by Aaron Gwyn
Juan seemed to have no problem planting his seed in both soils. On his third night with us, I came on him propped with his back to the fire, studying a little volume he held so close to his face he could’ve licked it—a strange occurrence all round as I’d never seen a ranger read anything round the campfire. There were men who carried the Good Book in their traps, but I hadn’t known them to crack its covers.
I stood there taking in the sight of this grappler studying his book like he was in a library and not camped in the wilderness on the Colorado.
“What you reading?” I said.
“Wordsworth,” he said, not yet looking up.
“Beg pardon?”
“William Wordsworth. A poet of Inglaterra. You haven’t heard of him, Captain?”
“Well,” I said, “there’s just not a whole lot of interest in English poetry among men in this line. Though I daresay I’d welcome it.”
He gestured for me to sit, then thumbed back and forth and a few pages and cleared his throat.
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,” he read. “The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, hath elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar: not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home: heaven lies about us in our infancy. Shades of the prison house began to close upon the growing boy, but he beholds the light, and whence it flows, he sees it in his joy.”
He stopped and looked up at me.
“Now that is something,” I said. “Read that last part again.”
As he began to do so, the men rose and gathered round, and soon he had quite an audience. I’d scant hope that Juan would make lovers of poetry of this rough band, but the longer he read, the more mouths I watched open and gape in childlike wonder. He must have read for a good ten minutes, and when his voice began to falter and he stopped, I saw that Felix McClusky was standing at the edge of the group, listening.
He nodded toward Juan and I thought he was about to deliver some slight or insult, but instead he said, “Is that the end of it?”
Juan nodded. “Would you hear another?”
In the firelight, McClusky’s face looked bashful and boyish.
“If you’d not mind,” he said.
The other men agreed. Then they began commenting on this or that phrase they’d caught, how nicely it was turned, how true.
I shook my head. I thought I’d been riding with men I knew. Ruffians and reprobates. And yet, in a few minutes’ time, Juan had revealed them to be poetry-lovers in buckskin.
Yes. Our new recruit was indeed a Godsend.
Not least of all, for me.
CECELIA
—TEXAS, 1837—
They stopped in the town of Washington on the muddy Brazos River. Samuel tied their horses to the post outside a cedar-log building, then stood there rummaging in his saddle bags.
She glanced up the dirt street of the little hamlet: to that mule over yonder with the dejected look on its face; to the chickens wandering from yard to yard, pecking at the mud. She heard a door open, and a red-haired man emerged from a dilapidated hut and slumped against his porch railing, staring.
She turned and looked back at Sam.
Your wilderness manners are one thing, she thought. Let’s see how you treat me among your own.
He’d produced a small leather satchel, but was still searching his bag, lips pursed, digging through his traps.
“Did you lose something?” she asked.
“I reckon,” he said. He glanced up at her and lifted the satchel. “I got to take this in to Captain Barker. Won’t be but a minute.”
Then he turned, went hobbling up the steps, and disappeared inside.
When he came back out, the satchel was gone and he had a sheaf of papers in hand. He hoisted himself into the saddle, and they started back down the lane.
He seemed very pleased with himself. He’d begun whistling a melody that meandered up and down.
Any other time, this might’ve annoyed her, but she couldn’t stop looking at the papers he carried, and the more she stared at them, the more nervous she got. She knew the bill of sale he’d taken off Childers was in his far-side saddlebag, but she couldn’t help thinking these new documents added something to it.
When they were a mile or so out of town, she couldn’t stand it any longer. She chucked her horse up alongside him and nodded at the papers.
“What are they?” she asked.
He didn’t say anything, didn’t stop his whistling, just handed them across.
She slowed her horse and stopped there in the road, unfolding the documents, reading through the pages. She was surprised to find they didn’t mention her. In fact, they had nothing to do with her at all.
The first page was just a note that read:
This is to certify that the name of Samuel Fisk appears on the muster roll of Capt. John Tumlinson’s Volunteer Company who was under the command of Major Williamson in the expedition against Santa Anna.
—John Tumlinson, Captain of Rangers
The next page was in two parts and written in a different hand:
On the application of Samuel Fisk in pay for services in the war of Independence between the Republic of Texas and Mexico in 1835:
I am well acquainted with Samuel Fisk the applicant here personally present—he is the identical Samuel Fisk who served in Capt. Smithwick’s Company. I was a member of the same company and have received pay for my services and was also paid for the use of my horse.
Private Fisk has received no pay for his service.
Sworn to this day of 16 April 1837
—Josiah Barker
Underneath this was another message, reading:
Personally appearing before me the undersigned Samuel Fisk who upon oath says:
I served under Capt. Smithwick in 1836. I was in service 18 months, I never receiving any pay for my services or the use of my horse to which I was entitled the same as other members of the company. I never hitherto applied for my pay or authorized any person to apply for me.
