Liminal States

by Zack Parsons

They didn’t know anything to do. Men did men things, and watching the little baby come out wasn’t a man thing. She knew, some way, that Warren was afraid to see her now. She was turned into a bad thing.

  Annie struggled to sit. Nel held her fast to the bed.

  “Calm yourself,” Nel said. “Shh. Just try to breathe.”

  Not okay. No. She could feel him leaving. The thump of boots she could see in her head. She knew which part of the floor he was standing on by the way the house sounded beneath him.

  He stopped just inside the kitchen. She could close her eyes and see his fingers on the stove. Feeling the greasy ridges of cast iron. Heat of morning’s fire. He turned around, shuffling his feet as though he might come back.

  She begged him to come back. Why would he leave her now?

  The feet thumped away. The door opened, the rain came in, and when the door closed again, he was gone. Not just left the room. Gone.

  Nel whispered something to Doc Carson, and Doc Carson said something back. Something with the word “train” that Annie could not understand.

  Nel lifted the towel held between Annie’s legs and showed it to Doc Carson. Annie couldn’t see his face, because the world was dark and blue around that part. She could see the white towel, though. It was all turned dripping. Bright red and dripping. Wasn’t like this before.

  Sheriff Warren Groves and his deputies Pat Cole and the foreigner who was called Turk rode the freshly mudded trail down from Red Stem and south into the flatlands. They had with them half a dozen good men with paper badges pinned to their coats and fresh rifles and more cartridges than an army would need for provision.

  The storm clouds scudded the heights of the Red Lines and gave their rain and left, off north and east. The riders soon crossed the clear divide in the landscape where the rain had darkened the rocks and earth. On the other side of this line it was parchment soil and sun-hot stone. The desert plain was untouched except by flood.

  The unseasonal rain sought the lowland and collected in the dry washes. The waters formed thin streams on the surface and emptied into barren creeks and carried off the ribs of canoes and the footbridges. Sheriff Groves warned the less experienced riders to keep clear of the banks no matter the temptation to get a look at the rain’s architecture. No time for that.

  Each man knew he rode with urgency and for danger. Though the men were no greenhorns, they were unseemly in their spoil for a fight. Only Sheriff Groves and maybe Pat Cole knew what was being left behind. Sheriff Groves looked at his big deputy and felt no inclination to discuss the matter. Annie’s birth trouble weighed heavy on his heart and there wasn’t a thing left to decide by talking.

  They crossed many miles of graben and raised dust behind them and passed the burned husks of Indian tents and the fallen bricks of haciendas. They reached the Ciruela Escarpment near midday. The tableland fell away by twenty to thirty feet in a steep cliff of whinstone and snowy pilings of gypsum sand. The escarpment continued west to east in a ragged boundary stretching for more than five miles. At the edges of the escarpment the land sagged and poured out smooth as flour to the desert below. There was no time for cautious detours. Sheriff Groves stopped the horses and got down and walked to the edge of the cliff to view the terrain. Footpaths were cut into the stone face. Those nearby were wide enough to allow a man to walk a mule or horse down to the desert below.

  “I don’t favor that approach,” said Pat Cole.

  Sheriff Groves pointed out to the horizon. The smoke of the train was easily spotted and beneath it the moving line of the train itself. It crossed within the rusty spokes and felloes of the rail bridge at Bear Creek as they watched.

  “If we mean to catch that train, this is our route,” said Sheriff Groves. “We can ride for the bridge at Green Creek.”

  He studied the desert sprawling below. He told the men what had to be done and they got down from their saddles. They took their horses’ reins in hand and formed a single file to descend the twisting path cut into the face of the escarpment. Sheriff Groves went first and warned the men behind not to be distracted by the train.

  He could see that Pat Cole was wary of the height. Sheriff Groves thought to tell Pat Cole to stay as lookout. Thought better. Such a thing said aloud would have undermined his deputy and driven him to act with foolish bravado.

  The horses rolled their eyes in their heads and resisted. Once coaxed onto the trail their ears swiveled at the sound of each pebble loosed by a bad step. The horses ground their teeth against their bits and foam dripped from their mouths.

