Gheist

by Richard Mosses

  After just one shift that future seemed like it was made of rainbows and unicorns. After steaming it in the shower she returned the dress and even the shoes the next day, bought herself a small set of pencils and a large sketch pad. The drawings were OK, but there was something fundamental missing. It was like they were purely mechanical, any motion was robotic – there was no life in them. Kat didn’t have to look far to see why.

  She knew there was a supposedly honest way to get it back, but stealing it seemed the only way. Who was crazy enough to steal, from a casino, owned by the biggest crook in a crooked town? Assuming her heart was actually there.

  Never mind her heart, where had the guys gone to? It had been nearly two days and she’d not heard a thing. Something serious must have happened. Maybe something metaphysical. Maybe they’d gone on to Heaven.

  The walls looked faceted and crystalline, like he was in an obsidian shard. The last things Clint remembered were turning to face the ghost who was talking to him and being pulled backwards, hard, out of the casino - and desperately trying to hold on, to stay. After that there was a period of empty mindlessness, like floating, which always happened if he overexerted himself. He had no idea how long that had lasted or how long he’d been in this place. It was like a prison or something. Solitary.

  He returned to going through his life. It was the only way to get himself back. No matter how hard he tried, every time he went through that empty phase he lost some memories, a piece of him just broke off. In the early days it was easy to miss pieces – what was an odd meal, or the birthdays in between the tens and fives? Most of them he couldn’t recall when he was alive. But the name of his first sweetheart, that was a fissure he couldn’t close. Why was he in that construction site when he died? A massive blank.

  Let’s see. He was born on 14th June, 1921 in Greenwood, Tulsa. His mom had to give birth in a white hospital as the black one had been burnt down in the race riots a few weeks earlier. The whole family had been made destitute. A situation they never recovered from. Insurance companies didn’t pay out for their losses, and rebuilding Greenwood was made difficult by the city planners. Of course Clint didn’t see any of that, he just took his first steps living outside and that was the way he grew up. His family moved around desperately trying to find work; his dad used to run a store in Greenwood, but was reduced to casual labour in a glutted market, eventually settling in an all-black town that was later consumed by the Dust Bowl, just like his parents.

  Clint wasn’t joking about being a black cowboy. Growing up near farms he lived for the range and the endless sky above his head. Some folks couldn’t cope with it, but for Clint it was only out there that he didn’t feel pushed in and he was free to think.

  At first he had been an extra set of hands hanging out at the ranch curious about what the men were doing, but he learned the ropes and still in his early teens was helping move the herd around looking for any water or edible grasses they could find. The black blizzards took their toll on his parents, already malnourished from the years of want, their lungs couldn’t take the dust. Finally it all got too much and at sixteen Clint headed west. He never made it to California. Briefly getting caught up in Boulder City, he found its prohibition too restrictive and headed to a more liberal town. He’d been here just as the Strip was being built. More than just his bones in the foundations, he’d sweated and bled during the construction of many more buildings in the area.

  Only just in his twenties, Clint waited in a queue to sign up for service in the days after Pearl Harbor. He ended up in Europe with the 761st, riding a tank rather than a horse. After the war he returned to Nevada and found his skills with a weapon were put to good use by the Mob.

  There were blanks he didn’t even know were there; whole sections of his life erased to the point that there weren’t even any threads to grasp. Clint only just recalled he had a sister. His sister was still alive, somewhere, in her eighties when Clint hadn’t gotten to forty. He even had a son.

  Time stretched out forever in the obsidian cell.

  15

  It took him an hour to walk to the ranch from his house. If that’s what you could call it; no more than a large room really, scavenged wood fixed to sawn-up telegraph posts with stolen nails for walls, holey tarpaulin for a roof. They had slept in the dirt until Mum had woven together rudimentary hammocks from scraps of rope and rags which they took down every morning. Clint’s dad set off with the other men at dawn. Sometimes a truck came and picked them up, sometimes they hopped on a train to the towns where the white folks lived, the ones with money and work they weren’t too afraid to give to coloured people to do. Five miles was nothing really. He’d got the water for his family from the pump first. Now he was gonna see the horses.

