Through Darkest America-Extended Version

by Neal Barrett Jr

  "Is he the . . . one that done the talking?" he finally asked. The man shook his head without looking up. "No. 'nother one from that."

  "He still talk to you some?"

  The black man raised his eyes. "He don't like to do a lot of talking. If he talks, he got to think 'bout where he's been."

  Howie thought about that. "He ever say where that was? Where they came from?"

  "Said he didn't talk a lot, now didn't I?" The man tossed a stick in the fire. Howie got the message, but couldn't bring himself to stop.

  "Look," Howie said, "I'm not saying it isn't so, or that this feller don't talk, just like you say. But it don't make sense. If he talks, he ain't meat. And if he's people, then someone treated him and the others like they wasn't. Why'd anyone do that?"

  The black man looked pained. Like nothing people did surprised him much. "Why'nt you just get up and go ask him?" he told Howie. "Reckon he'd be the one to answer that." He stood and gave Howie a brooding look, then walked off out of the light until Howie couldn't see him anymore.

  It doesn't make sense, Howie thought, and decided he was tired of thinking and saying it all the time.

  The black man didn't talk to him in the morning. Howie followed him across the flat hot land that didn't seem to end or begin. Then, when they stopped to share sparse swallows of water, the man stoppered his clay jug and looked right at Howie. "Look. My name's Earl. You can tell me yours if you want." Howie did, and the man said it once to himself. "I can't take you where I'm going, Howie, but you can go along some, then I'll show you how to bear north and west. It's where the ships come in I was tellin' you about. You might want to see 'em."

  It was a fine thing for Earl to do, and it made Howie feel better than he had in a long time. "Why, I might just do that," he said.

  It was peculiar how it started, because he was thinking about ships, and the funny-looking fish Earl told him he might see. It came to him slowly, like he was watching the dark surface of a lake for something rising up quietly from its depths. He couldn't say what it was, but he didn't feel good about it at all.

  When the night came again and supper was done, he made himself walk back to where the others always stayed, a little away from the camp. They looked at him cautiously, but didn't run. He knew at once that Earl was right. They were dirty and looked like stock, but their eyes told him better. He wanted to turn and go. Until now he could tell himself that Earl was maybe crazy, or making it all up. He couldn't do that anymore.

  "Which one of you is it that talks?" Howie said. They all looked at him. One of the girls was tending the boy who was sick. They were all younger than Howie. "I don't mean any harm. Earl'll tell you that."

  "What do you want, mister?" The boy who spoke had pale blue eyes and a nose that had been broken and had healed bad. His voice was thick, but Howie could understand him.

  "Who treated you like this?" Howie said. "I want to know that, I want to know who did it."

  "Who are you?" the boy said.

  "I'm not anybody at all. My name's Howie Ryder."

  The boy looked down at his hands. He didn't face Howie again for a long time. "You're not one of them, I don't guess," he said finally.

  "One of who?"

  "The guv'munt. One of them."

  "It was the gover'ment give me this," Howie said flatly. He pointed at the scarred flesh covering his bad eye, then squatted beside the boy. "Is that who it was? Why the hell for?"

  "They can do whatever they want," the boy said simply, as if that explained it all. "Whatever they want to do."

  Howie waited. The boy looked at the others and something seemed to pass between them.

  "I want an answer," Howie said. "That's all."

  "I don't have any of those," the boy said. He stood, walked back to the others, sat with his back to Howie, and pretended to be doing something else. Howie couldn't do anything but leave.

  Earl was asleep, or didn't want to talk. The sky seemed alive with stars. The boy hadn't told him a thing. The government, which likely meant troopers, had treated him like meat. Or so he said. It wasn't something Howie wanted to believe, but he couldn't put it aside. They were there and he could see them.

  The desert night was chill and he rolled up in his blanket. He wished there was a way you could turn off your head when you liked. When you didn't want to think anymore. Something like that'd be a blessing.

  He wondered about Kari. Where she was; what she was doing now. He guessed the war would go on until it quit. Until one side or the other got tired of dying and gave up. Maybe that's what had happened in the War way back when. Maybe there was no one left who wanted to fight, nothing left to burn.

  He turned over with a start, suddenly aware that he had slept, that the night was nearly gone, that something had brought him abruptly out of sleep. He reached for his knife, then recognized the shadow. The boy was just sitting there, watching, not moving at all.

  "Whatever you was thinking, it ain't that," the boy said. "You couldn't know it. Not 'less you been there, you couldn't. Hadn't anyone ever got out of that 'cept us. What they do there is use you like they want. You ain't meat, but you're by God close enough to it."