  The path cut back and forth down the escarpment so that the men at the front of the line were directly beneath the men at the back. A look down was dizzying for the height and sheerness. The broken skeletons of mules and goats lay half-buried under rocks and alkali sand. It was slow going.

  Sheriff Groves’ horse stopped and refused to go on. They were nearly at the bottom. He fought the reins to keep his horse moving. It whinnied in protest and stomped its feet. He clucked at the horse and slackened the lead and yanked it taut again.

  “Want me to kick him?” asked Pat Cole.

  There was a fool idea. Sheriff Groves laid a hand on his horse’s face and leaned in close. “Almost there,” he said. The horse was not calmed nor inclined to move.

  Sheriff Groves squinted over his horse’s muzzle at the shimmering desert. Flat miles of badland and dry sage. Even the cactuses seemed to be struggling in the heat. He could hear the rush of floodwaters and nearer was the cry of mated quails. He could not hear the train and this near to the ground he could only judge its location by the smoke above it.

  He was searching the distance as a great mass of brown and black dirt convulsed. It lifted from the plain to the south and heaved up in a mound and carried into the air the bridge over Bear Creek. Several men gasped in surprise at the sight. The bridge’s iron trusses came apart and along with a barrage of stones flew hundreds of feet into the sky.

  Sheriff Groves stared for fully a second before he recognized what was happening. “God Almighty,” he said.

  The sound beat against them like a blow from an open hand. The force threw hats from heads and knocked the men caught unaware against the face of the cliff. Sheriff Groves was nearly trampled as his horse surged down the trail. He rolled over the side of the path and suffered the fall of six or seven feet onto the pile of loose rock.

  There was a great crash and cry and men and animals came tumbling down the cliff from various heights. Sheriff Groves rolled and got up out of the way. His stomach turned at the sight of men and horses dashed upon the rocks. The animals screamed. Ink stains of blood flicked from broken limbs. Some horses found their legs and got up and some were badly injured and could only kick and cry with pain.

  Pat Cole’s legs lay pinned beneath the deputy’s huge bay horse. The stout lawman hollered from the pain and he was not a man known to complain much at injury.

  The train’s whistle blew a shrill note to signal braking. Boulders and stones flung into the air by the distant explosion began to fall not far away. Sheriff Groves could feel the impacts of the largest of these beneath his boots. The stink of the blasting powder and uprooted bridge was carried by the smoke from the blast. The train’s brakes began to squeal.

  Men got up from the calamity and caught the reins of loose horses. The paper deputies were cursing and bloodied and not seriously hurt. Most animals could be saved and were not so badly hurt that they could not ride. The sheriff’s horse and a few others had kept their footing or had escaped injury despite having rolled a dozen feet down the pitiless face of the escarpment.

  There was nothing to be done for Pat Cole’s horse. All four of the animal’s fetlocks and hooves dangled as uselessly as sticks in socks. Bone showed through the hide and blood spattered the rocks each time it kicked. Pat Cole hadn’t seen it yet. He was busy with a stream of curses.

  Turk brought over his shotgun and placed the barrel to the horse’s head. Sheriff Groves tried to calm Pat C
ole down but the deputy had a great fondness for the horse and cried out in dismay when he realized what was happening. The gun sounded and the horse’s head flung back in reflex. The animal’s long neck drooped to the ground. Black blood drained out of mouth and eyes. The horse’s hindquarters kicked for several seconds and further injured Pat Cole.

  Turk said he was sorry to Pat Cole and went over to Jasper Toomey’s horse. The Indian paint sat up as a child in a chair and screamed for the pain of its nearly amputated back legs folded underneath its rump. Turk shot this horse as well. It landed on its side with a crash of stone and lifting dust. A great quantity of blood spilled out of its head and turned the rocks dark. Jasper Toomey complained at the cost of the horse and the imposition of being forced to ride with another man.

