Ezra Dodson had wrapped and bound the bodies of his wife and daughter during a snowstorm in February, the month the Apache call the Moon of Sleeping Bears, and had sunk them beneath the ice of the Rio Hondo. He watched the hole he had hacked close over as clear as any lens, and with the coming of spring, he awaited the arrival of the itinerant tintypist while the river still ran cold enough to keep them.
The itinerant tintypist could not recall when he had acquired his mule or how old it was, but it seemed to him it had lived longer than any horse he had ever owned and was wiser than most of them as well. In its younger years it had been surefooted, stoic and reliable, pulling an old Conestoga over both mountain roads and desert hardpan, cautious and discerning about where it was best to cross a creek or set up camp or what new trail to take when the usual route was washed out or slid over with rock rubble. When in doubt I let my mule decide, the tintypist liked to say. But now the mule had gone gray in the muzzle and cloudy in its vision. And although it was willing to keep on, it had become unsteady on even a coating of snow, and the tintypist had taken to spending his winters in Lincoln. Come the thaw he loaded the wagon with staples for the trail and the equipment of tintyping. Stacks of engraving plates, foldable tripod, carboys of chemicals, the mahogany box-camera carefully crated. With the mule newly shod, he set out on his circuit of settlements where year after year there were ranchers and townsfolk and homesteaders expecting his visit. Yep, he comes through here every spring. Pretty regular too, I’d say, unless he breaks an axle oversteering that old wagon like he did a few years back or that old mule of his goes laid up lame.
It was in early May, the month the Apache call the Moon of Come Back Birds, that the tintypist started his yearly trek, heading west out of Lincoln. Stopping for a spell at Fort Stanton and pulling his wagon into the space designated for sutlers and their tables and tents where they kept up a steady trade selling spirits and tobacco and wool socks and such to the cavalry soldiers, and there setting up his camera-works and taking their pictures in military poses for sending home. Pistols drawn. Fierce looks. Cavalry kepis. Salutes and sabers. Dinnertime at the enlisted men’s mess. A corporal takes up his pen. Dearest Mother, got my picture took today so you can see that I am eating alright and taking to army life well enough.
On then through Nogal. A bride and groom married the prior autumn now hauling the gown and suit out from the cedar chest and dressing again as if for a second wedding. The bride pinches her cheeks but the rosiness fades. Take her hand there, sir. Stand a little closer, ma’am. Alright, don’t move. Breathing is permissible.
On to Capitan. New babies. Twins. Wriggling in the mother’s arms. Try keeping those little fellers still or they’ll be a blur.
Turning south then to Oscura. An old hunter on the steps of his falling down house with something furred in his lap. This here? This be my old Bobby Blue. Tick hound. Right natural don’t you think? Stuffed him myself, corn shucks and mattress cotton. I could do that old mule of yours when you’re through with him, standing up if that’s the way you want him.
On to Three Rivers and the one-room school. Five children in the yard, the schoolmarm severe. Pardon me ma’am, might we leave the switch out of the picture?
Pocito, Perrito, Berryville, Laughton. A family of fourteen gathered under the trees. Kitchen chairs. The daughters dressed from the same bolt of calico. Back row, Davey, you’re the tallest. Girls be still now, enough of them fidgets. We want those pretty faces to come out in the picture.
On then, to Tularosa. Patrons at the trading post stepping out into the sunlight. Proprietor on the porch and merchandising up to the last minute. How about a brandy new pull-bridle for that mule? I may be fresh out of them next time you’re passing through.
From there, east through Coyote Hills, stopping a while in Mescalero. Cattle ranch. Hired hands, mostly Mexicans, lining up. Inside the ranch house a grandfather sits on the horsehair sofa. His old wife beside him, her hand on his shoulder. Come on now, Baxter. Keep them eyes open.
Then north again into Ruidoso. The farrier’s shop. The farrier out front in his leather apron, arms folded. Hold on there, let me fetch my hammer. Then on to the livery. A new foal, skittish. The mare watchful, nickering. Somebody get a grip of that sweet little critter. A hand in the picture holding the halter. Its legs a cloud of motion.
