All Things Left Wild

by James Wade

  “You can live without me,” she said. “You can live without anyone or anything if you have to. As long as there’s mornings, you can live.”

  * * *

  I found the blood trail and followed it for a mile. Down into the dry creek bed filled with pine cones and up the other side and along a ridge and into a gulch that bled out into the Piñon Canyon. I lost the blood and backtracked and found it again and turned east and kept going and moved through a tract of Spanish alamos with a doleful look to them. The trail thinned out and I walked a hundred yards in each direction and saw nothing. I set down with my back against a hard pine and looked at the sun and saw it was close to noon. I ate the sweet roll and not the fruit.

  As I rose to leave I saw him. The buck was in front of me, lying in a twisted mesquite thicket. There were forty yards between us and as I moved toward him I kicked over the freshly fallen leaves and looked beneath and found the blood I’d missed earlier. I stood over him and he made no attempt to rise. There was dark blood covering his stomach and the ground and he had mesquite thorns strewn about his torn fur. The smell was rancid and unrelenting and I swallowed my throat so as to not add to the mess before me.

  The meat was long ruined, I knew, but the deer was still alive. The sky around me began to darken and I felt a gun in my hand and could not remember it being there before and across the thicket stood my mother and my father and they smiled at me and my mother waved and I strained my eyes to see them through the growing gray of the world.

  “You’ll have to take care of them,” she said, and as she did my father raised a pistol to his own head and fired and his legs went from under him like collapsing tent poles.

  “You’ll have to take care of them,” she said again, still smiling, and I looked down at my feet and the deer was gone and it was my brother, covered in blood and looking up at me, his tongue falling out of his mouth like a dying animal. His eyes unable to focus. He made a bawling noise that grew louder over time and I dropped the gun and covered my ears and it was louder still and I could feel my throat tightening and I scratched at it as if to open it from the outside to let the air pass.

  In a swelling panic I sucked in hard and my body shot up from the bed and Sophia rushed to me and put her arms around me and whispered to me in Spanish.

  “Es solo un sueño, mi amor. Shhhh, es solo un sueño.”

  38

  The same Ranger he’d first spoken with returned and this time there was another man with him. They asked after Charlie’s health and he told them what the doctor said and they nodded and asked how he was holding up and he said, “Alright.”

  “We were able to find the Arabian and bring her back. Got her tied out front. Couldn’t find no others.”

  Randall nodded.

  “We went through the bodies—thought you should know. Neither of the Bentley brothers were there.”

  The stove kept the room warm. Randall stared at the fog on the window.

  “You ought not try taking the law into your own hands, friend,” the new man said.

  Randall looked up at him and nodded again.

  “Your cousin’s dead.”

  “I know.”

  “So’s all his men.”

  “I know that too.”

  “Well.”

  “You know about those outlaws, the Lobos?” Randall asked.

  “Yessir, we been onto ’em for a while.”

  “A while?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And Sanford was going down there for what? To arrest ’em?”

  “Something like that.”

  “The one who called himself Grimes,” Randall said, “is he behind all this?”

  “Far as we can tell. Him and an old Mexican named Guerrero.”

  “Guerrero?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Where’s he?”

  “Got found with his throat cut some weeks back.”

  “Murdered?”

  “I don’t imagine he cut it himself. Servant woman found him at the dining table, bled out.”

  “Who did it?”

  “Couldn’t say. Maybe an enemy, maybe Grimes himself. Either way, the Lobos are finished.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I doubt they’re finished.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “My grandfather came out west and my father after him. They fought outlaws and Indians and their own government to try and civilize this part of the world. And for what? It’s not the world that needs taming, gentlemen, it’s us. It’s men who bring savagery to the land. Oh, yes, nature has its violence, but that violence is purposeful and necessary. So what purpose is the violence of men? The Lobos are finished—maybe—but others will take their place. The gap of violence will always be filled.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’re right about that. It’s a sad thing, but I’m sure you’re right.”

  “And what choice do we have? What part must we play as men when the wolves are at the doorstep and it is kill or be killed?”

  “You do what you gotta do, I imagine,” the Ranger said.

  “Yes, yes, I suppose you do.”

  “We put the boy on a train to Tucson. Got a man at the station who can carry him up the rest of the way.”

  “His body.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You put his body on a train,” Randall said.

  “Sure. Well, listen, a lot of good fellas died out there. And we’re sorry for your losses and wish the best for your . . . for your woman here. Seeing as how there ain’t much else, you probably won’t be hearing from us.”

  Randall nodded.

  The men placed their hats back on their heads, synchronized, and left the room and Randall did not watch them go. He looked at Charlotte and it was like she was sleeping peacefully and he imagined that she was but it did no good.

  * * *

  There was always a candle and it was always burning and they must have changed it, the nurse or the doctor, but he couldn’t remember ever seeing it replaced and so it became some supernatural fixture which was ever present and he likened it to the feeling of death in the room, which was also ever present and unchanging.

