The Color of Lightning Read online

  The Color of Lightning

  Paulette Jiles

  For my brother, Kenneth Jiles,

  and my sister,

  Sunny Elaine Holtmann

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  WHEN THEY FIRST came into the country it was wet…

  Chapter 2

  THAT DAY OF October 13, when the men were in…

  Chapter 3

  THE MEN WHO decided the fate of the Red Indians…

  Chapter 4

  THE MONONGAHELA CAME into the docks with four inches of…

  Chapter 5

  LOTTIE BECAME RED-CHEEKED and feverish. Elizabeth knew the men would…

  Chapter 6

  AS THEY WALKED on, Elizabeth recited silently all she had…

  Chapter 7

  A COLD FRONT CAME down upon them from the north,…

  Chapter 8

  THAT SAME SNOW fell upon Mary and Jube and Cherry…

  Chapter 9

  WITH HER KNIFE Mary could now help Gonkon inside the…

  Chapter 10

  THROUGH THE WINTER of 1864 and 1865 Britt Johnson lived…

  Chapter 11

  HE STARTED OUT in a spring windstorm and made thirty…

  Chapter 12

  THEY RODE TOWARD a shallow valley in the distance. A…

  Chapter 13

  THE TRAIN RATTLED through the flat country in the April…

  Chapter 14

  SAMUEL MADE AN office of the front room of the…

  Chapter 15

  THEY RODE OUT on the broad plains with nothing to…

  Chapter 16

  BRITT WOKE UP some time later. The horses were gone.

  Chapter 17

  THE OUTPOSTS HAD seen them ten miles away. Mary knew…

  Chapter 18

  SAMUEL HAMMOND WALKED among the tipis as some of the…

  Chapter 19

  JUBE HAD BEEN sleeping curled up on his left side.

  Chapter 20

  THE HEADMEN SAT on the floor of the warehouse and…

  Chapter 21

  BRITT AND HIS son rode north with a white man…

  Chapter 22

  THE CAPTIVE GIRL was about fourteen. Maybe older. She spoke…

  Chapter 23

  BRITT WATCHED FROM horseback as the soldiers ran the United…

  Chapter 24

  THE LEAN AND resilient young men of the Kiowa and…

  Chapter 25

  MARY SAT IN the front room and shelled the Indian…

  Chapter 26

  THEY CAME TO the crossing of the Clear Fork of…

  Chapter 27

  AND SO HE kept on. Britt asked seventy-five cents a…

  Chapter 28

  SAMUEL STEPPED DOWN from his buggy in front of the…

  Chapter 29

  ONCE WHEN BRITT was traveling on horseback between Fort Belknap…

  Chapter 30

  IN THE LATE spring of 1870 Britt and Paint drove…

  Chapter 31

  IN THE FALL of 1870 the only children who came…

  Chapter 32

  BRITT ASKED ALL three men, Dennis and Paint and Vesey,…

  Chapter 33

  WELL, WELL, NOW it begins!” cried Deaver. He grasped Samuel…

  Chapter 34

  IN LATE DECEMBER of 1870 Britt rode in front of…

  Chapter 35

  THEY CAME BACK to the house on Elm Creek for…

  Chapter 36

  IN LATE JANUARY of 1871 Britt decided to set up…

  Epilogue

  BRITT, DENNIS, AND Paint were found the following day by…

  Author’s Note

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Paulette Jiles

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  WHEN THEY FIRST came into the country it was wet and raining and if they had known of the droughts that lasted for seven years at a time they might never have stayed. They did not know what lay to the west. It seemed nobody did. Sky and grass and red earth as far as they could see. There were belts of trees in the river bottoms and the remains of old gardens where something had once been planted and harvested and then the fields abandoned. There was a stone circle at the crest of a low ridge.

  Moses Johnson was a stubborn and secretive man who found statements in the minor prophets that spoke to him of the troubles of the present day. He came to decisions that could not be altered. He read aloud: Therefore thus saith the Lord: Ye have not harkened unto me in proclaiming liberty, every one to his own brother, and every man to his neighbor. Behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine, and I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. That’s in Jeremiah, he said. So they left Burkett’s Station, Kentucky, in 1863 in four wagons, fifteen white people and five black including children, to get away from the war between armies and also the undeclared war between neighbors.

  Britt Johnson was proud of his wife and he loved her and was deeply jealous of her because of her good looks and her singing voice and her unstinting talk and laughter. Her singing voice. All along their journey from Kentucky to north Texas he had been afraid for her. Afraid that some white man, or black, or Spaniard, would take a liking to her and he would have to kill him. He rode a gray saddle horse always within sight of the wagon that carried her and the children. She was as much of grace and beauty as he would ever get out of Kentucky.

  Before they crossed the Mississippi at Little Egypt they stopped and there at the heel of the free state of Illinois Moses Johnson caused Britt’s manumission papers to be drawn up and notarized by a shabby consumptive justice of the peace who looked as if these papers were the last ones he would notarize before he died from sucking in the damp malarial air and the smoke of a black cigar.