  Howie's throat seemed constricted. "Use you how? What is it you're talking about?"

  The boy worked his mouth funny. "They do it 'cause stock gets weak and don't breed good anymore. Meat don't care if it's humpin' its sister or its ma, and that makes the blood go bad. You can't stop 'em doing it, so they put good blood back in the herds. Only it ain't meat blood. It's people's. The boys got to serve the best mares. The girls are put in with healthy bucks an' . . .”

  "Godamn, you're lying!" Howie exploded. He sat up and stared at the boy. "No one'd do a thing like that! No one!"

  "They can do whatever they want," the boy said.

  Howie was shaken. Supper starting to crawl up his throat. "Someone . . . someone'd find out. They couldn't do it without someone finding out."

  "Isn't anyone going to do that," the boy said. There was no feeling at all in his voice. "It's down in the old Keys and you don't get close unless you belong. It's a lie, the whole damn thing, and they can't take a chance on anyone finding out."

  The boy looked away from Howie, north, or nowhere at all. He seemed to be somewhere else. Howie thought he was simply turning away, like he did when he didn't want to talk.

  "Look," the boy said finally, "Earl said it was up to me, but that I probably hadn't ought to say anything at all. Only I got to do it. Maybe it ain't right, but I got to do it. See, the thing is, I knew her. They don't always cut your tongue right, and she could talk as good as me. She talked a lot about you. I knew who you was right off when you said your name. I tried to act like I didn't but I did. You was the . . .

  ”Huuuuuuh . . . !"

  Something tore at Howie's heart. Food came up and he couldn't stop it. "You're . talkin' crazy stuff," he said harshly, his voice as thick as the boy's. "D'wanta . . . hear g'damn crazy stuff!"

  "Listen, I'm sorry." The boy's eyesseemed to plead with Howie. "I wanted someone to know. You see that? I wanted someone to know what they do. That's all it was…"

  Howie cried out with all the anguish and loneliness that was in him, and knew it was a cry caught up inside him that no one else could hear. The sun rose out of the desert and he was lost in its terrible light. He wondered why there was no hurt at all. If he could make it hurt bad, someone would take it all back and do it over. But there was nothing in him now. It had been there once and it was gone. He couldn't make it happen anymore . . .

  "You all right?" Earl touched him gently. "You want a little water or something?"

  Howie shook him off.

  "I can get you some water if you like."

  "I got to go," Howie said. "I'm . . . obliged for your help and all I can't stay here no more." The desert was a blur. He looked at Earl and didn't see him. The others were there somewhere in the sun, the boy who talked and the rest.

  He started walking. Just walking away. He
saw Carolee as he always saw her—a small flash of laughter in a bright flower dress on the boat down to Bluevale, a comic miniature of her mother. He held on to that picture as long as he could. When it turned to something else, he shut that corner of his mind and never looked at it again.

  "There ain't nothin' up that way you can do," Earl called after him. "You know there ain't, boy."

  "I got to go see if that's so," Howie said.

  He wondered if he'd said it aloud or just thought it.

  Days of Howie Ryder...

  For some time after Mexico, Howie walked north and east, finally running flat out of land and coming up against the sea. He marveled at the great blue expanse that seemed to stretch out forever to the sky. Ma had shown him a picture in a book one time, an ocean and a boy in a boat. The water in the picture looked flat and painted on; it didn’t look a thing like this.

  The beach was thick with tiny creatures that scuttled along the sand; they were easy to catch and good to eat. Storms came in off the water now and then, and he had enough to drink.

  He followed the coast for some time. It seemed to go on forever. He tried to draw a map in his head, and decided the big stretch of water was the Gulf...

  The men came at him just before first light, making little noise, working up to him on the ground. He could smell their sweat and knew they weren’t afraid. Howie figured they’d done this once or twice before. They came in together, the second man holding a knife, just behind the first. They stopped to listen for a while, then the first man crawled up and grabbed out at Howie’s arms to hold him down. Howie rolled to one side and came up in a crouch; the man with the knife looked surprised because Howie wasn’t there and then he was. Howie thrust his own blade in belly-deep, sliced up quickly to the breast and jerked free, all in a move too fast to see.

  The other man cried out in fright, crabbed away, leaving his friend behind...

  Moving further north, he saw a little game, snicks and two rabuts. By late afternoon he smelled stock. The odor sent a sharp wave of nausea through his belly. Pictures appeared in his head, things he didn’t want to see. When the pens came into sight, he picked up his pace as quickly as he could. The stink was overpowering. The pens were set up in a clearing, on the bank of a sandy river that likely ran down to the sea. With a river close by you could dump all the waste from the stock and the organs nobody liked to eat.

