Wasteland Blues

by Scott Christian Carr

  “We got a buck,” said Magdalena quickly, a red flush creeping up her throat.

  “Get to your pots. I’ll take care of Mr. Buck.”

  ***

  That evening, Magdalena doted over John, helping him eat and changing the dressing on his wound. “Would you like to step outside and look at the stars?” she asked. “The fresh air will do you good.”

  John stood up from the table and limped toward the door, leaning into Magdalena. Derek watched the pair step outside, then turned to Mother Morgan.

  “You think he’ll be well enough to travel tomorrow?”

  “Could be.” The old woman sparked her pipe and fixed Derek with a grin. “Seems ready for a trip upstairs, I’ll wager.” She pointed her pipe to the loft overhead.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Derek.

  “Ain’t you got eyes, son? You may be rentin’ that girl, but it’s your friend that’s a lookin’ ta buy. Har, har, har.”

  Derek laughed, but his eyes were cold. “He wants a mama to coddle him, not a woman.” He pushed his plate away and strode to the ladder of the loft. When he was halfway up, he turned and looked at Mother Morgan.

  “You send her on up when she’s done her chores and kissed the baby goodnight.”

  “Derek,” said Leggy.

  Mother Morgan sucked her pipe and then blew a ring of stinking blue smoke at Leggy. “That’s interestin’ company you keep,” she said.

  Derek ignored them and disappeared into the loft.

  ***

  Leggy awoke to the sound of eggs sizzling in a skillet. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Magdalena worked at the cookfire, John beside her. Mother Morgan cackled to her hens outside. Teddy was still asleep, snoring beneath the great table where they’d eaten dinner.

  “Mornin’,” said the old man. “How’s the leg?”

  John turned and stood up. “Just about good as new.” He winced, then smiled and looked at Magdalena.

  “Good,” said Derek, coming down from the loft. “Then we can get out of here today.”

  Magdalena turned her head away.

  Derek strode over to Teddy’s inert form and kicked one of his brother’s great feet. “Wake up, lazy bones. Wake up!”

  Teddy sat up and cracked his head on the underside of the table. Derek laughed. Teddy crawled out, rubbing his head, his face still wrinkled with sleep.

  “Let’s go take a piss before you wet yourself,” said Derek. He put a hand under one of Teddy’s arms and urged him to his feet.

  After a breakfast of eggs and biscuits, Magdalena excused herself to go and tend her goats.

  “Perhaps,” she said to John, “you’d like to come with me into the field. It’ll be good to stretch your leg, get the blood pumping. It’s not a long walk, and we can rest along the way.”

  “Yes,” said John. “I’d like that.”

  “Take Afha and Minna with you,” said Leggy. “Let ’em graze a bit before we head out.”

  “And don’t wander too far,” said Derek. “I want to be back on the trail before mid-morning.”

  When they had gone, Derek turned to Mother Morgan.

  “Now what about this short cut?” he asked.

  “There’s lots of ways to get over the mountain,” she said. “Some are safe, others are short.” She cackled. “Some are faster, but a bit more dangerous.”

  “Dangerous how?” asked Leggy.

  The crone winked. “Sometimes the path is bad. Treacherous slopes, sudden precipices, unsure footing, rock slides. And sometimes it’s the folks who live up here that are bad.”

  “Can’t be that bad,” said Derek. “They leave you alone.”

  “They don’t bother Mother because I birth their babies and mend their bones. I tell them when to plant and when the storms will come. Fix their snake bites. But you? You’re a stranger. They’d fall on you and strip you clean, right down to your teeth.”

  “I’d like to see ’em try,” said Derek, matching the gleam in the old lady’s eyes with his own.

  She cackled again. “You are a firebrand, ain’t you?”

  Derek said nothing. He’d survived a childhood at the edge of a blasted desert—he was not easy to intimidate.

  The old woman looked at them closely. “I know just the path,” she said. “A few days march from here, through barren country. No homesteaders out that way, at least, not many.” She nodded. “Yes, I believe it will do nicely.”

