On this page will be found several selected Excerpts
from Novels of the two, four volume series,
Magandang Pilipinas
and
Sunny of the Old Southwest.
The book, writing utensils, and apple will lead to the current, feature selection.
From . . . Sailing to Windward
"Before the Wind" Chapter 5, the last . . . {the captain's wife}
Rosario had straightened the master’s cabin the day before, thinking that their dinner guests might be entertained by a look into life at sea. It was the same urge and willingness to show off one’s home to visitors that permeates most peoples and cultures around the globe and across the ages. Her new home was ever more unique to her background and might never lose a certain newness for her, however comfortable it might become. Now, this Sunday afternoon she walked around the cabin, touching things with her hands, feeling the wood of the cabinet trim and door casings . . . remembering the cozy closeness of life at sea with one you loved, the sharing of space and facilities and chores . . . feeling the movement of the deck beneath her, even ever so slightly here in a quiet harbor.
Rosario was not ready to leave yet. Not ready to leave this little honeymoon cabin, even one incongruously shared with her sister, nor to leave the ocean that the Rose O’ Sharon roamed. Strangely, the sea was in her blood now, maybe just a bit . . . and so with the world she had experienced around the Asian part of the Pacific Rim, the Far East and Oceania that she had sailed: people she met, some who looked like her and those so different; the many languages and different forms of dress; the foods, the music, even different ways to paint the world and express it in pictures or in dance.
Jon came down the steps into the master’s cabin and asked her if she was ready to take a ride to view the land that it was proposed would be theirs. There was just time before dinner. It would have a small section of coastline and a cove deep enough to anchor the Rose.
Looking up from the bunk where she stood fixing the bedding, the double one where he held her in a true love embrace that had saved her from being battered to death by a typhoon, the one that was now theirs, Rosario, the once slightly spoiled little provincial girl, said, “Yes, I’m ready.”
She finished the bunk and said matter-of-factly, “I want to go to Hong Kong again. Do you think we can get cargo for there soon? Oh, and Jon, will the Rose be able to reach Hawaii without any issues? After all, you originally brought her over from San Francisco. Someday you must take me there too . . . I mean to San Francisco.”
"Before the Wind" Chapter 5, the last . . . {the captain's wife}
Rosario had straightened the master’s cabin the day before, thinking that their dinner guests might be entertained by a look into life at sea. It was the same urge and willingness to show off one’s home to visitors that permeates most peoples and cultures around the globe and across the ages. Her new home was ever more unique to her background and might never lose a certain newness for her, however comfortable it might become. Now, this Sunday afternoon she walked around the cabin, touching things with her hands, feeling the wood of the cabinet trim and door casings . . . remembering the cozy closeness of life at sea with one you loved, the sharing of space and facilities and chores . . . feeling the movement of the deck beneath her, even ever so slightly here in a quiet harbor.
Rosario was not ready to leave yet. Not ready to leave this little honeymoon cabin, even one incongruously shared with her sister, nor to leave the ocean that the Rose O’ Sharon roamed. Strangely, the sea was in her blood now, maybe just a bit . . . and so with the world she had experienced around the Asian part of the Pacific Rim, the Far East and Oceania that she had sailed: people she met, some who looked like her and those so different; the many languages and different forms of dress; the foods, the music, even different ways to paint the world and express it in pictures or in dance.
Jon came down the steps into the master’s cabin and asked her if she was ready to take a ride to view the land that it was proposed would be theirs. There was just time before dinner. It would have a small section of coastline and a cove deep enough to anchor the Rose.
Looking up from the bunk where she stood fixing the bedding, the double one where he held her in a true love embrace that had saved her from being battered to death by a typhoon, the one that was now theirs, Rosario, the once slightly spoiled little provincial girl, said, “Yes, I’m ready.”
She finished the bunk and said matter-of-factly, “I want to go to Hong Kong again. Do you think we can get cargo for there soon? Oh, and Jon, will the Rose be able to reach Hawaii without any issues? After all, you originally brought her over from San Francisco. Someday you must take me there too . . . I mean to San Francisco.”
From . . . Kathleen
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Sunny Kathleen Jefferson Rodriguez (widow of Javier Rodriguez)
and her mother, Jóhonaá 'Sunny' Jefferson (Navajo wife of Aaron) are both called 'Sunny'.
Refuge 1907, rustic suburbs of Manila
As the traveler stood at the door in the bare, dusty courtyard surrounded by several nuns, the Mother Superior was of course immediately summoned and quickly came out through the big ancient wooden doors wearing an attractive but somewhat stern expression.
It was a somewhat picturesque, gray, stone convent in the old Spanish style on the outskirts of Manila, setting just high enough and close enough to see the blue of the bay. Small, simple, even slightly dreary, with a dusty barren courtyard and grounds, brightened by the ever present emerald green and sunny yellowy-greens of the bananas and palms and giant bordering field grasses of the islands, the little institution was a safe harbor to the accomplished, exhausted American woman. Those and the ubiquitous rich, pigment laden blues of the Philippine skies and seas always lifted the mood of the grey-brown grassless courtyards, alleys, streets, trails and other grounds of the archipelago’s towns and cities.
Sunny expected to be wrapped in a blanket and roundly scolded for the shortness of her skirt and revealing sleeveless jacket, but the woman took one look into her sad hollow eyes and embraced her, knowing nothing of the details of her trials. The weathered, experience, pretty, woman, still a girl in so many ways, fell into tears in a mother’s arms and would have collapsed to the ground if the older woman had not embraced her so tightly.
As her tears subsided enough to speak, a long twenty or thirty seconds perhaps, she whispered in the stern looking woman’s close ear in Spanish, “I need a confession.” Until that point the woman knew not that she embraced a Catholic girl, for Kathleen’s crucifix and most of the chain were within the colorful, stripped Ifugao jacket she wore. Perhaps before the tired young woman spoke such easy, fluent Spanish, the mother superior had even thought she was embracing an Ifugao girl who had come all that way to her from the Eastern slopes of the Cordillera Central or the Caraballo Mountains.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Sunny Kathleen Jefferson Rodriguez (widow of Javier Rodriguez)
and her mother, Jóhonaá 'Sunny' Jefferson (Navajo wife of Aaron) are both called 'Sunny'.
Refuge 1907, rustic suburbs of Manila
As the traveler stood at the door in the bare, dusty courtyard surrounded by several nuns, the Mother Superior was of course immediately summoned and quickly came out through the big ancient wooden doors wearing an attractive but somewhat stern expression.
It was a somewhat picturesque, gray, stone convent in the old Spanish style on the outskirts of Manila, setting just high enough and close enough to see the blue of the bay. Small, simple, even slightly dreary, with a dusty barren courtyard and grounds, brightened by the ever present emerald green and sunny yellowy-greens of the bananas and palms and giant bordering field grasses of the islands, the little institution was a safe harbor to the accomplished, exhausted American woman. Those and the ubiquitous rich, pigment laden blues of the Philippine skies and seas always lifted the mood of the grey-brown grassless courtyards, alleys, streets, trails and other grounds of the archipelago’s towns and cities.
Sunny expected to be wrapped in a blanket and roundly scolded for the shortness of her skirt and revealing sleeveless jacket, but the woman took one look into her sad hollow eyes and embraced her, knowing nothing of the details of her trials. The weathered, experience, pretty, woman, still a girl in so many ways, fell into tears in a mother’s arms and would have collapsed to the ground if the older woman had not embraced her so tightly.
As her tears subsided enough to speak, a long twenty or thirty seconds perhaps, she whispered in the stern looking woman’s close ear in Spanish, “I need a confession.” Until that point the woman knew not that she embraced a Catholic girl, for Kathleen’s crucifix and most of the chain were within the colorful, stripped Ifugao jacket she wore. Perhaps before the tired young woman spoke such easy, fluent Spanish, the mother superior had even thought she was embracing an Ifugao girl who had come all that way to her from the Eastern slopes of the Cordillera Central or the Caraballo Mountains.
From . . . Kathleen: "Refuge" 1907, rustic suburbs of Manila
They all went to a nearby cafe and ate together and then walked and talked of the next plans. Kathleen told them she was serious about the convent but also in some emotional and mental disarray at the moment. They told her to think, meditate, and pray, and to make no quick rash decisions.
Late that night, Sunny was awakened by someone standing beside her bed. A breeze blew through the open door and window. Almost ghostlike, a soft gown wrapped figure stood in the moonlight and whispered, “Mama, Mama.” Rising from her cot, she knew in the darkness who wore the long white nightgown purchased from a local store or borrowed from one of the nuns.
“What is it, Darling?” said with love and concern, maybe even some angst.
“I need you, Mama. I need to talk.”
“What then?”
“Not here.”
The two went to the neighborhood plaza just there beside the convent. It was the center of the small suburban community anchored by the convent and an impressive stone church and softly lit at the moment by the light of a nearly full moon. Nearby was a little collection of small shops, only a sari sari store, a cafe, and an institution that had some semblance of a general store or hardware back in the States. The main road from it led down the hill ever so logically toward the city.
A weathered, round stone table with three curved stone benches encircling it was at the center of the little plaza, with some sparse grass around it and a dusty traffic circle surrounding that.
They sat at first in silence, the older person awaiting the other’s words. Sitting beside each other with hands on the table as if to eat, they then turned in concert as if of the same mind and, with folded knee, placed one leg each upon the bench they shared, thus turning to face each other.
Eventually, the daughter spoke, “I may have loved him more than Javier. Should I feel guilty for that?”
It was common knowledge among many back home on the big Double H Ranch in Texas that the mother would never have left her husband’s side no matter what the danger. Nor would she have remarried if her husband died.
