The Wild Girl

by Jim Fergus

  Indian men dressed in serapes, the women in colorful dresses and shawls, were setting up tables around the plaza, unloading baskets of produce from donkeys and mules. I realized that it was Saturday and they were setting up the market. I exposed some film of the scene, and for the most part, the merchants were friendly and cooperative, although one old woman waved her cane threateningly when I pointed my camera at her.

  An enormous, incongruously ornate adobe brick church dominates the plaza. Built in the past century by Franciscan missionaries, or rather by the Indian slave labor they employed, it seems to loom threateningly over the little village. Inside, it was cool and dark, lit only by candles and wall sconces. I could hear the priest saying morning mass from the altar, but I could barely make him out in the dimness. I had not yet seen this man who sent village girls off to a life of prostitution in the border towns and I sat down in a pew in the rear of the church, waiting for my eyes to adjust. But there was something hypnotic about the low, echoing incantations of the mass, the dim candlelight, and I think I must have dozed off sitting there. The next thing I knew someone slipped into the pew beside me. It was Jesus, breathing heavily.

  “You must come with me, Señor Ned,” he whispered urgently.

  “What’s going on, kid?”

  “They caught an Apache. A real wild Apache.”

  I followed the boy out of the church. A crowd had formed on the other side of the plaza and we pushed our way through it. There I witnessed a sight such as I have never before seen. An Indian girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, was tethered by a rope to a hitching post in front of the jailhouse. She sat on her haunches in the dirt, peering out at the crowd through fiercely tangled hair. An overturned bucket lay beside her, and several uneaten tamales that had been thrown to her, as to a dog. The girl was filthy, streaked with dirt, sweat, and blood, dressed in a soiled man’s shirt and high moccasins. Even from a distance I could smell her.

  “You see, Señor Ned?” Jesus said in a low voice of wonder. “A wild Apache. A real wild Apache Indian. A gringo lion hunter caught her with his dogs in the mountains.”

  “Why do they have her tied to the hitching post?” I asked.

  “Because she is so dangerous,” said the boy.

  “She’s just a girl, for Christ’s sake.”

  “She bit one of the village boys,” Jesus insisted. “She nearly killed him. You must take her photograph.”

  The boy’s words snapped me out of my state of shock. “Yeah, you’re right, kid.”

  It is both disturbing and at the same time comforting, the sense of detachment that overcomes me when I look through my camera lens. Suddenly I was all business and the girl became a subject now, fodder for the camera, a photographic problem to be solved rather than a suffering human being to be pitied. I shot her from several different angles and then I moved in closer. The crowd buzzed excitedly.

  “Be careful, Señor Ned!” Jesus said. “Do not go too close. She is very dangerous.”

  The girl’s eyes followed me from beneath the tangle of hair, and from her throat issued a low warning sound like a growl.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Now the crowd parted again and the sheriff, a heavyset man with a thick black mustache, approached. Behind him followed the town doctor, a small thin man in a closely tailored black suit. He carried a black medical bag.

  “What are you doing here, young man?” the sheriff asked me.

  “Taking photographs, sir,” I answered. “I’m with the expedition.”

  “I must ask you to stand back,” he said. “This girl is dangerous. She bites like a wild animal.”

  “Yes, sir, so I understand.”

  Someone fetched the padre from the church. He was a younger man than I had expected, plump in his black priest robe, and very dark-skinned. Squinting in the sudden bright light of the plaza, he joined the doctor and the sheriff to confer over the girl. They kept their distance. I exposed some film of the scene: three grown men, all in positions of authority, afraid of this one small Indian girl crouched in the dirt.

  Finally the padre approached the girl, crossed himself, and held his palm up as if in benediction, praying as he did so, presumably summoning divine protection. But clearly his faith wavered, for the young priest’s posture was tentative, and when he reached down and put his hand on the girl’s head, she snarled and, quick as a dog snapping, latched her teeth onto the fleshy underside of his arm.

