Liminal States

by Zack Parsons

  He was no longer the sheriff. Had no more interest in the sort of justice the law offered. He made himself drunk before noon and sawed the beam and sang Annie’s French songs to himself even though he knew them only by the melody and the roughest sounds of the words.

  The freight wagons and their escorts crowded all other traffic from the road. These were huge vehicles, reinforced with iron axles and drawn by mule teams of ten or more. The wagons were flat-sided and painted blue and white. Each wagon bore the name of S.H. Ogilvy, the founder and proprietor of seventy-four beehive coke ovens in the Territory of Arizona. Ogilvy’s firm transported fuel coke five times per year to the foundry of Desmond Pearce atop Red Stem. This delivery was near at hand, as the wagons filed up the main road through Spark and beyond, creating such a procession that idle folk gathered to watch.

  The wagons’ huge wheels turned and slipped in the wagon ruts, and men shouted with concern at a wagon sliding precariously back and threatening the wagon behind. Disaster was averted by chocking the back axle until the mules could be brought under control and beaten forward. The mules halted again, and the Mexican teamsters cursed in Spanish and lashed them constantly, driving them up the sloping road.

  Outriders protected the flanks of the wagon train, shotguns ready as though some outlaw might rush from an alley and make off with six tons of coke. Here and there among the wagons the Anglos working directly for Ogilvy stood on the running boards. They were better dressed than the teamsters, wore tan and white Stetson hats, and shouted orders to one another, relaying them from one man to the next over the din of the mules to direct the course of the wagon train.

  Near the very end of this long column, chased only by the last of the armed riders, came a garish blue and yellow celerity wagon appointed with a comfortable interior, curtained windows, and a rack filled with matching baggage of the sort a Londoner might transport for a weekend in the country. The wagon contained three passengers, though it had left Arizona with only two. Bernard Huff, the agent of Ogilvy, and his pretty wife, Samantha, sat side by side on the bench of the carriage, nervously averting their gaze from the man introduced as Robert McClelland.

  Gideon wore a pair of Bernard’s fine trousers and a button-down shirt in the current fashion, though slightly too small for his limbs so that the cuffs ended before they reached his wrists. It was an unexpectedly fine replacement for his tattered clothes recovered from the cave, purchased, as well as his passage on the carriage, with the gold of his teeth and the gutted remains of his gold pocket watch. The agent, Huff, had been given no say in the matter. The bribe was paid to the wagon master named Conroy, who’d taken the gold and looted Huff’s case for the clothing.

  Gideon smiled at the well-dressed couple, his lips curled back, and he could see them shrink away in their seats and interpret his expression as a snarl. Perhaps it was a snarl. He did experience a certain bestial hunger and considered, absently, whether his jaw contained the strength to tear out their throats. It was not that he thought he might, only that some primitive recess of his mind reminded him that tearing out throats was a thing to be enjoyed and the hot gush of blood a thing to be savored.

  The Huffs said nothing. Gideon watched out the window as the wagon train ascended the road to Spark. It was a landscape of rock, desert, and the geologic folding of mountains, on into the wide-open distance, populated only occasionally by squatter shacks, grave markers, boulders, and cholla cactus. Gideon despised the austere endlessness of New Mexico. The country knew it was hated and behaved accordingly.

  Gideon slid open the glass of the carriage window and leaned his head out to see past the wagons. The leading elements of the wagon train were already through Spark and ascending to the foundry. The carriage, at the tail end of the column, was still on the lower outskirts of the town. Gideon recognized the frame house and barn just ahead and on the right, and his heart quickened in his breast.

  Sheriff Groves. Trying to pretend to wealth with that house. Annabelle. In an instant he could leap from the carriage and be with her. She was so tantalizingly near, he could feel her hair against his face as he held her in his arms.

  No. Not yet. Too many lingering troubles. Once he was able to repair the finances at the foundry, all would be well.

  Gideon leaned back in his seat and shut his eyes. He could hear a man singing, off-key, too distant to be understood, but the melody was haunting and familiar. It was one of Annabelle’s songs. The man clearly did not know the rhyme, but Gideon did. “Le sommeil va bientôt venir.” A simple lullaby to convince a child to sleep.

