Touchstone Season Two Box Set

by Andy Conway

  I dropped the pamphlet like it had smallpox on its pages.

  George W. Hancock clapped loudly, covering my disgust. “Give her a big hand, ladies and gentlemen, for being so brave.”

  They clapped again like the raucous morons they were, until he raised a hand once more.

  “The words of the great Theodore Roosevelt there, and yours for a dime this very day, ladies and gentlemen.”

  I turned to go, wanting to push my way out of the circle, but none of them moved to let me free.

  “You have spent many years away from your true home,” he said suddenly, booming it out like a priest at the pulpit. “You have spent many years speaking a language that is not your own!”

  Stung, I turned to spit in his eye.

  “We call ourselves La—”

  “Quiet!” he cried. “Please, do not make it easy for me. No prompting. Say anything you like but nothing about your origins.”

  And I could see in his eyes that he knew damn well where I’d spent the last years, but he wanted to protect me from the prejudice of his audience. They might tear me apart, and him with me.

  “I see that you doubt my skill.” he said.

  I was shaking my head, but said, “I think you’re a saloon bar fraud who uses stooges and plants in the audience to pull a trick on people.”

  The woman who was up previously called out with outrage. “How dare you call me a stooge!”

  “No, it’s fine,” cried George W. Hancock, laughing it off. “You go ahead, lady.”

  “It’s not as damaging or as offensive as a snake oil salesman, where you’re playing with people’s health,” I said. “You’re just an entertainer, so it’s harmless enough, I guess. But it’s still a lie, and I don’t think you can no more tell anything about where a person comes from, than I can look at an egg and tell where a chicken hatched it.”

  Half of the room laughed out loud, and I expected to see anger in his eyes, but humour danced there, like he knew a great secret and was about to trip me up so I’d fall flat on my face.

  “Thank you, very much, young lady. You’ve said enough.”

  A great whooooo of scandal rippled through the crowd, as if I’d offended him and he’d had enough of me. But he held up a hand to still them, still smiling his confident smile.

  “You have said precisely enough for me to glean from which corner of the earth you sprang.”

  I felt a strange tingling sensation at the back of my neck. I knew there was no way he could read this from anything I’d said, for one simple reason: I myself didn’t know where I was from.

  “Your accent, although marred by your recent stay with your foreign friends, as any accent would be compromised when subjected to a lengthy period of influence, nevertheless has some very unique qualities.”

  The audience was still now, every man and woman in the room hanging on his word.

  “You were not born on these shores, ma’am. Am I right?”

  I searched my heart. I had always felt it. I had always known I had not appeared on the plains from some former life in an American town. I had always sensed I was from across the sea.

  “You,” he said, “are from... England.”

  Like a slap to the face I knew it to be true the moment he said it. The audience cooed in wonder.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Now, which part of England? Let me see.”

  He stared into my very soul and I wondered if he had the power to read my mind. To read parts of my mind that even I could not read.

  He closed his eyes. “Tell me what your fondest memory is of these shores. I want to know nothing of your life in England, so you don’t betray an answer to me, unwittingly. I merely want to hear more of your voice so I can home in on your exact place of birth.”

  My fondest memory? My time since my awakening had been one of struggle, of death, of loneliness, starvation, murder, brutality. What was there to be fond of? But the moment that came to me was dancing with the tribe. Dancing our victory dance at the death of Custer, on the banks of the Little Bighorn.

  I looked around the sea of white faces and knew I could not tell them that. Knew they would take me outside and hang me from the steamship’s balcony.

  “There was a dance,” I said, making it up as images flowed to my imagination. “A square just on the edge of town in the afternoon sun. I was dressed in my best Sunday dress with a lovely black bonnet. And the sheriff asked me to dance. He was shy. More used to killing outlaws than courting women, but he took off his hat, fiddled with it in his hands, and asked if he might have the pleasure of this dance. And my heart jumped for joy. The band were playing My Darling Clementine, and we danced in the sun. It was quite beautiful.”

  I stopped and looked around. The craggy faces of the hardnosed men had softened a little. Each was thinking of a certain girl they’d once asked to dance.

  Though I had made it up, I had seen the images with such clarity, as if they were memories.

  “The Black Country,” said George W. Hancock. “No, not quite as broad as that. But one of the Midlands towns, certainly.”

  His finger wandered the air as if hovering over a map of England only he could see. “Not so far north as Wolverhampton. Not so far south as Warwick.”

  He opened his eyes with triumph. “I have it!”

  The finger now pointed at me.

  “You, ma’am, are from... Birmingham!”

  Everyone looked to me for the recognition I couldn’t give. But the word thrilled in my heart like an arrow that quivers and hums with delight at hitting its target.

  Birmingham.

  I knew it. I saw it. I could almost smell it.

  Birmingham.

  He was right. His skill was true. He had heard my voice and gleaned my origin.

  Birmingham.

  The word I’d written in my notebook. The word that had come to me in my dreams.

  My mouth fell open, but I couldn’t say yes. I simply nodded.

  A great cheer erupted and the room thundered with riotous applause.

