Free News of the World: A Novel by Paulette Jiles Page B

CHANGED , left his traveling clothes with Mrs. Gannet, and went back out onto the street. He took his portfolio of newpapers under his arm and then engaged two rooms in a hotel on Stemmons Ferry Road; it was a balloon-frame building with thin walls and flowered grain sacks for curtains but he was as yet unsure how much money he would make from his reading. Baths were fifty cents, an outrageous price, but he paid it and sat for fifteen mnutes in the hot water and then shaved.
    He found the proprietor of the Broadway Playhouse sitting in the Bluebonnet Saloon having an early drink and engaged the small theater for the night. He wrote it down and had the man sign it in case he got too drunk and forgot.
    He went on down Trinity to Thurber’s News and Printing Establishment where he was greeted and seduced by the smell of ink and the noise of the press coming from the rear. It was a Chandler and Price hand-fed paten press, slowly chunking out page after page of announcements or advertising. All around were sticks of type and the bindery equipment, the perforating machine. A sign on the wall:
    THIS IS A PRINTING OFFICE

C ROSSROADS OF CIVILIZATION
    Refuge of all the arts against the ravages of time
    ARMOURY OF FEARLESS TRUTH
    AGAINST WHISPERING RUMOR
    INCESSANT TRUMPET OF TRADE
From this place words may fly abroad
    NOT TO PERISH ON WAVES OF SOUND
    NOT TO VARY WITH THE WRITER’S HAND
    BUT FIXED IN TIME HAVING BEEN VERIFIED IN PROOF
    Friend you stand on sacred ground
    THIS IS A PRINTING OFFICE
    The Captain took a deep breath to subdue the sudden bitter slash of envy and then felt more or less all right. Thurber greeted him and inquired after his health, his readings, his journeys, and the Indian threat from the north. Did he not find traveling onerous? The Captain fixed Thurber with his dark eyes and said no, he did not, and assured him that he, Jefferson Kyle Kidd, had not yet been forced to confine himself to a bath chair or an invalid’s bed and when he did he would notify Thurber with a postcard. Thank you, sir, for your concern.
    The Captain stalked around the print shop and gazed at the layout tables and type cases. Thurber clasped his hands behind his back and rolled his eyes at his two printer’s devils. Then the Captain bought a sheet of letter paper and an envelope, andthe latest editions of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Chicago Tribune, the London Times, the New-York Herald, and El Clarion, a Mexico City newspaper. He would sit at peace in the hotel room, under a proper roof, and find articles of interest in the English-language papers and then translate some articles from El Clarion.
    Then he went down Trinity to the Dallas Weekly Courier offices, much refreshed from having snarled at Thurber, to sit with their Morse operator and take news from the AP wire. The fee was reasonable. The wire from Arkansas and points east was still operating. The Comanche and Kiowa had learned to cut the wire and then repair it with horsehair so that it would not transmit but no one could tell where it had been cut. They well knew Army orders came over the telegraph wires.
    He took out the thick sheaf of printed notices and handbills from his portfolio and, there in the Courier offices, inked in the last line.
    THE
    LATEST NEWS AND ARTICLES
    FROM THE MAJOR JOURNALS OF THE CIVILIZED WORLD
    CAPTAIN JEFFERSON KYLE KIDD
    WILL READ A COMPENDIUM
    FROM SELECTED NEWSPAPERS AT 8:00 P.M.
    AT THE BROADWAY PLAYHOUSE
    He walked around the streets of Dallas tacking up his notices as he went. These small towns in North Texas were always hungry for news and for a presenter to read it. It was so muchmore entertaining than sitting at home reading the papers, having only yourself or your spouse to whom you could make noises of outrage or astonishment. Then, of course, there were those who could not read at all or only haltingly.
    He worried all up and down every street and with every tack he drove in. Worried about the very long journey ahead, about his