All God's Children

by Aaron Gwyn

  “What’s your name?” Fisk asked.

  “Childers,” the man said.

  Fisk nodded. He stroked his beard with his forefinger and thumb. He said: “Might think better of it when you get home.”

  “Better of what?” said Childers.

  “Selling to me.”

  “I don’t believe I will,” Childers told him.

  “Might,” said Fisk. “We could ride back and talk about it.”

  “Ride where?” Childers said.

  “Your house,” said Fisk. “A man thinks different in his house. Reflects on all the mistakes he’s made.”

  “Sir,” said Childers, but Fisk was still speaking.

  “You a married man?”

  “I am,” Childers said.

  “We’ll ask your wife her opinion,” said Fisk. “I don’t doubt but what Mrs. Childers is a educated woman. How you reckon she’ll feel about you turning down twelve hunnerd dollars? Buy a mess of waistcoats, I’d think.”

  Childers’s mouth opened. He stared at Fisk—the pistol, the knife in its leather scabbard.

  “Do you mean to threaten me?” he said.

  Fisk said nothing. He stopped stroking his beard and began to scratch the back of his neck.

  “Because,” continued Childers, growing more confident, “I can promise you: I’ll not be browbeaten by some bounder who’s—”

  Fisk slapped Childers very hard across the mouth. It happened so quickly, Cecelia barely saw. Fisk’s hand had been behind his head, scratching, and then it’d leapt out and struck Childers’s astonished face.

  Fast, thought Cecelia. He is very fast.

  Childers staggered backward several steps. His cheek was dark red. Cecelia could tell he’d never been touched in anger. He went down onto a knee, working his jaw back and forth. He kept blinking his eyes open, shaking his head.

  Fisk’s expression hadn’t changed at all, though a vein bulged out on his bull’s neck like a rope.

  He said: “Anyone ever tell you you’re hard to do business with?”

  Childers made a low, moaning sound.

  “Well, you are,” said Fisk. “And it’s nobody trying to browbeat you. I meant to make you some money.”

  Childers fingered his jaw. He seemed to be testing it for something. When he looked back up at Fisk, he extended his hand.

  “Twelve hundred?” he said.

  Fisk shook his head. “That offer’s been rescinded.”

  “Rescinded,” Childers said.

  “Means it’s been withdrawn.”

  “What offer do you make?” Childers asked.

  “I’d maybe give you five.”

  “Five hundred?”

  “Five dollars,” said Fisk, and glancing up at Cecelia, he winked.

  “I paid eight-fifty!” Childers told him. “Not two hours ago, you offered me twelve!”

  “And you decided it’d be more profitable to be a horse’s ass.”

  “Suppose I involve the constable?” Childers said, though there wasn’t any force behind it, and Cecelia knew wherever this blond man was headed, she was going with him.

  Fisk turned and looked over one shoulder, and then he turned and looked over the other.

  “I don’t see one,” he said. “Tell you what: you go get him, we’ll stay here and wait. Just don’t take too long. I been known to get impatient.”

  * * *

  They took a winding way across the countryside, Cecelia on the chestnut mare named Honey, Samuel on his big bay horse.

  That was the man’s name: Samuel. That’s what he said to call him.

  Cecelia had never addressed a white man familiar. You were expected to master and marse your way around, like a roach scurrying for cover. But this man seemed different, like he didn’t know the rules, or didn’t care about rules, or was making new rules of his own. He was an exception, and exceptions ended badly for her. She sat the horse behind Samuel, peeking up at him, then looking down at her hands. She didn’t know what to do with them, never been on a horse in her life. She held onto the saddle horn, but that didn’t seem right: it wasn’t shaped for hands. Samuel had her horse’s lead line tethered to his own tack, and all she had to worry about was staying in the saddle. She liked it, riding and watching the country pass. A good little mare, was Honey. Cecelia reached down to pet her.

  They made camp in the woods beside the road. Samuel built a fire, boiled up a bag of beans, and set a kettle on the coals.

  She sat there watching. She was wondering when the pain would come. Would he hit her or would he kick her? Would she wake to find him on top of her, pressing down?

  “You take coffee?” Samuel said.

  “Tea,” she said. She’d never had coffee. She’d never been offered it. What was it to him if she had coffee? Her hands were shaking and she clasped them together to try and steady herself. She’d done fine while they were moving, but now there was nothing between the two of them but the crackling fire.

  Samuel said: “I’ve only got the one cup, but you’re welcome to swap with me, you want some of this.”

  She stared into the fire. She watched the spout of the kettle steam.

  Samuel removed it from the coals, took off the lid and poured in a handful of coffee grounds, then set it to one side. He rose, walked over to his horse, took a skillet from his saddle bag, came back over, squatted and began cutting slices from a slab of salt pork.

  “Take a while on the beans,” he said, slicing with his knife. “I’ve got a loaf of bread. Half a loaf, anyway.”

  She hadn’t noticed just how young he was. In Natchitoches, in the presence of Childers, or sitting up on his horse, Samuel had seemed a good deal older. Just the way he carried himself, as if he hadn’t come across anything he couldn’t walk over like a bridge.