“No. Javier is gone.”
“You are a one man woman, Mother. Everyone knows that.”
“People are different without being wrong. If Aaron had died young and I somehow survived, some man might have eventually wooed me. The world is full of brigands and worthy men.”
The daughter looked at her doubtfully, and the elder one said, “I brought Isaac and Emma together.”
“She was a widow?”
“Who suffered a terrible experience and he a widower. Emma, when very young, suffered an experience not unlike yours, but very much worse. Her very brutal moments were at the hands of the Comanche and left her with no known family in the world. I do not think she could have ever found a normal life without a man such as Isaac . . without remarrying.”
“I should have stayed and died with him, Mama.”
“You’re trying to be me . . what you think I am.”
“I guess so.”
“That is almost what happened to Emma, and look at the rich life she has had, the people she has touched, the children she has brought into this world.”
After a long, pensive pause, the mother continued, “You gave him respect. You made him happy at the end of his life if it truly ended there.”
“That is what the Mother Superior said.”
“I’ve only met her briefly. She is a smart woman, and enlightened for one in such a role. You know, we often think them too set and closeminded.”
“It demands obedience, Mama . . hers and others’ . . their superiors. And it breeds strictness. Yes, she has insights.”
“You remember that as you discern your future. You are not the type to be disciplined. You are, but you discipline yourself. You never needed it as a child, but when it comes to what to do and how to do it, you only listen to you.”
“I know,” said softly. “Did I cause this?”
“No. It just happened.”
The girl, the younger woman suddenly turned her pretty face into a squinting, lip biting frown and began to shed silent tears, embracing her own torso as if to hug herself . . . and the older woman pulled those arms and hands away and reached over and held her daughter tightly . .
And the girl said in a whisper, “I wish I had given myself to him, Mama. I wish it so strongly . . regret it so badly.”
Saying nothing, Sunny just held her and listened.
“We slept together that last night, for the fear of it. We had done it for several nights . . just embraced. We knew people were around, but had not seen them, and wondered why they avoided us. We also thought there was a large snake. We think we heard it and saw what seemed like trails in the dirt and grass.”
She paused and the mother said, “You were right about the snake.”
Surprised maybe by the lack of reaction from her mother about the shared bed and the turn of the topic, Kathleen continued, as they both calmed and sat back slightly holding both of each other’s hands.
“Mama, it was cool that night due to the rains, and we were nervous, at least I was. We had lost the whole group and had no guides, and the rumors before we had left to go in country of the fierceness of the warriors affected me. They are apparently good people, even enlightened and egalitarian; but they are said to be very quick to anger and fierce. It was our third night alone. Were you ever scared?”
“Every time.”
“What?”
“Courage is seeing it through when you are afraid, not the lack of fear.”
From . . . East and West From Texas: The Red River War, the rescue of Emma Lowe from the Comanche raid, 1874 Scene: the great room of the Double H Ranch
Minutes earlier Emma, a pretty auburn haired woman, had been ushered in by several of the ranch women. Oddly, she found herself alone as they all went to attend to her needs of clothing, a bath, food and such. She was a bit too pretty and soft to look her role as a frontier wife. To the twenty-eight year old Navajo woman, the nineteen year old Emma Jane was a mere youth. But, in both of their worlds, women married young and Sunny should have had a house full of children by now. She knew from intuition that Emma wasn’t soft.
Sitting there in some lonely painful place mentally, Emma jumped slightly to the gentle touch of a woman’s hand on her shoulder; and then she reflexively jumped slightly once again from seeing the native face of Sunny looking down at her. It was brief, but she knew her friend saw it. And at this moment the hate and fear were at least slightly real. Could these pagan people be inherently evil . . . did the cross on Sunny’s neck mean nothing . . . was it a ruse, a degradation of a meaningful symbol, and a lure to fool real Christians? Knowing Sunny was a papist and not only Indian but from the Spanish Southwest, the thought crossed her mind that this was some evil conspiracy, these Indian wars that had finally reached out from history and touched her personally, touched and destroyed her. Was it all some biblical prophecy playing out now, and was the petite dark ‘friend’ beside her part of the dark forces of paganism and papists? Was the tribulation near? Was she living its beginnings?
Her face looked at Sunny, reflecting horror, which is perhaps a mix of fear and hate. Sunny saw and fought walking away to let her simmer a bit, as Emma fought believing these thoughts as well. Instead Sunny reached down for a hand reluctantly given and said, “No, Emma; don’t think it. I’m your friend. I will always be your friend. I will be your friend forever.” And as her voice echoed the words she had said those few years ago to a broken young woman sitting on a saloon floor, Sunny thanked God silently that Emma and Aurora had been spared the ordeal of her other friend, Ellen. If Ellen could heal, Emma surely could.
Nothing more was said, and the two women just sat together for an hour or so on the long bench until Emma told Sunny she should go to Aaron and that she needed to be alone for a while.
Minutes earlier Emma, a pretty auburn haired woman, had been ushered in by several of the ranch women. Oddly, she found herself alone as they all went to attend to her needs of clothing, a bath, food and such. She was a bit too pretty and soft to look her role as a frontier wife. To the twenty-eight year old Navajo woman, the nineteen year old Emma Jane was a mere youth. But, in both of their worlds, women married young and Sunny should have had a house full of children by now. She knew from intuition that Emma wasn’t soft.
Sitting there in some lonely painful place mentally, Emma jumped slightly to the gentle touch of a woman’s hand on her shoulder; and then she reflexively jumped slightly once again from seeing the native face of Sunny looking down at her. It was brief, but she knew her friend saw it. And at this moment the hate and fear were at least slightly real. Could these pagan people be inherently evil . . . did the cross on Sunny’s neck mean nothing . . . was it a ruse, a degradation of a meaningful symbol, and a lure to fool real Christians? Knowing Sunny was a papist and not only Indian but from the Spanish Southwest, the thought crossed her mind that this was some evil conspiracy, these Indian wars that had finally reached out from history and touched her personally, touched and destroyed her. Was it all some biblical prophecy playing out now, and was the petite dark ‘friend’ beside her part of the dark forces of paganism and papists? Was the tribulation near? Was she living its beginnings?
Her face looked at Sunny, reflecting horror, which is perhaps a mix of fear and hate. Sunny saw and fought walking away to let her simmer a bit, as Emma fought believing these thoughts as well. Instead Sunny reached down for a hand reluctantly given and said, “No, Emma; don’t think it. I’m your friend. I will always be your friend. I will be your friend forever.” And as her voice echoed the words she had said those few years ago to a broken young woman sitting on a saloon floor, Sunny thanked God silently that Emma and Aurora had been spared the ordeal of her other friend, Ellen. If Ellen could heal, Emma surely could.
Nothing more was said, and the two women just sat together for an hour or so on the long bench until Emma told Sunny she should go to Aaron and that she needed to be alone for a while.
From . . . To the End of the World: Manila, 1902 . . . At a cavalry brigade dinner, when Gen. George Adamson introduces his friends Aaron Jefferson and his Navajo wife Sunny to his officers and their wives, George asks Sunny to tell of her experiences to these people who were formerly her Navajo people's enemies.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
After telling of her defeat of her two captors who also held Dahiná and Ellen . . .
“How did a small girl like yourself achieve that victory, Mrs. Jefferson,” asked Ann Jackson.
“My father and my husband prepared me. I am sure many of you, if confined to the rough frontier in your past, were also prepared by your men. Atsá taught me the knife from the very young age of eight years.” Again one could sense if not actually hear a slight gasp. Many of these women could use a gun if necessary, but a woman knife fighter, even a native one?
“My father was worried that bad men would target me, and that some rough white men might even steal me as I got older. Of course it eventually happened to my cousins and me. He had great foresight. He taught me much more than Navajo women learn about fighting with a blade and gave me two, a dagger and a hunting knife similar to a small version of a Bowie Knife. They are fine Spanish blades that I still carry today. I would not be here today without them. I know we are angry with these Spaniards now, and perhaps with some good reasons; but their culture has contributed much to this world, including some of my dearest friends.”
“Do you have them now, your knives? Please show them to us!” someone asked excitedly. These were after all somewhat adventurous women who had followed their soldiers across the frontier and around the world. They were military stuffy and then not so much at times. She pretended to have only the hunter which she removed to pass around.
Adamson’s goal was being achieved: yes, she was exotic, perhaps a bit of a ‘wild’ woman in their eyes, but she was being respected now. No one would have left that room at that moment, and like it or not even her detractors would never totally see her in a negative light once they left that dinner.
The Native American woman was tearing slightly, and her husband was holding her hand. They could all see it. And as the memories, good and bad, flooded back from the depths of Sunny’s psyche, many of these women replayed their own in their minds. Some had lost close friends, occasionally soldiers and their wives killed . . . most had attended one too many military funeral . . . many had seen tortured bodies brought in from desolate battlefields . . . or huddled in fear in some lonely outpost. Almost everyone present in the room had lost count of the sleepless nights that they waited for their soldier to come home, wondering all the while if he would.
They were bonding with her in shared memories of fear, loneliness, and sorrow.
“Are you alright Sunny?” inquired the General, and then continuing apologetically, “Perhaps this was a mistake.”
“No, no. It is alright, George,” Sunny responded and began to talk again.
“We were hiding in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristos in the summer of 1866. The People, as we called ourselves, had been ordered to march to Bosque Redondo on the Pecos to be interned. Aaron, my husband was there in the mountains with Josh Davis, who would later die saving one of my two cousins from a gang of ruffians who held her captive. Aaron and I met there, that autumn.”
