Inland - Tea Obreht Page 0,31

studying the paper.

“And here—what do you mean by dragons’ teeth?”

“The Hellenes had it that when you sow dragons’ teeth, you reap a battle-ready army.” Pleased with herself, she watched him make his way through her letter again. “When will you print it?”

“Print it?” He looked up at her with genuine surprise. “Darling, this undertaking was purely for the benefit of your constitution.”

Her constitution? Her constitution boiled for days. Worse still was Emmett’s inability to comprehend why she was so withdrawn and curt.

But don’t you feel released, Mama, having written it?

She did not. All that time, all that effort. Pages and pages written and rewritten, wrung out and reconstituted until she was no longer certain of her own logic. And Emmett—still dragging his feet with a rebuttal he continued to claim he was writing; still dawdling with half-hearted scraps of script he refused to let her see. Where was the pen-wielding cavalier who had protested the Apache Wars outright, and marked every land-grab and unjust closure and extrajudicial hanging from here to Yuma?

Well. Emmett had carted off to Cumberland in search of the wretched Paul Griggs and his damnable water delivery, leaving the boys in charge of the printhouse. And one day later, a little giddy with sleeplessness and determination, Nora had found herself slipping her note to Dolan.

“A last-minute addition,” she said.

Dolan read it with widening eyes. “Has Papa seen this?”

“Of course.”

“Who on earth is ‘Ellen Francis’?”

In a failure of imagination, Nora had put her mother’s name to the text. But Dolan had no memory of Ellen Francis Volk, had never met nor written to her. It would surprise Nora to learn that he remembered having had a Grandmother Ellen at all.

“You don’t know her. She’s newly set up out on the Red Fork.”

“And she wrote to you?”

“To your father. Last week.”

And still there had been time to confess, to withdraw. Still Dolan had lingered in the doorway, twisting his hat. “You’re certain Papa approves?”

Rob, who’d watched all this sidelong from the fence, returned and took the note from his brother’s hand. “Come on,” he said, “Papa approves.”

And so the piece had run—and what had it wrought? A fleeting afternoon’s thrill at the sight of her familiar words, ink-fat and coursing down the page, so formal, so lasting. A brief daydream that she and Desma might laugh about all this together. She had even allowed herself to believe—just for a moment, admittedly, for she knew Desma well enough—that after an initial period of agitation, Desma might grow to feel bashfully warm about having been lauded thus for all the virtues she would never extol in herself.

But instead, everything had gone to hell. The very next afternoon, Dolan was waving the Clarion in her face. They did not shy from rebuttals, the Clarion, and they’d written one up so fast Nora could scarcely believe they hadn’t had it lined up long before the whole mess had even begun. Goddamn the might of the daily.

Despite our desire to mount a defense of our publication’s character—baselessly maligned by The Amargo Sentinel—the Ash River Clarion abstains from anything that might invite indictment of our journalistic propriety. Suffer us to dismantle these accusations instead. Firstly: reporting the facts about Amargo’s predicaments is a matter of civic responsibility. That once-noble town’s inevitable ruination is as wounding to us, its friends and neighbors, as it is to its own fine citizenry. Second: it is well proven that counties derive a great benefit from the movement of legislative seats. The process encourages civic engagement, and will be crucial to our Territory’s petition for statehood. Finally: though Mr. Merrion Crace holds a stake in this newspaper, the Sentinel’s crude understanding of his involvement betrays divination rather than truth—which is unsurprising, of course, given its publisher’s connection to mesmerists and mediums. The facts are as follows: this paper was established to furnish the people of Inés Valley with news and tidings, and Mr. Crace has always been divested from its management. As to Mrs. Desma Ruiz, being widowed twice would require her having been widowed to begin with; and since we have it on good authority that her confederation with the late Mr. Rey Ruiz was not legal—insofar as she was, and yet remains, married to her first husband Mr. Robert Gris—it is the duty of this publication to point out that she is not a widow at all.

“There’ll be hell to pay now,” said Dolan despairingly. “From Father and the Stock Association both.”

“So be it,” Nora said.