  “Aieeeeeeee,” cried the padre, grabbing the girl by the hair and trying to pull his arm away. “Aieeeeeeeee.”

  The crowd erupted in excitement, and someone actually laughed inappropriately at the young priest’s nearly girlish distress. But no one went to his aid. For my part, I was glad that she was biting him and all I could think was, Good, I guess you won’t be taking this one off to the whorehouse in Agua Prieta.

  The sheriff rushed into the jailhouse and came out again carrying a blanket. The padre had finally managed to disengage himself from the girl’s teeth and now he staggered back holding his arm, which was bleeding profusely. “¡Ayúdeme!” cried the padre. “¡Alguien me ayuda! ¡Ella me mordió!” The doctor stepped forward to minister to the priest’s wounds as the sheriff called out for someone in the crowd. The crowd parted and a stocky fellow with short, massively thick arms, and wearing a blacksmith’s apron, stepped forward. The sheriff handed the blanket to the man, who approached the girl, waving the blanket ahead of him like a graceless bullfighter. Meanwhile the sheriff circled to the side; clearly the plan was to throw the blanket over the girl as one does to subdue vicious dogs.

  The crowd watched spellbound, occasionally calling out encouragement to the blacksmith. But they were soon disappointed, for when he threw the blanket over the girl, and both he and the sheriff pounced upon her, she was so exhausted and weak that she barely struggled; like a bird in a covered cage, she lay still. The two large men looked suddenly quite foolish lying atop her on the ground.

  Now the blacksmith picked the girl up, still wrapped in the blanket, and carried her into the jailhouse, the sheriff closing the door behind them.

  Jesus and I went back up to camp and loaded my 8×10, tripod, plate holders, and a set of lights on the burro. I sent the boy to find Margaret, and I woke up Wade Jackson. “You have to come into town with me, Big Wade. They caught an Apache girl.”

  As he did most mornings, Big Wade looked like hell. “It’s your story, kid,” he said. “You go ahead and cover it. I’m feeling a tad punky today.” He smiled painfully. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not really a morning person.”

  “It’s nearly ten o’clock,” I said, but Big Wade had already rolled over.

  Jesus returned to say that Margaret had gone up in the airplane with Spider King. And so we went back down to the village alone and tied the burro to the hitching post to which the girl had been tethered. The plaza was even more crowded now, people arriving for the Saturday market, only to find that there was yet another attraction in town today. A line had formed in front of the jugzado, and an old woman waiting at the end of it told us that they had put la niña bronca in a cell and that for five pesos each the sheriff was allowing people to enter to view her. We went to the head of the line and asked the man guarding the door if we could speak to the sheriff.

  “Tell him we’re with the expedition,” I said, “that I’m a reporter for the newspaper in Douglas.”

  The man retreated into the dark jailhouse and came back a moment later with the sheriff.

  “What do you wish now, young man?” the sheriff asked me impatiently.

  “I wish to photograph the Apache girl.”

  “You have already done so.”

  “I want to photograph her in the jail.”

  “For what reason?”

  “Because it’s a good story for my newspaper,” I said. “‘Wild Apache Girl Jailed in Bavispe.’”

  “You wish to make us look cruel and barbaric,” the
sheriff said.

  “I don’t care about making you look one way or another. I just want to take the girl’s photograph.”

  “She is in our jail only because we have nowhere else to put her,” said the sheriff. “You saw for yourself how wild she is.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And your newspaper is willing to pay for the privilege of photographing her?”

  “Of course.”

  The sheriff seemed to calculate for a moment. “One hundred pesos,” he said, “and I will close the viewing down for one hour. In your newspaper article you will write my name. Sheriff Enrique Cardenas. You will say that the girl is being well treated, and that she has been examined by our doctor.”

  “Okay, I can do that. Just one other thing: I’ll need a generator to run my lights.”