Sunny glanced at Ann, perhaps because she had sensed an ally. The woman had a saddened and pained look on her face. She seemed a person whose mind had experienced an awakening this evening. “
“How did Josh die?” asked Ann.
Arron spoke up, giving Sunny a break in her narrative. Josh was his best friend after all. “He left us in West Texas to go for help to assist in the search for Natty as he also sought her himself. I think we all knew he would end up doing the chore alone and that it would possibly end badly. It had to be done, as in any pursuit like that, time is the main factor. He had no time to seek assistance with any diligence. He tracked her with her captors high into the Sangre de Cristos and had it out with them, one against three. She’s alive today because of him. He fell off of a cliff in the fight with the last desperado. She is married to former Lt. Jonathan Jones now, and she’s a poet of some note in Texas.
” A woman’s voice spoke from another table in the back of the room. “I have read her poetry. It is deeply moving and beautiful. But important to this evening’s presentation as well, I have read Ellen Johnson Emerson’s poignant and courageous memoir, Mrs. Jefferson. She speaks very highly of you.”
Looking up in slight surprise, lifting her head which had been down, Sunny replied, “I was not aware of it.”
“It only recently came out,” the woman responded. “It is a very brave admission of a life’s experiences by a woman so callously abused by life. It will do anyone good for the knowing of it, for its educating function, but it must have been hard for her. How does someone tell those things about their own life? I do not know how a woman could speak of such things, but I do not fault her for it. Perhaps many will.”
“Ellen is such a good and strong woman with such a good heart.”
“Well apparently so are you, Mrs. Jefferson. She attributes her survival to God, her husband, and you, but not necessarily in that order.”
The room could see that Sunny was softly crying as she smiled softly as well.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
After telling of her defeat of her two captors who also held Dahiná and Ellen . . .
“How did a small girl like yourself achieve that victory, Mrs. Jefferson,” asked Ann Jackson.
“My father and my husband prepared me. I am sure many of you, if confined to the rough frontier in your past, were also prepared by your men. Atsá taught me the knife from the very young age of eight years.” Again one could sense if not actually hear a slight gasp. Many of these women could use a gun if necessary, but a woman knife fighter, even a native one?
“My father was worried that bad men would target me, and that some rough white men might even steal me as I got older. Of course it eventually happened to my cousins and me. He had great foresight. He taught me much more than Navajo women learn about fighting with a blade and gave me two, a dagger and a hunting knife similar to a small version of a Bowie Knife. They are fine Spanish blades that I still carry today. I would not be here today without them. I know we are angry with these Spaniards now, and perhaps with some good reasons; but their culture has contributed much to this world, including some of my dearest friends.”
“Do you have them now, your knives? Please show them to us!” someone asked excitedly. These were after all somewhat adventurous women who had followed their soldiers across the frontier and around the world. They were military stuffy and then not so much at times. She pretended to have only the hunter which she removed to pass around.
Adamson’s goal was being achieved: yes, she was exotic, perhaps a bit of a ‘wild’ woman in their eyes, but she was being respected now. No one would have left that room at that moment, and like it or not even her detractors would never totally see her in a negative light once they left that dinner.
The Native American woman was tearing slightly, and her husband was holding her hand. They could all see it. And as the memories, good and bad, flooded back from the depths of Sunny’s psyche, many of these women replayed their own in their minds. Some had lost close friends, occasionally soldiers and their wives killed . . . most had attended one too many military funeral . . . many had seen tortured bodies brought in from desolate battlefields . . . or huddled in fear in some lonely outpost. Almost everyone present in the room had lost count of the sleepless nights that they waited for their soldier to come home, wondering all the while if he would.
They were bonding with her in shared memories of fear, loneliness, and sorrow.
“Are you alright Sunny?” inquired the General, and then continuing apologetically, “Perhaps this was a mistake.”
“No, no. It is alright, George,” Sunny responded and began to talk again.
“We were hiding in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristos in the summer of 1866. The People, as we called ourselves, had been ordered to march to Bosque Redondo on the Pecos to be interned. Aaron, my husband was there in the mountains with Josh Davis, who would later die saving one of my two cousins from a gang of ruffians who held her captive. Aaron and I met there, that autumn.”
Sunny glanced at Ann, perhaps because she had sensed an ally. The woman had a saddened and pained look on her face. She seemed a person whose mind had experienced an awakening this evening. “
“How did Josh die?” asked Ann.
Arron spoke up, giving Sunny a break in her narrative. Josh was his best friend after all. “He left us in West Texas to go for help to assist in the search for Natty as he also sought her himself. I think we all knew he would end up doing the chore alone and that it would possibly end badly. It had to be done, as in any pursuit like that, time is the main factor. He had no time to seek assistance with any diligence. He tracked her with her captors high into the Sangre de Cristos and had it out with them, one against three. She’s alive today because of him. He fell off of a cliff in the fight with the last desperado. She is married to former Lt. Jonathan Jones now, and she’s a poet of some note in Texas.
” A woman’s voice spoke from another table in the back of the room. “I have read her poetry. It is deeply moving and beautiful. But important to this evening’s presentation as well, I have read Ellen Johnson Emerson’s poignant and courageous memoir, Mrs. Jefferson. She speaks very highly of you.”
Looking up in slight surprise, lifting her head which had been down, Sunny replied, “I was not aware of it.”
“It only recently came out,” the woman responded. “It is a very brave admission of a life’s experiences by a woman so callously abused by life. It will do anyone good for the knowing of it, for its educating function, but it must have been hard for her. How does someone tell those things about their own life? I do not know how a woman could speak of such things, but I do not fault her for it. Perhaps many will.”
“Ellen is such a good and strong woman with such a good heart.”
“Well apparently so are you, Mrs. Jefferson. She attributes her survival to God, her husband, and you, but not necessarily in that order.”
The room could see that Sunny was softly crying as she smiled softly as well.
from All the Scattered Pieces :
The two wives sat together on their cowboy ponies in silence on a gentle slope. They tensed inside themselves in their stoic way, and Dahiná was aching inside for love of the man from the same race that had beaten her down . . . tried to beat her down. But that was not him, not this good man she loved and who was willing to die to save her sister. Watching intently the women saw the two other cowboys, Jeb and Arlen, ride rapidly toward the impending burst of prairie violence. Almost simultaneously, the report from Aaron’s Henry and the boom of the Dragoon in Dusty’s hand, like cymbals, interrupted the drumming rhythm of the galloping horses. A deadly symphony of the plains was being performed in support of the actors who played their lives out on the widest of stages. A split second afterward, the Comanche let go the first arrow and nocked another. Then he winced backward slightly absorbing the ball from the powerful revolver at its extreme range of close to eighty yards.
from All the Scattered Pieces :
As he hoped against hope that he presented the slightest of targets, he pulled the trigger. And as the rifle fired and he chambered another and fired again, Dusty knew he was a dead man if he missed. Afraid to look, he buried his face in the cold snow and prairie grass and whispered goodbye to Dahiná. She had become all that mattered to him in this life and all he really wanted. He had done this for her. Maybe he could have got off another shot, but he wanted his last moment on this earth to be with her.
From . . . Those Who Trespass
Cebu 1906, The O’Brian Estate
“Well, you know what it’s like . . . on a beam reach with a fair wind in the tropics . . . . We were taking it slow on a north by northwest heading with the trade winds on the starboard beam. They weren’t too strong coming across Negros and Panay . . . and there was a lull in the monsoons. We took days sailing up the Western Visayas, staying just offshore . . a couple of miles off at times, sometimes closer in to watch the activity, . . just headin’ home for Cebu and waiting for the Habagat, the coming southwest monsoons, to hit us any day. You know, they can come early out here. . . . . Not the port of Cebu. ‘Cause we’ve got this anchorage right at the front door, down the hill there. Anyway, we weren’t in a hurry, and the girls like watching their islands go by
“Well, when you live in Eden . . .” the petty officer commented casually, tipping his glass toward Jon.
Smiling agreement, the schooner skipper continued, “It was a beautiful day on the twenty-fourth when it happened, an’ it’d been so smooth that we had not anchored once since we picked up the coast off Cansilan Point a few days before, . . coming up from Singapore.”
“That’s close to where some of Pilar’s people ran into those Moros in ’02, isn’t it?”
From . . . Those Who Trespass: Iloilo Province, Island of Panay, Philippine Islands 1901
He had mounted himself on a quality horse from the States or a Spanish steed left behind, not a little Filipino one. The horse reared from the exertion and the surprised immediacy of the quick stop, and the man aimed the handguns rather randomly.
“Get down!” she said loudly and firmly in Hiligaynon to the ones with her and pushed the girl beside her face down in the dirt. “Don’t look, hide your eyes!”
Running would have only gotten most, if not all, killed anyway, and what would have happened to any surviving child without her guidance when she would be dead and could no longer lead them?
“Lay on your stomachs and don’t look up,” she added.
. . . This was it . . . their end . . . after only a short attempt to escape the war, . . . and she did not want them to watch themselves being killed by close gunfire. Perhaps they understood it themselves as the lay flat and hugged the Philippine dirt. Most were quiet as death and there was a muffled whimper or two.
The man paused, maybe surprised by Pilar’s more sophisticated attire, even though it was a little torn and dirty now . . . or maybe because he wasn’t the careless type. His face was a bit ferocious looking if only because of the current physical exertion he was engaged in.
She was shaking all over, and . . . looking straight ahead and not up at him, forcing a certain determination and perhaps seeming like an obedient servant, Pilar said firmly with a trembling monotone voice that she had to will to function, “I am not from here. I came for them, to take them from this. My people are not rebels.” And she dropped to her knees and crossed herself in the Catholic way, folding her two hands together before her breast and praying softly yet quite audibly as she awaited the sound of the close gunshots and the pain. It was the “Our Father” . . . the “Lord’s Prayer”.