  The justice of the peace said it was a shame to manumit the man, look at what a likely buck he was, a great big strong nigger, and Moses Johnson said, You are going to meet your Maker before long, sir. You will meet him with tobacco on your breath and smelling of the Indian devil weed, and what will you say to Him who is the Author of your being? You will say Yes I did my utmost to keep a human being in the bonds of slavery and robbed of his liberty, and moreover I spent my precious breath a-smoking of filthy black cigars. Here is the lawyer’s signature on his papers and his wife’s papers as well. You will have your clerk copy all of these and then deposit the copies in the Pulaski County Courthouse. And from there they went on to Texas.

  You could raise cattle anywhere in that country. At that time there was very little mesquite or underbrush, just the bluestem and the grama grasses and the low curling buffalo grass and the wild oats and buckwheat. When the wind ran over it they all bent in various yielding flows, with the wild buckwheat standing in islands, stiff with its heads of grain and red branching stems. The lower creek bottoms were like parks, with immense trees and no underbrush. The streams ran clearer than they do now. The grass held the soil in tight fists of roots. The streams did not always run but here and there were water holes whose edges were cut up with hoof marks of javelina and buffalo and sometimes antelope. Ducks flashed up off the surface and skimmed away in their flight patterns of beating and sailing, beating and sailing.

  Mary had been raised in the main house with old Mrs. Randall who was blind in one eye, and she had not wanted to come to Texas, even on the promise of her freedom. Britt said he would make it up to her. As soon as the country was settled and the war was over he would start in as a freighter. He would break in a team from some of the wild mustangs that ran loose in the plains. There had to be
a way to catch them. Then he would buy heavy horses. And then they would have a good house and a big fenced garden and a cookstove and a kerosene lamp.

  The people who had come from Burkett’s Station built their houses with large stone fireplaces and chimneys. They rode out into the country to explore. The tall grass hissed around the horses’ legs like spray. Feral cattle ran in spotted and elusive herds, their horns as long as lances, splashed in red and white and some of them dotted like clown cattle.

  They had come to live on the very edge of the great Rolling Plains, with the forested country behind them and the empty lands in front. Long, attentive lines of timber ran like lost regiments along the rivers and creeks. Everything was strange to them: the cactus in all its hooked varieties, the elusive antelope in white bibs and black antlers, the red sandstone dug up in plates to build chimneys and fireplaces big enough to get into in case there was a shooting situation.

  There were nearly fifty black people in Young County now. Britt said soon they could have their own church and their own school. Mary was silent for a moment as the thought struck her and then cried out, She could be the Elm Creek teacher! She could teach children to sing their ABCs and recite Bible verses! For instance how the people were freed from Babylon in Isaiah! Britt nodded and listened as he stood in the doorway.

  Mary planned the school and the lessons aloud and at length, and lit the fire and sang and talked and made up rhymes for the children that had been born to them, Jim the oldest and Jube who was nine and Cherry, age five, who had wavy hair like her mother. She told the children stories of who they were. That their great-grandfather had been brought from Africa, from a place called Benin, and that he was the son of a great king there, taken captive when he was ten, because he saw in the distance a waving red silk flag and had gone to see who was waving it in such an inviting way. He had sung a certain song he wanted all his descendants to remember but it had been forgotten. From time to time Mary said she dreamed about Kentucky and the rain there, and her mother and her aunts. She dreamed that she and Britt and the children had gone home.

  BRITT TRIED NOT to favor Jim over the other two but already at age eleven the boy was both manly and kind. Jim bent over the pages of the Bible by firelight, entranced by words like reigneth and strowed. His mother made him spell them out. That spring Jim rode with his father searching out the wild cattle that grazed along the Clear Fork of the Brazos and when they came upon buffalo they sat on their horses and watched them, looking for some clue as to their nature. One of the white men who had lived in the country for ten years led them to see a herd moving north in the cold spring rain. They were dark and woolly and stood high at the shoulder, they moved down the slopes of the Brazos Valley wreathed in their own steam and water dripping from their half-moon horns, free and un-tended. No human beings owned them or directed their movement. They went where they meant to go in their own minds. They spread to the bald horizon under a drifting animal mist, and they smelled good.

  “I wonder if they have regular teeth,” said Moses.

  “Like cows,” said old man Peveler. “They just have regular teeth like cows.”

  “How do they eat?”

  “They eat very well. The tongue especially.”

  Young Jim wanted to ride down among them but Britt laid his hand on the boy’s forearm and shook his head. A calf turned to stare at them. It was a bright rusty red. Its mother turned and called to it and the calls from the herd of thousands in low explosive grunts made a ceaseless web of sound as the herd made their way north by the notions they held unspoken and secret, some ageless living map written out invisibly in their hearts.