  He was glad when the carriage rolled into Spark and left behind the song and the lonely frame house where Annabelle lived with another man. It was nice to be surrounded again by buildings and alleyways. Gideon was gladdened by the sight of slop buckets emptied onto dirt roads, prospectors and mulattoes squatting the side streets in their tents, drunken miners rising late in the shadows of unfamiliar houses, and plain-faced whores coming out of their cribs and squinting up at the sky.

  “I see the Whitney coming up,” he said.

  “Oh?” said Bernard.

  Bernard believed Gideon’s story, believed he was a surveyor for the railroad attacked by Indians on his way to Spark, believed his horse and instruments were stolen and he was abandoned, in blood-soaked rags, to die in the desert.

  “Thank you for your hospitality,” said Gideon.

  Though the carriage was still a ways short of the Whitney, Gideon was anxious to be off before he was recognized. He opened the door and climbed onto the sideboard.

  “You never did show us what was in your bag,” said Mrs. Huff.

  She pointed out the window to the red valise, held in one of Gideon’s hands and very much the worse for wear.

  “A solution,” said Gideon. “I found it in the desert.”

  “You are very lucky,” said Mrs. Huff.

  She bit at her lower lip and reached a blue-gloved hand out and brushed his that gripped the frame of the door. Gideon was poised to leap down from the carriage but could not resist glancing back and offering the pretty young blonde a smile. She did bear some resemblance to his beloved Annabelle.

  “I am preternaturally blessed,” he said.

  He leaped down and waited until the wagon train had passed. He had no money for the luxury and privacy he so desired. No silver dollars for a hot bath or for the debts he owed Bo Fairway. Gideon left the shade of the Whitney’s awning. The wagon train was disappearing up the curve of the mountain. He trudged, barefoot, over the rutted wagon paths and up the slowly curving road through Spark.

  He ducked past foundry workers who recognized him, soot-faced miners returning from morning shift, and soiled doves who called out his name from the balconies of the saloons. The girls shook the hems of their petticoats and they buzzed like horseflies. Gideon’s station in the town demanded he not request, nor could he rely upon, the assistance of any one of these people.

  Flies bit his neck, and the sun burned his newly pale skin no matter how he shaded himself with the valise. He did not want to return to the house. Not now. But he had no choice. He passed through the estate’s rusty iron gate and up the cobblestone path to the mansion. Father endured like a tumor on the upper floors. He could feel the malignant throb of life.

  Gideon stole in through the scullery door unnoticed by Mrs. Reece. Her staff of young women and boys was too afraid of Gideon to alert her as he crept past the laundry basins and the pantry. This fear was Father’s doing, for he tormented the kitchen and laundry staff with incessant demands, shouting, and the hanging sword of liquidation. Only Mrs. Reece and Adelaide had the fortitude to endure; the rest of the staff was perpetually being sacked and hired to placate Father. The worst Gideon ever inflicted upon the servants was the occasional liaison with a well-rounded laundry girl or maid, and these larder trysts were only with consent.

  On the second floor he could hear Adelaide, Father’s nurse, acting as his proxy in the hall and vituperating at some poo
r maid. Gideon could see Adelaide at the end of the long hall, silhouetted by the huge window, leaning in and prodding the girl with the gnarled tip of a finger.

  Gideon kept to the carpet as much as possible and then dashed quickly across the anteroom’s tiled floor, relying on his bare feet to conceal the sound of his footsteps. He felt reduced to a low thing, creeping about in his family house, feet caked in mule dung, wearing a stranger’s clothes. There was nothing else to be done. He could not stand to be summoned by Father in this condition.

  He reached his chambers at last and shut the door behind him. The extravagant bedroom was crammed with maps and trophies from his time in England, meaningless ribbons, a stuffed fox, and all the elaborate models of steamships he had assembled against Father’s wishes. He had not built one of these in many years, not since discovering whiskey and women, but he still admired the craftsmanship of the masts, rigging, funnels, decks, and tiny cannons.