The man looked at her silently and controlled his somewhat excited horse as the nearby noise of battle, or murder, resonated and some of it grew closer yet more sporadic as the numbers of targets lessened.
“Where then?!” he inquired sharply . . . demanding and answer.
“Cebu,” she responded clearly, yet still trembling as she lifted her head and looked up at him. It seemed to her that she was shaking so violently as if to soon come apart, . . . yet the sergeant saw instead a certain courage emanating from her. That was the business he was in after all. He was a regular Army noncom who had seen it all . . . trained . . . experienced . . . not some state volunteer who was frightened by this wild jungle hell his government had placed him in.
“My God,” the man exclaimed at the thought of the distance she had come . . . possibly piecing it all together in his trained military mind . . . filling in suspected gaps about her mission and what she might have gone through. He was a veteran of more campaigns than the less well trained state volunteers from Kansas and Tennessee serving there in the Philippines had ever heard of.
From . . . Sailing to Windward 1897 off the Southeast Coast of Cebu
In the captain's cabin, dining together after the blessing, Rosario and Jonathan were quiet at first, until he stated knowingly, “You will come to regret your actions. You know that.” He too was a Catholic, being an Irish American.
She replied contemplatively, “Surely, a little, but you do not realize the depth of my stepfather’s control nor the dissolution of our family. It goes, his commanding way . . . beyond that of some in our culture and has a selfish character. You see, he is a stepfather, and he loves me as a tool in his business and other plans. The marriage was to please several people and least of all me. My real father died when I, the youngest, was very small.”
There was a long pause, and the girl sensed a friend or needed to. This was dangerous for her, a sea captain of all things . . . a man of the world who probably had taken many a girl and maybe some unwillingly. He could throw her on the bigger bunk right now for his after dinner dessert, and she knew it. Those like her who seek unusual and adventurous escapes and paths in life always faced risks. She did not know him after all. All she hung some hope of protection on was the golden Christian cross on the heavy gold chain around his neck. She had seen that as she had come down to the docks and watched him a few moments each day. She had planned this a while. The days prior to her dash to him and his schooner, Rose O' Sharon, were not the first time the petite Filipina had spent observing Captain Jonathan O'Brian.
From . . . To the End of the World
1902 . . . It was delivered by the normal post, having been dropped in the mail by someone returning from the Philippine Islands. The envelope was small and wrinkled slightly and a bit soiled. There was no return address and the message was quite short and in Spanish.
Mr. & Mrs. Aaron Jefferson,
Your son, Aaron, is in some trouble here. They, his superiors, may think he is a traitor. But he was only saving me from bad men. He could stay here with me and my family forever and hide, but he longs for you and fears you will believe the lies. And he is hurt. He will heal with time and our care, but we are in a war with your country. I will do my best by him, as I love him. He is a very good man. You raised him well. I can give no address now, for they will know. But if you come or send your agents, we will know and find you somehow. Be very careful, as it is dangerous. I am not fighting your countrymen. I and my father and brothers are not combatants. But that does not seem to matter. You do not have anything to fear from us, but there is danger everywhere here. Angelina Pilar Perez |
Sunny looked at the letter, just a note really, and at the photo of the girl. Casual pictures would not be common in the Philippines for people hiding in a war, so there was no picture of the two of them. She did not know how her son looked now, and it pained her. She looked at the formal photo of the native girl. Her name was Spanish; but, like many of the Mexican girls, she was Indio with perhaps some little Spanish. She did not look half Spanish like some Mexican women did. She was not a mestiza, and there was an oriental look that differed from the Mexicans as well. She must have included the image as an informal introduction of herself. It was obviously all the girl could do, as formal as circumstances would allow. There was something Spanish about the formal native dress, as the picture was from just below the waist up. She wore in fact a blend between the formal native baro’t saya and its Spanish influenced María Clara, but the Texas ranch woman could not know that. Sunny had heard that her son was in a wild tropical wilderness, but she held in her hand a picture of what seemed like a refined, somewhat aristocratic young woman.
“I don't like this girl,” she said. “She is too native.”
Standing on the front porch of the Double H Ranch at dusk with the red sunset glowing just behind and to the right of them, Aaron took the picture from his Navajo wife and studied it a moment and then, handing it back, replied, “Look at it closely or, perhaps better, ‘casually’; and try to rein in your prejudice.”
Sunny took it and looking at him surprised and defensively said, “I have no prejudice.”
“You just said she’s too native; you're a hundred percent native yourself. He loves his mom. When he seeks a true lover, a man looks for his mother in a girl, Sunny.”
She looked at it and then up at him with an inquisitive stare.
“Sunny, she looks just like you. Well, I mean the nose is a little smaller, but look at her. She's you twenty years ago.”
The Navajo woman looked intently at the picture and her husband saw a slight smile curl her mouth at the corners.
From . . . East and West from Texas
All the following scenes are from East and West from Texas
Mr. Dickenson turned and called gently to his wife who was in the kitchen, “Laura Ann, fix these folks our best two rooms, one for the Jefferson couple an’ one for their companions.”
"We don’t want to put you out any, Mr. Dickenson,” offered Sunny. She meant because of her presence.
“Why of course not. We’re an Inn, ma’am. It is our business. But don’t you worry, our two best rooms are available and at no extra charge.”
Sunny saw the gleam in his eye and surmised that he was a cloistered and frustrated adventurer. He was happy with his lot, though in his youth he had surely longed to cross the next ridge and then the plains she now lived on . . . pushing on to the Rockies where she had once lived and hunted . . . and then to the desert of her birth and formation. He was a tavern keeper. Travelers came through, and he heard the stories. He longed to be Aaron: a man of daring adventure coming home now after several years with a loving, exotic native wife. Oh, the man loved his wife, but he had missed the sharp edge of life that the raw frontier of America had offered. Still he could get the occasional glimpse of it when interesting travelers passed through, and none more interesting than Jóhonaá of the Navajo had ever done that in Crossville, Tennessee. Suddenly Sunny felt so blessed, so blessed to have seen what she had seen and experienced all that she had. And she was only twenty-eight years old. She wasn’t done yet.
From . . . East and West from Texas
Another Sister Sitting by the bedside of her seriously ill young sister-in-law, Jane; Jefferson Farm, Stuarts Draft, Virginia, winter of 1874
In the days that followed, Sunny would sit long hours with Jane, almost constantly some days.
“Why am I angry at you?”
“It is okay, it is natural, Jane.”
“But you are so good, and I look at you and feel anger.”
The two had become so close that Jane could speak so honestly, and she said, “I hate myself for it. I get angry at Helen too but more at you. Why?”
“You are angry, and it is natural, because we will go on, get to go on, and you might not. You address it more to us, Helen and me, because we are more like you, and you think you should get to stay like us. You wonder why you are different. You see me as so different and of a race your people sometimes hate, so your mind says, ‘Why does she get to stay?’ But you will be the lucky one if you go soon, Jane. You will be in the better place and await us. You and I will be such close friends someday . . . such close sisters.”
“Why do I doubt it, Sunny?” Jane moaned.
“Many doubt what they cannot see, even if they want to believe it and do believe it.”
“Will it cost me heaven, my doubt?”
“There have been many who have doubted. Good people. One of them, a Spaniard, Saint John of the Cross, did. It is called ‘the dark night of the soul’ when one goes through it. He wrote about it in a long poem. There was another, a Frenchman, Saint Paul of the Cross. He suffered his doubts a long time. And yet, he was such a holy man.”
Obviously Sunny’s two years in study at Mission de San Vicente in the Sangre de Cristos was not wasted.
“You papists, you have those saints you pray to,” said angrily now. “It is like you have so many little gods. How can you believe all that?”
“They are just good people, Jane. They are not gods.”
“You pray to them.”
“Is your mother alive?
“Yes, why?”
“And your grandmother?
“No, why?”
“Do you visit her grave; is it around these lands?”
“Yes.”
“And do you talk to her there?”
“Sometimes,” said perhaps with a bit of embarrassment about it.
“It is like that: like a person, a simple farm girl like you and I, talks to dead parents or grandparents, Jane. Our prayer to them is just that, ‘conversation’ not ‘worship’ of them. They are very holy people. If we can talk to one dead person, we can talk to others.
Another Sister Going to bed in the guestroom in Professor and Mrs. Richardson's apartments after a dinner and talk with several professors, their wives, and some students from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, winter of 1874
“Aaron, I have seen many things on this trip. I do not think your people superior to my people or culture. We are just different, but our ways, my people’s ways, are worthy as well. I am glad in my mind and heart for my learning and experiences. My father was right . . . I mean right to teach me and push me to learn.”
She paused and said with a slight smile, “He pushed me toward you, you know. You did, didn’t you?”
“No,” looking puzzled and inquisitive.
“Those years ago . . . at San Vicente . . . he encouraged me. I was ready to yield to Elaina. I thought her better . . . the better woman for you.”
Assisted by the moonlight floating across the small town street and drifting into the window, the husband looked into her deep, dark brown eyes and realized the truth in them. He knew it was not said to elevate herself but that it was just an honest comment. He knew, as well, of the power of her capacity for sacrifice. She had given up her life for him once, hadn’t she? And on that occasion they weren’t even married yet. She had always thought of him and others before herself. Of course she had thought Elaina better. It was the way she always thought because she in fact was the better woman just for such a charitable approach to everyone and everything. Aaron reached over across the bed; and, wrapping his hand around her neck in a gentle way, he kissed her deeply and lovingly.
