“There’s not one single Negro! For obvious reasons. Negroes can’t be characters in novels. That would be like having a dog as protagonist!” Derisive laughter all around. “A horse, on the other hand … A horse has character and soul.”
“Mexicans know how to handle horses so well because they’re similar, they’re equals. It’s remarkable how they understand one another.”
“There’s an obvious explanation: Mexicans’ souls are identical to horses’.”
“But not Negroes.”
“Not at all. I would never use them as characters because all Negroes are cut from the same cloth, it’s completely different, anyone can see that. There’s no difference between one Negro and another. That’s why they can’t handle horses, they’re not simpatico. Horses are all feeling … Negroes have absolutely no personality,” she emphasizes this last word.
“You mean they’re like a piece of furniture, a wardrobe, or a chair?”
“My chairs have personality.”
“But we’re agreed that Mexicans don’t have personality either.”
“Definitely not!” the author says. “A horse, maybe. Because it’s beautiful. But a Mexican … Every character must be beautiful in their own way, even if it’s evil.”
“I’ve tried to get rid of my servants’ odor,” this is Miss Sharp, Rebecca. She’s jumped into the conversation to make her position clear. What if they knew she had been thinking of marrying a Mexican? But her interjection is so inappropriate everyone ignores her. It’s not good breeding to mention human odors at such an elegant gathering.
“I agree, it’s impossible to have a novel with beasts, animals, or things as the main characters.”
“Then how do you explain that so many people adore Uncle Tom’s Cabin?”
“The criteria for judging a book can’t be taken from the masses. They can’t make literary judgments. That would be absurd! The book called Uncle Tom’s Cabin isn’t a novel, it’s an abolitionist treatise, a piece of propaganda, vulgar and depraved. I haven’t read it but …”
“If it weren’t for the English no one would have even taken notice of it. Have they lost their literary sense? They just supported it to hurt this country. It’s unpatriotic to like Uncle Tom’s Cabin …”
“Of course!”
“It would make more sense to write a book with inanimate objects as characters. Humans leave the marks of their souls on objects. Because, when it comes down to it, we’ve created them.”
“Let’s toast to your success, esteemed Catherine,” the hostess breaks in, to change the topic. There’s not a whit of abolitionist in her.
General Cumin, who leads the Seventh Cavalry Regiment, had been sent south of the Nueces River several months earlier to dismantle illegal operations and get rid of some Mexican bandits in those parts (he wasn’t instructed to get rid of the gringo bandits, though those were the only ones he came across, despite … well, we’ll get to that). He was born for military campaigning; life in the saddle on the open plains fills him with joy: his reins in one hand, his Colt in the other, and if he can shoot an Indian, even better!
General Cumin wears a red bandana. He’s always accompanied by his guide (or scout), a Tonkawa (Cumin boasts, “The Tonkawas are cannibals … sometimes!”) who rides a pony black as night and fast as lightning. They call the Tonkawa Fragrance.
Fragrance is a giant who wears black face paint (his war paint) and copper loops in his pierced ears. Despite General Cumin’s objections, he removes his shirt at the drop of a hat. Sometimes he even sings:
We walk, we walk
to where the lights shine bright.
We dance, we dance.
If he’s asked, he says he comes from the Turtle family, who knows what he means, his mother was called Owl Woman, and she was a captive, supposedly French.
They make a good pair, Cumin and Fragrance.
General Cumin has another companion in life, his wife, who’s not like him, and even less like Fragrance. She likes the quiet life, not a life on the move. Luckily, her slave, Eliza, accompanied her, and she trusts her and confides in her. It’s three years since they’ve been living among the savages.
Whenever General Cumin receives a new assignment, he celebrates at home, breaking chairs out of joy (“Chairs don’t grow on trees in these parts, Gen’l,” Eliza would say, true to her mistress), while his wife sat downcast on the floor, deep in thought, watching her home destroyed in a fit of jubilation.
Out on the endless grasslands, where white men get lost and die of thirst, General Cumin feels like he’s being born, out there where there’s no stone, no tree, no brush, no hillock, nothing to orient him.
Let’s get back to the present. At nightfall a message arrives for General Cumin.
“I’m in no mood to read, tell me what it says.”
The messenger knows what it says, without having to open it.
“Make haste to Bruneville, some bandit called Nepomuceno has started a rebellion. He already fled to the other side.”
The celebrations in General Cumin’s house begin even before the messenger leaves. But they don’t last long. They’ll depart at dawn with their carts for the fort, which is a stone’s throw from Bruneville, with their livestock and their horses. It’s a brief celebration, but Cumin and Fragrance have had enough time to pretend they’ve drunk more than their fair share. At General Cumin’s house the chairs are all in splinters.
A conversation overheard in Nepomuceno’s new camp: “Stealman may have stolen the barge, but it’s going to be a filthy pigsty without those two boys to clean it — all those cow pies and horse shit and whatever else people leave behind — being a gringo it’ll never occur to him to get a bucket and a mop … Who’d want to travel in that dump!?”
On the other side of the Río Bravo, at Mrs. Big’s, Sandy’s niece is mopping the kitchen floor because she can’t sleep. The night breeze, which rocks the two strangled men, and the guffaws of the armed gringos, who have built a campfire a few paces from the tree, make her feel ill.
“They’ll burn the leaves of the icaco tree and it won’t be able to bear fruit this year.”
In the Stealmans’ mansion, when the last living being has fallen asleep, worn out from exertion — the last will be the first there, too — one slave will open her eyes as soon as dawn breaks, she couldn’t sleep for fear of John Tanner, the White Indian, she saw him getting into the bed she shares with four others. Elizabeth dreams that someone is knocking on the door of her room. In her dream, she gets out of bed, wondering why none of her slaves are answering, and she opens the door half asleep. It’s her father. He’s not old anymore. A potion he spent years concocting has given him eternal life. Elizabeth wakes up with a start. She turns over in her bed and falls back asleep.
South of Matasánchez, Juan Caballo and Wild Horse are talking, oblivious to the fact the sun set six hours ago. Time has lost its meaning for the Mascogo and the Seminole since the messenger pigeon arrived. They speak in Gullah, the language they brought with them from the Sea Islands, full of words like bambara, fulane, mandinga, kongo, kimbundu.
To witness the conversation between the two chiefs (Indian and Negro), the Mascogo have all remained awake and alert, children and elders gathered round. When one of them shuts their eyes, they all sing to wake them up: “Kumbaya, kumbaya,” that’s how they call them back from sleep, “Don’t go, we’re all in this together …”
“Dem yent yeddy wuh oonuh say.”
They should just make the decision they know they must. Although it’s nearly settled, they won’t announce it until dawn, after a nightlong vigil discussing the matter in darkness, to the hooting of owls, the dreaming of foxes, the nighttime wiggling of fish.