  His prize model was of a ship of his own design. The Republic never sailed any sea, it was a flight of his imagination, as long as Brunel’s Great Eastern and powered by a submerged screw. A flagship for America to match any of Europe. He knew little of shipbuilding but vowed some day to see The Republic launched. Once his family’s fortunes were restored he would have wealth enough for such pursuits.

  He touched the painted flag atop The Republic and recalled the expense and difficulty of constructing even the model. It had been many years since he had been on a ship like like it.

  He often fantasized about booking passage on a trans-Atlantic steamer, of taking Annabelle to see England, London, to Scotland, where his great-grandfather was born. His greatest aspiration was to take her on his own steamer, sailing to whichever port around the world she desired. He might stand at the rail with his arm across her shoulders and watch the sun rising over nothing but blue water.

  Gideon rang the house maids and ordered basins of hot water and a mirror. He sat in a chair, and a young girl named Margaret washed his hair and shaved him while he soaked his feet in a tub. He watched in the mirror as she lathered up his face, amazed at the ageless contours of his cheeks, the absence of crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. He was the same as when he awoke the day before but with the youth of ten years earlier and without injury or defect.

  Curative powers were claimed of many pools and mud fields throughout history. A hot spring could not explain what he saw in the mirror. Gideon did not believe in magic, he learned to doubt such superstitions at Chatholm, but like all good Christians he believed in the miraculous. Surely God’s hand was at work in his rejuvenation. If science might explain Gideon’s new life, God was in the eyes of the dog that led him to it.

  “Why?” said Gideon. Margaret paused in shaving his face. He met her eyes in the mirror. “I don’t expect you to have any answers. Continue.”

  She did an adequate job with the razor and admitted to shaving her father on occasion. Perhaps Gideon was old enough to be her father. He could only be sure that the man seen in the mirror was not.

  Two small wounds bled, and for these she applied the styptic pencil. As she stanched the second of these, Gideon seized her wrist, and, finding her smell appealing and her corseted figure acceptable, he turned her onto the bed and raised her apron and skirt and had at her without objection. She had pretty brown eyes, said little, and her neck tasted sweet. She chewed her lip and looked at the ceiling, and when he finished, he rolled over and asked her to clean him and told her fetch him a meal and two full pitchers of water.

  Margaret returned with another servant, a boy named Tom who held his jaw clenched in anger, though he said nothing. Margaret had the red-eyed look of a girl just finished crying. Gideon found no appetite for her upset and did not inquire as to her feelings.

  “Just there is fine,” he said, directing them to a writing desk.

  He dismissed them with instructions to fetch the Dane. He drank down three cups of water and swallowed bites of stewed rabbit, potatoes, and a crusty piece of bread. When he finished his meal, he took a small box of Lewis Licorice Dandies from his desk drawer and chewed on the sweet, candied extract. He looked in the mirror and picked the black shreds from his teeth with a fingernail.

  Gideon’s suit felt a bit tight, and he could not be sure if it was because he was full with food and water or if his lean, youthful muscles made for a tighter fit. He tried on the jacket he had worn to his brother’s funeral, and this fit perfectly.

  He was lacing up his boots when there came a hesitant knock at the door. It was the Dane, obsequious as always, shaved head bowed like that of a monk in the presence of a holy artifact. Gideon knew that such a servile demeanor was only a veneer with the Dane. It barely concealed his uncompromising view of bookkeeping and his simmering resentment over his forced involvement in financial subterfuge. It was the Dane and Robert Broken Horse and no others who knew the truth of the Long family’s business peril.

  “You sent for me?”

  Gideon ignored the Dane and finished lacing his boot. He got up from his chair and brought over the valise and rested it on the writing desk beside the remnants of his meal.

  “Your leg,” said the Dane. “Why do you not have limp?”

  “Sit down,” Gideon said, and he gestured to the chair before the desk. Gideon opened the valise and took out the lone folio that had survived his journey across the desert. “Tell me what this means.”