”A Mother's Memories Camping on the border of the Navajo Reservation lands, 1887
“Sunny, talk about it.”
“Not now, not here . . . the children.”
They could hear the distant strains of David’s guitar and Irish tenor voice from the riverbank as he began to sing, “I’ll take you home again Kathleen…”
“That’s why, Sunny . . . they’re your children . . . part of you.”
As she looked at her children around the campfire, she elaborated softly, “I do not want them . . . you . . . to see me afraid.” She bravely said it just loud enough for them to hear too.
“It’s not fear, Sunny. It’s a different kind of apprehension.”
“It is fear. It feels like fear to me. I think they will hate me. Alone or with you, a white man, they will hate me. What if they are violent; what of the children’s safety? What if they hate them too?”
“What, Mama? What is it? We’re visiting your old home when you were a little girl,” the usually quiet (younger) Sunny asked her namesake mother a Joanna type of question. The events at San Vicente had drawn her closer to her mother, to her mother’s identity.
The woman became quiet, thoughtful, and sullen; and then she spoke softly, “My father knew so much more than some leaders did, but he was a more minor leader, not because of ability but by choice. He told them to make a treaty . . . that the Diné would be destroyed . . . not in a meeting but privately. He told his friends of the things he had seen, things he had been shown and told. Few believed him. They respected him, but they believed he had been tricked. Some accused him tentatively and halfheartedly of cowardice, but none really believed it. He had fought and killed Comanche. Few others were as successful as Atsá in that regard.”
“Papa has,” exclaimed Israel in a manly manner.
“Shhh,” responded the younger Aaron.
The mother continued, “We left a week before the attack in the canyon, right after darkness so we could get far before daybreak. We had not the possessions we have now, but we left the land and our hogan. The others left theirs as well. I was eighteen and should have been married, but my father allowed me to refuse suitors. There was none I cared for until this one,” and she smilingly grasped his hand, still looking into the fire as if it entranced her and opened the memories up. “I almost lost him to Elaina, a worthy opponent.”
The children issued a soft gasp. They had not known of that competition in their parents’ youth.
The woman continued, “We were attacked once by some men . . . once on the trek to safety. They were not soldiers . . . and they killed my friend. It was as if they aimed for her, just a girl . . . a harmless young girl. But they were few and we drove them off. My brother Ahigá and his friend rode them down and killed them for they would have been able to tell of our escape and route . . . and for the girl. We weren’t in the mountains yet, and we were vulnerable. It is the only time we fought whites until that night in the valley.”
“You said your family never fought them, Ma,” said Aaron.
“We never raided or attacked any whites nor fought against their army, Aaron. That is what I meant. That day, the next day after we left, it was defensive. That is what I meant.
We learned a few weeks later, when some who fled and got away arrived in the valley, that the Army had attacked and that Dahiná and Naadáá’s parents were brutally murdered. No one knew for sure of the girls’ fate, but we heard later that they were on the Long Walk."
Opening Scene from East and West from Texas: The great room of the Double H Ranch; Brazos River Watershed; Texas July 1874; SETTING: Red River War
Comanche Moon
In the wee hours of morning, the great room of the old ranch house was softly, mystically lit with silvery moonlight that scattered across the floor from the massive windows. The soft, orange glow of a coal oil lamp in the far corner on the big roll top desk added to the mood that spoke to the dreamer of story books and real life adventures, of love and danger and the realm of things spiritual as well. He lay there on the large sofa drifting in and out of sleep but never letting himself truly go off.
The clock ticked in the hallway between the main room and the parlor, where many an ominous or happy meeting had taken place over the years: calls to action, or celebrations, or agony over some worrisome news, like when Natty was lost on the vast prairies of Oklahoma. It chimed each hour as well after its Big Ben introductory chime. It was beautiful to those who could sleep and annoying, even torturous, to those who couldn’t. His reaction this night was ambivalent.
For him, it was an alternately restful and restless night . . . not like the usual ones with her. Dozing now he would muse over memories; and, awake at another moment, he would concern himself with scanning what he could see of the terrain outside of the numerous window panes, scanning as well his thoughts and worries over the reason he was there in that room and why his eyes searched. The big glass windows went almost to the floor, as risks of attack were thought to be more distant now to the north and west.
At some point, he felt her presence in the room and knew the woman stood beside him, having without any real effort stealthily entered. He regretted having awakened her with his absence from the marital bed. She was native. She missed nothing.
After several moments, she spoke just as he reached and took the hand he knew was there.
“You cannot sleep, Aaron? What is your worry?”
“Nothing, Darlin’ . . . just restless after all we did today. It was a long and heavy one.”
There was a pause, and he held her smallish hand tenderly, and the moonlight caught on the open edge of her thin, delicate nightgown. Nights were hot in Texas this time of year. The silver glow painted the front of the gown as well, revealing the petite feminine shape through its sheerness; and the woman, now comfortable in these trappings of the white world as easily as in her own, sat on the edge of the sofa beside his prone body. The silver light now revealed the golden brown of her skin and softly highlighted the small, silver crucifix laying on her chest, just below her delicate neck.
With her left hand still in his, as he had adjusted to her movements, she looked in his shadowed face and placed her right gently on the left side of it, on his temple and cheek in a comforting way . . . as motherly as it was romantic.
She spoke softly, “When you brought your life of danger to mine and wedded the danger together, we chose truth. For secrets only bring surprises not security.”
Aaron looked at her long and lovingly, wishing he was in a more romantic mood than his concerns now allowed. Then he said, “I saw a Comanche brave today on the far northwest edge of our range, far up the western banks of the Brazos. That’s why I was so late getting back; I was up there. You know, it’s almost a day’s ride, round trip. We met him before. He was the small one with the double face scar when we met Quanah four years ago.”
“Oh my,” she said casually, reflecting concern and surprise in a controlled way. The somewhat stoic native woman defined self-control.
“He had a message; he was looking for me . . . after all those years.”
“We must have made an impression.”
“He said that Quanah wanted us to not fight him. He doesn’t want to have to kill us, I guess.”
“It means something is afoot.”
“You would think so. And he’s warning us. There was a fight a week or so ago up at Adobe Walls, but I don’t know any of the particulars. I’ve been meanin’ to ask Dusty. John said he knew something of it.”
“We have to warn others. Otherwise we’re traitors. And of course they would say I was complicit. It is the right thing to do. Lives are at stake.” Not always stoic with respect to serious matters, Jóhonaá now allowed her concern to show in her voice.
Aaron went on, “I told him that we would not be a part of any invasion of Comancheria but we would defend our homes and those of our friends.”
“They’re not going to attack here tonight, Aaron.”
“I know . . . but you know, it’s just me.”
“Come to bed.”
“It’s beautiful out here with these big windows . . . lay down here and cuddle.”
Some hours later she awakened and eventually started to stir. She did not want to be caught out in the main room dressed for the bedroom.
“Aaron, I must go . . . my dress,” she responded to his gentle yet firm grip on her body.
He released her; and as she started to stand, he did as well. He wanted the moment to last, and long moments later in their room together, they finally started to dress for the day.
As she began to change, Sunny said in a serious tone, “I want to go. I want us to go today, together: first to town and then to the military authorities. There is no Army office in town or any other nearby town. Fort Griffin is closest . . . or maybe Phantom Hill. Aren’t we about the same distance from each? We’ll have to send a messenger. And we need to stop at each ranch on our way and warn them. Maybe we need to go to the fort in person. Let them hear it from me. I have to be a part of this, Aaron. I will not be blamed later by whites in some crazy way for the brutality of those plainsmen.”
“People know you, Jóhonaá. Our friends and associates know you now.”
“Aaron, you know how it is. There is a delicate state of peace and danger between our races, and many of your whites do not see us as equal humans. We have true friends, but there are strangers who move in, people who do not owe any loyalty or allegiance to us or the Hofstadters for their land or our help and assistance.”
“You may be worrying too much.”
“You know the public mob, Aaron. You faced it yourself that night, and we all did right out on that porch,” and she pointed toward the front of the house. “I’m an Indian. I do not want to go through that again. What they do to women, Quanah’s people, it is unforgivable . . . they are savages. My people would never do that. I do not want to be associated with that, Aaron. And they will, Aaron; your people will try to blame me . . . some of them. We must ride to the front of this Aaron. We must turn the herd before a stampede tramples Naadáá, Dahiná, and me.”
SCENE: The great room of the Double H Ranch; Brazos River Watershed; Texas July 1874
SETTING: Red River War
Morning rose beautifully the following day, and the world outside was rose-gray and yellow as the kitchen and great room came to life.
One person had sat, with their back against the wall, all night long on the bench in the big common area. Now crossing the room, Natty wondered how the shocked girl had remained upright through the night, tired as she must have been, most certainly was. Shock may have been the answer to that unspoken question. Ultimately, all had left her at her request as the wee hours of the previous darkness ground on. Emma couldn’t vocalize it at the time, but Sunny, Natty, and Dahiná knew from experience that replaying the horrors in your mind somehow helped one grasp them.
Emma did not wince when the Indian woman sat beside her on the long bench as she had reacted to Sunny the night before. She knew them both. The land of her now gone family was part bargain purchase, part gift from the people of the Double H. The somewhat delicate looking yet very frontier tough woman was sole heir to the acreage now, but only time would tell if she would remarry and reclaim it. The Double H would protect it for her until then.
Natty spoke without invasively taking a hand or otherwise touching the depressed woman, “Are you hungry, Emma?”
“What’s thuh use; I cain’t go on,” looking straight ahead and hollow.
Knowing to say nothing, to not rush anything, Naadáá just sat beside her for long moments. She had been with John all the rest of the night; he could spare her now. The couple had not talked as he had been given enough whiskey to sleep soundly in her embrace. Talk would come.