X
Subscribing to and sworn before me
this 16 April 1837
—Josiah Barker
“You didn’t sign it,” she said, and the words were hardly out of her mouth before she realized why.
He could not write his name, probably couldn’t read these pages.
“You were in a war?” she said.
“That’s an awful proud name for it.”
“It says for services in the war of Independence.”
“Well, if it’s wrote down, it’s got to be true then, hadn’t it?”
“What’s the pay they’re talking about?”
“Land,” he said. “My land payment. Government’s short of gold, so they pay us all in property.”
“All of who?”
“Rangers,” he said. “Our ranger company.”
“Is that an army?”
“It’s a sort of one,” he said.
“Are you still in it?”
“As of right this minute, I’m not in nothing. My term expired in Louisiana, but I was supposed to bring that satchel to Captain Barker, so that’s what I done.”
“What was in the satchel?”
“I don’t have no idea,” he said.
“And you’re finished? With your rangers?”
“Captain wanted me to sign on for another go, but I told him I was tired of people telling me what to do.”
She felt herself relaxing, her heart beating slower, and as it did, she saw once again what a striking man he was. He really did have a rough beauty to him. It was just that you didn’t expect it, so it took you unaware.
Folding the papers, she walked her horse over and handed them back to Samuel. She asked where they were going.
>
“Well,” he told her, “they say I have to ride to the land office in Austin. I show them these papers and then I can pick out some property and hire a surveyor.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know then what,” he said. “What about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where do you want to go?”
She’d been waiting all her life for someone to ask her this. Of course, she had no answer. No practice at answers. It flummoxed her so badly that she kneed Honey into a walk, got out ahead of Samuel, then pushed the horse to a trot.
She wouldn’t have him looking at her, seeing the baffled expression on her face.
Where did she want to go?
The only place she’d ever considered was away.
DUNCAN LAMMONS
—TEXAS, 1840–1841—
That summer, we were deployed along the Brazos, scouting for any sign of Comanche. In those days, it was not unheard of for them to venture so far east. Later that year, Chief Buffalo Hump would lead his Penateka braves to the Port of Linnville and raze it to the ground.
But that catastrophe was still some weeks away and we’d seen no Indians of any stripe for months. In the eventide, I’d allow the men to light as many cookfires as they wished and often a bottle would be passed around.
One night, after partaking of a particularly stancheous jar of mash, we began to question Juan Juarez about his birth and homeland, how he’d crossed the great ocean and ended up with the likes of us.
Juan didn’t consume spiritous liquors. He sat with his back to the fire, studying us, as if trying to determine just how drunk we were.
“Who would want such stories?” he asked. “Why not rather a poem?” He retrieved his Wordsworth from his blankets and began to thumb the pages.
Levi English said, “You can read to us any night. We’re asking about your kinfolk. Your raising.”
Juan’s brow knit. He glanced at me.
“Tu familia,” I told him. “Su crianza.”
He shook his head. He lifted his book.
“But this is a very great poet, no?”
“For a fact,” I told him.
“And you would rather some story of myself?”
“The men are partial to you, Master Juarez. Take it as a compliment. Un cumplido.”
He looked at me, then at the faces flickering in the firelight. He closed his book and set it there beside him.
“Very well,” he said. “What would you know?”
“Where were you born?” Levi said.
“On Tenerife in the Islas Canarias. You would say the Isle of Dogs.”
“I thought that you were Spanish.”
“Si. Castellano. El español. Tenerife is a colony of España.”
“It’s an island?” Levi said.
“An island,” Juan told him, nodding. “But an island of coast, mountain, forest, all three. There is desert as well. You walk out of foothills into the sea.”
I said, “Did you live in a town?”
“Si, a village,” he said. “A village near the shore. Mamá and Papá. Mi hermanos. Mi abuela.”
It sounded like quite a life; I couldn’t imagine him wanting to leave it.
Nor could McClusky. The Irishman said, “If you were so happy, what brought you to us?”
“I cannot say we were happy all the time, but we were often happy.”
Then something in his face changed. He seemed to grow more thoughtful.
“Mamá, when she carries me inside her, has a strong premonición I will be a girl. So, being a boy, I am much surprise to her. Maybe too much surprise.
“Mi hermanos are older than myself. They tease and call me Juanita. Mamá takes their part; only Abuela takes mine. Papá is a fisherman and has no time to take any part at all. His hands are fat with the scars of his nets.”
“Who’s Abuela?” Levi said.
“His grandmother,” I told him, then looking at Juan, “Your mother’s mother?”