  He could see them from a distance when he was climbing the trees – bare even in summer now. The men would be riding them around after the steers, out onto the plains, coming back sometimes months later with them fat from fresh grasses. Clint wanted to ride, to get out away from the buzz of people; babies crying, women gossiping, drunks fighting. Made his head hurt. Everyone living on top of each other wasn’t right. There was all that land out there. Wasn’t like there were any Indian raiding parties no more.

  The fence was made from dry wood the colour of ash. It was easy to cross as it was only waist height. Wasn’t long ago it would have been over his head and he’d have to peek through the parallel slats. He smiled thinking about it. He hesitated though. Boundaries barely existed in Elysium Field, just one of the many reasons he hated being there. Anyone could walk in at any time, and this one didn’t seem to have any reason to be there with no animals to keep in. A big ranch house sat roughly in the middle of this fenced-off area. A young girl in a clean dress was sitting on a swing hanging from a tree branch. She saw him and waved. After a moment Clint waved back.

  He stood on the bottom slat and was about to swing his leg over but thought better of it. Instead Clint followed the fence round. It was the horses he’d come to see after all.

  Just over a low hill, behind the ranch, was a good sized paddock with a much higher fence. Nearby there were stables and beyond that a very large field that was fenced off with wire. No cows were there today, but in the paddock a man was trying to loop a leather harness over the nose of a horse. He’d already got a lasso around its neck, but it kept bucking and trying to bite the harness every time he got near. The man was talking to the young horse, giving commands by the tone of his voice. Clint climbed up the fence and straddled the top to watch.

  After a long struggle, the horse finally accepted the harness over its face. Both man and horse looked exhausted. The man secured the harness first, rewarding the horse with a carrot, then stepped away from it. He climbed up the fence opposite and noticed Clint sitting there.

  “Clear off, boy,” the man said loudly, wiping his forehead and neck with a red kerchief. “This is no place for you.”

  “I just wanna see the horses,” Clint shouted back. “I don’t mean no harm.”

  “I don’t care. Scram. I don’t want to see ya round here again.” He motioned his hands as if to shoo Clint away like a he was a stray chicken.

  He wasn’t bothering anyone just sitting, but he didn’t want to get into trouble either, so he sloped off home and found his Ma had plenty of things for him to do. The next day though he came back and watched as once again the man tried to get the horse to accept the harness. It didn’t seem to take so long, but maybe Clint had got there later than before. The horse kicked up soil in the paddock that whirled away with the wind.

  The man saw Clint again peeking through the fence. “I told ya to git, didn’t I? I told ya, right?”

  “Maybe I could help?” said Clint. “I get Ma the water every day. Maybe you need water too, and I can watch.”

  “Don’t ya understand what I’m saying? My mum gave you black folks some land, don’t mean you get to come here and bother us,” the man said, coming round on the inside of the fence to where Clin
t stood.

  “I’m Clinton Jefferson, sir. I just want to see the horses. Maybe I can help?”

  “Just git going afore I shoot ya, boy.” The man’s hand dropped to the handle of the pistol in the holster at his belt.

  “Yessir.” Clint ran back home.

  Clint went back nearly every day, except Sunday when they went to church, watching through the fence with hungry eyes. Every day the man shooed him off whenever he’d finished with the horse. He must have felt Clint watching, but he did nothing about it until the horse took the harness.

  “Why don’t you run to the pump and get me some water,” the man said wearily one day. “There’s a tin cup there.”

  Clint ran round the paddock and toward the stables. A handpump sat with its spout over a wooden trough of brackish water. Clint pumped the handle until a fresh spume plashed into the trough and he caught some in the white enamel mug. As quickly as he could he returned without spilling too much. The man took the mug and drained the cup. “Thank you. Ya really wanna work?” Clint nodded. “I got a coupla other things ya could do. Ya know how to mend fences?”