“I got nothing and wouldn’t care if I did,” Emma said softly at some point.
“You have friends, truer friends than you know,” the native woman replied as they both sat and stared ahead, the Indian using an economy of words to let the other’s thoughts flow.
“I got nobody, Natty.”
Waiting a few moments once more, Naadáá finally responded, “It is so sad to say, but your trials are common out here. You have no blood relatives and lost your man, but you have strong friends who will never leave you if you remain here. One sits with you now. And you have a home in this building you sit in for as long as you want.”
Finally, Emma turned and looked at Natty, taking in the native features in profile. When the Navajo turned her head toward her, the white woman took in the soft smile and dark penetrating eyes that echoed truth in her words yet reflected the race that had destroyed her loved ones. She just looked and said nothing for a few seconds and then spoke, “Yur husband held me all night . . . out there on the trail. I can tell you ‘cause I know he loves you an’ you trust him. I just want yuh tuh know it happened. I had no clothes ‘cept that duster I had on. I don’t want you to hear it from somebody else an’ think wrong of us.”
“I’m glad he did. . . . I know this sounds so hollow now, but the wounds will heal, Emma. Mine did.”
“I never knew yur story.”
“I will tell you later, today if you want. I will tell you now a little . . . that we two, my sister and I, were captured by very bad men . . . men like Comancheros, and we were to be sold.” Even now in her own very dark place, Emma reacted with a hand to her mouth and a slight gasp. The Navajo continued, “In all the years of our life in Dinétah, we girls were at risk from Comancheros and Comanche. Others were dangerous too, but the Comanche are the harshest. When we were imprisoned by the Army, the bad native and white men still came and raided the camp and took girls and horses from there, from one horror to another. We are simply horses to them, but they can use us in a different way than a horse before they sell us.”
“Imprisoned?”
“The white army came, my husband’s forces, but before his time out here; and they took Dahiná and me after they killed our parents. My father had never fought the whites, but they killed him anyway. They came with some white settlers too. We were marched over three hundred miles to a camp that had no food and could produce none. The river water made us sick, the Pecos. At first there were no buildings, and we dug holes to sleep in. And then the Apache and Comanche came.”
Rather than sink into her own darkness when she usually relived it, Natty looked straight, soft, and true into the white girl’s eyes. There was no time now for her own sorrow. She had a man now, and a home and family. The story, her sad story, was for Emma now, for her knowledge that she did not stand alone. One can be told that a thousand times; but to sit and hear it from another young person near their own age, who had lived something similar, carried so much more power.
SCENE: The great room of the Double H Ranch; Brazos River Watershed; Texas July 1874; SETTING: Red River War
He looked more intently at her, more carefully with just a hint of interest in her situation. He knew no details of it. “Pardon me, but like yuh told me, just go home. Rest as long as yuh can an’ just wait there, and maybe life will catch up an’ smooth out the next road.”
“There is no home.” And the woman returned to her stare as her head was against the wall again. In an unladylike manner her right leg was folded up in front of her with that foot on the bench, and she loosely held it with draped forearms on the knee as she leaned back against the wall. Her left dangled to the floor, and he could see a pretty, delicate bare foot protruding from the long country dress. The length of the dress protected her dignity, and the casual manner attracted the rural Virginia boy in Isaac. He saw as well the damaged person, the country girl of great strength in a delicate body, who life had just about broken completely in two.
“Do you want to tell me? We can talk in the parlor whur its private.” Whatever made him say it he could not fathom. Where the words came from he could not imagine. Empathy for others was inherent in the Jefferson boys and welled up in him when he finally looked at the woman and saw it, all the pain that would not let her rest or sleep well or eat well. She had obviously lost weight but was just hauntingly pretty now rather than the robust beauty he imagined she once was. He imagined her in the fields in a long gingham or cotton dress or working in the kitchen between a big trestle table and a stone fireplace. He furiously, without showing it, forced from his mind the image of her in his arms on a wedding bed in just a cotton slip or in lace or nothing at all, and it almost made him hesitate. After all, ‘What would [his dead wife] Jane think?’
“They killed him horribly,” and her eyes, still red, welled up, but she held it in. “Is that what you want know? They stripped us all and . . . and took their manhood.” . . . (Why was she telling him this?) . . . “I stood there like that . . . naked . . . and watched it . . . I cain’t tell it . . . cain’t tell you all uv it . . . and then b’fore they could . . . yuh know, hurt Aurora, hurt her in evil ways, sumbody shot her . . . an’ I ran. All those men saw me . . . that saved me, John and’ all, saw me like that.”
Isaac’s inner struggle continued and was briefly intense and overwhelming; for, fortunately or unfortunately for his mental state, the woman had now firmly planted the image in his mind of her wearing nothing at all. Then he added, referencing the parlor, “It’s still public there. People won’t frown on it. I’ll tell you about Jane and maybe you can forget a moment . . . just for a moment.”
She wanted him to hold her, and he wanted to. And, releasing her bent knee, she held her hands together in her lap, gritting her teeth, trying to hold in the sobs, then wrapping her arms around her waist across each other tensing them and her body trying to ease it as if trying to hold herself, embrace herself, because there was no one else, no one to do it. Women had embraced her since that horrible day and John Jones that night after it happened, and she felt so guilty for that . . . so guilty that John’s embrace had comforted her all thru the night, strong as he was . . . and he was Natty’s husband, and she felt jealous that her man was gone and an Indian woman had such a fine man. How was that right?
Isaac took her hands, taking her forearms and pulling them away from her self-imposed embrace . . . and he held each hand in his own. He did not know if he should hold her right here in public at this dance. He sensed the trembling, the anxiety. This was no mere shy girl trembling out of the nervousness of young love. This was a woman whose life was broken . . . whose life had been ripped apart and torn away . . . and butchered in front of her . . . and she had only saved herself by deserting the ones she loved and running. Isaac was nervous and confused but he was the right man for the job at the right time and place.
Some newcomers may have been confused or scandalized, yet most present knew a little of their stories, and so it seemed right on some level.
After long moments, the two got up hand-in-hand and danced to Lorena and Aura Lea and then retired to the parlor. None present believed that was a problem. Both had been married; they were adults. The evening was still young, and those who arrived later and came in the front door by the parlor saw them talking quietly, heads together almost touching. They leaned in close and held each other’s two hands. There were tears, quiet ones, soft sobs. And there were embraces, the handsomely rugged Virginia farmer holding her head against his chest. Her wounds were so much deeper, the perfect situation for him to heal his own by comforting her. If the man had to be the strong one, it was easier for Isaac, for he could only attempt to imagine what her pain was like. It facilitated the healing for the one with common wounds of death and loss to be able to help someone who had recently stepped out of a nightmare. That she was of the opposite gender and pretty just helped the nervous young man forward.
Quality fiction is imagined reality
“I don't like this girl,” she said. “She is too native.”
Standing on the front porch of the Double H Ranch at dusk with the red sunset glowing just behind and to the right of them, Aaron took the picture from his Navajo wife and studied it a moment and then, handing it back, replied, “Look at it closely or, perhaps better, ‘casually’; and try to rein in your prejudice.”
Sunny took it and looking at him surprised and defensively said, “I have no prejudice.”
“You just said she’s too native; you're a hundred percent native yourself. He loves his mom. When he seeks a true lover, a man looks for his mother in a girl, Sunny.”
She looked at it and then up at him with an inquisitive stare.
“Sunny, she looks just like you. Well, I mean the nose is a little smaller, but look at her. She's you twenty years ago.”
The Navajo woman looked intently at the picture and her husband saw a slight smile curl her mouth at the corners.
From . . . East and West from Texas
All the following scenes are from East and West from Texas
Mr. Dickenson turned and called gently to his wife who was in the kitchen, “Laura Ann, fix these folks our best two rooms, one for the Jefferson couple an’ one for their companions.”
"We don’t want to put you out any, Mr. Dickenson,” offered Sunny. She meant because of her presence.
“Why of course not. We’re an Inn, ma’am. It is our business. But don’t you worry, our two best rooms are available and at no extra charge.”
Sunny saw the gleam in his eye and surmised that he was a cloistered and frustrated adventurer. He was happy with his lot, though in his youth he had surely longed to cross the next ridge and then the plains she now lived on . . . pushing on to the Rockies where she had once lived and hunted . . . and then to the desert of her birth and formation. He was a tavern keeper. Travelers came through, and he heard the stories. He longed to be Aaron: a man of daring adventure coming home now after several years with a loving, exotic native wife. Oh, the man loved his wife, but he had missed the sharp edge of life that the raw frontier of America had offered. Still he could get the occasional glimpse of it when interesting travelers passed through, and none more interesting than Jóhonaá of the Navajo had ever done that in Crossville, Tennessee. Suddenly Sunny felt so blessed, so blessed to have seen what she had seen and experienced all that she had. And she was only twenty-eight years old. She wasn’t done yet.
From . . . East and West from Texas
Another Sister Sitting by the bedside of her seriously ill young sister-in-law, Jane; Jefferson Farm, Stuarts Draft, Virginia, winter of 1874
In the days that followed, Sunny would sit long hours with Jane, almost constantly some days.
“Why am I angry at you?”
“It is okay, it is natural, Jane.”
“But you are so good, and I look at you and feel anger.”
The two had become so close that Jane could speak so honestly, and she said, “I hate myself for it. I get angry at Helen too but more at you. Why?”
