Remember Ben Clayton (22 page)

This man remembered the day that Kanaumahka had sold Jewell to the Kiowas. He remembered the name of the Kiowa man who had bought her, and what band he belonged to. When Lamar checked the rolls again he found the man’s name and learned that he was probably camped with his family along Medicine Bluff Creek.

It was a small camp, with two or three traditional lodges and a half-dozen agency tents and brush arbors strung out along the banks of the creek. The Kiowas shuffled together suspiciously when he rode in on horseback, but before he could even state his business Jewell walked out of one of the tents and began to wail at the sight of him. He got off his horse and walked over to her and said what she already knew, that he was her brother. She didn’t look nearly the same. Her skin was tight and coarse from years out in the sun, her hair was drab, and she was missing a couple of teeth in her upper mouth. There was a blue tattoo of a half-moon on her forehead. They did not embrace but just stood there talking. Jewell was weeping and all the Kiowas around them were teary as well. Lamar wished he could feel something else, but all he felt was anger and waste and shame at what had happened to them, and he couldn’t help blaming her in his mind for refusing to make an escape with him when they had the chance. In fact, he found himself starting to wonder if she had woken the Comanches up that morning and told them that he had gone just so they wouldn’t take their wrath out on her.

He did not say this to her, but he could not help thinking it when he saw what a complete Indian she had become, not just in dress or in language but—he knew almost at once—in thought. She could still speak English, but not without thinking about what she wanted to say beforehand, and the words when she said them were slow and ponderous.

She served him a meal of gristly agency beef and fried bread. She had a husband who went by the name of Eli Poahway. He was stringy and quiet and she said he was good to her. He was a medicine man and he wanted to set up a sweat for Lamar but Lamar said he would rather not. He didn’t know Kiowas, and their manner and rituals were strange to him and he didn’t want to linger among them.

Jewell told him that the Kiowas had treated her with great kindness, particularly a woman, now dead, who had adopted her as her own child. Several years after she was sold, a group of Texas Rangers rode into the camp and saw that she was white and tried to make a deal to ransom her. Jewell had become such a Kiowa by then that the thought of riding off with these strange men filled her with panic. She and her Indian mother crept out of camp that night and hid in the high grass across the river until the Rangers had given up and left. When Jewell and her mother came back they expected the chief who had made the deal with the Rangers to be angry, but he was so touched by their attachment to each other that he just chuckled softly and let the matter go.

Her Kiowa mother died before they came onto the reservation, but Jewell married Eli soon thereafter and had lived with him and his two sisters and their husbands ever since, moving camp frequently and mixing with the soldiers and Indian police at Fort Sill only when she had to.

As she was talking, Lamar looked around at the shabby camp and the people in their cheap white men’s clothes, at the frayed tents and the trash heaps and the overworked horses that were so few in number compared to the great herd he had once tended on the open prairies. These people were poor, and as they moved from place to place on the reservation lands they were pent up in a way that seemed almost comical when compared to the infinite license they had once enjoyed in wandering across the earth.

She wanted him to spend the night but he wanted to be away from there. He told her he was leaving and he was taking her home. He hadn’t thought any farther than that and he didn’t even know where home was, but he knew he was taking her. Eli didn’t speak English in those days and Jewell was careful not to translate what Lamar had just said. She looked at her brother in astonishment. This is where I live, she told him. These are the people I live with. What are you talking about?

Something got into Lamar when she said that. She had been unwilling to come with him years ago when they had a chance to escape their bondage, and now she was unwilling to do so again, even though the bondage this time was of her own making. All these years Lamar had carried within himself an anger he could not suppress or explain, an anger that had been brewed out of being a captive and an exile both. He had been taken by the Comanches, beaten and humiliated and then gradually educated and formed to their ways, and then when he thought he was one of them he had been cast out and thrown upon the mercy of a people he no longer understood and who had no patience to deal with him.

He told her that if she didn’t come with him then by God that was the end of it as far as he was concerned. She was crying and Eli was looking agitated. Lamar got into an argument that ended with him sitting on his horse and riding away alone while Eli and three or four other men trotted along beside with rifles and knives in their hands. He heard Jewell crying behind him in the same high-pitched wail of grief and confusion he remembered from the day the Kiowas had taken her.

If he had had his way he would never have seen her again. But decades later, he made the mistake of mentioning to Sarey that he had once had a sister and that as far as he knew she was still living in the Indian Territories. Sarey took it upon herself to write Jewell a letter through the agency at Fort Sill and invite her to their wedding, but Lamar saw it before she mailed it and tore it up. They had a fight afterwards that almost put an end to everything. They made up and got married after all, but Sarey would never let up on the idea of Jewell. Family meant everything to her and she would not tolerate Lamar being on bad terms with his sister. The letter she made sure he did not have a chance to tear up was the one she sent after Ben was born inviting Jewell to come meet her new nephew.

