing to put some distance between myself and all that, I head west alone.
Traveling by railcar, buckboard, the back of a mule for one stretch through Illinois, I eventually find my way to Chouteau Island on the Arkansas River along the Santa Fe trail. There I fiddle up work as a teamster, helping guide the heavy freight wagons south through the sandhills of Bear Creek Pass.
It’s during one such journey, as we struggle against the Cimarron’s braiding midstream current in a mid-autumn drizzle, that I spot a commotion downriver.
Once the wagon makes it safely across, and the oxen stop their bellowing from the strain of dragging the overloaded buckboard up from the riverbed quicksand, I hand the reins to my partner and amble down the treeless riverbank, plodding through waist-high grass, hoping to get a closer look at what’s causing all the ruckus.
A striking black woman—small but muscular, short-haired, with coarse grey whip scars crisscrossing her back—stands naked in the churning, sandy water, impervious to the rain, impervious to everything as she tenderly bathes an infant, singing to it softly.
A restive crowd watches from the river’s edge, largely silent, except for a young Comanche woman in deerskin dress and knee boots, crying out angrily, even as the darker woman pays her no mind, cooing to the infant in her arms, continuing her plaintive song as she swirls back and forth, dipping the child gently into the water over and over.
A Mexican trader by the name of Cuchillo stands among the onlookers, chewing on a long blade of buffalo grass, face shadowed by the brim of his high-crowned hat. Having made his acquaintance during previous trips, I ask him if he has any details to offer as to what might be happening or why.
He glances one last time at the scene, then draws me away outside of general earshot.
He tells me the black woman is one of a half dozen wives for a Comanche head man named Three Wolves, whose band now occupies the river’s south shore, waiting for the weather to turn before continuing on to the valley where they make their traditional winter camp.
The head man’s main wife just died in childbirth, an all too common occurrence among the tribes, and the second wife, the one screaming on the riverbank, is too terrified of the swollen river to perform the ritual bathing of the newborn. The Negro stepped in, scooping the baby up and carrying it to the water, fearing that if she didn’t the child would be just one more infant born “on the other side of the blanket.” The second wife feels shamed—thus the intemperance.
The black woman’s name is Na’ura, which translates as “someone found.”
Come the Civil War, many blacks in Indian Territory decided to take their chances, make a break for Mexico, where slavery’s abolished. Most never made it, like Na’ura. She alone survived among her family—both parents, three siblings—when they fled across the Red River into Texas. She was covered in tarantula bites and close to death from thirst and starvation when a hunting party from Three Wolves’ camp found her.
A plan takes shape in my mind, for I can sense Na’ura has caused herself serious trouble, and the winds of time are not favoring Three Wolves and his people.
I have to act quickly, though. The Comanche band will move on in three to four days, heading farther downriver as soon as the rains stop.
I do not fear the tribes. Like them, the fianna were hunters and warriors—long-haired, expert horsemen, known for our keening war cry. We both esteem courage in battle to an extreme degree, something that appalls and horrifies our more civilized enemies.
The Celts and Comanche also share an awareness that not all that is real is visible, which explains the reverence for burial grounds. And a keen awareness of spirits.
With that sense of commonality in mind, I devise my way forward.
I already have the perfect gift in hand: a spanking new Yellowboy, the latest Winchester repeater, brass-plated with a fifteen-round magazine. The piece alone will make a stunning gift. Just to be certain, I add three boxes of .44 cartridges and a hand mirror, the latter alone worth a horse or a pile of buffalo robes.
I leave the ankle-deep mud of the smoke-filled town with its clapboard shanties and hugger-mugger tents to head downriver toward Three Wolves’ camp, riding the gelding I’ve bought from the local blacksmith, knowing no Comanche can respect a man who owns not a single horse.
Word of my coming has preceded me—Cuchillo’s handiwork—so once I arrive in camp, a few stern young men, accompanied by a swarm of mocking children, half drag, half shove me to the head man’s lair.
Buffalo hides form the tipi’s internal dew cloth, elaborately painted with scenes of battle and the hunt, while buffalo robes lie three deep across the dirt floor. Their dense black fur makes sitting luxuriant, despite the lingering haze of smoke from the fire.
A tall, sinewy man of indeterminate age, Three Wolves wears a headdress made of a buffalo scalp with the bull horns intact, from which his luxurious black hair, greased with bison fat, hangs loose to the middle of his chest. He’s tattooed his battle scars, to make them stand out, and he bears himself with the sad severity of a man who knows war.
Na’ura wears a knee-length buckskin dress, festooned with beadwork and porcupine quills, high moccasins made of soft, chewed deerskin with buffalo-hide soles.