  The other men were not seriously hurt and together they got a rope around the neck of Pat Cole’s horse. As they labored Sheriff Groves was mindful of the train slowing across the plain. Some men held up the horse’s hindquarters and the others pulled on the rope and in this way freed Pat Cole from beneath its body. His limbs were crushed and blood ran out from the torn legs of his trousers. His left arm was turned beneath his back and broken in several places. Turk and Sherriff Groves lifted Pat Cole to sitting and the limb hung behind him at a sick angle.

  In parley with the other men it was decided as quickly as could be that Jasper Toomey and a man called Frank Barnard would build a travois and pull Pat Cole behind Barnard’s horse. In this way all three men could ride back to Spark with only one horse to spare.

  Unless the bandits’ plan had already gone awry it seemed they intended to trap the Pacific Southern between two downed bridges. Sheriff Groves and the other men would ride on to Green Creek at greatest speed in an effort to forestall or repel the ambush.

  When Sheriff Groves brought the news to his wounded deputy Pat Cole regarded him with plain anger. His face was chalked with dust and his eyes were rimmed red. He was sweating from the pain but he looked at Sheriff Groves like a snake that had bitten him. Sheriff Groves got done telling him how it would be and then got up and started toward his horse.

  “You go on,” Pat Cole said.

  Sheriff Groves did not turn back as he walked away. He tipped his hat to no one and climbed into the saddle of his black and white rabicano and he left Pat Cole in the dirt.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Annie sprawled upon the blanket, the sun warming her face and the silken ribbons of her hair spread out around her head. The cerulean sky was without cloud or defect. The waterfall drummed into a clear pool and vibrated the rock beneath her, and it raised a susurrus voice that beckoned to her to swim. Warren came over to her from the water, his trousers rolled up to his knees and his undershirt rolled up at the sleeves. His face and hair dripped water on her feet, and she let out a cry from the coldness.

  Warren Groves was strong and good-hearted and tender when she needed him to be and hard iron beside her when she was afraid. Not so much like that cloying braggart Gideon Long. Warren had no fortune, but he was in every other way her fantasy of an American man. He reached down a hand, and she took it, and he lifted her up and into his tanned arms.

  In evening, by the glow of a fire, they made love for the first time beside the waterfall. She had promised to save herself for marriage, but she answered his advances without hesitation. When it was done and they lay together on the rocks that still held the warmth of the day. The moon had taken on a strange appearance as if distorted by a circular lens suspended in the sky.

  “What is happening in the sky?” she asked Warren.

  “It’s a moon dog,” said Warren. “Nothing to worry about. Seen one on the trail in Texas.”

  She turned her head trying to see if it moved with her view. It remained in the starry sky, a bright halo surrounding the moon.

  “If you hadn’t lured me out here it would have passed God’s eye with no man to see it.”

  “Then we are fortunate to be here to appreciate his spectacle.” Warren’s words held an appreciation for the sublime, but he was already rolling onto his side to fold her up in his big arms.

  It was a miracle, she thought as he pulled her against him. She was distracted. She realized that Warren would never be more than he was in that moment. No matter how strong or kind, Warren could not fill her yearning.

  Annie blamed greed. She craved all the beautiful things, of France and of the Mediterranean, to travel the oceans, and she dreamed of Gideon Long, who was not the good things that Warren was but who gladly promised to fulfill her every desire. He lavished her with secret gifts and with poems and perfumes. He enticed her to leave Warren and join him in travel.

  Warren left the house early each morning to attend to his duties as sheriff, and on some days Annie fantasized about this different life she could have. She stood naked but for the jewelry Gideon gave her and looked at her decorated neck in the hand mirror.

  Gideon had known her even before Warren, but in those days he was tentative, seeking to win her affection and impress her by indirect methods of flattery and gifts. Too tentative. Warren had swept her away with his masculinity. Gideon had never even kissed her, but by his prose she knew herself to be the object of his fantasies. Even this answered a perversely Christian desire, to be wanted but to never submit to lust.

  She tilted the mirror down at an indecent angle, and her body bulged, and she became gravid. Pain seared her belly, and the mirror dropped from her fingers.

