by S. L. Hawke
We did exactly that, but the mare they had assigned to me was thin and maladjusted. Several times she had shied and refused to pass an ox cart with an overbearing dog, or even the multitudes of Chinese that suddenly made way for my horse to kick up and neigh. Many other Asians were followed by heavily laden carts filled with some of their own goods, headed no doubt to the Chinatown.
Noise, people, smoke, the smell of fish, excrement, body odor, all began to squeeze me in somehow. All I wanted was to get away from the mess. The crowds and the noise seemed to press down on my very head.
“Sloan, in formation!!!” came the command of the officer in charge of the lines. The morning light was creeping hotly out behind the fog that had shrouded San Francisco.
It’s April and feels like summer already, I noticed. The dark glasses the Doc had given to me for protection against the headaches I sometimes got when light and noise descended upon me, felt like a soothing blanket.
The infantry on foot created its own cloud of debris and smell. I broke line and went to the west edge.
“Sloan! Back in formation!”
I galloped to the edge of the Cavalry line and pulled my horse alongside the rear of the supply lines. No one followed up on horse behind me. They must have remembered I wasn’t an enlisted man. A covered wagon was pulled off to the side. All of its occupants were standing in front of the broken wagon, clad in happi or work style kimono and they were bowing.
For a moment, as I bowed my head slightly in acknowledgement, a little boy, dangling from his mother’s back in a traditional shawl-like child carrier, looked up at me. He smiled widely displaying a new front tooth. I winked at him. He hid his face back down under the cloth on his mother’s bent back.
To my relief I saw two young men carrying a new wheel towards this unfortunate family, but it did not ease the pressure on my chest. At least I was spared the headache. Hiru, my son, please be happy with Dorcas. It was a small comfort knowing he was not here to experience this miasma of human debris.
There were farms in the distance on a green rolling land that was going yellow from lack of rain. We’d just come through two sets of mountains, at least that was what Ohioans would have called them, and were following a valley south, dotted intermittently with springs, marsh and dry meadow. Jad sidled up next to me. There was another mountain range to the west of us. The fog was flowing down its peaks as if it were a huge wave caught permanently in its breaking state. The sight left me still for a moment.
“Remember that time is a human perception. We make clever machines that move and chime but they cannot really tell us what time is.”
“But we age. And things grow.” The answer was not easy to see in my mind, one of gears, symmetry, and rights and wrongs. Master Aimen smiled slightly, then narrowed his eyes.
“There will be a time when you will not be able to see the progress of your life, only the passing of it, like a wisp of cloud. Be hopeful that such a cloud moves slowly or not all, like a waterfall, endlessly moving, but remaining in place.”
“Let me get this done quickly,” I muttered like a prayer.
“What was that?” Jad’s voice brought me back to the present. “Why the hell didn’t we take a boat?” Jad scratched his butt, then settled uncomfortably in the saddle again. There was a shade tree and what looked like cattails sprouting up, so I rode over to the small oasis of water to check my agitated mare and the state of my feed bag for her. “Great idea. We ain’t regiment so let’s take a breather,” Jad said, following me a bit too frantically. He dismounted and barely tethered his horse before running into the bushes.
I made sure to go as far away as possible from where Jad was relieving himself and found a small spring to fill my canteen. The mare followed me and started in on the cattails. I cut some other weeds that I knew she would love, but ones I didn’t recognize, I left to her palette. The oat bag I carried for her was full, so I let her eat some, then allowed her to drink from the running part of the lower stream. I’d check her hocks and hooves when she got out of the mud. My boots were too nice to spoil in the wet. Time enough for that.
We were going to descend into a moist valley. We stayed closer to the ocean, rather than traverse the ridge, but the well-worn road was a series of ups and downs, dusty at times or muddy from a sudden wetland. Already I had slapped one mosquito. Soon we would be following a lake bed, large and narrow, from what I could remember of the maps. At least it would keep the demands of water light until we reached the hotter valley; from what Jad had described, New Almaden was hotter than Hades.
Finally, buttoning his pants, Jad appeared from the bushes.