The clothing of the other wives is drab, a signal they do not think much of my visit. Their faces and arms are deeply gashed, wounds inflicted in mourning for the dead first wife.
I’m offered roasted elk meat by one of the lesser wives, in keeping with the Comanche belief one should never talk of serious things with a hungry man. Three Wolves and I agree to speak Spanish, a language we both manage well, and once I’ve finished a portion of the meat, he says, “You have a question.”
“A request,” I reply. “Yes.”
With an air of indifference to suggest a position of strength, I present the Winchester, the boxes of shells, but hold back the mirror for now, in the event I’m obliged to haggle.
Three Wolves bobs the rifle in his hands, fingers the engraved brass plating, squints down the barrel to check the sight, racks the lever slow, then fast.
Though I know my principal leverage lies in the head man’s immediate need to mitigate discord among his wives, I choose to frame the issue in starker terms.
“I have come,” I tell him, “to help prevent any difficulties from the pony soldiers who, sooner or later, will come to take Na’ura away, offering nothing in return.”
She sits there impassively, staring straight ahead, so stock-still I wonder if she’s even bothering to listen.
I’m aware that Comanche women look forward to marrying great warriors, so I describe my exploits with the Irish Brigade—the great hand-to-hand battles, the valor of the men, the many fallen, the hope of returning to Ireland to fight for its freedom when—
Three Wolves stops me with a raised hand. Judging from his expression, he finds my exploits not so much unimpressive as irrelevant.
“Na’ura cannot bear children,” he tells me. “The long rides on horseback battered her womb. So she does not want to leave the newborn infant, though the child is not hers, and she has no right to it. Still, she would help care for it well.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the second wife, the one who berated Na’ura so fiercely on the riverbank only days before, sitting passively. She says not a word, either on her own behalf or against her rival, from which I infer that it’s time to negotiate.
“The Comanche are right to want more babies,” I respond, “given that the drought years decimated their numbers. But as I said, the cavalry officers have orders to free all blacks believed to be enslaved.”
“She is not a slave,” Three Wolves thunders. “She is a wife. A good wife. She is needed.”
“Yes, but whites are stubborn. They remain fixed on their ideas, all the worse when their notions are anchored in vanity.”
I stop short of telling him that the settlers, inspired by their bibles and backed by their government, see this country as the Promised Land—meaning he and his kind are Canaanites, whom their god commands they dominate, drive out, destroy.
In the same way, they see the prairie as wasteland—an emptiness in need of dominion through work. Rather than coexist, they wage war—on native, nature, everything.
“It will only be a matter of time, and not much time at that, before the soldiers come and take her away. Forever.”
And with that, I produce the hand mirror.
It’s a simple affair—oval, made of unadorned silver, heavy in the hand—but it’s often the simpler gifts that strike a chord.
Three Wolves grunts as he takes it from me, then studies his reflection. He runs a finger along his tattooed scars, grins puckishly, then hands the mirror to Na’ura. She declines to look at herself, instead passing it along to the next wife down.
Three Wolves says, “The Mexican, Cuchillo, says you sing well. The People love jokes and songs.”
“As do the Irish.”
“Sing for me, then, while I consider your offer. A song of your homeland, for I understand your people live far away, and have suffered.”
Who hasn’t—and what exactly qualifies as home anymore? But I know what he’s after.
O Father dear, I often hear you speak of Erin's Isle
Her lofty scenes, her valleys green, her mountains
rude and wild
They say it is a lovely land wherein a prince might dwell
Oh why did you abandon it? The reason, to me tell.
I doubt they’ve understood more than a word here and there, but sorrow translates, and it’s there in the melody. At last, Na’ura turns toward me. Her eyes glisten, but not with melancholy. With grief.
I skip the other verses save one.
O well do I remember that bleak December day
The landlord and the sheriff came to drive us all away
They set my roof on fire with cursed English spleen
And that's the cruel reason that I left old Skibbereen
Three Wolves lets the last of it fade away, then waits, sitting there with that inbred stoicism unique to men of his kind. I wait as well, seconds bleeding into minutes, feeling Na’ura’s eyes upon me but not daring to glance back, till it feels like all eternity is passing.
“If I learn you mistreat her,” Three Wolves says finally, “I will find you.”
He then extends his hand to Na’ura. She accepts it. He reaches out for mine. He crosses my wrist over hers, and chants softly for several moments, the sound deep in his throat, a tune that drifts like fog across a river.
We’ve ridden maybe half a mile—me on my gelding; Na’ura on a roan mare bestowed by Three Wolves—when she stops, turns in her blanket saddle, and stares back at the camp.
