Free News of the World: A Novel by Paulette Jiles

He stewed silently at the imposition of it all. He must have been out of his mind. Senile dementia. But he had promised. I’ll do it, he thought. I will get her back to her relatives if I never cock another gun. He read through the Boston paper, staring mindlessly at advertisements for cures and false hair.
    THEY CONTINUED ON to the south. He had forgotten to find a blacksmith for the cracked tire rim but the wheels had swollen in the wet and perhaps had seized it tight to the felloes. The trace chains jingled, the horses’ hooves kicked up little gouts of mud, the forested, hilly landscape slowly moved backward on either side. It was a mild day with white steam rising from the damp hollows. He would have to get the tire fixed in Dallas and his money was short. After he had paid the Masonic Hall and bought more supplies and grain for the horses, there was not much left.
    Since they had left the town she now sat up beside him and sang to herself, one hand dancing in the air. With the resilience of a ten-year-old she had accepted that she could not cross the Red and rejoin her people and so she sang and made dancing gestures.
    Well then, Johanna, he said. He had calmed himself. It was time to be patient. Auntie? Uncle? You will soon see them.
    She stared straight ahead with the blank look that meant a dredging of the mind, a searching through old indexes.
    He tried German. Tante Anna, he said. Onkle Vilhelm.
    She turned to him. Ja, she said. There was surprise in her voice. Then she seemed to struggle with a tangled thing inside her head, something knotted that would not unknot.
    She opened both stained hands on her lap and stared at the palms. She shut her fingers. She wasn’t really seeing anything. Her face was no longer a child’s face but one that had gone through something beyond description or comprehension and so was suspended for a moment in wordlessness. Her hands opened and shut, opened and shut.
    And then she spoke. Mama, Papa. She lifted her head to him. Todt, she said.
    They rolled through a bur oak forest with the steady click of the break in the iron tire counting out its revolutions; Fancy’s harness jingled. Crooked zigzag limbs sifted through the air. Beneath them the crisp shells of acorns made crushed sounds.
    The Captain looked down at her, into her guileless eyes and the rediscovered pain in them. Sudden terrible memories. He bit the left side of his lower lip and was sorry he had broughtit up. He tucked the blanket more tightly around her neck and smiled at her.
    He said, Never mind, my dear. Let’s try an English lesson. She nodded gravely with one hand opening and shutting on a sleeve flounce.
    Hand, he said. He held up his hand.
    Hont, she said.
    Horse. He pointed to Fancy jogging along ahead of them.
    Hoas.
    The Captain knew nothing of the Kiowa language but he knew it had no R .
    Very good! he said in a cheerful tone.
    Felly good.
    But now her voice was low and discouraged. She had left the taina to keep watch across the Red River for her. That was taken care of. Now she had to begin a new, long, hard road to somewhere else. Felly good.
    THEY CROSSED CLEAR Creek and then Denton Creek and two days later they came finally into the small town of Dallas about four o’clock of a chilly afternoon. The girl was even more subdued and frightened than in Spanish Fort, stunned by the noise and the wagons. There were several two-story buildings of brick and stone. She jumped back into the rear and pressed against the backrest of the wagon seat, between the flour keg and his carpetbag. They came in to town on the north road, where it led past several blacksmith shops with their great shed-roof caverns and lit with scarlet light, full of men andhorses, tobacco smoke and the noise of metal being forced to hold the things of this world together bolt by bolt. Johanna glanced into them with deep apprehension. The Captain was happy to see them. He would bring the wagon in tomorrow. First, of course, he would