Lamar did not learn she was coming until the day Sarey told him he had to go meet the train. Jewell stepped onto the platform with Eli behind her, paying no attention to the hostile stares of the other passengers or the people at the station. Sarey paid no attention either. She walked right up to them and gave them both a warm handshake and put little Ben in Jewell’s arms.

They stayed for three days. Lamar did not have much he cared to say to his sister and she was the same with him. She was in her fifties then and looked no different than any other old Kiowa woman, deep lines around her slack mouth and her stringy hair in braids and a ragged dress whose muddy hem trailed around her ankles. The blue moon tattoo on her forehead was faded now and cross-hatched with wrinkles. Her English since he had last seen her had become halting and uncertain, and perhaps the reason they stayed civil with each other was because she knew she could no longer hold an argument with him in their native tongue.

She stared down at Ben in his crib as if she had never seen a baby before in her life. She had no children of her own, at least none that Lamar knew about, and the silent claim she seemed to be making on his child disturbed him in ways he could not fathom or tolerate. He put up with it until Eli opened his satchel and pulled out a bundle of sage and lit it right there in the parlor. He said he only wanted to bless the child and Sarey said it would do no harm, but Lamar shouted at all of them that Indians had ruined his life and ruined Jewell’s life too, even though she wouldn’t admit it, and he would be damned if he would allow any of that business around his son.

Jewell and Eli were gone before sunrise the next morning. He didn’t hear them leave and he never did learn how they got themselves to the train station. Sarey took the baby the next day and moved in with her folks and left him alone there for two weeks to think about things before she would do him the favor of coming home.

He was still thinking about things. There was a whole hell of a lot he could have handled differently in his life, starting with him moving faster to get that rifle from above the door when the Comanches came into his house and ending with the way he had spoken to Gil Gilheaney tonight for no good reason other than to get the man’s bristles up. On nights like this he had a habit of working his way back through those regrets one by one as if he was looking for some sort of answer or satisfaction. But there was no answer to anything, and no satisfaction, and no one left to apologize to except for the sculptor sleeping in his dead son’s room.

NINETEEN

B
y six o’clock the next morning Gil had dressed and packed his bag and set it against the wall of the parlor. Clayton did not join him and Maureen for breakfast, and George’s Mary served them with wary discretion until she grew too curious to be silent any longer.

“So what did he do?”

“It’s nothing,” Gil said. “A slight disagreement.”

“Go ahead and tell me,” George’s Mary said to Maureen. “I ain’t going to be surprised.”

“He was rude and insulting. My father treats his clients with respect and is accustomed to—”

“Maureen,” Gil told her, “you should pack.”

“I’ll pack when I’m through with my breakfast.”

Gil set his napkin on the table and walked over to the front window. The winter storm of the night before had sheathed the tree branches along the creek in ice, and as the wind gusted he could almost hear them tinkling like the glass in a chandelier. Clayton, Ernest, and Nax were all standing on the frosted ground by the corral fence. The two younger men stood next to their saddled horses as they talked to their boss. It looked like they were arguing with him about something—probably, Gil supposed, about whether they actually had to go out riding in this weather. The argument ended when Clayton turned his back on them, and Ernest and Nax, with a shared look of annoyance, mounted their horses and rode them off into the face of the wind.

Clayton walked into the house and when he saw Gil standing at the window he said good morning and walked over to the dinner table for a cup of coffee. His face was flushed with the cold and as he walked he left a melting trail of ice droplets on the rug.

Gil followed and stood in front of Clayton. “When I get back to San Antonio I’ll immediately put a check in the mail, reimbursing you for your last payment to me.”

“What for? I ain’t canceling the damn commission.”

“No, but I am. If you read the contract, you’ll find that either party has the right to terminate the agreement.”

Gil saw a look of real hostility in Clayton’s eyes now, and he took some satisfaction in it.

“You need to talk some sense into your father,” Clayton said to Maureen.

“I do?”

It warmed Gil to realize that his daughter was taking his part, if a little bitterly. After their tense conversation about Vance, their manner with each other had been brittle and formal, especially during the long train ride to Abilene. But now Clayton’s surliness had brought them back into their natural alliance.

“Well, if that’s the way you want things to be I guess it’s all right with me,” Clayton said. “I see your bags packed there. I expect you want to get out of here on the next train.”

“If it’s convenient,” Gil said.

Clayton laughed and pointed toward the window, at the icy aftermath of yesterday’s storm. “That look convenient to you?”

“We can wait till tomorrow,” Maureen said.

“No,” Gil declared. “We’ll go now.”