  I felt my face go red and my hand went to my breast to still my beating heart. I was from Birmingham. And this Birmingham was in England. I knew it now.

  George W. Hancock politely shook my hand. I saw him mouth a thank you but could not hear it above the acclaim.

  Yankton

  YANKTON, FEBRUARY, 1887. The General Terry edged along the last narrow stretch of water before pulling into Yankton with a scream. Before I’d even set foot in the place I could sense that Yankton was bigger than Running Water. About ten times bigger. It gave off a threatening hum like a beehive, and I almost changed my mind. I could stay on the boat and take it all the way to Sioux City. It would be slower, but much more peaceful, and I didn’t wonder why some people still chose to do that and hang the railroad.

  But George W. Hancock came to my side and insisted on accompanying me off the steamship. He took a last long look at the ship that had brought us here, before we commenced our walk across the town. He was almost weeping tears for the golden age of the steamboat.

  “You should have seen it ten years ago. My lord, what a time that was. What a time.”

  He insisted on walking me all the way to the Yankton train station.

  I told him it wasn’t necessary, but I was kind of glad of his arm to hang on to, and his company was a distraction from the clamour of the place.

  Right away there was more noise than I’d ever heard, and more people than I’d ever seen. Except...

  Somewhere, deep at the back of my mind, in my dreams and in my lost memories, I sensed I had heard more noise, seen more people and waded through more dirt than this. Maybe it had been in my former life in this Birmingham. Maybe it was even louder, more crowded, and dirtier than Yankton.

  We came to the train station building in ten minutes and I was surprised to find it a squat building with a low, wide roof, like an angry god had squashed a tipi.

  George W. Hancock looked through my itinerary and told
me I could get a cheaper ticket all the way to New York if I bought from the right person, not the robbers at the railroad office.

  He would go find such a man and arrange everything for me. I agreed and gave him my money and watched him walk off, whistling a jaunty tune.

  I drank some water from a fountain, and pulled my shawl around me from the bitter cold, trying not to look like a winyan with a blanket.

  And I sat on a bench at that station and waited.

  And waited and waited.

  After about an hour I knew he wasn’t coming back. He’d taken my money and was no doubt half way back down the river, regaling his dwindling band of passengers with his party trick.

  How could I have been so stupid as to trust a white man? Of course he’d stolen my money! The white men had stolen everything from the Indians. They stole just like they breathed in and out. It was not only natural to them, it was their God-given right.

  I decided to go hunt him down and cut out his heart, but knew there was so little chance of ever finding him. Despair threw its blanket over my head and I suffocated, so hot suddenly, wanting to lie down on the cool floor. I ran my hand under the water from the drinking fountain and slathered my face. I was going to puke.

  Then I saw him.

  Cutting through the indifferent crowd, heading straight for me, a smile on his face.

  He’d come back.

  George W. Hancock came right up to me and touched the brim of his hat.

  “Ma’am, I do apologize for the terrible delay. The bureaucracy involved in buying tickets for so many different railroads, and transfers, and such, well... It proved a herculean task.”

  He took out a sheaf of papers: my tickets and an itinerary detailing every stop and change in the journey to New York.

  “And here is your change, ma’am.”

  I blinked tears away and babbled, “I should give you something for your help.”

  “Please, God, no,” he said, alarmed. “Do not insult me. It is my pleasure and my duty to help a beautiful lady.”

  He pressed the money into my fist and I shoved it into my purse, as if it were something shameful.

  “I can’t thank you enough,” I said. “Not just for this, but for telling me where I’m from.”

  He nodded and looked into the distance, as if trying to see back downriver to the exact place we had been when he told me. “You didn’t know.”

  I shook my head. “But I see that word in my dreams. And when you said it, I knew. I would never have known where it was, though.”

  “And now you intend to go there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. And I really didn’t.

  I held out my hand suddenly and he shook it, then laughed and turned it over and kissed it, bowing deep.

  “Thank you, Mr Hancock.”

  He ignored my goodbyes, not yet finished with me, stroking his silver moustache, deep in thought.

  “So,” he said, lowering his voice, “you lived with the Sioux?”

  “We call ourselves Lakota.”

  “And the Hunkpapa band, if I’m not mistaken. How long? A good few years, by my reckoning.”

  “Three years.”

  “So you missed the Indian Wars? Little Bighorn.”

  “No. I was there.”

  “But, how can that be possible? You’ve not long lost your accent, that I do know, and the wars were ten years ago.”

  “That’s my magic to keep.”

  A smirk, and that bow of the head again. “Ma’am. It has been a privilege to meet you.”

  “Thank you for your help, Mr Hancock.”

  But still he could not leave. “The Little Bighorn, eh? That camp must have been quite a sight. That battle too, I dare say.”

  “You wouldn’t believe it. No one would believe it.”

  “Wish I’d been there to see it, all the same.”

  “You wouldn’t have liked it,” I said.

  “Why so?”

  “I’d have scalped you.”

  A flash of fear in his eyes. Then he smiled and raised his white hat, revealing a bald crown from which his lank silver locks hung. “You wouldn’t have got much for your trouble, ma’am.”