  They named him Achilles because he had white markings on his fetlocks. The man, Marcus Dow, told Clint the story of the legendary Greek hero.

  It was going to be a few months more before Achilles was old enough for anyone to ride him, so in the meantime, in exchange for work around the ranch, Mr Dow showed Clint how to get on and off a horse, how to put on the bridle, the saddle and everything else, with a mare called Juniper.

  There were only a few other ranch hands around, staying in their own house, while the herd was away with the rest of the cowboys. They weren’t happy to see Clint. Didn’t seem to matter what he did, they were always tripping him up, knocking him down, taking the piss, calling him a filthy nigger boy. They didn’t seem to realise his family had escaped a whole lot worse. He’d been born the day a fire took out the whole neighbourhood his dad had a store in, and Clint had to be born in the white hospital. He couldn’t have come into the world under a worse omen. His family had been kicked from place to place until they settled in Elysium. In Elysium there were those that told tales of midnight hangings, brutal beatings, and rape. The idea he was different, that he was valued less than people of a different skin, wasn’t new to him. Somehow he felt the other ranch hand’s hearts weren’t really in it. He was the new guy, and his skin was an easy thing to see and easier to mock him for. Their employer - not Mr Dow, but Mrs Dow, his mother - had taken the black community under her wing. While it seemed it had been as much an act of charity as mercy and she knew she couldn’t change the world, old Mrs Dow at least expected her employees to behave themselves. Clint had never seen her. He’d heard she was sick. Would her wishes be honoured after she died? Could Marcus keep the men in line and extend his own protection to Elysium? Despite their casual jibes maybe they were used to black people. With the rains not coming and the cattle having to be taken further away to feed perhaps it wouldn’t matter and they’d all get blown away by a tornado.

  Weeks passed and by the time the herd returned Clint could take Juniper out to meet them and help guide them into the fenced off field. If the returning cowboys cared they didn’t say anything. The steers were divided up, some to help keep the herd, the rest put onto a cattle truck and taken away to the nearest slaughterhouse. Mostly, Clint watched and learned.

  When the herd left once more he helped Mr Dow with training Achilles and when the horse was old enough he started to ride him round the ranch. The horse responded well to him and as they grew and worked together sometimes it was like the horse was a part of him, like Clint’s arm.

  Almost a year had passed before Clint was allowed to go out with the herd. He was nervous. It was one thing to ride for a day but he had always been back home at night. Even if he didn’t get back to his family, he would still sleep in the stable with Achilles. His colleagues didn’t seem ready to have him in the bunk house yet. This would mean being away for months.

  He hugged his mum and little sister. His dad was on a straw mattress on the ground. He’d been laid up since injuring his leg at work, and there was getting less of it as the year had gone on. His dad told them stories of whole farms being blown away in a day. With no crops there was only construction, and many folks were already moving West.

  Following the withered flanks of the cattle, Clint heard the men worrying over where they’d find grazing land. The dry earth clouded up around them and the herd could probably be seen moving for miles. Looking up at the bright sash of stars that first night Clint felt free and all his fears flew off like the crows that lurked at the fringes of the drive. The next day he rode out of the dust to the front of the herd. The plains were barren and open, rolling gently as far as he could see. The sky was unbroken and pale blue, clouds like the last strokes of paint from a dry brush. There was nowhere to hide from the sun, not even a rock to slide under. A thin wind blew grit in Clint’s eye and he struggled to see, the grains rasping under the lower lid, making them water.

  “Missing ya mammy?” teased Arty Walsh.

  “Not as much as I’m missing yours,” Clint said. He’d picked up a few things hanging out with the guys.

  “Why ah oughta knock the black offa ya, ya scamp,” Arty said, without malice. Everyone within earshot was laughing.