  She described to them a rough trail that had its start a few miles to the north. Three or four days’ travel would take them up through a long series of switchbacks and high ridges. If they followed the path true they would find themselves at the edge of a seemingly impassable cliff. They were to look for a notch in the cliff’s edge, where they would find a slope, a steep slope, but one that such fine adventurers as themselves should have no trouble braving.

  “Follow that slope down into a stony valley,” said the old woman. “From there, your Wasteland is due east, straight into the rising sun.”

  ***

  Derek, Teddy, and Leggy, walking on his hands and stumps, came upon John and Magdalena sitting in the grass several hundred yards from the cabin. They sat cross-legged, facing each other, lost in a rapture of quiet conversation. Goats grazed nearby, the tiny bells fixed round their necks tinkling. Minna and Ahfa strode over to Teddy and nuzzled his hands.

  “Let’s go,” ordered Derek, nudging John with his boot.

  Teddy, who’d carried all their gear from the cabin, busied himself cinching Ahfa’s saddle around the donkey’s scrawny belly and heaving Leggy onto the back of the beast.

  John looked up at Derek as if he didn’t recognize him. A shadow crossed his face.

  “I don’t….” started John. “Fellas, I’m thinkin’ maybe….”

  Derek let him stammer. He knew exactly what John was wrestling with, and exactly to how put a quick end to the nonsense.

  “I want to stay,” said John finally, unable to look at his companions.

  Derek let the moment linger, let John’s words hang uncomfortably in the air. Though he said nothing, the menace radiated from him like heat from a fire. Leggy nudged the donkey toward Derek, ready to shove the beast between him and John if need be. Magdalena rose from the grass, the long rifle cradled in her arms.

  Derek stepped forward and pressed his face into John’s. “I always knew you’d quit.” Derek pushed John back with his body. “We all did. But don’t cry to me. Explain it to God. Explain it to the angels.”

  He bored into John’s head with his gaze, dug in with hooks crueler than iron. Derek looked as if he meant to drive over John, to stomp him to dust into the ground. Instead Derek spun and walked away.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Leggy and Teddy. He moved off down the path and didn’t look back.

  ***

  They hadn’t even gone a mile when John caught up to them, his head bowed in shame and embarrassment. Derek saw his friend’s cheeks, wet with tears, but he didn’t say a thing.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The path the old woman set them on avoided the cool forests of pine and oak that marched up the mountain in favor of a steep, rocky ascent into the Sierra Nevada range. As they cleared the foothills, the landscape became hard and craggy, cracked and broken.

  All that day they marched in silence. Leggy regarded his troop with concern. Derek had prevailed over John, but at what price? Leggy had assured the lad with a hearty clap on the shoulder that whatever didn’t kill him could only make him stronger. But Leggy wasn’t so sure. The venom was gone from John’s leg, but another poison was seeping into his heart.

  And there was something else, something about the landscape they moved through. These rocky wastes had cast a pall over the travelers, and they stumbled forward reluc
tantly, like prisoners to the gallows.

  Teddy was the most visibly uneasy. He walked tentatively ahead and was prone to stopping without cause and refusing to budge until Derek consoled him with secret whispers and urged him forward again. Teddy clutched his Bedouin flute tightly in his fist and held it out protectively in front of him, perhaps hoping to ward off any evils that might be marking their passage. And when the world grew the most quiet, when the shrill wind for reasons unknown decided to cease its busy passage around weathered rocks, he would play. He would lift his flute to his lips and blow. With no rhythm or tune discernible to the others, Teddy would fill the dangerous silence with the discordant, untuned sound of their passage.

  The “music” annoyed the bejeezus out of Leggy. But he would admit that he preferred it to the stretches of eerie quiet that dogged their path. Let Teddy have his flute. If it kept him moving forward, then Leggy wouldn’t complain.