“I’ve heard talk of a couple Freedmen towns starting up,” I tell her. “You might find yourself welcome there. They’re very new, however, and a long ways off—San Antone’s the closest, the others are around Dallas, Houston. It’s too dangerous to travel alone. I can come along, make sure you get there safely.”
She’s still looking back the way we came. Nearby, the river churns, its mudbanks thronged with foraging birds, a brisk northern wind whipping the tall grass.
In time, she asks, “Where are your people?”
“I don’t have any people,” I tell her, then think of Niamh. “Not in this world.”
She studies me like the sky before a storm. Moments pass, not a word, she hardly blinks.
“Then you and I, we are alone.”
“It would seem so, yes.”
Another infinite silence. I find myself remembering the scars crisscrossing her back.
“I know a place.” She points northwest. “There are horses and buffalo. Good grass. Clear water.” With a nudge of her knees into her pony’s flanks and a click of her tongue she heads off, calling back over her shoulder. “Sing for me, Irish.”
Masked Ball
And in those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, and death will fly from them.
—Revelation 9:6
—45—
I’m drifting somewhere in the haze between sleep and waking, images sifting through my mind of the Kansas badlands—you and I, we are alone—when a voice from the stable doorway rises above the thump of distant music.
“Shane?”
I rise from my bleariness, brush myself off, and make way barefoot toward the gate of the stall. Pharaoh pays me little mind—a mere one eye, dark and shiny, tracks my movement.
I gesture my visitor toward me, saying quietly, “Here, luv.”
From her silhouette I can see the high-waisted dress, complete with puffed sleeves and flaring skirt, and as she draws nearer I can see the fabric’s a vibrant purplish blue, like jacaranda blossoms.
The Foonies have performed their doll-work on her. Her face is coated in a bright white base, rimmed with a vivid red line. Celtic knots with their intricate interlacings predominate—eternity knots adorn each cheek, a Triquetra on her chin, two tiny matching lover’s knots mark the edges of her mouth. She’s planted a Nordic fire eye in the middle of her brow, so the downward dagger reaches the tip of her nose.
A sheen of sweat coats the bare skin of her neck—from dancing, I suspect. Her damp hair glistens.
I nod toward the facework. “Do all that by yourself?’
“Pretty much. Like it?”
“Working backwards, in a mirror?”
“Girls learn to master such things. Most do anyway. Jenny helped, admittedly, on the trickier parts.”
“So there’s a Jenny in our midst.”
“Well, yeah, kinda. Her Foonie name is Spider Child.”
“Cuddly.”
“They all have names like that. Regina Mortalis. Professor Miserare. Countess Thundercut.”
“And have you earned yourself a moniker as yet?”
“I have.” Her almond eyes gleam. She holds out her arms. “I am Runaway Pearl.”
“Well done.” I clap my hands softly. “Suits you.”
Quick as that, however, the mirth vanishes. She rustles forward, fingers rising to touch one of the deeper cuts on my cheek.
“How bad does it hurt?”
“Don’t fuss now. It’s all just nicks and nothings.”
She withdraws her hand but not her gaze. “You’re really not coming in?”
“I’m a crooner, Georgie, not a hoofer.”
“It’s not the kind of dancing that takes talent.”
“Seriously, I cut a miserable rug.”
“It feels good, though.” She lifts her chin, rakes her hands through her wet hair, shakes them out. “Bouncing around. Working off the angst.”
“I’m sure it’s all grand fun. But me and Ol’ Pharaoh here, we’ve reached an accommodation. Neither one of us intends to hog the stall.”
“You don’t mind the . . .” She crinkles her nose.
“Are ya mad? It’s grand.”
She rises on tiptoe to peek in at the beast. He greets her with that same glowing, indifferent eye.
“Native Americans,” she says, “when they first encountered horses, called them magic dogs.”
Did she somehow once again listen in on my thoughts—and from all the way down the hill? Perhaps my remembrances of Na’ura linger around me like a scent.
“So goes the story, yeah.”
“You don’t think it’s true?”
“Unclear. I do know that among certain tribes—the Blackfoot, for example—the gift of a horse or a dog must be reciprocated. No questions. And generously, too.”
She looks off down the stalls, biting her lip. “There’s been a . . . development.”
I settle in for a talk, drape my arms on the stall gate. “Tell me.”
“Dutch knows who we are.”
So ends the Ballad of Turk and Misty. “How did he find out?”
“Doomscrolling on his phone. He’s a bit of worrier.”
“He wears that on his face. And?”
“He pulled me aside. We took a little walk together.”