“Wash your hands?” I asked, hoping he would.
“What?” Jad looked at his hands. “Oh, yeah, I guess I’d better. The rasher of bacon wasn’t the best.” That’s an image I couldn’t forget: a moldy side of a hog being sliced and fried up in a crusty pan that hadn’t seen water and soap in a long while. I was glad I hadn’t eaten breakfast with the camp that morning on the outskirts of the city. The Japanese noodle vendor outside the Chinese gate was my choice.
Water from my canteen didn’t stop the nausea that erupted suddenly. My brief time as a soldier never left me unless I left the country. Hawaii was clean and the water clear, but here, well–the Doc in the Belly of the Whale gave me a section of cactus that held gooey, slightly bitter juice. He told me to chew on it whenever I felt the ‘urge’ coming on and it should help. He also told me that it grows all around the hotter parts of the state, and its relative makes the Mexican liquor called ‘tequila’. I favored tequila in my youth, but that was a long time ago. Seeing Jad was reminding me just how hard this trip would be.
2
“God Damnit Drew!” Jad looked down at the officer with a hole in his head. “There’s only one thing left to do.”
“I’ll turn myself in.”
“Shit no! We’re starving, sick. You and I can’t fight no more. Not with each other. This Company must have been the one we were supposed to support. No,” Jad sat down wearily, “we go back and wait.”
We staggered past all the bodies in the field, past the burned remains of the Rancho, past dead or dying farm animals. We were too sick to drag the meat back to camp. That was what the previous mission was doing for their regiment. And now they all lay about, dead. This wasn’t a cause. This was greed. Our Platoon Leader was right.
The regiment was reduced down to 400 men, all sick, like Jad and me. The Commandant watched me collapse during water carry duty and called me in. We heard shots earlier. Two. Deserters.
“Go home son. You’re no use to us.” He stamped my discharge papers with his red seal and wrote ‘disability’ across it. Shame wasn’t even in my body, only fatigue and the need to remember my name and rank.
Jad met me at the camp edge that night. Elena, wearing a knitted shawl and carrying fresh tortillas, had barely let go of the basket before I tore it from her, jamming the warm scented corn down my gullet like a wild dog. The beans went next and then my stomach, unable to handle this sudden meal after weeks of starvation, rebelled and the contents shamefully erupted across my shirt and hands.
Jad handed the canteen to me and we started out in the darkness like thieves. The walk was endless until I could no longer use my legs. I briefly remembered hearing Spanish and raving for water and my Pah.
I saw Pah standing over me. He wore a pale blue head covering and a white paper scarf bulged under his chin as I lay flat in a painfully bright white room. A voice behind him said: “We’ve got rhythm. BP one ten over seventy, Doctor. He’s stabilizing now.” There was a constant maddening beeping noise unlike any bug I had ever heard. Shapes and sounds of voices, a few women with faces covered with that same white scarf, men wearing dark blue uniforms, hovering over me. “Get him prepped, STAT, “ it was my father’s voice that echoed these strange words.
Then I fell a great distance and landed on my back. The room had rich, dark wood in the walls. It was cool, even cold. A fire in a
n earthen fireplace gave out no warmth. My father was there, looking like he did the day he died, checking his pocket watch.
Not now, Anndrah. Not now. You have too much to do, my young’un. Think of your sisters, your brah…but his words were faint.
His form dissolved and was replaced by an old woman wearing silver braided hair and a bright sky-blue blouse.
“Welcome back, Drew. I was sure you were gone.” Jad looked well and fed. “We’re at Elena’s uncle’s ranch.” He placed a hand on my shoulder. My arm was clean. No bullet, just a clean bandage. I still had my arm. The tears leaked out of my eyes.
“Where?” was all I managed to croak.
“New Mexico, buddy. Our company really was lost. No wonder we ran out of food!”
Being with Jad again brought back too many memories. The scent of the road, the tight quarters, all made me ill. The horse’s blanket needed adjusting so I smoothed it near the horn of the saddle and accepted the mare leaning against me while I checked her shoeing. I ran my hands down the length of her hocks to make sure she was seated right in her bones and the ligaments were proper and not bulging.