  The Dane sat down and put on his spectacles. Gideon lit a lamp on the desk and turned up the flame. The Dane paged slowly through the document, and Gideon studied his expression. When the Dane finished, he closed the folio, exhaled deeply, and sat back in the chair. He laced his fingers behind his head.

  “Your father has lot of money in bonds, gold, silver, and land. Lot of land in California. By the ocean.”

  “What? What is the document?”

  “Is testament,” said the Dane. “Drawn to ensure fortune, along with business, pass to your sister and husband when he is dying.” The Dane leaned forward in the chair and licked his lips. “There is no signing.”

  “Unsigned?”

  “That is right.”

  The Dane did not show any particular satisfaction at this news. Gideon made up for him. He clapped the Dane roughly on the shoulder, and his jubilation was such that he went over to his cabinet full of spirits and took out a bottle of cognac and two glasses. He had been denied the train’s gold by bad luck and damned Warren Groves, but a fortune could be his after all, and he could be the one to save the business. Certainly cause for celebration.

  “Let us reflect upon the easing turn of fortune,” Gideon said, and he poured himself and the Dane each a healthy portion of amber liquid. “A toast. To ... starting over.”

  They clinked glasses, but the Dane would not drink. Gideon finished his in a single gulp and snatched the glass from the Dane’s hand.

  “You filthy teetotaler,” he laughed. “You would not believe what I went through for that document.”

  “Congratulation, Mr. Long. Maybe meet payroll for month.”

  Gideon’s expression soured. “Always my little squarehead, eh? You can never enjoy a moment of victory.”

  “Sir, I enjoy no longer forging ledger. If this is possible by this money, I am very glad.”

  “Out.” Gideon waved to the door. “Out of here before I remember why I hate you. Spend your brain on how I can claim Father’s money and turn the wireworks to profit.”

  “Sir, might I be permission to leave early? My wife work at the church, and she is help with funerals.”

  Gideon was already distracted, paging through his father’s testament, planning to smother the old brute beneath a pillow. “The what?”

  “The funerals, for those mans who die in train. And for ah ... sheriff wife.”

  The church was built on the southern slope of Red Stem and the view from the cemetery encompassed nearly all of the Tularosa Basin from the white sand desert to the distant and hazy shapes of the San Andres Mountains. Th
e cemetery was surrounded by a sagging wooden fence and it spread down the slope and beyond the First Gospel Church of the Redemption.

  It was an old church. One of the oldest buildings in Spark. It was the work of the first Anglos to come and built from whitewashed boards and capped with a gabled roof rebuilt twice with blue shakes. The steeple was askew on account of being constructed at an angle and there was a ten-foot copper cross at its summit that drooped as if time might pull it down. That copper cross was the donation of the Pearce family and replaced a seven-foot copper cross given by the Long family. That cross now stood among the stones and wooden crosses as a monument in the cemetery.

  The cemetery was currently full up with curious folk come to take a count of the number of bodies being put into the ground that day. Word of the train calamity had spread and was already being printed in his rag as TRAIN MASSACRE! by the newspaperman and distributed in such quantity that some copies were printed on paper sacks.

  “Sheriff, I am mighty sorry we can’t do this all proper, but the Army has took over my church,” said the sunburned preacher.

  The coffin thumped against the earth at the bottom of the grave and the gravediggers let go the ropes to coil in the ground. Warren stared down at his wife’s casket.

  “Did your wife have a verse I could read? Some favorite bit of scripture?”

  “Don’t expect she read things the same way as you.”

  “I’ll just say a general prayer, if you’d rather,” said the preacher.

  Warren nodded absently to the preacher who was of little concern to him. He focused his attention on the task at hand. On the duty of burying his wife. He had done all the steps that were needed. He had cleaned her body and built her a fine casket out of old oak and dressed her in the clothes she wore to their wedding and kissed her head and nailed her into the box. He had picked a fine plot and put down a carved cross and dug her a hole. With the help of Felix Arguello and two buffalo soldiers he had now put her into the ground and all that was left was to say a few words and seal her in the earth.