Clayton met his guest’s eyes. “Ernest is out riding fence, so I’ll have to drive you myself.”

“You ought not to be out driving in this, Mr. Clayton,” George’s Mary said.

“Well, that’s your opinion and you’re welcome to it.” He turned back to Gil and Maureen. “You folks are welcome to stay another day or so till this weather clears or take your chances in the car with me.”

It was a miserable, dangerous trip to Abilene, Clayton wrestling the steering wheel of the flivver as it slipped along on the icy road. Several times Gil was on the point of telling Clayton to turn back, but he thought better of breaking the already irritated driver’s concentration. So Gil and Maureen just stared silently ahead, hoping the journey wouldn’t end in a spinout on the side of a desolate road where no help or rescue would be forthcoming.

When they finally made it to the station, they learned the train would be an hour and a half late.

“I’d better stay around and make sure it comes,” Clayton said. “Don’t want to leave you stranded here.”

“We’ll be fine,” Gil said. “If we end up having to spend another night, we’ll stay at the hotel.”

“No, there’s no point in waiting for the train here,” Clayton said after a moment. “Let’s go on across the street to the Grace and at least have a decent lunch while you wait.”

“We’d be happy to,” Maureen said, before Gil could contradict her. They left their bags with the porter and walked quickly across the street to the warmth of the Grace Hotel, where they sat down in the dining room—full of stranded passengers like themselves—and Clayton scowled at an overworked waiter and demanded menus.

They ate in awkward silence, Clayton and Gil ignoring each other, Clayton taking only a few bites of his club sandwich before pushing the plate away. Maureen introduced a few neutral remarks but the conversation went nowhere and neither man cared to nudge it forward.

It was snowing outside now. As Gil watched the flakes descend upon Abilene he had to fight back a wave of unwelcome nostalgia. He did not need to be reminded just now of the wintry New York streets of his boyhood and adolescence and exuberant twenties, the sense of rejuvenation and mystery he had felt with every new snowfall. When he was young he had taken it as a certainty that artistic greatness awaited him, but now his best work was either destroyed or stillborn and he sat on the verge of his old age waiting for a train that would only carry him deeper into obscurity.

“I want you to keep the money I paid you and finish the job,” Clayton said.

“What for?”

“Because I made a deal with you and you’ve held up your end of it and I want you to finish.”

“I appreciate you wanting to honor your contract even though I’m not holding you to the obligation. But it’s better if we just—”

“Is your father always so damn prideful?” Clayton asked Maureen. “Do you think you could talk him into giving me a chance to say I’m sorry?”

He turned to Gil again. “I want you to finish the statue and don’t pay no attention to me.”

“All right,” Gil said. “I’ll continue working on the piece and when I’m satisfied with it I’ll contact you for your approval.”

“That settles the matter, then,” Clayton said.

But it didn’t seem settled, at least not judging by the way Clayton sat there folding and refolding his napkin in deliberative silence. There was clearly something else he felt the need to say, but a lifetime of keeping his thoughts to himself had made sharing them an unaccustomed burden.

“You saw that woman who came to my house,” he finally said.

“Your sister.”

“Well, she’s part of what came between my son and me. Or maybe I ought to say I caused her to come between us. I know people have told you how I got taken by the Comanches when I was a boy. I’ve had newspaper writers and such show up at the ranch and want me to tell them all about it, but I don’t care to speak about that part of my life and the reason is it’s confusing to me and there’s a lot of it I’m ashamed about.”

“It’s not necessary for you to discuss this with us,” Maureen said gently.

“Well, no, I think maybe it is.”

He paused while the waiter took away their plates, including his nearly untouched club sandwich, and waited until he was out of earshot on the other side of the dining room to continue.

“I meant to keep Jewell away from Ben because she had taken to Indian ways and I didn’t want any of that around my son. The way I looked at it, the Comanches took away my life mostly. For a good long time I didn’t know who I was or how I ought to behave around people and there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot of good that came my way except for Sarey and Ben. I didn’t want that boy confused like I was, or like Jewell was. Sarey took a different view of the subject and we had an argument or two about it. She may have been right but it seemed to me that Jewell was trying to turn my boy into a damn Indian and I wasn’t going to stand for it.

“I didn’t know until after he got killed and I went through his room that she’d been writing him pert’ near all his life. Sarey was in on it with her. Jewell didn’t understand how to write in English anymore, but there was a woman up there at the Fort Sill Indian school that wrote down for her what she wanted to say. She’d heard that Ben lost a baby tooth once and she wrote back and told him to go out and face east right before daybreak and make a wish and throw the tooth into the sun and his wish would come true. That was the kind of thing she filled his head with. When I came across those letters it irritated me a good deal and I threw them all in the fire. I didn’t care if they were his property or not. Anyway, he was dead so it didn’t matter what I did with them. I believe I’ll have an ice cream sundae.”

