Jade: Outlaw by Robert Flynn

 

He didn’t take a bottle but stopped at the half-shack, half-tent saloon, walked across the dirt floor, asked for a beer and took it to the end of the short and dusty bar that was under the wooden roof. Shep, in for his two beers before bed, spoke to him. Two pistoleros nodded. Jade nodded but didn’t invite conversation. Jade was drinking his beer when a woman joined him. “New to town, ain’t you? Thought we might get acquainted.” She tried to look bright but looked over-handled despite her youth, and her eyes were dull with knowledge of men. Jade had calico fever but the misery in her face was twin to his own and he didn’t want to know more of it.

A beautifully written brief novel of the confusion of hatred, desire, duty, shame, doubt, remorse and sundry other adult themes.

Our protagonist, not written to be admired but he still is by others although he does not admire himself is moved to conflict by his fascination with a woman who was a former Indian captive.

“It’s done,” he said, and watched as she cut her steak and ate biscuits and gravy. She had a healthy appetite but didn’t talk with her mouth full or chew with her mouth open. She cooked regular fare and there was plenty of it. She had enough sand for two brooms. Strong enough to carry her side of the teepee in both ways. But she was Indian. Not by birth but by choice. She looked Indian--dark eyes, long, straight black hair. He didn’t know that he could abide that. But her dark eyes were really brown with green flecks, hair so black it sometimes had a blue sheen. Her lips were even, neither thin nor blown, but with small lines above her upper lip. From chewing leather to soften it?

“What did you like about being Indian?” he asked, believing that no decent white woman could.

“Family. Boys competed to be the fastest, the strongest, best with a horse, best with a bow, with a lance but it was for the tribe not just personal glory. Listening to the stories and making our own stories. Girls worked beside their mothers who showed us how to gather roots, nuts, berries, firewood, buffalo chips, finding and cooking with a new herb, sewing skins to make a teepee, smoking meat, making moccasins to please our husbands who fed and protected the village. I loved following my mother, playing at cooking, washing, making and taking down teepees.

“Every girl had a doll and learned to make clothing for it. Sometimes girls worked and sang together cleaning and softening hides. When the village moved we helped our mothers take down the teepee and helped them move the poles, the hides to wherever we went. When our fathers had no horses to spare we carried everything. “When one died, all grieved. No one owned the land, or the river, or the sky. There was no glory in owning. It would be dishonorable to ride one horse and lead one if another brave was afoot. If you had two robes and someone was cold, you gave them one. Not to do so would be disgraceful. When one triumphed all celebrated. Here, smaller than an Indian village, they allow brutality to neighbors.”

Jade remains puzzled, confused, repelled by the woman who embraces what he loathes.

The novel, while not action heavy, reveals enough pragmatic scoutcraft to let us know this author and character knows what’s what.

They didn’t ride like Indians but one had a star or concho that glittered when the sun hit it. Or a gold watch hanging from his shirt. Why would someone wear glitter in Indian country? Jade wondered. Might as well hold the arrow to your breast and ask a brave to let go of the bow string.

The stark lyricism of the prose is not confined to our protagonists, all characters have a sense of desolation to them.

“Hannah believed I would fulfill her dreams but instead she fell victim to mine.”

While not a classic, this mature novel is well worth a read for the discerning.

“Have you ever seen the sea?” she asked him.

“No.”

“They tell me it tastes of salt.”

“I’ve heard that,” Jade agreed “Rain is not salty. Tears are salty. The sea must be the collected tears of people.”

“I have heard that beneath the ground is a great fire and it breaks through sometimes,” Jade said. “I have seen where the fire has broken through. Maybe tears are what keeps it from burning up the earth.”