“Well, we will be home by tomorrow at this time.” Jad farted loudly with a sigh. “I can’t wait to show you to Elena.” I smiled and wondered how time had treated her.
“How many daughters do you have now?” My face couldn’t hide the pleasure at seeing Jad’s family.
“Four. And no comments about dowry. They are all spoken for except two.”
“Not bad. How’s your son handling the ranch?”
“Well, you’ll see. We get into arguments about modernizing things. He wants to grow hops, for beer, and grapes for wine. He keeps telling me there is big money in wine and beer.”
Well, he’s got that right. “What were you growing before?”
“Apricots, but they were always getting leaf curl or bug. So we went to almonds, which weren’t much better. Everything takes water around here, even in the winter at times. It’s been dry two years in a row now.” Jad navigated the holes in the road without looking. He must have done this road a lot.
“You come up to San Francisco every year?” I carefully led the mare around a few bigger wheel ruts. Whatever had come up this road had done so in rain at least a month ago and carried something heavy.
“Gold Stage,” Jad said,as if the words themselves would explain everything. He looked over to me as he adjusted his hat in the sun. “I get paid double for riding alongside. Except the stage driver is a madman. Sometimes. It depends on who takes the run.”
So, a gold stage, from New Almaden, or…? I wondered to myself. “From the mine?”
“No, from Santa Cruz. Sometimes mine money is on it. But mostly it’s money from lime and powder. And gold. There is some–just no one is sayin’ much else about it.” Jad looked off into the distance. “Santa Cruz is rich with all sorts of wonders.”
A small lake appeared before us, and in the distance some horses and cattle. There were even deer. The unit found a series of meadows linked by the shoreline. There was a scent in the air and across the water I saw oak trees mingling with bays. It was bay I was smelling but not all of it. There was a sweet scent I could not quite identify.
The meadows were dotted with a flower Jad referred to as a large ‘buttercup’. They were a deep yellow almost an orange in color. The sight of them cheered me greatly. Then I began to notice others, yellow or white. Nearby were lupine, a purple cone-shaped flower. That one I knew. It grew everywhere. Dotted in between all this were pink tiny flowers I knew no name for and another plant, sticky and green but with bright red leaf-like flowers that reminded me of a paintbrush. I could almost hear Hiru chattering on about them as if he were seated behind me.
“Sloan!” The voice was Fergus’. He was beckoning me to come to the supplies wagon. Jad rode off towards the General’s party reminding me that we had a dinner place set at his table tonight. Men were gathering in groups, setting up their field tents, conical-shaped canvas sheets, in a pattern reminiscent of a family outing. No one seemed much on their guard. Why should they be? There was nothing that would come upon us without having to climb or swim.
Why didn’t I feel like that? Fergus had a large container filled with canned fruit. He must have gotten this in the city.
“Too heavy for you, Captain?” I teased, trying not to smile.
“Just pick it up and put it over there – mind you, it’s not unbreakable!” As I started to lift the very heavy box, the cans inside weren’t the only contents. I set the box inside Fergus’ tent and saw small cartridge boxes underneath the cans. Pistol size, new, and lots of them. If they were raided, the supplies could be blown up before the thieves had a chance to profit from it.
Andrew was hard at work trying to put up the latrine, but was failing in heroic style.
“I’ll help him.” I gestured, but Fergus slowly shook his head. “To each his own. They need a horseman at the Cav. Take the second cart over there and help them or I’ll have sick horses to deal with on top of whining, lazy privates.”
I started at Fergus’ tone. His youth was only looks, apparently. Perhaps I misjudged him.
Dinner that night made me bring out my only other set of clean clothes. General Slocum was in his military best, seated at the head of a “table” with his Commandant Cavalry Lieutenant Fitzgerald, and Infantry Lieutenant Adrian Beasle. Beasle fidgeted constantly, jumping at every bit of black speck on the canvas table cover, as well as the sounds of coughs of the infantrymen outside. His spectacles were fogged up and the hair on his head plastered down with sweat.