On to Alto. The family cemetery behind the house. Fenced in white picket. Old headstones, some askew. A grave newly dug and waiting. Our dear Auntie Jeanne, I do believe she held on these last weeks for when you was coming. The darkened parlor. Here and there candles. The odor of candlewax. Lifting the lid. The old aunt displayed in her packed-away clothes. Now a waft of camphor. Woolen fichu tied at her chest and kept with a cameo brooch. Blue gingham dress. The parlor too dark for a proper tintype. The curtains are thrown open. The candles are brought closer. A grandfather clock near the door. A painted chalk dog on the mantle. Chipped. A bird cage of brass-wire with a brass birdy finial and a domed roof sloping into the curlicued eaves. There the dead canary, the empty seedcup. A pair it was. One dead when she forgot to feed it. The other we turned loose, barely living. The old aunt positioned. Partially propped. Horace, fetch Auntie another pillow please, that would help some. The tintypist lifts his shroud-cloth and ducks his head under. Adjusts the focus. Slides in the plate. Takes a final look. No need to tell her don’t move, Auntie Jean. Opens the shutter. A long stillness seeps through the room. Unseen cricket calls from a corner. Tick and tock. The minute hand moves a half-click back, then lurches forward and clicks into place. Back a half-click, forward, click. Back a half-click, forward, click. Alright then folks. The curtains are drawn again. The lid lowered. Ease it down, Horace, that’s right, watch your fingers. The candles snuffed.
Ditchville, Parajito, Cold Canyon, La Quinta. A new barn. New outhouse. Little Jimmy peeking out. Boy you get out from there and come sit for your picture now, well ain’t he just the dickens.
Now through the settlement at Low Water Hollow. Come on Martha, he’s here. He’s got that same old mule, too. Bring the boy on out. The mother hurries, fastens her hair with a comb. She carries out the son, a spindly and wasted bit of a boy. This here’s our Martin. We were hoping you’d be coming through soon. The mother positions the boy on her knee, supports his wobbly head against her chest. Say hello Martin. This man’s taking our picture.
Late May now, and on to the towns along the Rio Hondo. Tinne, Los Gatos, Poco, and Picacho. Picacho of course. This trip he’d be stopping at Picacho for certain, where some folks had put up their cabin right there on the river. Dodson, that was the name. Ezra Dodson. Just him and his missus, Alma Dodson. A year ago, last June it was, when Ezra asked the tintypist to please come back next spring or so. The baby is due next winter, Ezra had said. Next February, said Alma, that’s by my reckoning. A girl, she had said. A daughter, you’ll see. Come next May, she will be four months old, she told the tintypist. The perfect age for a picture.
They had died during a February snowfall, the month the Apache call the Moon of Sleeping Bears, when animals lie still and dreaming in their dens and would not stir to take them.
It was fortunate, the husband would tell the tintypist, that they lived near the river and that they expected him in spring.
And fortunate, the husband said, that they had died—his wife and his daughter both—when the Rio Hondo was frozen in its shallows but flowing midstream at its coldest.
The husband had done what he could to clean away the blood before he wrapped them in gunny sacking and brought them to the river. There had been so much of it. More, it seemed, than such a small and fragile woman could contain. So much that he had stuffed a rag into the wound he had made in her belly to sop up the pool of it that remained, forgetting that the river would wash her, wash all of it away. She had screamed his name so many days. Ezra. Ezra. And then just screaming. Bled for so many days. When the screaming stopped she lay still but still bleeding. A spreading stain on the ticking under her and the sheet he had put between her legs. He bent to her chest. Heart sounds. He heard them. Or was it the wind thudding the shutters. Or was it the dull hammering in his head. Or the dog thumping his tail against the bedstead as it sat smelling the blood. And then, so quickly, she became the color of weathered bone. The color of buttermilk. The color of the clouds. The color of the sheet when it was still clean before all that coming of the blood when it was still early in her screaming. He lifted the sheet. He dared to look. The hole, the cleft. There the protrusion of a tiny foot. Pink, wrinkled. Covered in slime. The smell of dung. The knife was ready. Hunting, skinning, honed with care. Back and forth, with attention to the point. He placed it on the square of flannel she had saved. A pattern of flowers. Alma dear, he said. My Alma, he said as he pushed in the point and he felt the skin and muscle give way as if the blade had entered an empty space and he turned the knife and made a slit hip to hip in the place he thought a slit should be made. There the child. Bloody but uncut. He took it by the shoulders. The arms limp. The head lolling, flopping back. As she said it would. Months before she had sewn a doll from scraps of cloth. Stuffed with gramma grass. You’ll hold her like so, she had said. Her? he said. I can tell, she said. A daughter, he said. What will we name her? Mary Delia, he suggested, after my mother. Not now, she said. Bad luck to be naming or be talking of names. And she took up the doll and held it out to him. Your hand goes here, she said, on the back of her head until she can hold it up herself. Yes, he remembered how it should be done, how he had to do it. He reached into the wound he had made. He slid his hand behind its head. Until she can hold it up herself. The eyes were closed. The mouth full of dung. The body was stuck with patches of white. He began to lift it, to pull it out of her. But it would not give. It would not give. He adjusted his grasp. It would not give. The foot caught under the ramus of bone. He ran his fingers along the limb. Its knee. Its ankle. A tug, a thrust. A release. A kind of a pop. A cork from a bottle. The cluck of the tongue that tells a horse to go.
