even then his hair already receding. Bob imagined his friends called him “Jim,” but he thought of him as Lieutenant Abert.
The account began with a description of Bent’s Fort. Bob Dollar had gone to Bent’s Fort himself on the eighth-grade class trip. He knew the fort was a reconstruction and the guides, blacksmiths and mountain men lounging around were only actors, but the feeling was remarkably real that he was on the border of Mexico marked by the Arkansas River in the mid-nineteenth century, the world of traders and trappers and Cheyenne Indians, of Mexicans and Texians, of buffalo hides and French voyageurs. Now, looking at Lieutenant Abert’s watercolor of the fort, done from the far side of the Arkansas and showing an overly large flag flying from the fort and, in the foreground, a conical tent, perhaps a teepee, with two white men standing near, one wearing a striped shirt and, his arms folded, the other in buckskin pants and with a rifle over his left shoulder, he felt he was there again. The fort looked the same as it had on the eighth-grade trip. During the class visit Bob had been pleased to see screaming peacocks strutting along the fort’s parapet and wandering through the courtyard. Now he read that in Lieutenant Abert’s day there had been numerous cages at the fort containing birds of the region—the magpie, the mockingbird, the bald eagle. The parapet of the outer wall was planted to bristling cacti, which, when Abert saw them in the summer of 1845, were in waxy red-and-cream-colored bloom.
He delighted, with the lieutenant, in the groups of Cheyenne who came to the fort and did a scalp dance and posed for him while he painted their portraits. He enjoyed the lieutenant’s detailed description of Cheyenne hairdressing, the men’s hair long enough to trail on the ground but their eyebrows and beards plucked out with tweezers. He thought the lieutenant’s attraction to the women’s center partings and neat braids that hung to their waists a little more than that of a disinterested observer. Clearly he fancied them and Bob wondered if he had slept with any of them. He supposed so. And when the lieutenant went with “Mr. Charbonard” to visit Old Bark, an important Cheyenne (with a beautiful daughter), Bob thrilled at the contact with the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804, for “Mr. Charbonard” was Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, son of Sacajawea and Toussaint Charbonneau, the baby whom Sacajawea had carried on her back all the way to the Great Water of the West. What the lieutenant had written in 1845 Bob held in his hand, feeling the long-dead voice speaking to him.
At the end of the week, sitting in the Mexicali Rose over a cup of weak coffee, the cook stuck his head out of the square hole where the chicken-fried platters appeared.
“Hey, Bob Dollar, want your eggs bright-eyed or dirty on both sides? And are you still lookin for a place to rent?”
“Dirty. And I sure am.”
“Well, I heard it there’s a lady down in Woolybucket got somethin. If you don’t mind stayin down there. Pretty dead town. I got the number for you.” He thrust a torn edge of newspaper through the hole. “And if you got smarts you’d take somethin to eat. There’s no place to eat in Woolybucket. There was a place about fifteen years ago, run by a old lady, well, I say old lady, but you couldn’t tell if she was a woman or a man.”
“Thanks. And I guess I’ll get an order of fried chicken to go.”
He looked on his map. Woolybucket was the next town past Cowboy Rose, down Route 444, which ran from Tyrone, Oklahoma, to Pampa, Texas. It was on the north side of the Canadian River. He called the number and a woman’s thin yet rough voice told him that the place was an old log bunkhouse on the Busted Star Ranch, without electricity or running water, but sound and sturdy and only fifty dollars a month. No drinkers, no smokers, no women, no drugs. He said he would like to look at it, thinking that maybe
The account began with a description of Bent’s Fort. Bob Dollar had gone to Bent’s Fort himself on the eighth-grade class trip. He knew the fort was a reconstruction and the guides, blacksmiths and mountain men lounging around were only actors, but the feeling was remarkably real that he was on the border of Mexico marked by the Arkansas River in the mid-nineteenth century, the world of traders and trappers and Cheyenne Indians, of Mexicans and Texians, of buffalo hides and French voyageurs. Now, looking at Lieutenant Abert’s watercolor of the fort, done from the far side of the Arkansas and showing an overly large flag flying from the fort and, in the foreground, a conical tent, perhaps a teepee, with two white men standing near, one wearing a striped shirt and, his arms folded, the other in buckskin pants and with a rifle over his left shoulder, he felt he was there again. The fort looked the same as it had on the eighth-grade trip. During the class visit Bob had been pleased to see screaming peacocks strutting along the fort’s parapet and wandering through the courtyard. Now he read that in Lieutenant Abert’s day there had been numerous cages at the fort containing birds of the region—the magpie, the mockingbird, the bald eagle. The parapet of the outer wall was planted to bristling cacti, which, when Abert saw them in the summer of 1845, were in waxy red-and-cream-colored bloom.
He delighted, with the lieutenant, in the groups of Cheyenne who came to the fort and did a scalp dance and posed for him while he painted their portraits. He enjoyed the lieutenant’s detailed description of Cheyenne hairdressing, the men’s hair long enough to trail on the ground but their eyebrows and beards plucked out with tweezers. He thought the lieutenant’s attraction to the women’s center partings and neat braids that hung to their waists a little more than that of a disinterested observer. Clearly he fancied them and Bob wondered if he had slept with any of them. He supposed so. And when the lieutenant went with “Mr. Charbonard” to visit Old Bark, an important Cheyenne (with a beautiful daughter), Bob thrilled at the contact with the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804, for “Mr. Charbonard” was Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, son of Sacajawea and Toussaint Charbonneau, the baby whom Sacajawea had carried on her back all the way to the Great Water of the West. What the lieutenant had written in 1845 Bob held in his hand, feeling the long-dead voice speaking to him.
At the end of the week, sitting in the Mexicali Rose over a cup of weak coffee, the cook stuck his head out of the square hole where the chicken-fried platters appeared.
“Hey, Bob Dollar, want your eggs bright-eyed or dirty on both sides? And are you still lookin for a place to rent?”
“Dirty. And I sure am.”
“Well, I heard it there’s a lady down in Woolybucket got somethin. If you don’t mind stayin down there. Pretty dead town. I got the number for you.” He thrust a torn edge of newspaper through the hole. “And if you got smarts you’d take somethin to eat. There’s no place to eat in Woolybucket. There was a place about fifteen years ago, run by a old lady, well, I say old lady, but you couldn’t tell if she was a woman or a man.”
“Thanks. And I guess I’ll get an order of fried chicken to go.”
He looked on his map. Woolybucket was the next town past Cowboy Rose, down Route 444, which ran from Tyrone, Oklahoma, to Pampa, Texas. It was on the north side of the Canadian River. He called the number and a woman’s thin yet rough voice told him that the place was an old log bunkhouse on the Busted Star Ranch, without electricity or running water, but sound and sturdy and only fifty dollars a month. No drinkers, no smokers, no women, no drugs. He said he would like to look at it, thinking that maybe
Similar Books
