What's your stories?

I’ve gotten tired of narrative - not the concept, just the use of the word. People talk about how facts fit into a narrative of this or that. Sometimes, I think they mean theory in its literal sense - a system of ideas that help us organize observations.

Sometimes, they just mean story.

In 2007, Susan Faludi wrote a book called The Terror Dream about the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in 2001. She argued that our reaction as a country followed from one of our stories, the kidnapping of a white woman from under the nose of her menfolk.

You know - The Searchers.

The story of Comanche Station, this week’s feature, is Mr. Cody - and his wife. We first meet him when he rides up to some Comanche with a mule-load of trade goods. He has to sweeten the deal for the chief, throwing in his rifle, but for that princely sum, he receives a woman that he didn’t want.

But he saves her, anyway.

And they meet up with some other cowboys at Comanche Station. The party has to make its way to safety, through Comanche country - because the stage isn’t coming and the cowboys are on their own.

This movie was made before political correctness and before we treated Indians as people, but the Comanche don’t play a big role in this movie. They’re a danger, out there, picking off a cowboy and forming into raiding parties.

The real villain of the movie is another cowboy. He’s after the woman for the reward that her husband put out for her return. Him and Cody pace around each other, metaphorically, building alliances or testing them between the others in the group, waiting for the blow.

It’s a lot about what a man does, in the old west. The bad guy tells the woman, yeah, a big reward shows that her husband loves her, in a way, but he should have come after her, himself, if he was man enough to be her man.

The movie ends up being about two stories, Mr. Cody’s and the woman’s husband. The husband made the reward of five thousand dollars unconditional - whether they brought back his wife dead or alive. One of the cowboys asks why he would do a dumb thing like that, making it just as easy for somebody to bring her back dead.

Mr. Cody understands, though, because he’s been looking for his wife for ten years, now, trading drygoods and rifles for any white woman he hears of in the hope that it was her - hence, his disappointment when he first saw her. Mr. Cody won’t ever know, for sure, but he would gladly pay just to find out whether she’s dead.

Of course, the woman’s husband will never see her again, no matter what. He’s blind, so going after her himself is out of the question. He doesn’t see Cody, either, while the stoic cowboy rides off, without his reward.