He cleaned out its mouth with a sweep of his fingers. He wiped the patches of white from its face with his shirt, careful in the creases along the nose, the hollows of the eyes. There now, he told it. He pushed the lids open with his thumbs. The pupils wide. Boreholes of blackness. He looked to his wife. Her mouth had gone slack. Her lips dry and fissured. Her eyes were open. There the same void, the same endless vacancy. The same black apertures filling their spaces. He wrapped the small body in the square of flannel. A fold, a tuck. See Alma? he said and held it to her. It’s our Mary Delia, he said. He set it beside her. He turned her head to face it. And see, she has your eyes. My ears, I’d say. But Alma, your eyes for certain.
The snow was still falling when they went into the river. Ezra Dodson had wrapped them together with lengths of sacking in that singular shape of a body that has been bound for the shelf of a crypt or for burial in the earth and had circled this bundle with a crisscross of rope, leaving a good length of it loose at the foot and by this he slid it along behind him through a stand of evergreens and over a little rise on his way to the river. Winding through the grove of old trees, bark clotted with pitch. Piney scent of sap. Pushing past the low-slung branches. Sprays of snow dusting the shrouded bale of the dead. The dog following behind on the snow-tamped path the parcel made. Tiny cones and needles strewn in its wake.
At the river he set it on the bank. When he had hacked a hole in a frozen eddy, he lowered in the gunnied bundle and tethered it to the trunk of a large cottonwood growing streamside. The flow in the eddy was slower than the rest of the river, and new ice soon closed the hole over and he was glad of that at dusk when he heard the coyotes singing their incantations of the hunt.
From time to time he went to the river to clear away new snow that had fallen on the ice so that he might gaze down and watch that long dark shape waver with the current as if it were some giant bottom feeder that had swum upstream to spawn, and sometimes he went just to tug on the rope and feel the weight of them. And there they stayed through the month the Apache call the Moon of Dying Snow, and on through the thaw and ice going thin in the Moon of Waking Bears, and on through the new buds on the cottonwood when the river still ran cold with mountain snow melt. And it was in May, the month the Apache call the Moon of Come Back Birds, when a goldfinch nested in the cottonwood and Ezra Dodson finished sanding the pinewood box and the tintypist with his mule and wagon rode in. Been expecting you right about now, said Ezra Dodson.
The tintypist climbed down from the wagon and patted his mule. This old boy, I thought he’d have some trouble with the trail up Cold Canyon or that ford at Ditchtown, but we took it easy, didn’t we old boy. Sure we did, he said, and he turned the mule loose from its traces. If I rightly recollect, he said, your wife was predicting a daughter.
Yes, said Ezra Dodson. A daughter.
Well now, said the tintypist. Are they about ready for a picture?
Yes, said Ezra Dodson. I’ll go fetch them.
Near as pretty as she ever was, the tintypist said.
There was, of course, the damage that death will do. The sharper margins of the nose, the general blanching of the skin. But the gunny sacking had saved her from all but the slightest bit of sloughing at the jaw line and the chin, and the waxy deposit that forms on the faces of the submerged dead had given hers a translucent look. The wound was bloodless, fringed in white shreds of flesh. The gown washed clean. Her eyes settled into their craters. Her hair a tangle of moist tendrils. Yes, said Ezra Dodson. I do believe she is, he said.
The child, however, had shrunk somewhat. Puckered at the mouth. Pursed. The tiny fingers shriveled and fisted. The brow creased, the countenance glowering. As if she was aggrieved, said Ezra Dodson.
