Granted. Calley flushed a bit at the cheekbones. And so if one were to read law, where is there solid ground? Somewhere there has to be a bedrock of the law.
Captain Kidd said, It has been said by authorities that the law should apply the same to the king and to the peasant both, it should be written out and placed in the city square for all to see, it should be written simply and in the language of the common people, lest the people grow weary of their burdens.
The young man tipped his head toward the Captain with an odd look on his face. It was a kind of longing, a kind of hope.
Who said that?
Hammurabi.
CAPTAIN KIDD KNEW the best thing would be to leave immediately, in the night, as they had done before. Same situation as Dallas. He had collected his fees for the reading but yet none of the establishments of Durand were open and if he were to pound on the door of J. D. Allan, Prop., to ask to purchase .38 ammunition it would become known and the general condition of suspicion would have it that he was on his way to shoot someone of the opposite party, whatever party that was. He had eight bullets left for the revolver, and the dove shot and several pounds of gunpowder and a supply of dimes. That would have to do.
From the banks of the Bosque, by the dim light of the candle lantern, he collected Pasha and Fancy. The rain had lessened but still it dripped from his hat brim and his silk topper had become heavy with it and sat on his head in a damp chunk. He slogged through the wet grass calling to the horses in a low voice. Little Fancy seemed to delight in her musical bell and lifted her head and jingled it. The horses were rested and full of new spring grass. He led them in. Inside the stave mill he changed to his old traveling clothes by the light of the lantern. He wondered how many candles they had left. The silence and the lacy patterns that the candle threw out of the intricately pierced tin shade were comforting. He ate a quick meal of black beans and bacon.
He called softly, Johanna, Johanna.
Kep-den!
She jumped out of the wagon bed, throwing aside her blankets in a dramatic gesture. She was in her nightgown with hay in her hair and a looping tangle of fabrics and textiles in her hands. Looka here, y’all, she said.
The Captain turned to her with a smile. She had not yet distinguished the second person plural from the singular but every day saw an improvement.
Shhh, he said. What?
I dress-a, I chekkit, I drawers, I stokkin! Kep-den, look! She held out a bar of soap.
Shhh, yes, excellent. Who gave you this?
She laid all her secondhand clothes in a neat pile on the tailgate and gazed at them happily. Bad water lady, she said.
Good, good, now go dress, we have to leave.
So the young woman who tried to drag Johanna from the Bosque had been stricken with Christian conscience and had collected clothing for the girl; a dress in yellow and madder carriage check, a jacket of dark green, drawers, stockings, and soap. He ran the hems and edges through his fingers, looked at all the buttons; sewed secure and tight. Clothing was hard to come by and these were all of top quality. Good. Stricken consciences are an excellent thing, all told. The girl now had three dresses and plenty of underthings. She would not have to meet her relatives dirty and ill-clad. The thought gave him a small, sharp pain in his heart.
The rainstorm had all but passed over. Now the sky was clearing. He put the horse’s hobbles in his old chore coat pocket and in the stave-mill yard he backed Fancy between the shafts and threw the harness over her back. The gold letters shone in the moonlight.
Johanna ducked into the shed row and came carrying, at the last, something wrapped in burlap but the Captain was too hurried to think about it and so blew out the candle lantern, stepped up to the driver’s seat, turned the little roan mare and the light spring wagon with its screeching fifth wheel. They moved quietly out of arguing, fighting, contentious Durand and into the dark of an early spring Texas night while overhead nightjars moved and sang their low and throaty songs. They swept low, like owls, and carried the light of the stars on their backs. On down the white moonlit road at a steady trot, seven miles an hour, bang bang bang, Pasha trotting behind, eleven at night when all decent folks were in bed. The Captain was not sure what came next, what town, what county, what new trouble.
Johanna climbed over the backrest and took up the burlap bundle and returned to the driver’s seat beside the Captain. She sat beside him and opened it.
Blek-fass! she cried.
Oh no, Johanna, no.
Two chicken carcasses with bloody feathers and no heads lay in her lap. It was Penelope and Amelia. Dead. Deader than John Wilkes Booth. She smiled down at them. She had twisted their heads off and gutted them and out of the cavity of one she held up the quivering blob of an unlaid egg which she had saved out of the entrails.
Is good! she said. She patted his arm with a sticky hand. Blek-fass.
He drove for a few moments with his eyes shut.
It was too late to go back and pay the disagreeable broom man. Too late to apologize, too late to leave money to reimburse the peevish creature. The Captain was now probably thought of in Durand not only as a Davis man but a common chicken thief. He was not sure which was worse. The Captain’s hand went to his forehead. A dreadful loss of status in the world. In his world. Loss of reputation and the regard of our fellow persons is in any society, from Iceland to Malaysia, a terrible blow to the spirit. It is worse than being penniless and more cutting than the blades of enemies.
The Captain said, in an even voice, into which he managed to inject a tone of delight, Indeed! Clever child! Now we have breakfast.
The night was cold and he felt it in his bones and the cool streaks on his cheeks. He realized they were tears, for the trouble that lay ahead of her. For all the years of roofs and walls and the peculiar rules against stealing chickens. He was still tired. He was still drained. She was busy wrapping up the carcasses and singing. She had not the slightest notion of animals as private property, except for horses. Horses belonged to one person, everything else was dinner at large. She would not hesitate to put a bullet through a calf or a kid. In his imagination he saw her walking into the Leonberger yard triumphantly dragging a headless prize foal to please her stranger relatives.
She raised her head and saw him shouldering away the tears on his cheeks.
Oh Kep-dun, she said in a falling tone. She reached up and stroked away the tears with her hard and callused fingertips. Her fingers were gummy with blood and there were down feathers stuck on them. One drifted down in the moonlight like a falling minute angel onto his coat.
Leave me alone, Johanna.
Hungli, she said in a decisive tone. Kontah hungli.
Grandfather was hungry, that was what was wrong, he was hungry and she would soon have him fixed up with roasted chicken with an egg cooked in the rib cage.
He said, Old people cry easily, my dear. One of the afflictions of age.
You-all hungli. She patted the hen’s corpse with a hearty feathered sound. Is all lite Cho-henna?
Yes, he said. It’s all right.
SIXTEEN