  It took two men to carry the generator into the cell area in the back of the jugzado. The sheriff led us there by the light of a kerosene lantern. The cell area had one high barred window through which a few desultory rays of sunlight fell, overwhelmed by the dimness and squalor of the cell, the heavy smell of human waste, the faint acrid undercurrent of disinfectant. The girl was the sole prisoner. They had removed the shirt she had been wearing and her moccasins, and covered her with a woolen blanket, but now she lay naked in a fetal position on the stone floor of the cell, the blanket bunched up beside her. Jesus stepped up to the bars, crossed himself, and whispered something under his breath.

  “Shouldn’t this girl be in a hospital?” I asked the sheriff. “Why is she curled up like that?”

  “We are a poor village, young man,” the sheriff said. “We do not have a hospital here. The girl refuses food and water. El doctor says there is nothing more that can be done for her.”

  “Couldn’t you clean her up a little?” I asked. “Couldn’t you put some clothes on her?”

  “After the doctor examined her, we covered her with the blanket,” said the sheriff. “She threw it off. Do you wish to make your photograph, or not?”

  “I want to shoot inside the cell,” I said.

  “That is not possible,” the sheriff said. “It is too dangerous.”

  “She doesn’t look so dangerous anymore, does she?” I said. “In fact, she looks like she’s unconscious.”

  “You have one hour, young man,” the sheriff said, and he left us alone in the cell area.

  I set up the camera on the tripod, rigged the lights, then cranked up the generator; it sputtered into life, making a terrible racket and belching black exhaust smoke. Even with the window and the door left open behind us, I knew I didn’t have long to work before we would be overcome by the gas fumes. I hit the light switch, flooding the cell in a lurid white light.

  I took a meter reading, stopped my lens down to f8, to give myself a little more depth of field, and carefully focused, bringing the lines of the girl from a soft, indistinct blur into sharp clarity.

  Big Wade says that the camera never lies, only the person behind the camera, and that the photographer’s sole responsibility is to let the truth be revealed. I had retreated into the safety of my viewfinder, the space that allows me a kind of perfect objectivity, where my sole concern is the composition of the image I am trying to make, and where all becomes a photographic problem, rather than a human one. I re-aimed the lights, moved my tripod slightly, and refocused. In my complete absorption, even the sound of the generator seemed to recede. I made several negatives, repositioned the camera and lights, and shot from a different angle. Finally satisfied that I had what I wanted, I stepped back and hit the cutoff switch on the generator. It ground to a halt, the lights fading slowly.

  My job done, the truth recorded, it was only then, in the dim light, and the sudden absence of noise, that I was able to truly look at the girl. It was only then that the nausea began to rise from my stomach, and the sweat broke out on my forehead.

  “Good God,” I muttered. And to Jesus, I said: “Go tell the sheriff I need to see him. Then go find a bucket of water, soap, a sponge, and a couple of towels.” I pulled some peso notes out of my wallet and handed them to him. “And see if you can buy some kind of nightshirt. Something to cover her with … and a hairbrush.”

  The sheriff came back into the cell area. “Your time is nearly up, young man,” he said.

  I understood that the sheriff was not going to help the girl for any humanitarian reasons, but I thought that I might still be able to appeal to his economic instincts.

  “My newspaper will not be able to run these photographs, after all, Sheriff,” I said. “You see, the girl is naked, and my editor will say that they are too lurid for his readers. And you’re right, they will only make you look cruel and barbaric. So I wish to pay you for another hour to photograph her again. But I need first to clean her up and cover her.”

  The sheriff considered this. “If I let you in the cell, you understand that you enter at your own risk?”

  “Yes.”

  After Jesus returned, the sheriff unlocked the door to the cell and swung it open. He stepped back. I carried the bucket of water in and knelt down beside the girl. Jesus refused to enter the cell. “Do not touch her, Señor Ned,” he begged me. “Please.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Jesus,” I said. “Can’t you see that she’s unconscious?” I spoke then to the girl, though I knew she wouldn’t hear or understand me. “I’m just going to clean you up a little,” I said. I turned her over onto her back. She did not resist, and though her eyes were open, she didn’t appear to see me. I squeezed a little water from the sponge onto her lips, but she did not respond. I cannot describe her odor … beyond the filth, something else, a deeper scent.