No, said the tintypist, as he set his camera on the tripod. That’s just as she was leaving. By now she’s an angel for certain.
A rocking chair was placed beside the cabin steps. There the two of them were lifted in. Her arm arranged with a bend at the elbow, her head inclined toward the swaddled child in the crook. And the child? Positioned as in sleep. Should we open their eyes? asked Ezra Dodson.
No, said the tintypist who in his years of travelling for his trade had done this all before. Better to not, he said.
The dog had been crouched under the cabin steps and now crawled out on its belly and lay at their feet. Let me back us up a bit, said the tintypist as he lifted the tripod. That way we get your dog in the picture.
The tintypist dipped his head under the camera cloth once more and adjusted the focus for the change in distance. A small shadow briefly passed above the posed tableau. As a cloud on the wind might do. Or a buzzard soaring high above the evergreens. And then another. Their slow convolutions. Their easy circles. Damn, said Ezra Dodson, peering up.
The tintypist threw off the cloth and looked. They won’t be bothering her none, he said. Nor the little one. We’re just about ready, he said. Just about.
Ezra took his place behind the rocking chair, his hands on her shoulders. At the last moment he had brought forth her summer bonnet and this was set on her head to hide her hollowed eyes in the shadow of its brim. The tintypist knew just the right tilt.
I hope it is to your liking, the tintypist said when he handed Ezra Dodson the finished plate.
Ezra Dodson took it in his hands and looked a while and wept.
The wife and daughter looked natural enough. With just a dappling of sunlight coming through the trees, but the image clear and sharp. As was the dog. Though its tail was just a blur.
He was harnessing his mule when the Appaloosa and its rider came through the grove of evergreens and started down the rise to the cabin. The mule gave a soft bray and tossed its head. The tintypist looked where the mule was looking. Is it your wife’s kin you’re expecting? asked the tintypist.
No kin, said Ezra Dodson.
Well here comes someone yonder, said the tintypist. Hello young fella.
Ezra Dodson stopped his digging and climbed from the hole. He leaned his shovel beside the pinewood box.
It was a boy nearly grown, not yet a man, who climbed down from the Appaloosa. Slight of build but sturdy, somewhat sloped in the shoulder. He touched his hat, a black drover with the crown imploded. He nodded toward the hole and turned to Ezra Dodson. Need a hand with that mister?
There was not much more to be done. A few more shovelfuls to be flung out. Hammering the lid. The box roped and lowered in. The boy with the drover hat in the hole. Easy now. Hold on, he said. Take that up again, sir. Right there’s good. Ain’t quite level. Send me down that shovel. Oh see, there it is. It’s a damn root that’s catching it is what. Likely that big old tree. There’s no telling when it comes to roots. Fetch down an axe. Alright then. Let’s see how it sits. Send it on down again. Easy now. Yep, that’s right level. That’s fine. Is that to your liking, Mister Dodson?
The boy in the drover hat climbed out. The tintypist took up the shovel. The soil was pitched in. Tamped. All hats held. Words spoken.
I’m beholden, said Ezra Dodson.
It’s alright, said the tintypist.
Weren’t nothing, said the boy.
What might be your name son, asked Ezra Dodson.
William Henry Bonney.
The tintypist shook his head. Aw now, he said. That’s not his name. That’s not your name son.
Ezra Dodson scratched his head. You two been prior acquainted?
Acquainted with them posters put up all over, said the tintypist as he looked at the boy in the drover hat. But that face they drawed on them don’t come close.
Not all of it’s true, said the boy in the drover hat.
All of what? said Ezra Dodson.
All of what they say he’s wanted for, said the tintypist.
I’d better be getting on, said the boy, heading for his horse.
Listen here Mister William Henry Bonney, said the tintypist. I don’t take a whit of it as true, you being on the run but still taking the time for a man what’s lost his family.
I’m getting pretty worn down on my running, said the boy.
Well then, said the tintypist. It’s likely you’d hold still long enough for a picture.
The afternoon sun had lent a coppery slant to the cabin steps where the boy sat. He watched the tintypist setting up his box-camera. Sliding open the accordion bellows. Patting the bright mahogany wood and asking it, Ready for another one?
What say? asked the boy.
Didn’t say, said the tintypist. Soon though.