“No,” he said. “She is Papá’s. Mamá does not like that she is come to live with us. She is old and tells us stories. The Witches of Anaga. The Lumia who wanders the night and sinks her tooth into whichever child she finds. The Dip, a dog who takes the children’s blood as well. These are the stories Abuela enjoys to tell.”
“Did it scare you?” Levi said.
“No. Both mi hermanos are frighten of her, but I am not frighten. I like her stories very much. We have only three beds in our home and some one must share with Abuela. I say that I will share and Abuela tells me many more stories than mi hermanos.
“Mamá is pray all the time, thinking some bad thing will befall her hijos. ‘Do not go down to the shore,’ she says. ‘Do not go up to the mountain.’ She is sure this bad thing will happen, but Abuela thinks Mamá has a weakness.
“‘Your mamá has put her fear inside your hermanos,’ she tells me. ‘How will they be men?’
“‘They will not,’ I say.
“‘No,’ she says. ‘They are cobardes. But you are brave already. These is why Lumia will pass you by. The blood of a brave boy dries Lumia up like wind. Your hermanos? Why not sink a tooth into the heart of a cobarde? If I had a tooth left to me, I would do this myself.’
“It is the corsarios especially that worry Mamá. Piratas of Barbary. They take anyone they can find and they find many. There is a blacksmith of our village named Juan also, a big man, very strong. But one day he is gone. No one knows to where. People say the piratas take him. Mi papá says it is foolish to think the piratas take this man.
“‘He drinks too much,’ Papá says. ‘He drinks and is fallen into the sea and drown. What would piratas want with such a man?’”
“Pirata?” McClusky asked.
“Pirates,” I told him.
“Si,” said Juan. “Corsario.”
“Why did they take your people?” I asked.
“Not just my people, Captain. The Frances, los italianos. Old, young, it is no difference. It is for esclavos that the piratas take these people. Or for rescate. Or as rehén.”
“English,” McClusky demanded.
“Hostages,” I told him. “For ransom.”
Juan nodded. “Abuela thinks my mother fears the corsarios too much.
“‘You see,’ she tells me. ‘Your mamá does not like that I should speak of Lumia, but she will talk of the piratas until she turn your hermanos into cobardes. I ask you: which is worse?’
“Better than stories, Abuela loves to eat bananas. Bananas all the time. Papá brings her these when he can think to do so, but his mind is with the fish. Mamá makes soup for Abuela to eat, but Abuela cares nothing for soup.
“When I bring her back bananas, you should see her eyes.
“‘You are like Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar,’ she says. ‘You are ten of your hermanos.’ She peels the banana with her fingers. Her face shines. ‘Not ten,’ she says: ‘cien.’
“‘Why do you bring her plantanos?’ mi hermano Miguel asks.
“‘He must bring her these,’ says mi hermano Gabriel, ‘or he cannot share her bed.’ He sucks his lips over his teeth like they are Abuela’s gums.
“‘You are afraid of shadows, Gabriel. You could not fetch a potato from the ground.’
“Gabriel takes one of the bananas and puts it obscenely between his lips, a gesto I will not understand until much later, when I am un esclavo in the pasha’s palace.
“But I tell Abuela and she understand very well. At supper, she takes one of the bananas, staring at mi hermanos all the while. She does not peel it. She says, ‘They say that the tooth of Lumia is a similar size. She is silent as a mouse in all her movements, but her tooth she cannot quiet.’ She holds the banana like a great fang. ‘It clicks against the open windows she will slip inside. It scratches the floors as she crawl o
n hands and feet.’ She places the tip of the banana on the table and drags it. Miguel looks down at his lap and Gabriel puts out his chin to show he is not frighten, but both their faces are as pale as if the Lumia has drain their blood already.
“‘I myself saw her when I was just a child,’ says Abuela, ‘and I—’
“‘This is enough,’ Mamá says. She turns to Papá in her anger, but Papá is hiding a smile.
“‘I suppose you enjoy these pagano lies,’ Mamá says.
“‘I suppose,’ says Papá.
“That night, lying with Abuela in the dark, I can hear mi hermanos cry. Abuela hears them also. She begins to laugh.”
* * *
Juan told us that the next year some manner of blight was visited on the banana trees of his island. Before this, he’d only had to walk a mile or so to find fruit for his granny; now he had to go five miles or more.
He’d become quite expert as a climber; he could clamber up a trunk quick as a squirrel.
On a scout one morning, roosted up in a banana tree, he looked out between the leafy stalks to see a number of boats pulled up on the beach, small boats such as the fishermen of his little island used, but unfamiliar in their design. He felt a tremor of fear, but his granny had taught him the shame of such cowardice, so he gathered the bunch of bananas he’d come for and slid to the ground. He now saw that farther out from the coast, a great ship was anchored. He knew right away who it belonged to and he started off into the trees, taking a footpath that would lead him into his village by a secret route.