  For two days they climbed in silence, save the wind and the flute, and neither saw nor heard any signs of life—no birds of prey circled above, no insects crawled below. The enormous moths had not reappeared at night, and they were free to light a tentative campfire without intrusion. Leggy had fully expected to hear the clamor and scream of mountain cats by night. But only silence had accompanied the harvest moon’s lazy sojourn across the ruined sky.

  ***

  On the morning of the fourth day out from the homestead, they stood at the top of a sheer cliff, just as Mother Morgan had described. Above them, still thousands of feet overhead, the hard, high spine of the Sierras ran to the north and south. The peaks were tipped with white snow. Mist draped the hills and valleys beneath them, obscuring their view of what lay ahead.

  Maybe it was better that way, thought Leggy.

  “Now what?” asked John.

  Derek related the old woman’s instructions to search for the notch that the she had said would lead them down into a stony valley.

  “There,” Derek said.

  The notch lay between two huge knuckles of rock. They peered through it to see a steep slope that led to a series of switchbacks.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Leggy.

  “Why?” asked Derek. “You thought maybe she was lyin’?”

  “I don’t know,” said Leggy. “Somethin’ about this path makes me uneasy. Like maybe she’d put us on a wild goose chase, sent us wandering in circles until we died out here, just because she’d think it was funny. But her directions were right as rain. At least, so far.”

  He re-arranged himself in the saddle and patted Ahfa on his flanks. “Hope you’re as sure-footed as Tariq thought you were, donkey,” he said. “Goin’ up is hard work, but goin’ down is careful work. One slip and….” he made a falling gesture with his hand.

  “Anyway,” he said, “that crone was right about this being a short cut. If we had followed my route, we’d still be on the way up.”

  ***

  During the first afternoon of their descent they heard Tap! Tap! Tap!

  The sharp sound assailed their ears, which had become accustomed to the soft breath of wind and flute.

  Tap! Tap! Tap!

  They stopped and listened for a time. The tapping was intermittent. It echoed throughout the hills, making it hard to locate its origin. But after a few moments Leggy smiled.

  Derek had noticed the old man’s lips moving, a quiet counting between echoes.

  Tap! Tap! Tap!

  “There’s a trick to it,” Leggy confided. “Counting the echoes to locate the source. I’ll teach you sometime. C’mon, this way.”

  The noise grew louder and sharper as they eased down into the valley, the dull tap resolving into the sharp clink of metal on hard stone.

  Perplexed, they continued their steady pace, descending the rocky slopes and switchbacks, making their way doggedly toward its source. After days of silence, the source of the tapping was a welcome mystery.

  The switchbacks ended at a gravel-strewn and slippery slope between two steep cliff walls. Teddy took the lead. Placing a huge hamfist firmly against each wall to either side, he braced himself and formed an immovable human barricade should any of the others, mules included, lose their footing and begin to slide. Their descent was slow and arduous. Pebbles and gravel broke loose and rolled down the hill ahead of them, mini avalanches which announced their coming to any who might reside in the canyon below.

  The tapping stopped.

  Eventually, having given up any hopes they might have had about remaining inconspicuous, they reached the bottom of the slope and turned a corner into the canyon. Not knowing what to expect, Derek pushed his way forward, fingering the barrel of his shotgun. He squeezed past his brother and stepped into the wide opening. A movement at the opposite end of the valley, about a hundred yards away, caught his eye. Someone was sitting on a pile of rocks and waving to him.

  The strange figure that reposed on the mound of gravel was thin and pale. Dressed in faded rags, he was nearly indiscernible from the slate and granite all around. As they neared, they could see that it was a man, a very old man, much older than Leggy.

  The old man stood up from the rock pile and waved both arms. “Heloooooo-eeeee, there,” he called, squinting his eyes and peering in their direction. “I wuz waiting fer you slowpokes ta git here!” He laughed gruffly and then sat back down on the rocks, waiting for the group to come to him.