  They turned back toward Elm Creek. Old man Peveler had been in the country a long time and carried the scar of an arrow wound in his neck. The red men live in the north, he told them. Past the West Fork of the Trinity and on beyond the Red River, which is four days’ ride north of here. That is their land and this is their raiding country. They raid for fun. The young men love it. Then they ride back north across the Red and they are safe there, so keep your firearms loaded and to hand.

  And so they stayed. In Kentucky there was nothing but war and no safe place. To the north and west were the wild Indian lands of plain and canyon. Now that they had arrived they found that there was no other place to go. There was no retreat. No going back.

  Britt worked for old man Peveler, driving freight, carrying supplies from Weatherford over the rolling prairies to Fort Belknap and Concho, supplies to the Ledbetter Salt Works. This way he learned the roads and the freighting business. The men at these places told him that he should be careful. But Moses Johnson said he hadn’t seen a red man since they had arrived. Judge Wilson said it was true, there had been some kind of Indians close by at some time but he did not know of what persuasion they were and they were gone now, and with nearly two hundred civilized people in the county it was not likely they would return.

  They were alone now. All those who had come from Burkett’s Station, Kentucky, were alone, each family in its own house on the ocean of grass. Their cabin windows sparked in the night like the distant ports of small craft on unfamiliar seas. They were not sure what lay to the north and west, perhaps some veiled landscape or nation of people who had once owned the land where they themselves now lived. But these people were gone and were not coming back.

  BRITT LAY DOWN his tin shears and listened. It was a heavy dark night with a haze about the three-quarter moon, hot and close. The dog stood up and stalked slowly into the yard with the fur of his back rising hair by hair. Mary and the children were asleep. The trumpet vine crawled down over the doorway and in it some persistent ticking insect clocked the seconds. Britt stepped to one side of the open door, into the shadow where he could not be seen, with a half-made candle sconce in his hands. A wind came up out of the grasslands and moved down into the valley of Elm Creek and rattled the cottonwood leaves over the cabin. The dog stood stiff-legged, staring at the far bluff of the creek where the stone circle was. A man stood there. In the blue moonlight Britt could see that the top half of his face was painted black. His hair drifted in the wind. Then he was gone.

  THE MORNING OF October 13, 1864, Britt bridled his team of horses. The men were going to Weatherford for supplies and a few other things like hard candy and Mrs. Fitzgerald’s hair dye. There are no mornings anywhere like mornings in Texas, before the heat of the day, the world suspended as if it were early morning in paradise and fading stars like night watchmen walking the periphery of darkness and calling out that all is well. Mary’s lessons scraped clean from the thin boards, and bread baking in a skillet.

  Britt came in and took up a smoking hot triangle of cornbread from the skillet and lifted it to his mouth. Then he bent forward with a confused expression to a piece of paper lying on the clothes trunk. All over the margins of the paper were sums.

  Their freedom papers.

  She had been using the margins of their freedom papers to teach the children to write sums with a pen.

  Britt slung the cornbread back into the skillet and shouted her name. How did she ever think she could do such a thing? What white man would now believe these papers were real? Mary shouted to him he could go and get another set. How were the children supposed to learn how to use a pen? There wasn’t any other paper. She stalked across the cabin with her chin in the air and her hair coming unpinned from under her headcloth. She banged the skillet onto the hearth and pieces of cornbread flew up and scattered.

  Britt stormed outside and threw his dray whip across the yard. He turned and went back in again. How could he go and ask Moses Johnson for another set? And let him know how he did not value them, but let the children scribble and blot ink all over them? Moses Johnson nearly got himself lynched for wanting to free his slaves, his life’s mortal end could have been in those papers. Look at them. Just look. He held up the manumission papers. Seven times nine equals sixty-three, seven times seven equals forty-nine. Divide by three. A hot feeling rose into his chest a
nd then to his face.

  “You were looking for a better life than I could give you,” he shouted. “You’d rather be a house slave to old Mrs. Randall than to be free in Texas with me.”

  If she didn’t like the way he lived his life she could go back to Kentucky to her mother and take the children with her, war or no war. The children hid in the washhouse and spied with fixed stares out the cracks between the logs and whispered to each other about the progress of the fight between their parents.

  Britt lowered his head and bit his upper lip to keep from saying anything more, and when he raised it again Mary had run over to the window and thrown open the shutters. Her arms were crossed and she was staring out at the grapevines draping over the heavy green water of Elm Creek.

  “And stop looking at yourself in the mirror,” he said. “And when you go, leave Jim with me.”

  Mary took the mirror from the wall and threw it on the floor. It broke up into many angled pieces. Each piece reflected something of their house and the clothing of their children hung on pegs on the wall, and one large piece shone with the image of the sky and its early-morning adornment of cottony clouds overhead tumbling southeast in the early breeze and the bright dots of cottonwood leaves.

  Two married people found themselves on separate and barren planets, alone in a place called Young County in the remote land of Texas. In an instant they realized that the bonds between them were not strong at all, but very fragile, and if these were broken they would be solitary and isolated for all eternity, and all that they had made together and the children they had made between them would be thrown out on long orbits like minor comets.