  As ever, there was a slow, constant motion in the pens, stock shuffling aimlessly about. He passed the breeding sheds, keeping his attention straight ahead, trying to ignore the growing knot that cramped his gut. He walked by a high board fence, past gateways and ramps, and came right on the mares. Howie stopped, too shaken to turn away. Sweat cold as ice stung his face. They were young, no more than fourteen, each one gravid and heavy-breasted, nearly ready to foal. One looked up, a mare with matted yellow hair, looked right at him with dull, incurious eyes, grunted in her throat and clutched her breasts. Bile rose up in Howie’s throat and he turned away and retched...

  When the man came around, Howie jabbed him in once in the ribs. The man’s eyes went wide; a frightened cry was muffled in the gag.

  Howie leaned in close. “You’re Anson Slade.” It wasn’t a question at all.

  Slade nodded emphatically.

  “I’m taking off this gag,” Howie said. “You want to yell, why that’s up to you. I ain’t against bringing blood.”

  Howie stripped the gag away. Slade drew in a breath.

  “Who the---hell are you?” Slade said angrily. “Damn it, I’ll have your---“

  Howie touched Slade’s cheek with his knife. Slade went silent at once.

  “What happened at Silver Island?” Howie said. “I want to know about that. I don’t want to hear nothing else.”

  Slade looked surprised. “Everybody knows about that.”

  “Well, you pretend I ain’t heard.”

  Slade let out a breath. “Them Rebels landed guerrillas somehow. It all happened real fast. They killed all the younguns they could catch, and took off in the ‘glades. That’s all I know---“

  Howie grabbed him by the shirt, slammed him hard against the floor.

  “You listen, and listen hard. There isn’t any Rebels down there. The gov’ment itself done the killing. Mister, I know what Silver Island was for, and I know what you was doin’ down there. One of those girls was my sister. Her name was Carolee. You think about her. Carolee Ryder. You just keep thinking on her.”

  Howie picked up Slade, carried him over his shoulder and lead him outside into the deep stands of oak. Even with the gag thrust deeply into Anson Slade’s mouth, Howie could hear him screaming inside all the way into the woods...

  “There it is,” Captain Finley said. “Bout four miles off the starboard bow. New Los Angeles and port.”

  Howie stood by the railing, watching the sea. Late on the afternoon before, Finley had pointed far to starboard at the hundreds of small islands off the shore. The gray points of land looked peculiar; most were no more than stubs, ragged mounds of stone that seldom rose more than twenty feet above the sea.

  “Don’t appear real natural, do they?” the Captain had said. “That’s because they aren’t. What you’re looking at now is Old Los Angeles town. There’s a whole city there on the bottom. Right about there is where the shore used to be.” He waved his hand vaguely to the right.

  “The war did that?” Howie couldn’t imagine such devastation, or what might have caused it.

  “Partly the War. Folks say it was more than that, though. That unholy weapons of the time loosed something in the earth. The land just heaved up and cracked in two, and drowned the whole coast in the sea. Forty, fifty miles inland, and a hundred miles wide. No one can say it happened that way—--but the city’s down there, that’s a fact.”

  Howie could think of nothing to say. Long after the Captain left, he stood and watched the dreary islands until they vanished far astern...

  The caravan had been traveling through heavy stands of pine, spruce and fir for some time. On the morning after the sixth day out from New Los Angeles, Ritcher Jones called a halt. Brother Jonas and the others in Howie’s carriage scrambled eagerly to the ground. Howie joined them, wondering what the fuss was all about.

  “What are we doing?” he asked. “We ain’t been riding for three hours.”

  Jonas looked surprised. “Why, we’re here, boy. This is High Sequoia.”

  Howie didn’t like to seem a fool, but he couldn’t see anything but trees.

  “Look, over there,” Jonas said.

  At first, Howie saw nothing but dense woods. Then, his eye caught something, but rejected it at once. It was clearly a trick of the light; there werent’ any trees that big, not anywhere. There were six or eight together, and he couldn’t sort them out. Then he saw another, and another after that, great, enormous shapes nearly lost in the dusty green light that filtered down from above.

  “Great God A’mighty,” Howie cried. “They’re real, ain’t they?”

  “Oh, they are, for certain,” Jonas said. “Giant Sequoias, the Lord’s finest creation. This is hallowed ground you’re standing on now. Don’t forget that. There’s nowhere like this in the world. Nowhere but here.”

  “I reckon I’ll agree on that,” Howie said...

  The End

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