“You are angry, and it is natural, because we will go on, get to go on, and you might not. You address it more to us, Helen and me, because we are more like you, and you think you should get to stay like us. You wonder why you are different. You see me as so different and of a race your people sometimes hate, so your mind says, ‘Why does she get to stay?’ But you will be the lucky one if you go soon, Jane. You will be in the better place and await us. You and I will be such close friends someday . . . such close sisters.”
“Why do I doubt it, Sunny?” Jane moaned.
“Many doubt what they cannot see, even if they want to believe it and do believe it.”
“Will it cost me heaven, my doubt?”
“There have been many who have doubted. Good people. One of them, a Spaniard, Saint John of the Cross, did. It is called ‘the dark night of the soul’ when one goes through it. He wrote about it in a long poem. There was another, a Frenchman, Saint Paul of the Cross. He suffered his doubts a long time. And yet, he was such a holy man.”
Obviously Sunny’s two years in study at Mission de San Vicente in the Sangre de Cristos was not wasted.
“You papists, you have those saints you pray to,” said angrily now. “It is like you have so many little gods. How can you believe all that?”
“They are just good people, Jane. They are not gods.”
“You pray to them.”
“Is your mother alive?
“Yes, why?”
“And your grandmother?
“No, why?”
“Do you visit her grave; is it around these lands?”
“Yes.”
“And do you talk to her there?”
“Sometimes,” said perhaps with a bit of embarrassment about it.
“It is like that: like a person, a simple farm girl like you and I, talks to dead parents or grandparents, Jane. Our prayer to them is just that, ‘conversation’ not ‘worship’ of them. They are very holy people. If we can talk to one dead person, we can talk to others.
Another Sister Going to bed in the guestroom in Professor and Mrs. Richardson's apartments after a dinner and talk with several professors, their wives, and some students from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, winter of 1874
“Aaron, I have seen many things on this trip. I do not think your people superior to my people or culture. We are just different, but our ways, my people’s ways, are worthy as well. I am glad in my mind and heart for my learning and experiences. My father was right . . . I mean right to teach me and push me to learn.”
She paused and said with a slight smile, “He pushed me toward you, you know. You did, didn’t you?”
“No,” looking puzzled and inquisitive.
“Those years ago . . . at San Vicente . . . he encouraged me. I was ready to yield to Elaina. I thought her better . . . the better woman for you.”
Assisted by the moonlight floating across the small town street and drifting into the window, the husband looked into her deep, dark brown eyes and realized the truth in them. He knew it was not said to elevate herself but that it was just an honest comment. He knew, as well, of the power of her capacity for sacrifice. She had given up her life for him once, hadn’t she? And on that occasion they weren’t even married yet. She had always thought of him and others before herself. Of course she had thought Elaina better. It was the way she always thought because she in fact was the better woman just for such a charitable approach to everyone and everything. Aaron reached over across the bed; and, wrapping his hand around her neck in a gentle way, he kissed her deeply and lovingly.
”A Mother's Memories Camping on the border of the Navajo Reservation lands, 1887
“Sunny, talk about it.”
“Not now, not here . . . the children.”
They could hear the distant strains of David’s guitar and Irish tenor voice from the riverbank as he began to sing, “I’ll take you home again Kathleen…”
“That’s why, Sunny . . . they’re your children . . . part of you.”
As she looked at her children around the campfire, she elaborated softly, “I do not want them . . . you . . . to see me afraid.” She bravely said it just loud enough for them to hear too.
“It’s not fear, Sunny. It’s a different kind of apprehension.”
“It is fear. It feels like fear to me. I think they will hate me. Alone or with you, a white man, they will hate me. What if they are violent; what of the children’s safety? What if they hate them too?”
“What, Mama? What is it? We’re visiting your old home when you were a little girl,” the usually quiet (younger) Sunny asked her namesake mother a Joanna type of question. The events at San Vicente had drawn her closer to her mother, to her mother’s identity.
The woman became quiet, thoughtful, and sullen; and then she spoke softly, “My father knew so much more than some leaders did, but he was a more minor leader, not because of ability but by choice. He told them to make a treaty . . . that the Diné would be destroyed . . . not in a meeting but privately. He told his friends of the things he had seen, things he had been shown and told. Few believed him. They respected him, but they believed he had been tricked. Some accused him tentatively and halfheartedly of cowardice, but none really believed it. He had fought and killed Comanche. Few others were as successful as Atsá in that regard.”
“Papa has,” exclaimed Israel in a manly manner.
“Shhh,” responded the younger Aaron.
The mother continued, “We left a week before the attack in the canyon, right after darkness so we could get far before daybreak. We had not the possessions we have now, but we left the land and our hogan. The others left theirs as well. I was eighteen and should have been married, but my father allowed me to refuse suitors. There was none I cared for until this one,” and she smilingly grasped his hand, still looking into the fire as if it entranced her and opened the memories up. “I almost lost him to Elaina, a worthy opponent.”
The children issued a soft gasp. They had not known of that competition in their parents’ youth.
The woman continued, “We were attacked once by some men . . . once on the trek to safety. They were not soldiers . . . and they killed my friend. It was as if they aimed for her, just a girl . . . a harmless young girl. But they were few and we drove them off. My brother Ahigá and his friend rode them down and killed them for they would have been able to tell of our escape and route . . . and for the girl. We weren’t in the mountains yet, and we were vulnerable. It is the only time we fought whites until that night in the valley.”
“You said your family never fought them, Ma,” said Aaron.
“We never raided or attacked any whites nor fought against their army, Aaron. That is what I meant. That day, the next day after we left, it was defensive. That is what I meant.
We learned a few weeks later, when some who fled and got away arrived in the valley, that the Army had attacked and that Dahiná and Naadáá’s parents were brutally murdered. No one knew for sure of the girls’ fate, but we heard later that they were on the Long Walk."
Opening Scene from East and West from Texas: The great room of the Double H Ranch; Brazos River Watershed; Texas July 1874; SETTING: Red River War
Comanche Moon
In the wee hours of morning, the great room of the old ranch house was softly, mystically lit with silvery moonlight that scattered across the floor from the massive windows. The soft, orange glow of a coal oil lamp in the far corner on the big roll top desk added to the mood that spoke to the dreamer of story books and real life adventures, of love and danger and the realm of things spiritual as well. He lay there on the large sofa drifting in and out of sleep but never letting himself truly go off.
The clock ticked in the hallway between the main room and the parlor, where many an ominous or happy meeting had taken place over the years: calls to action, or celebrations, or agony over some worrisome news, like when Natty was lost on the vast prairies of Oklahoma. It chimed each hour as well after its Big Ben introductory chime. It was beautiful to those who could sleep and annoying, even torturous, to those who couldn’t. His reaction this night was ambivalent.
For him, it was an alternately restful and restless night . . . not like the usual ones with her. Dozing now he would muse over memories; and, awake at another moment, he would concern himself with scanning what he could see of the terrain outside of the numerous window panes, scanning as well his thoughts and worries over the reason he was there in that room and why his eyes searched. The big glass windows went almost to the floor, as risks of attack were thought to be more distant now to the north and west.
At some point, he felt her presence in the room and knew the woman stood beside him, having without any real effort stealthily entered. He regretted having awakened her with his absence from the marital bed. She was native. She missed nothing.
After several moments, she spoke just as he reached and took the hand he knew was there.
“You cannot sleep, Aaron? What is your worry?”
“Nothing, Darlin’ . . . just restless after all we did today. It was a long and heavy one.”
There was a pause, and he held her smallish hand tenderly, and the moonlight caught on the open edge of her thin, delicate nightgown. Nights were hot in Texas this time of year. The silver glow painted the front of the gown as well, revealing the petite feminine shape through its sheerness; and the woman, now comfortable in these trappings of the white world as easily as in her own, sat on the edge of the sofa beside his prone body. The silver light now revealed the golden brown of her skin and softly highlighted the small, silver crucifix laying on her chest, just below her delicate neck.
With her left hand still in his, as he had adjusted to her movements, she looked in his shadowed face and placed her right gently on the left side of it, on his temple and cheek in a comforting way . . . as motherly as it was romantic.
She spoke softly, “When you brought your life of danger to mine and wedded the danger together, we chose truth. For secrets only bring surprises not security.”
Aaron looked at her long and lovingly, wishing he was in a more romantic mood than his concerns now allowed. Then he said, “I saw a Comanche brave today on the far northwest edge of our range, far up the western banks of the Brazos. That’s why I was so late getting back; I was up there. You know, it’s almost a day’s ride, round trip. We met him before. He was the small one with the double face scar when we met Quanah four years ago.”
“Oh my,” she said casually, reflecting concern and surprise in a controlled way. The somewhat stoic native woman defined self-control.
“He had a message; he was looking for me . . . after all those years.”
“We must have made an impression.”
“He said that Quanah wanted us to not fight him. He doesn’t want to have to kill us, I guess.”
“It means something is afoot.”
“You would think so. And he’s warning us. There was a fight a week or so ago up at Adobe Walls, but I don’t know any of the particulars. I’ve been meanin’ to ask Dusty. John said he knew something of it.”
“We have to warn others. Otherwise we’re traitors. And of course they would say I was complicit. It is the right thing to do. Lives are at stake.” Not always stoic with respect to serious matters, Jóhonaá now allowed her concern to show in her voice.
Aaron went on, “I told him that we would not be a part of any invasion of Comancheria but we would defend our homes and those of our friends.”
“They’re not going to attack here tonight, Aaron.”
“I know . . . but you know, it’s just me.”
“Come to bed.”
“It’s beautiful out here with these big windows . . . lay down here and cuddle.”
Some hours later she awakened and eventually started to stir. She did not want to be caught out in the main room dressed for the bedroom.
“Aaron, I must go . . . my dress,” she responded to his gentle yet firm grip on her body.