  I rubbed soap onto the sponge and washed the girl, periodically wringing the sponge out in the bucket and resoaping it. I washed her thoroughly from head to toe, washing caked dirt and what looked like dried menstrual blood from her legs and feet, washing between her legs and under her arms, washing her back and her breasts. I had never touched another person, least of all a girl, so intimately before in my life, but, oddly, despite my generally shy nature, I was not embarrassed. Rather I had the strange sense of ministering to a wounded animal rather than to a girl, and all the while I spoke softly to her, as one might speak to an animal, knowing that she could not understand.

  The water became quickly dirty and I had Jesus empty it outside and bring me a fresh bucket. And then a third, with which I washed the girl’s hair. I dried her with towels, wiped the floor, and pulled the muslin nightshirt over her. I combed her hair, carefully loosening the tangles until it lay straight and shiny; it was actually quite beautiful, black and coarse as a horse’s mane.

  I was still brushing the girl’s hair when the light began to come back into her eyes, some kind of recognition of her surroundings, and as it did a strange, chilling noise rose from her throat, a kind of low moan that carried with it such a depth of despair and suffering that it raised gooseflesh on me. Behind me I heard Jesus whisper in terrified Spanish, and the sheriff spoke to warn me. Now suddenly the girl looked me fully in the eyes and her moan turned to a hiss, a kind of snarl, and she sprang away from me with remarkable strength, crabbing backward into the corner of the cell, where she squatted and peered out at me through her hair like a trapped animal. She began to speak then in her own language, a low, guttural ancient tongue that sounded like the mutterings of the earth.

  “La chica está loca,” Jesus whispered.

  “It’s all right,” I said to her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Do not touch her, Señor Ned,” Jesus said. “Please. She will bite you. She is crazy.”

  “You must come out of the cell now,” the sheriff said.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” I repeated, ignoring them. I held the blanket out to the girl. “I just want to put this blanket around you so you don’t catch cold. Here, see? Take it. It’s all right.”

  The girl was still speaking in her low voice, a kind of incantation, and as I moved closer to her, she crouche
d lower. Suddenly she lunged snarling at me.

  Jesus cried out in terror, but the girl’s lunge was only a warning, and she sank back into her corner again, a low growl issuing from her throat.

  “Jesus Christ, Jesus!” I said. “Will you please shut the fuck up? You scared me more than she did. What’s the matter with you?”

  “I am sorry, Señor Ned,” he said. “I thought she was going to bite you.”

  “She’s just a girl, Jesus,” I said. “Look at her. She’s just a scared kid.”

  “She is a wild Apache Indian,” he insisted. “Ella está loca.”

  “I’m going to put this blanket around you now,” I said to the girl. “Jesus, tell her that in Spanish. Maybe she’ll understand.”

  Jesus stepped tentatively up to the bars.

  “Tell her I just want to help her. That no one’s going to hurt her.”

  “El gringo dice que él desea ayudarla,” the boy said in an oddly formal tone of voice. “No la va danar.”

  “You sound like a damn bill collector, Jesus,” I said. “Can’t you try to be a little friendlier?”

  “El desea ser su amigo, y para ayudarla,” said the boy. “El no la va a danar.”

  I couldn’t tell if the girl understood him or not, but very slowly and deliberately I reached the blanket out to her again, and again the sound arose from her chest, a low warning growl. But this time she allowed me to drape the blanket over her shoulder.

  “Keep talking, kid,” I said. “I think maybe she understands you.”

  “The Apaches have always lived in our country,” the sheriff said. “They steal our women and babies. In this way, many of them have learned our language.”

  As the boy spoke, I slid the blanket around her shoulder. “There, see? Nothing to be afraid of.”