The Bride of Texas Read Free

coat was lost among the older patches, which reflected all the colours of the heavenly phenomenon overhead except red. Stejskal’s comrade, Vojta Houska, exhibited no such respect for the bride, for a hairywhite thigh showed through a tear in his trouser leg. The last member of the threesome concluding the short procession had patched the seat of his trousers with two crossed stripes of bright blue silk that bore a remarkable resemblance to the bars on the Confederate flag. The sergeant wondered if this was pure coincidence. Hardly, knowing Jan Amos Shake.
    “A Czech day,” grumbled Kakuska.
    “A Czech bride,” said the sergeant, and they joined the threesome. A lieutenant unfurled a fancy parasol and held it over the bride, and the sergeant tried to remember where he had last seen that article of Southern finery. It was pink with little blue flowers on it, with a strip of white lace around the edge. The inside was lined with blue satin set with tiny gold stars that glistened over the bride’s coiffure. Then the scene came alive in his mind. A funny war — horrible, but funny all the same. Shake, the clown, loping among stinking corpses of mules, wearing a lady’s huge yellow chapeau with bright green plumes and carrying the very same parasol that was now protecting the bride’s immaculate dress as she crossed the open space between the canopy and the tent. Behind Shake had been an indignant Negress — a handsome, pale brown hunk of woman holding her skirts above her knees so you could see an occasional flash of white underwear — screaming something in a dialect the sergeant didn’t understand, but he didn’t need to, it was obvious. Then Shake tripped, the hat fell off and rolled in the dust, and the brown beauty let go of her skirt and dived for the hat while Shake covered his face with his hands, thinking she was about to tackle him. But she just picked up the plumed chapeau and dusted it off. Shake got up and stood there warily while the woman shook her fist at him. Finally he understood what she was saying: “Robbing us poor niggers. My Sunday go-to-church hat!”
    “Sorry, ma’am, sorry!” Shake muttered, and the woman’s gaze fell on the parasol he had dropped in the dust.
    “You-all can keep that,” she said, and strode off, carrying the hat before her like a holy relic. They watched the proud figure walking away towards the white plantation house, and it occurred to the sergeant that perhaps she had beaten the scavengers to it and helped herself to her mistress’s chapeau and the fancy dress she was wearing. But God knew. She was obviously a house nigger, the aristocracy of the slave world.
    That was the last time he’d seen the parasol, until it resurfaced above the golden locks of Linda Toupelik.
    Kakuska said, “Another Moravian girl finds happiness.”
    “And another Yankee dunce sticks his head in the yoke,” Shake grumbled, then added, “and it’s going to be one hell of a yoke, my friend. A Moravian yoke.”
    The parasol was snapped shut and the bride, on her brother’s arm, followed the groom into the tent, accompanied by the diminutive Kil. There was room inside for the groom’s fellow officers, but the enlisted men had to stay outside in the rain. The front of the tent was open, though, so they could see old Reverend Mulroney waiting behind the prie-dieu, holding his well-thumbed Bible and smiling an appropriate smile.
    It was still raining on the sycamores.
    Then the clergyman’s gaze fell on the bride, and suddenly his smile didn’t seem so appropriate to the sergeant after all. It was as if the chaplain were looking at one of those smutty pictures Corporal Gambetta carried in his haversack and rented to soldiers for a penny when they felt the need to take off into the bushes. The minister looked from bride to groom and, when he spoke, his voice confirmed the sergeant’s suspicion.
    “Dearly beloved,” he intoned, “listen while we read from the Book of Ezekiel the