  The old man’s ash-gray hair was long and flowed down past the tops of his shoulders. Despite the loose rags and his advanced age, it was obvious he was strong. Hard knots of muscle wrapped their way across his shoulders and down his disproportionately large forearms and wrists. A ragged white beard covered most of his shrunken face. What wasn’t hidden by his whiskers was blanched by wind and sun and pulled taut over his skull. His eyes peered out from behind bushy gray eyebrows. Though it was hard to make out his expression beneath his rampant beard, he exuded an air of merriment.

  “Sorry, but you boys missed lunch,” he remarked when they were close enough to speak without yelling. “But that’s okay. Dinner’s coming up on us real quick.” He glanced up at the sky. The sun was out of sight behind the lip of the canyon and the shadows were beginning to grow long. “’Nother hour or two, I should guess. Drop your bags wherever ya like, you’ll be camping here. For tonight at least.”

  The old man extended a hand. Derek reached out and the man grabbed it and pumped his arm enthusiastically and with unexpected strength. He shook everyone else’s hand in turn, as they introduced themselves.

  “I’m Teddy!” said the giant, caught up by the man’s enthusiasm

  “Oh my,” the old man looked up at Teddy, who stood a full head and shoulder taller than Leggy, mounted on the donkey.

  “We’re goin’ to New York,” Teddy announced proudly.

  “Oh my!” repeated the old man. “Ya don’t say?”

  “And what’s your name,” Derek asked, looking him over with distrust.

  “Me?” said old man. He appeared surprised, as if he’d never before considered that he might one day be posed such a question. “Well, I don’t rightly have one, I guess you could say. Never needed one. No one around to call me by it even if I did have one.”

  It took a moment for Teddy to comprehend, but when he did grasp the old man’s predicament, he exclaimed in surprise, “You don’t got no name?”

  The old man shook his head. He was smiling widely now, a long thin horizontal U-shaped split formed in the hair of his beard, revealing a collection of brown and twisted teeth.

  “I’ll give you a name,” Teddy offered.

  “Will you, now?” The stranger chuckled.

  “Stu…. Stu…. Stubert!” said Teddy. When there was no reaction from the man he tried again. “Horace!” The giant wrung his hands and chewed on his tongue. “Bartlefish! Monkos! Humpety-Dumpety
,” he offered.

  “Those are all good names there, Teddy,” said Leggy. “But why don’t you think about it for a while, and tell us what you come up with later?”

  Teddy nodded in solemn agreement and sat down on his huge haunches. He began silently mouthing syllables, compiling a list of potential appellations for the mysterious stranger, a man who, at least in Teddy’s mind, would remain a stranger until he could be fixed with a name.

  “So, you live right here in the canyon?” Leggy asked, in an attempt to provoke conversation.

  “Yep,” said the man. “Always have.”

  “All by yourself?” asked Derek.

  “The winters must be Hell,” said Leggy.

  “Purtle-pus….” muttered Teddy.

  The nameless old hermit nodded. “Yep and yep.”

  “Why?” asked John.

  The old man looked surprised again, as if the answer was obvious. He swept his hand around to indicate the pile of gravel. “Why? Because there’s work to be done.”

  ***

  The old hermit’s “work” turned out to be as much a mystery as everything else about him. He led them around to the other side of the hill of gravel he’d been sitting on and showed them a deep hole in the ground, a pit so wide Derek doubted even Teddy could leap from one edge to the other at its widest part.

  At the pit’s north edge was an even stranger site. A concrete abutment, nearly twelve feet across, and as tall as the old man’s shoulders, was set into the ground, half-buried. On the top of the structure, fixed into a small, second level of concrete, at a roughly a forty-five degree angle was a large round rusted steel door, nearly four feet in diameter.

  The door was quite obviously sealed tight. It was marked with numerous scrapes in the rust and dents in the metal where the old man had taken a pickaxe or shovel to it. Likewise, the concrete all around the door was chipped away and broken, several feet deep in places. In some of the deeper burrows, John could see the brown rust of metal framing set within the concrete.