  He looked at her with his dark blue eyes. He really was much younger than she’d thought. It gave her an edge, but she wasn’t sure exactly how. She was taking in everything about him, searching for the weakness. There was always weakness. Finding it was like finding a lever: you could move something heavier than yourself.

  Dusk was coming on. She thought she saw bats flitting through the air, but they might have been birds. She was very alert. She heard everything there was to hear, smelled every scent on the breeze.

  Samuel left the beans to simmer, rose and walked back over to his horse. He drew another pistol out of a saddle bag. So, he has two guns, she thought, but then he pulled out a third. He walked back over and sat by the fire, placing a pistol on either side of him, removing the pistol from his belt on his right hip, and tucking it in his belt on the other side, butt forward.

  Yes, she thought. One gun isn’t enough for him: he wants to shoot you with three.

  She sat there, studying him. She thought she might be able to kick coals into his face before he pointed one of the pistols at her, but she pictured him slapping Childers.

  You’ll need to distract him, she thought.

  She said: “Are we in any trouble?”

  Samuel had been paying attention to the beans. Maybe he was planning to eat before he shot her.

  “Trouble with who?” Samuel said.

  “Anybody,” she said, nodding at his guns.

  “Not as far as I know,” he said.

  She stared at him. The pistols had her spooked, but she realized they had nothing to do with her. He’d gone to the trouble of stealing her; he wouldn’t up and shoot her full of holes. He didn’t have that air about him, but his air was very strange. There was nothing in her experience to prepare her for it.

  “What are you scared of?” she asked.

  Samuel had his long knife in hand. His pistols shone in the firelight. He cocked his head and looked at her.

  “Scared?” he said.

  Yes, she wondered. What would that be like? Not to
be scared. Then she thought she might use this to her advantage. Because, perhaps he ought to be scared and didn’t know it.

  They sat listening to the fire. She couldn’t stop looking at the guns, wondering what they felt like. She’d never been this curious about anything in all her life.

  “Can I hold it?” she said, and then thought, No. You shouldn’t have said that.

  Samuel was stirring the beans with the blade of his knife. He glanced at her, then nodded to one of the pistols there on the blanket beside him. Was that what she wanted to hold?

  “Yes,” she said, and then thought, He is different. He is a different kind of man. That was good, but it also made her nervous. She didn’t know how he was different. The guns weren’t allowing her to think.

  Samuel switched his knife to his left hand, wiped his fingers on the underside of his thigh, took up the pistol and handed it across.

  She reached out and took hold of it. The gun was heavy, much heavier than she’d have thought. Smooth to the touch, the steel a little cool. She could feel the danger in it, and she liked the possibilities of all that it could do.

  She sat there, feeling its weight. She could sense his eyes on her. She handed the pistol back across, and Samuel took it and laid it on the blanket.

  She was instantly ravenous. Maybe it was the smell of the beans and frying pork, or maybe it was holding the gun. She looked at Samuel.

  “How’d you know I wouldn’t shoot you?” she said.

  “You ain’t shot anybody,” said Samuel, grinning.

  “How do you know?”

  Now Samuel laughed, and she felt cross with him. Had she said something funny? Did he think she was that ignorant, couldn’t figure out how to work a gun?

  She must have made a face, because he stifled his laughter, and started pinching at his nose.

  “I wouldn’t hand a gun to somebody who’d shoot me with it,” he said.

  “You’ve been around a lot of shooting?”

  Samuel just shrugged, as if it was no great matter, and she wasn’t irritated with him anymore because maybe he would teach her.

  She said, “You’ve killed people, haven’t you?”

  “Mexicans,” he said.

  “Why did you kill Mexicans?”

  “They went to oppressing us.”

  She watched him a moment. She asked how the Mexicans had done that.

  “Done what?”

  “Oppress you,” she said.

  “I don’t know. It’s what the men told me.”

  “What men?”

  “The ones who said the Mexicans were oppressing us.”

  She didn’t say anything. Everything about this man was foreign to her. But there was something familiar too. She couldn’t put her finger on it.

  They sat there eating quietly; the food was very good. She could feel herself liking this man, and it had been a long time since she’d liked anyone but Okah. It had been years. She’d taken those things out of herself and placed them in a jar. Her mind was shelves and shelves of all the things she was storing. This was the love she’d bottled up after they’d sold away her mother, and this was that close feeling she’d bottled up after Jubal lost his ears. This was her hope of reaching Philadelphia; this was her hope of being free, not surrounded by people who were slower: being around them was like walking through molasses. All the slow people of the world; let’s cover Cecelia with moss.

  Samuel wasn’t smart like her, or not smart in the same way. But his mind was quick and agile. There was no fear in him at all.

  And he sat right there and let you hold his gun.

  If he hadn’t been so young, perhaps he’d have known there were plenty of things in this world to be scared of.

  He might’ve even realized she was one of them.

  DUNCAN LAMMONS

  —TEXAS, 1836–1839—

  1836 was a bad Indian year, the worst then on record. Our ranging company spent all winter riding against the various bands niggling the Republic.

  But come springtime, Noah was for trying a different approach. Under flag of truce, he ingratiated himself to a Comanche chieftain by the name of Muguara, and the chief invited Noah to live in their camp for a spell.