  They rode on into the day, and the wind picked up, soon everyone had to tie their hats down and their neckerchiefs across their faces. Across the plain a wall of grey and brown billowed rapidly towards them. The plumes of dust got thicker, rasping at their skin. The foreman got them to halt the herd in a gulley left by a stream in wetter times. The dirt storm hit them hard, like being shot with rock salt, they were pelted with fine grains of earth and rock. The day became night even though it wasn’t long after noon. Even in the gulley the funnelling of the wind had enough strength to start stripping the ground. At first a few particles of dirt ran after the rest, until this became a stream and it almost seemed like the earth was moving out from under Clint’s feet.

  Clint screwed up his eyes, buried them in the crook of his arm and tried not to breathe, but even through the kerchief each time he sucked in some air he ended up coughing out thick streams of brown saliva. The wet smell of earth clogged up his nostrils and it felt like some of it crept into his lungs making breathing like shifting a heavy stone on his chest.

  Achilles began to whinny and pull at the reins. He wanted to run.

  “Don’t let him go, whatever ya do,” shouted Arty, over the high-pitched whistling and rasping, between coughing fits. “Ya let him go, the others will folla. In this shit we’ll never find them again.”

  Clint stroked Achilles’ neck and the bridge of his nose. He talked to the horse in a soothing tone. But he kept pulling his head away, stamping at the dry dirt, loosening it more. You could feel the tension coming off the animals. They were ready to break. Ready to run.

  Pulling harder on the rein, Clint could see the horse was biting hard on the bit, white foam flecked its lips. He took his neckerchief off his face, tried to fold it right but the wind kept stripping it from Clint’s fingers. He gave up and just wrapped it over Achilles’ eyes. This helped to calm the horse, but made it almost impossible to breathe. He got Achilles to put his head down to the ground. Here the gale was broken by all the cattle and the few rocks in the gulley. Clint poured every effort of his will into the horse who had been his friend. Now he had to become its master. He forced the creature down lower. Achilles sank down onto his knees in the fossil river bed. Sweat beaded across Clint’s face and soaked into his shirt, instantly grimed with dirt and then dried to black salt by the wind.

  “Is it a twister?” someone yelled.

  If there was a reply it was stripped away with the soil.

  They returned to the ranch, leaving behind the carcasses of many of the cattle and at least two horses lost. For miles there was nothing more than a few shoots of dried grass. It seemed like every step the herd took ground up the earth ev
en more. All the lakes and rivers were reduced to stinking puddles and damp stains in the landscape.

  Clint stank of corrupt earth and rank sweat. Every crevice itched with grit, his skin was abraded raw. With a near constant cough he kept hacking up gobs of black phlegm, the same spurted from his nose when he cleared his sinuses. His head was swollen and throbbed with his pulse.

  The ranch had fared no better. The stables had been blown down, the fences scattered. At his home both his parents were coughing up blood as well as black. His dad had withered like the cows – he wasn’t much more than ribs and hip bones. Despite the winds rattling the boards and ballooning the canvas roof, the shack stank of sickness. With his mother also falling ill, Clint’s sister Sophia wasn’t coping with looking after them on the little their friends and neighbours could spare.

  The few coins Clint got helped them get a doctor and buy some food. While his mum rallied and Sophia avoided getting ill, before the winds settled down his father died.

  Clint helped rebuild the ranch and when the winds died and some rains came he took the herd out once more, Achilles his loyal mount.

  The next year his mother couldn’t hold on. Too many months without enough food and another season of dust and she followed Clint’s dad into the ground. Fewer and fewer were left in Elysium. Just as there were fewer cattle on the Dow’s ranch. Even Sophie left with a friend’s family who were heading north to Chicago.

  Old Mrs Dow died and most of the town lined the streets for her funeral. In the dust they were all the same colour.

  “I’m sorry, son,” Marcus said. “There’s not enough cows left. We’re sending them all ta the slaughterhouse. I can’t pay ya either, but take Achilles, he’s no good ta anyone else anyway.” His smile was as bony and dry as the horse’s withers. “You were a good worker and I’ve written ya a letter of reference. That should see ya good where they’ll take ya.”