  Annie awoke to the confusion of unfamiliar hands and voices. She struggled, tried to speak, and felt the pain anew. Before she could make any sense of it, she fell back into sleepless unconsciousness. It was only when someone—a doctor?—brought salts to her nose that she came fully awake and sat up in the bed and knocked over a pitcher of water.

  She was in her bedroom in the house. In her own bed. Warren’s bed. She knew that much. The lines of the world were bright and moving. An old crone was beside her, holding her arm with both hands, saying something. Calm. Be calm. She felt a hand on her belly.

  “Why are you here?” said Annie.

  She was naked, she realized, and she fought to pull clothes or blankets over her body. She was too weak to struggle against the woman.

  “Please, what is happening?” said Annie.

  “Is that French?” said the man who might be a doctor. “I can’t understand her. You’ve got to get her to calm down and stop kickin’, or this’ll beat the devil. Give her something to bite.”

  The old woman looked very mean, and she took a piece of soft cloth and stuffed it into Annie’s mouth. The cloth was moist and bitter, and Annie tried to spit it out.

  “Hold her tight now,” said the doctor.

  Something cold and hard slipped between her legs and into her body, and it hurt, and she could feel the blood pouring out. She bit down on the cloth for the pain, and the sharp, bright lines of the world dimmed and turned blue. It felt as if an auger was being turned inside her loins.

  “I can’t reach her,” the doctor said. “Here now, help me with the towels. If we can clear some of this out, I might be able to find it.”

  The old woman—Nel?—left Annie’s side, and the pressure eased on her mouth. The pain was receding. She was able to spit the cloth out and breathe. She laid her head back against the pillow. The sound of rain was gone. Was it there before? Somewhere else, not so far, she could hear the creak-creak turning of a wheel in water and the soft buzz of insects.

  “I came as soon as I was able,” said a familiar voice.

  Annie lifted her head just a bit and was surprised to see her father standing behind the strangers.

  “Papa?” she said. “Papa, how did you get here?”

  “Shh, there was a train. Don’t you remember?”

  “I do,” she said.

  “There’s something else.” Papa smiled, and he seemed very happy. “Your mother is coming.”

  The door began to open. Annie felt a thrill at seeing her mother. Light beamed in through the
doorway, a warming glow. She strained to sit up, to see her mother’s face, but the light disappeared, and the room beyond fell away, and Annie was gazing into a howling blackness that yawned open and threatened to swallow her up. She began to scream.

  “Get the cloth back into her mouth,” said the doctor.

  Eli McClelland was the only man still in the water. He stood hunch-shouldered, like a bear dressed in a Union coat, and he reached into the foaming water searching for the end of the fuse. He seemed unbothered by the rushing water that had carried away several men, or was at the least more intent on finding the fuse than concerned with his own safety. As Gideon watched, McClelland began walking upstream against the current, body stooped over so that it was easy to imagine he might pull up a fish.

  “Ready the men on this side,” said Gideon to Robert Broken Horse. He raised his voice to be heard by McClelland. “Get out of the water. There is no time for that.”

  “I need to find the fuse,” said McClelland. “It’ll still burn.”

  McClelland continued upstream, trudging into the flowing water, heedless of the approaching train. He was nearing the rail bridge over Green Creek. The kegs of powder were placed beneath the bridge’s decking, near the stone abutments on either bank of the creek. These explosives were supplemented with a small amount of dynamite, secured by Gideon himself, and placed high enough to require ladders. The rope of safety fuse reached from the bridge and into the creek and was pulled tight by the weight of the flowing water.

  Gideon could see that McClelland intended to wade to where the fuse entered the water only a few feet beneath the bridge. The braking train was nearly upon them. There was nowhere near the time left to follow the fuse back to a safe point, pull it from the water, and get it lit.

  “My rifle,” Gideon said to Robert Broken Horse, who was doing his best to organize the soaked bandits into a fighting force.

  The Indian brought out from the horse’s saddle a dark velvet cloth containing Gideon’s rifle. He untied the cord holding the cloth in a roll and unfurled it upon the ground. Fabric loops held a series of cartridges and various cleaning implements. He presented the rifle to Gideon.