Fitzgerald simply looked bored. He lit a tiparillo, a remnant from a visit to Cuba from what I could see, and smoked deeply. Fergus danced in and pulled out a bottle of brandy, French, and ten years old. All the officers suddenly got animated. Andrew showed up late, hair wet from a bath in the lake. The latrine was, he quietly assured me, “ready for use.”
I gratefully accepted a thimble full of brandy, hoping it would help me sleep. The lamp-lit edges of the light felt like daggers into the recesses of my skull.
“Sloan. I knew a Sloan, big military Captain – resided in Pennsylvania.” Fitzgerald squinted at me. “Southern slave lovers, being named after that president.” Fitzgerald watched me, the lids of his eyes at half-mast. The man simply wanted me to rise to his jab, but since there was no truth to it, and since I saw him limping away from his horse earlier today, I could see the man was not happy on this assignment. A half smile crept across my face as I spoke.
“I believe his name ended with an ‘e’. Not that it made any difference. Served in the A company – or was that Jackson Sloan? There are a lot of us, cousins from the old country I suspect. My father came from Renfrewshire, Scotland.”
Fitzgerald looked away as if I hadn’t said a thing. He took out a flask and drank from it.
Good. He will leave me alone.
“We should be at the Rancho by this time tomorrow. The horses and the men are a bit more seasoned and the warmth in the evenings makes camping easier. What kind of accommodations may we expect at New Almaden?” Beasle’s question was a good one. The man wiped his forehead, his hands, and his upper lip with a lace handkerchief.
“Well, the foreman at the mine assures me that we have stables for our cavalry and barracks for the men. They are a large scale operation so a few more don’t seem to matter.”
“I’d hardly call three hundred men and fifty horses a few more.” Fergus poured himself some more brandy. Andrew remained quiet but his eyes were active. He was taking in this whole tense dinner with relish. Just as his mother would have done.
“The Marshal’s Office is executing the seizure of the mines, not the U.S. Military,” Andrew added. Fitzgerald came out of his stupor and focused in on Andrew. “Just so we are very clear who is executing search and seizure.”
“Someone should teach you some manners, BOY.” Fitzgerald spat the words out. The man was itching to fight. This annoyed me a great deal,
that and the headache.
“You know,” Jad waved his hands in front of him. “You people need to understand that we citizens and lawmen out here do your job and ours together. Have a little respect for our territory. And we won’t do anything outside the law. The President gave the order to the Marshals, NOT the military. Got it?” Jad leaned forward and lit his cigar on the fluttering candle in the center of the table. Then he blew a perfect smoke ring.
“You locals are all the same. Breed with local cattle and then expect us to clean up your messes when things don’t work out and the greasers take your money. Well what do you expect from a bunch of horse thieves and Spanish half breeds?” Fitzgerald completely focused on Jad. There was not going to be a good ending to all of this.
Jad took another puff of the cigar. Then he asked Beasle to hold it. Beasle, using his handkerchief to protect his fingers, held the cigar as if it were a turd he just picked up from an unwanted place.
“So if you fuck the cows, maybe the women fuck the bulls,” Fitzgerald said offhandedly, causing a slight shake of the head from the General.
First the metal cups got swept out of the way, then both men stood. I learned a long time ago never to intervene in matters of personal insults. Both men were in need of some sort of release, so fighting was the way of it. Fergus rolled his eyes as he moved plates away to spare the food as the General joined in. The General fell over, ordered Fitzgerald to stop (which he ignored), and then finally, like pulling apart dogs over a piece of meat, I nodded to Andrew and both of us grabbed one of them, Jad with Andrew, and myself with Fitzgerald who tried to take a swing at me. I let him overstep and held his fist, then used the momentum to wrap his arm around his back. With the other hand, I simply and none too gently planted his cheek flat on the table.
“You are a dead man, Sloan, a dead man. I’ll rip your intestines out and strangle you with them!” Fitzgerald threatened but he could not move. Pressure exerted by my thumb on the nerve on his neck saw to that. Suddenly without warning, Fitzgerald went limp and began to shake.