  He turned and was gone, and I could hear his laughter all the way up the street.

  Corn Palaces

  ELK POINT, FEBRUARY, 1887. I stepped on the train through a fog of steam and a porter showed me to my carriage, putting my bag on the rack above my head. An old couple to my side, and three men opposite, who looked me over and appraised me, like the cattle that had made them lose their hair, even the one that wore a white collar that marked him out as a priest.

  I ignored them by poring over the map that George W. Hancock had purchased for me. The journey I’d taken from Running Water to Sioux City was barely the width of one finger, but from Sioux City to New York was the width of eight palms.

  The map was a sight to break the heart of the bravest of braves. Here it was, plain to see, the white man’s cities and railroads spreading all over the land like an invasive creeper, and there in the middle, an insignificant little spot labelled Indian Territory.

  Closing my eyes, feeling the gentle tug of the train as it scurried up the track, I drifted off and woke with a bump to find all the occupants of the carriage changed. Checking the map, I knew we must have gone through Vermillion and maybe Elk Point, and Sioux City would be next. There were now two couples conversing. I couldn’t hear what the women were saying to each other, because the men were next to me and talked loudly of corn palaces.

  I listened, thinking I’d misheard, but it seemed they were talking about real buildings made out of corn. And Sioux City was famous for it. They were the Eighth Wonder of the World and everyone was going to see them. I wondered why Billy Roka and George W. Hancock hadn’t mentioned this to me.

  From the conversation of the men, I gathered there had been a drought that summer, and a plague of locusts too which had wiped out the crops of almost every state. But prayer had saved Sioux City alone, and the drought and the locusts had miraculously passed over them. It was such a miracle that they’d now built palaces out of corn. The Lord be merciful.

  I wondered at this God of theirs. How could he save the lives of these wasichus, but do nothing while Miniconjou children were shot dead in the snow?

  I did not want to hear any more about this God, turning away to the window and dozing again, trying to shut my ears to their talk of corn palaces.

  But here was a curious thing.

  I jolted awake to a gentle touch on my arm.

  “Sioux City, ma’am.” The man smiling down at me was not one of the men who had talked of corn palaces. He was the priest, who had been in the carriage when I’d got on.

  Glancing around, I checked on the others, expecting to find the priest had simply returned to the carriage, but everyone in there, bustling for their luggage, was the same as when I’d started my journey. The priest, the two ogling men, the old couple.

  “Where are the two couples?” I asked. “They were talking about the corn palaces.”

  “Corn palaces?”

  “Palaces made of corn. In Sioux City.”

  They looked, one to the other, and I saw that no one had heard of any corn palaces. It had been a dream within a dream.

  The priest took my bag from the rack and tipped his hat and said no more, thinking I was a poor crazy woman.

  Maybe he was right.

  Iron Horses

  SIOUX CITY, FEBRUARY, 1887. I got off the train but saw nothing of Sioux City, walking from the Sioux City and Northern Railroad to the Illinois Central Railroad under the roof of the new union building. There was no need to go seek out non-existent corn palaces or a city that had grown from eight thousand to thirty thousand in just seven years, and I was glad of that.

  This train took me from Sioux City, through Fort Dodge, Dubuque, Rockford, Rochelle, Aurora, and finally to Chicago, and only the width of two palms across the map.

  By now it was overwhelm
ing just how many wasichus there were across the country. Red Cloud had warned that they were coming like grasshoppers, but so few of us had been able to imagine just how many there were, and how unstoppable. In two days, I’d already seen more whites than I’d seen blades of grass by the Little Bighorn. And there were still six palms to travel across the map to New York, the busiest, most populated city of them all.

  The journey was a blur of smoke and fear. I fell sick and was glad of the sleeper cabin that George W. Hancock had booked for me. The Erie and Western Railroad Company line ran from Chicago, through Marion, Hornsville, Erie, Binghamton, and a hundred or more stations along the way.

  The names of the towns called out to me in our native tongues, our words stolen from us like our lands.

  I chanted their names to myself, to remember what was lost, and how:

  Locust, Ashland, Akron, Shenanga,

  Amasa, Columbus, Bear Lake, Ashville,

  Lakewood, Friendship, Horseheads, Chemung,

  Tioga, Owego, Susquehanna, Cochecton,

  Callicoon, Lackawaxen, Shokola, Goshen,

  Suffern, Hohokus, Nyack, Passaic.

  And when the chanting ended and the iron horse reared up and neighed its last, I fell from it through a cloud, dizzy with fever, into the beehive of New York.

  Locusts

  NEW YORK, FEBRUARY, 1887. To my surprise, I found that the streets of New York seemed familiar to me. Familiar and yet strange at the same time. For I sensed roughly where I should walk, and how each street related to others, but only recognized one or two of the buildings that lined the crowded streets, and instead had visions of great towers made of glass and iron.

  One side of my face ached and I thought a sewing awl had been thrust into my ear, like the one they thrust into Custer’s ear so he might hear better in the spirit land. The pain throbbed inside my mouth and down my throat.