  Charlotte had not been conscious for days and the doctor said it might be that she never would wake and said so in a way that suggested he needed the bed free, and Randall said he would pay good money and that if he suspected the doctor was slacking in his care, he would put a bullet in his head and then go call on his family and do the same.

  By the light of the candle Randall read aloud from The Picture of Dorian Gray and he drank coffee by the pint and stayed awake longer than a man should and still there was no change. He sent the nurse away and brushed Charlotte’s hair himself and bathed her and rubbed her feet and when he could put it off no more he wrote a letter to Tad’s father and told of the boy’s fate and in the writing he said Tad was brave beyond his years and killed many outlaws before he fell. He wept when the letter was finished and wept other times for no reason and at first he prayed and then thought of praying and then ultimately lost the will to speak with God.

  He decided that no matter Charlotte’s fate he was done with this quest and would return to Arizona as soon as she healed. He’d said as much to the Rangers who came asking after him and they seemed to agree this was a fine idea.

  There were many nights in the dark hospital when Randall woke and saw a man’s face in the candlelight and then it was gone and his heart raced and the candle burned.

  One day, nearly three weeks after his arrival, he heard a mass of footsteps as they thundered down the hall.

  “He’s done killed ol’ Hollis,” someone shouted and the footsteps passed back the way they’d come. Soon after there were gunshots and men hollering and then everything fell silent again. Randall latched the door
and stood with his guns drawn and sweat on his forehead.

  The next morning he asked the doctor what had transpired, but before the doctor could answer Charlotte stirred from her infinite sleep and her eyes opened and she turned to Randall.

  “The boy,” she said, and Randall shook his head and she closed her eyes long and opened them again.

  “You get them brothers?” she asked, and again Randall shook his head and she grimaced and he fell to his knees at her side.

  “Please, don’t worry about that or anything else.”

  “I died,” she said, and he told her no and that she was just in a coma, and she insisted and said she knew she’d died because her brother and father had been there in the place she’d gone to, and Randall relented.

  “Well, good,” he told her. “Glad you got that part out of the way. You’ll have to tell me about it sometime.”

  “I’ll tell you now,” she said.

  “You need to rest now.”

  “There were colors you can’t say. Colors that give you feeling and emotion and they were everywhere.”

  “Dream colors,” he told her but she waved off his words with her hand and the gesture was frail enough that he didn’t argue and she continued to speak.

  “Not a dream. Not anything. Just colors and I went into them.”

  “Into the colors.”

  She nodded.

  “I went into them and I was them and my family was all there, back in East Texas and the humidity hung so thick in the air you could drown from breathing. The loblolly pines and the great big shade oaks and honeysuckle growing up over everything and giving the whole world a sweet smell like the ones from when you’re a child, and I could see it and smell it and it all stretched out before me and was never ending. It was like I was there for the first time and yet I recognized everything and it put me at ease, like waking up from a troubled sleep and realizing it was only a dream.

  “I saw my sister and my brother and myself by Caney Creek and we were hiding, the three of us, from Daddy, but not in a frightened way, it’s just that we didn’t want the day to be done. There was always a somber finality to coming home in the evenings and knowing it would be another night and another day of chores before those magical hours when we were free to be only children. And in a child’s mind there is no tomorrow and no yesterday and no waiting to live, there’s only living. We lose that. Somewhere along the way such a notion as to live gets overshadowed by other things and in these things we bury ourselves and bury our will to live and who can say if this is right or wrong. And when I died I found myself giggling beneath the edge of the creek bed, crouched and secret in a moment shared and wanting to live forever and I blew with the wind and the colors of the dusk into my own hair and then I opened my eyes.”

  * * *

  The next day a letter came for Randall and the man at the door who was not the doctor smiled and was cheery and such a manner was off-putting to Randall and did not seem to belong in this new world he had created within the four walls of Charlotte’s room. But he took the letter in kind and thanked the man and shut the door when he left.

  The letter was from Joanna and bore bad news as letters usually do.

  His mother had taken the flu and it had weakened her and soon the pneumonia was on her and it was only a few days after that she died. Joanna had called for a doctor from Albuquerque and when he came it was found that he had studied medicine under Joanna’s father and though he was unable to save Randall’s mother, he was heading back to Philadelphia soon and Joanna would be going with him and they intended to marry. She wrote these things and more and told him Roscoe was still in charge at the ranch and he seemed to be doing a good job, though she admitted her ability to measure was questionable at best. She told him the winter was hard and getting harder and she had heard of the great shootout and was happy he was not injured or killed. She told him Tadpole’s father had not been seen on the ranch in two weeks and most believe he had gone to California. She told him the doctor’s name was Jeffrey.

  He read her words and gave no reaction. He called for a pen and ink and wrote a simple response.