The boy sat. The tintypist leveled the tripod, adjusted the legs. He opened a little latched slot on the top of the box. Dropped in the plate. Reset the latch. Almost there, he said.
How does this work? said the boy.
An exposed negative image on a colloidal emulsion mounted to a black metal plate appears positive, he said.
Well sure, said the boy.
The tintypist covered his head with the black camera cloth and set his eye to the lens. He slid the bellows forward and back adjusting the focus. An upside-down and antipodal boy came into view. There you are, the tintypist told him. He peeked out from the cloth, leaned sideways. Frowning. Hmm, he said. Let’s get you standing. Give you some height.
The boy stood. He took off his drover hat.
Hat back on, said the tintypist. He flung the cloth from his head and stepped slightly away from the camera, rubbing his jaw. He looked at the boy. It’s crook to the left, he said.
My own Da give me this here hat, the boy said. This is how I since been wearing it.
The tintypist squinted. You’ve got yourself standing near stiff as a dead man. Let’s see what you look like toting that Winchester.
He took up his rifle and set it beside him stock down to the boards.
Better, said the tintypist. And smiling is permissible.
My teeth ain’t right, the boy said. Too rabbity my Mam always told me.
You got reason to be smiling, Mister Bonney. They ain’t strung you up just yet.
The tintypist took a last look at the boy. The rightside-up Mr. Bonney. We’re all set then, he said. Now just pick out something to look at.
The boy looked. Past the brim of his drover hat. Beyond the shrouded tintypist and his camera. There the clouds changing shape as they steamed along. The afternoon sun gliding the edges. The light through the needles of the spruce grove. Small cones suspended. Ezra Dodson setting stones along the border or the grave mound, their shadows long in the raking light. The dark soil drying. The Appaloosa just beyond, head down, pulling grass with its teeth as it went along. The scattering of the spots on its rump forming a pattern, as if they could be connected to make a picture or the parts of a picture with some parts missing. The mule’s ears turning toward the trees. A kinglet peeping in the spruce, pecking along a branch.
You need to stay still, the tintypist told the boy. But breathing is permissible.
He lifted the camera cloth and bowed his head under.
He opened the shutter and exposed the plate.
The sun was nearly set and the afternoon had grown colder when the tintypist held aside the canvas curtain he had hung at the back of his wagon and climbed down. He had wrapped the tintype in a scrap of muslin. Here you go son, he told the boy. Take a looksee.
The boy carefully folded back the cloth
Go on. You can’t hurt it none, said the tintypist. It’s ready for looking at.
The boy turned his back to the low-lying sun and held the tintype in front of him. Well now, he said. That’s my Winchester alright, he said. So that must be me.
Spitten image, said the tintypist.
I can’t recall when last I seen myself, said the boy.
Give it here, said Ezra Dodson. He took the tintype, cloth and all. Yep, he said nodding his head and passing it back to the boy. Yep, he told the tintypist. You got him good.
No sir Mister Dodson, said the boy in the drover hat. He got me better than I am
Well I do thank you, said the tintypist. But it ain’t my doing. This here camera, it don’t lie. That’s what I tell folks. Go get yourself gussied up or don’t gussy, or whatever which way you want it. It don’t matter none. This here camera, he said patting the rich mahogany wood. It sees. More than you be seeing. This here camera.
The boy put his hand on his vest pocket.
The tintypist stepped back and put up his hands. I ain’t taking nothing for it, Mister Bonney. Might be worth something to you someday. Mayhaps it brings you luck.
It’s fine work, he said. But you keep it for me. I’m beholden to you if you did.
Me keep it? Oh no, son. I never did it that way. That ain’t how it’s done, he said.
The boy took a last look at himself and folded the cloth back over. The way things are, he said, this is the best way to be doing it.
He took up the reins of the Appaloosa. He stirruped his foot and threw his legs over. He turned the horse out through the evergreen grove, heading for the plains west of the Pecos.
The sun sets. The kinglet forages on until dark.
The dog sits by the cabin door and whines to be let out.
The Rio Hondo had been muddied where Ezra Dodson had waded in to haul his parcel onto the bank, and there the river fronds had been flattened and tangled. But the current made its repairs. By nightfall the pebbles on the riverbed had rolled back into their places and the bottom silt had settled. And the river ran clear again, as if no disturbance had occurred. As if it had never been sullied.