He released her; and as she started to stand, he did as well. He wanted the moment to last, and long moments later in their room together, they finally started to dress for the day.
As she began to change, Sunny said in a serious tone, “I want to go. I want us to go today, together: first to town and then to the military authorities. There is no Army office in town or any other nearby town. Fort Griffin is closest . . . or maybe Phantom Hill. Aren’t we about the same distance from each? We’ll have to send a messenger. And we need to stop at each ranch on our way and warn them. Maybe we need to go to the fort in person. Let them hear it from me. I have to be a part of this, Aaron. I will not be blamed later by whites in some crazy way for the brutality of those plainsmen.”
“People know you, Jóhonaá. Our friends and associates know you now.”
“Aaron, you know how it is. There is a delicate state of peace and danger between our races, and many of your whites do not see us as equal humans. We have true friends, but there are strangers who move in, people who do not owe any loyalty or allegiance to us or the Hofstadters for their land or our help and assistance.”
“You may be worrying too much.”
“You know the public mob, Aaron. You faced it yourself that night, and we all did right out on that porch,” and she pointed toward the front of the house. “I’m an Indian. I do not want to go through that again. What they do to women, Quanah’s people, it is unforgivable . . . they are savages. My people would never do that. I do not want to be associated with that, Aaron. And they will, Aaron; your people will try to blame me . . . some of them. We must ride to the front of this Aaron. We must turn the herd before a stampede tramples Naadáá, Dahiná, and me.”
SCENE: The great room of the Double H Ranch; Brazos River Watershed; Texas July 1874
SETTING: Red River War
Morning rose beautifully the following day, and the world outside was rose-gray and yellow as the kitchen and great room came to life.
One person had sat, with their back against the wall, all night long on the bench in the big common area. Now crossing the room, Natty wondered how the shocked girl had remained upright through the night, tired as she must have been, most certainly was. Shock may have been the answer to that unspoken question. Ultimately, all had left her at her request as the wee hours of the previous darkness ground on. Emma couldn’t vocalize it at the time, but Sunny, Natty, and Dahiná knew from experience that replaying the horrors in your mind somehow helped one grasp them.
Emma did not wince when the Indian woman sat beside her on the long bench as she had reacted to Sunny the night before. She knew them both. The land of her now gone family was part bargain purchase, part gift from the people of the Double H. The somewhat delicate looking yet very frontier tough woman was sole heir to the acreage now, but only time would tell if she would remarry and reclaim it. The Double H would protect it for her until then.
Natty spoke without invasively taking a hand or otherwise touching the depressed woman, “Are you hungry, Emma?”
“What’s thuh use; I cain’t go on,” looking straight ahead and hollow.
Knowing to say nothing, to not rush anything, Naadáá just sat beside her for long moments. She had been with John all the rest of the night; he could spare her now. The couple had not talked as he had been given enough whiskey to sleep soundly in her embrace. Talk would come.
“I got nothing and wouldn’t care if I did,” Emma said softly at some point.
“You have friends, truer friends than you know,” the native woman replied as they both sat and stared ahead, the Indian using an economy of words to let the other’s thoughts flow.
“I got nobody, Natty.”
Waiting a few moments once more, Naadáá finally responded, “It is so sad to say, but your trials are common out here. You have no blood relatives and lost your man, but you have strong friends who will never leave you if you remain here. One sits with you now. And you have a home in this building you sit in for as long as you want.”
Finally, Emma turned and looked at Natty, taking in the native features in profile. When the Navajo turned her head toward her, the white woman took in the soft smile and dark penetrating eyes that echoed truth in her words yet reflected the race that had destroyed her loved ones. She just looked and said nothing for a few seconds and then spoke, “Yur husband held me all night . . . out there on the trail. I can tell you ‘cause I know he loves you an’ you trust him. I just want yuh tuh know it happened. I had no clothes ‘cept that duster I had on. I don’t want you to hear it from somebody else an’ think wrong of us.”
“I’m glad he did. . . . I know this sounds so hollow now, but the wounds will heal, Emma. Mine did.”
“I never knew yur story.”
“I will tell you later, today if you want. I will tell you now a little . . . that we two, my sister and I, were captured by very bad men . . . men like Comancheros, and we were to be sold.” Even now in her own very dark place, Emma reacted with a hand to her mouth and a slight gasp. The Navajo continued, “In all the years of our life in Dinétah, we girls were at risk from Comancheros and Comanche. Others were dangerous too, but the Comanche are the harshest. When we were imprisoned by the Army, the bad native and white men still came and raided the camp and took girls and horses from there, from one horror to another. We are simply horses to them, but they can use us in a different way than a horse before they sell us.”
“Imprisoned?”
“The white army came, my husband’s forces, but before his time out here; and they took Dahiná and me after they killed our parents. My father had never fought the whites, but they killed him anyway. They came with some white settlers too. We were marched over three hundred miles to a camp that had no food and could produce none. The river water made us sick, the Pecos. At first there were no buildings, and we dug holes to sleep in. And then the Apache and Comanche came.”
Rather than sink into her own darkness when she usually relived it, Natty looked straight, soft, and true into the white girl’s eyes. There was no time now for her own sorrow. She had a man now, and a home and family. The story, her sad story, was for Emma now, for her knowledge that she did not stand alone. One can be told that a thousand times; but to sit and hear it from another young person near their own age, who had lived something similar, carried so much more power.
SCENE: The great room of the Double H Ranch; Brazos River Watershed; Texas July 1874; SETTING: Red River War
He looked more intently at her, more carefully with just a hint of interest in her situation. He knew no details of it. “Pardon me, but like yuh told me, just go home. Rest as long as yuh can an’ just wait there, and maybe life will catch up an’ smooth out the next road.”
“There is no home.” And the woman returned to her stare as her head was against the wall again. In an unladylike manner her right leg was folded up in front of her with that foot on the bench, and she loosely held it with draped forearms on the knee as she leaned back against the wall. Her left dangled to the floor, and he could see a pretty, delicate bare foot protruding from the long country dress. The length of the dress protected her dignity, and the casual manner attracted the rural Virginia boy in Isaac. He saw as well the damaged person, the country girl of great strength in a delicate body, who life had just about broken completely in two.
“Do you want to tell me? We can talk in the parlor whur its private.” Whatever made him say it he could not fathom. Where the words came from he could not imagine. Empathy for others was inherent in the Jefferson boys and welled up in him when he finally looked at the woman and saw it, all the pain that would not let her rest or sleep well or eat well. She had obviously lost weight but was just hauntingly pretty now rather than the robust beauty he imagined she once was. He imagined her in the fields in a long gingham or cotton dress or working in the kitchen between a big trestle table and a stone fireplace. He furiously, without showing it, forced from his mind the image of her in his arms on a wedding bed in just a cotton slip or in lace or nothing at all, and it almost made him hesitate. After all, ‘What would [his dead wife] Jane think?’
“They killed him horribly,” and her eyes, still red, welled up, but she held it in. “Is that what you want know? They stripped us all and . . . and took their manhood.” . . . (Why was she telling him this?) . . . “I stood there like that . . . naked . . . and watched it . . . I cain’t tell it . . . cain’t tell you all uv it . . . and then b’fore they could . . . yuh know, hurt Aurora, hurt her in evil ways, sumbody shot her . . . an’ I ran. All those men saw me . . . that saved me, John and’ all, saw me like that.”
Isaac’s inner struggle continued and was briefly intense and overwhelming; for, fortunately or unfortunately for his mental state, the woman had now firmly planted the image in his mind of her wearing nothing at all. Then he added, referencing the parlor, “It’s still public there. People won’t frown on it. I’ll tell you about Jane and maybe you can forget a moment . . . just for a moment.”
She wanted him to hold her, and he wanted to. And, releasing her bent knee, she held her hands together in her lap, gritting her teeth, trying to hold in the sobs, then wrapping her arms around her waist across each other tensing them and her body trying to ease it as if trying to hold herself, embrace herself, because there was no one else, no one to do it. Women had embraced her since that horrible day and John Jones that night after it happened, and she felt so guilty for that . . . so guilty that John’s embrace had comforted her all thru the night, strong as he was . . . and he was Natty’s husband, and she felt jealous that her man was gone and an Indian woman had such a fine man. How was that right?
Isaac took her hands, taking her forearms and pulling them away from her self-imposed embrace . . . and he held each hand in his own. He did not know if he should hold her right here in public at this dance. He sensed the trembling, the anxiety. This was no mere shy girl trembling out of the nervousness of young love. This was a woman whose life was broken . . . whose life had been ripped apart and torn away . . . and butchered in front of her . . . and she had only saved herself by deserting the ones she loved and running. Isaac was nervous and confused but he was the right man for the job at the right time and place.
Some newcomers may have been confused or scandalized, yet most present knew a little of their stories, and so it seemed right on some level.
After long moments, the two got up hand-in-hand and danced to Lorena and Aura Lea and then retired to the parlor. None present believed that was a problem. Both had been married; they were adults. The evening was still young, and those who arrived later and came in the front door by the parlor saw them talking quietly, heads together almost touching. They leaned in close and held each other’s two hands. There were tears, quiet ones, soft sobs. And there were embraces, the handsomely rugged Virginia farmer holding her head against his chest. Her wounds were so much deeper, the perfect situation for him to heal his own by comforting her. If the man had to be the strong one, it was easier for Isaac, for he could only attempt to imagine what her pain was like. It facilitated the healing for the one with common wounds of death and loss to be able to help someone who had recently stepped out of a nightmare. That she was of the opposite gender and pretty just helped the nervous young man forward.
Quality fiction is imagined reality