He turned in his chair and summoned the waiter with an impatient wave of his hand.

“You saw what happened that night,” he went on when the waiter went back to the kitchen with his order, “that night when the two of you were at the house and Jewell showed up. She knew damn well she wasn’t welcome there anymore and there she was anyway.”

“Maybe she had something she needed to say to you,” Maureen said.

“She could have said it in a letter if it was that damn important. No, she just wanted to agitate me about Ben. You saw that bracelet she threw at me. She and Eli probably wanted to do another one of their useless ceremonies with it like they did last time.”

“What do you mean, ‘last time’?” Gil asked him.

Clayton didn’t answer until his ice cream sundae had been delivered and he had consumed two or three spoonfuls of the confection with as much mechanical indifference as a horse eating feed.

“She and Eli showed up at the ranch a few days before Ben went off to the war. I don’t know how she knew he was going. I guess he had written to her about it. They set up their tent down by the creek and I didn’t make too much of a fuss about it at the time. I figured I owed it to Sarey to be hospitable. Ben spent a lot of time with them down there but they seemed to be behaving themselves so I just let it go on. But the night before he was supposed to leave I heard a lot of singing coming from that tent. I remember some of those Comanche songs but I didn’t understand a word of what they were singing about in Kiowa and it made me suspicious.

“So I just walked into the tent to see what was going on. It was the three of them sitting around a fire, Jewell and Eli doing the singing and Ben just staring into the coals like he’d lost his wits. I’d heard about that peyote church that Quanah Parker got started up there in the Territories and I knew right away that was what they were up to. I walked around that fire circle to grab Ben and get him out of there. Eli stood up and started yelling at me that I was going in the wrong direction, but I didn’t care about what he had to say one way or the other. The two of us got into a scuffle and then Ben got into it too. I saw that bracelet on his wrist and I tore it off. It ended up with me dragging him out of there somehow and the two of us yelling at each other. He’d eaten enough of that damn peyote to where he didn’t make a bit of sense, but maybe I didn’t either. I didn’t care.”

“What was the purpose of the ceremony?” Gil asked. “To protect him in the war?”

Clayton nodded wearily. “That’s what Jewell kept yelling at me. That was what the bracelet was for too. But I already told you I wasn’t going to stand for that nonsense. And it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. You tell me what you think: you think a buffalo tooth bracelet’s going to stop a German artillery shell?”

He was staring at Gil with aggressive intensity, as if he really meant for the question to be answered.

“You don’t need my opinion about any of this,” Gil said. “You already know what sort of a mistake you made.”

“I guess I do.”

Clayton looked down at his melting sundae in its glass tulip dish. He took another bite of ice cream and then set down the spoon and watched the snow brushing softly against the windows.

“Anyway,” he said finally, “that was the last time I ever saw Ben.”

EVEN AS THE TRAIN
traveled south to tropical San Antonio the winter storm held steady. Gil and Maureen lingered after dinner in the dining car, passing ice-sheathed tree branches that shone in the moonlight and fields whose shallow coating of snow made them eerily luminescent. The dispute with Clayton had thrown them briefly into a lively alliance that seemed now to be fading. The revelation about his break with his son should have provided them with plenty to discuss on their trip home, but perhaps it was too raw a subject so soon after their own argument about Vance.

“I had a letter from the Louisiana Historical Society before we left,” Gil said to Maureen, in the careful tone they seemed to be using with each other lately. “They want a La Salle for the riverfront in New Orleans.”

“A competition?”

“No, it’s mine if I want it. But they want to meet me and draw up the contract while I’m there. I hate to leave the Clayton before it’s off to the foundry, but they want me in New Orleans in the next few weeks.”

“So you have a major commission in your pocket. No wonder you were so quick to give Mr. Clayton his check back.”

“It’s not about money and you know it.”

“Yes, I know it, Daddy.”

“I had no intention of letting that man push me around. It seems to be his way of doing things, judging by how he drove off his own son, but it won’t work on me.”

“I feel sorry for him,” Maureen said.

“Of course. It’s a pitiful situation all the way round.”

They resumed looking out the windows as the Texas night rolled by. The disquiet that had arisen between Gil and his daughter over Vance Martindale still lingered, and he had been unsettled by hearing Clayton’s story of open hostility toward his own son. Their situations were hardly comparable, of course. Clayton was a hard and naturally disapproving man, his confused grief just another means of angering people and pushing them away. But Gil could recognize traces of that overbearing man in himself. He too was a father who expected his child, even his grown child, to behave in a certain way, an expectation that, as in Clayton’s case, was no longer countered or softened by a motherly influence. But didn’t all fathers, if they were worth anything, expect something of the sort?