He had become impatient of trouble and other people’s emotions. His life seemed to him tin and sour, a bit spoiled, and it was something that had only come upon him lately. A slow dullness had seeped into him like coal gas and he did not know what to do about it except seek out quiet and solitude.
My name is Cicada. My father’s name is Turning Water. My mother’s name is Three Spotted. I want to go home.
Then at last he was doing what he loved: carrying information by hand through the Southern wilderness; messages, orders, maps, reports […] Captain Kidd was already over six feet tall and he had a runner’s muscles. He had good lungs and he knew the country.
If people had true knowledge of the world perhaps they would not take up arms and so perhaps he could be an aggregator of information from distant places and then the world would be a more peaceful place […] And then he had come to think that what people needed, at bottom, was not only information but tales of the remote, the mysterious, dressed up as hard information.
More than ever knowing in his fragile bones that it was the duty of men who aspired to the condition of humanity to protect children and kill for them if necessary. It comes to a person most clearly when he has daughters.
He turned the page. He said, This is writing. This is printing. This tells us of all the things we ought to know in the world. And also that we ought to want to know.
The doll is like herself, not real and not not-real. I make myself understood I hope. You can put her in any clothing and she remains as strange as she was before because she has been through two creations.
And the newspapers, they say nothing about this at all or about the poor at all, Doris said. There are great holes in your newspapers. Nobody sees them. God sees them.
The girl still called out, she had not moved. Then she bent to place the doll to sit against the rock, facing Indian Territory.
Who cares for your fashions and your wars and your causes? I will shortly be gone and I have seen many fashions come and go and many causes so passionately defended only to be forgotten. But now it was different and he was drawn back into the stream of being because there was once again a life in his hands. Things mattered.
He was suddenly almost overwhelmed with pity for her. Torn from her parents, adopted by a strange culture, given new parents, then sold for a few blankets and some old silverware, not sent to stranger after stranger, crushed into peculiar clothing […] and now she could not even eat her food without having to use outlandish instruments.
There was no method by which he could explain anything to her but she did not need explanations. Her family and her tribe had fought with the Utes, their ancient enemies, and the Caddos […] She didn’t need to be told anything except that there were enemies in pursuit and she had already figured that out.
No. Absolutely not. No. No scalping. He lifted her up and swung her up over the ledges of stone and then followed. He said, It is considered very impolite.
Maybe life is just carrying news. Surviving to carry the news. Maybe we have just one message, and it is delivered to us when we are born and we are never sure what it says; it may have nothing to do with us personally but it must be carried by hand through a life, all the way, and at the end handed over, sealed.
As long as they were traveling she was content and happy and the world held great interest for her but Captain Kidd wondered what would happen when she found she was never to wander the face of the earth again, when she was to be confined forever to her Leonberger relatives in a square house that could not be broken down and packed on a travois.
Captain Kidd said, She was a captive. An Indian captive.
We can’t have this, said the young woman. She held on to the rope bucket handle with both hands. I don’t care if she’s a Hottentot. I don’t care if she’s Lola Montez. She was parading her charms out there in the river like a Dallas huzzy.
He would have liked to kiss her on the cheek but he had no idea if the Kiowas kissed one another or if so, did grandfathers kiss granddaughters. You never knew. Cultures were mine fields.
Captain Kidd said, It has been said by authorities that the law should apply the same to the king and to the peasant both, it should be written out and placed in the city square for all to see, it should be written simply and in the language of the common people, lest the people grow weary of their burdens.
Here had been people whose dearest memories were the sound of a dipper dropped in the water bucket after taking a drink and the click of it as it hit bottom. The quiet of evening […] the familiar path to the barn walked for years by one’s father, grandfather, uncles, the way they called out, Horses, horses.
She never learned to value those things that white people valued. The greatest pride of the Kiowa was to do without, to make use of anything at hand; they were almost vain of their ability to go without water, food, and shelter. Life was not safe and nothing could make it so, neither fashionable dresses nor bank accounts.
She sat stiffly in her riding habit and her smart little topper and watched them and rode home and then tried to appear cheerful at dinner, carefully managing her fork and the minute coffee spoon. The Captain sighed heavily, his hands in his lap, staring at his flan. The worst had happened. He did not know what to do.
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.