  “Don’t tell me you’re considering it,” I said.

  “I’m absolutely considering it.”

  “What the devil for?”

  “Because I’m tired of roosting in this saddle. I’ve got blisters on my backside and my feet feel like rocks.”

  “You’re blind as a snubbing post,” I said. “You traipse out there with those howlers, you’ll lose yourself a mess of hair.”

  He thought about that for several minutes.

  Then he said, “No, Duncan, I think you’re wrong. We need to establish commerce with these people, and I believe this might could be a start.”

  “People?” I said. “Is that what we’re calling them?”

  “Well,” he said, “what name would you give?”

  “I’ve been too inconvenienced to give much thought to the matter, Noah. Most of the Indians I’ve encountered have tried to pop an arrow through me.”

  Noah shook his head. “There are an awful lot of Indians in these parts to have to go to war with all of them. Would you not rather have some as friends?”

  Levi English, who was lying on his bedroll several feet away, had been listening to our conversation and now couldn’t help but enter it.

  “Friends?” he said. “Begging your pardon, Cap, but you’re ignorant as a mule-eared rabbit.”

  I feared Noah might sharpen the young ranger’s hoe for such saucy words, but apparently Captain Smithwick was in a diplomatic mood.

  “Why haven’t I got sense, Levi? Tell me something.”

  “You cannot be friends with horse Indians. My pap was killed by the Pawnee in Arkansas. They killed him and left him lay.”

  “I am sorry about that,” Noah said. “But these tribes are different one from another. I don’t think we can lay your paw’s murder on the Comanche.”

  Levi mumbled something, rolled over and showed us his back. Noah and I sat there with the fire crackling. I wished that Sam was with us; he’d have been able to convince Noah of his error.

  I cleared my throat.

  “He has a point,” I said. “At the very least, you might consider it.”

  Noah said, “It cannot be that all of these people”—and here he gave the word special stress—“mean to do us violence. As I see it, a man is a man. If we can learn what it is they want, there is no reason why we can’t have relations.”

  I supposed he was right, but still didn’t like this talk about men-being-men as I suspected I’d be forced to kill a mess of them before it was all said and done. I tried to think about Levi’s murdered pap, but now Noah’s newfound Quakerism was rattling around in my head like a handful of gravel.

  “It is a fine notion,” I told him. “Are you willing to go to hell for it? What if you’re wrong?”

  “Then I guess you will have to do without me,” he said. “But I am determined to try.”

  We continued to argue most the night, but I was barking at a knot. When he left out at dawn, I told myself I’d never see him again.

  But he returned that summer just as plump as you please. He wore buckskin breeches, a necklace of glass beads, and his hair was down on his shoulders.

  “Well,” I said, “I knew you for a heathen when I first clapped eyes on you. Here is the proof.”

  All that day, he regaled us with stories of buffalo hunts and life in a Comanche camp. In three months’ time, he’d picked up a fair amount of their lingo, and had acquired the name Juaqua. Old Muguara promised him that his band would not trouble us so long as their hunting grounds were respected.

  “You impress me,” I said. “Now, if every tribe would have you as their hous
eguest, we might get somewhere in about a hundred years.”

  “We might,” Noah said.

  * * *

  There was still no word from Sam. I asked after him everwhere we went, but folks didn’t know what I was talking about.

  “He wears a panther skin,” I told one wall-eyed patriarch outside Gonzales. “He’s made a cap of it.”

  The man nodded at me.

  “Good for him,” he said.

  That spring, our second term of enlistment was drawing to an end. Noah asked what I planned to do.

  “What do you mean?” I said. “I’m signing on again. How about yourself?”

  He said that he was done with rangering, and it was no idle threat. When his term of service was finished, he set out to open a shop in Bastrop. I dithered about a few days, then put my name on the roster. They gave me a captaincy and a good company formed under me: Calvin Barker. Jimmie Curtice. The Mexican Joel Ramírez, who wanted above all things to be counted a true Texan—and was so in my book.

  Levi English was still with us; I’d watched him become a full-grown man. There was Oliver Buckman and Hugh Childers. Ganey Crosby who used the name “Choctaw Tom.” John Berry. John Williams. Isaac Casner.

  New recruits straggled in every year: vagabond boys with a hankering for blood or men who’d exhausted the other meager prospects our Republic had to offer and concluded it was either ride or starve. If these troopers had one thing in common besides their gift for violence, it was the dire circumstances of their youths. I began keeping a tally of how many rangers told me they’d seen their fathers burn up with fever or get stretched by a hangman’s noose. They recounted tales of terrible accidents: falls from horseback, wagons swept away by swollen rivers, attacks by mountain lions or panthers—Choctaw Tom told me his pap had been savaged by a billy goat. The animal pushed the poor farmer into a corner of his barn and butted him so fiercely his organs ruptured.

  My men had been raised by uncles or stepfathers, brutes who lashed them for imagined offenses or because it gave them pleasure. Noah and myself were the only rangers I ever knew who could not recite you some juvenile misfortune. I often thought about that. Does every talent have its seed in calamity?