  Dear Joanna,

  Tad’s body is being brought to the ranch. Have Roscoe see that he has a proper burial next to Harry’s grave. There is a widow near Fort Davis named Cole. She has a young boy in need of proper care. I have written to her so that you may have the boy sent to your new home in Philadelphia. I know you will do right by him. You were always an excellent mother.

  Best wishes,

  Randall

  In the early morning hours he sat in a small chair by the small window and watched the empty street. Men would come before the dawn and shovel the street free of manure and do their best to fill in ruts after storms and he watched these men closely as they worked and he named them in his mind or at least assigned to them their own discernible acknowledgment and from this he began to know them in the way a sleeping man knows the travelers of his dreams. But Randall was not asleep.

  He seldom slept and when he did it was fitful and he saw always the mountains behind him to the east and the rim country of his youth and the red rock and canyon lands to the north and the desert to the south and Arizona was not some welcomed image come to comfort but rather a vision upon a vision of death and things to come. And always he was flying and always the pine trees stood burned and bare and in that manner appeared as whole forests full of sickly creatures, stoic giants from some time unheard now stripped and starved and huddled together to face a fate they did not expect. And in his dreams he flew down past the naked limbs of the trees, dead where they stood, zombies unmoving, and he flew lower still to where the golden manzanita, once called ghosts of the flame, had begun to grow and flower after the unseen fire. And he flew downward into the ash and soil and darkness and there he became a seed and waited for the rain and thirsted for it and longed for it as his skin dried and cracked and bled under the earth. He smelled it. The storm coming down from the northwest and darkening the skies over the tablelands and off-loading the weight of water into the gusts of wind, which scattered it about the goldenrod and mesquite, and he fought the roots of his enemies and his friends for the nourishing rain as it seeped in all around him. He drank it deeply and without pause, as if in some feverish state of unrest, and he felt it course through him and make him strong and he emerged suddenly and violently from the ground and opened his eyes.

  * * *

  Charlotte was awake long enough to drink and he tried to have her eat but the pain was too great and so he watched her wither and shrink before him and become something she was not yet had always been. He loved her deeply, this he knew. And soon she could not speak other than to ask for water or the bedpan and he would take her hand in his and hold it as gently as the clouds in the night sky and he would tell her stories of his childhood and stories of his successes and failures and admitted there were more of the latter.

  He told her of the innocence of young love, and the naivety. He told her of the joys of being a father, and the terror. But mostly he told her how much he loved her. She was a long time dying and Randall refused to leave or turn away and he placed every loss of his life into the bed with her and watched as the guilt and pain of all that had befallen him was slowly hardened around him and if Charlotte had become unrecognizable so too had he. His thoughts. His soul.

  On the morning she took her last breath, he sat by the window.

  “Shall I tell you of the world outside?”

  “No,” her voice was a whisper. “Quit talking and let me die.”

  “It’s a gray day. The grass is turned to winter pasture. The roads are mud and the ladies are holding their skirts as they walk.”

  “God, it’s happening—you’re really gonna talk me to death.”

  “I don’t know the day of the week, but I think it must be Sunday, the way the people are dressed. There’s some birds gather
ing on the top of the mercantile. Goldfinches, headed south for winter, I’d imagine. I can’t hear him, but there’s a man picking a banjo near the post office. He’s sitting on an apple box. I couldn’t say for sure, but it looks like it’s a sad song, the way he’s singing it. There’s a coach out front of the hotel. Probably that theater troupe folks have been talking about. Maybe we’ll go see them perform, once you’re feeling better.”

  “Don’t be angry,” she said, and he did not turn to watch her go.

  39

  Doctor Cobb called it an unlikely outcome. Sophia called it a miracle. I couldn’t say who was right or why, but I didn’t lose my leg and barring some unforeseen infection or heavy fever, I would live.

  I had been so ready to die that this news seemed almost too late. I didn’t even smile.

  “Oh yes, by all means,” said the doctor, throwing his hands up. “I bring cowboys back from the dead every day. No need to thank me, and certainly don’t be too happy about all this.”

  “I apologize, doc. I guess I didn’t plan this far ahead.”

  He rolled his eyes and left the room and as soon as the door was shut Sophia climbed into the bed and kissed me and the jostling of the mattress made me wince and she stopped and said sorry but then started up again.

  I lifted my good arm and put my hand on her shoulder to steady us both.

  “Anybody come asking after us?”

  She shook her head.

  “Any posters?”

  “No. I looked at many of the buildings and saw nothing.”

  “What about the law? Doctor probably had to tell somebody something.”

  “He says he did not. But if the sheriff comes I will tell him you are a Mexican bandit and I am here to arrest you and take you back to Mexico to hang.” She grinned.

  “I’m serious,” I told her. “We can’t stay here. We gotta keep moving.”

  “The doctor Cobb says it will be a week until you can move. Probably longer until you can use your leg again.”