Far Bright Star

by Robert Olmstead

  Black storm clouds were massing in the north the whole of that day and the sky was hardened. He could not remember the last time he was rained on. Let the weather be foul. It didn’t matter to him. He returned to the automobile, let out the clutch, and rammed the car along a stretch of black deeply rutted soil. He drove on until he dozed at the wheel and then he pulled off and let his head go back against the seat. Inside, he was wearied on the verge of collapse. He righted himself and continued on.

  The storm moved east, and a sozzling rain was still falling when he entered the wet band the storm left behind. The wheels of the Dodge slithered in the mud, and then there was a lull in the rain and the day turned hot and steamy. The deep ruts were left awash and they captured the wheels and guided the automobile. The automobile ruddered in the throws of the wet channels and began to cough and sputter and lose power. He pushed on, the steering wheel snapping right and left and the one time he let it go so as to not break a wrist.

  Then the automobile spun and the engine wound and then stopped as if held by a sudden hand. The wheels were stogged deep in clayey mud. He’d bogged himself down right to the axle and would need a team of horses to haul out.

  Over the next rise he hailed a wheat farmer working a field and found out a town was not so far. There was an auto mechanic there in case he needed one and so arranged for the farmer to tow the automobile out of the bog when his day was done. He himself would continue on afoot.

  Before long the road turned smoldering hot. He came to men in striped trousers, their bodies stripped to the waist. They were chained at the ankles and in cadence shuffled forward and let down their slingblades to cut back the grassy ditches. Two men stood quietly harnessed to a scoop shovel being loaded. They were guarded by men on horseback, Winchesters perched upright on their thighs. He’d one time known a trooper from Mississippi, a former trustee who’d been pardoned for shooting a runner. He remembered him a crack shot on horseback.

  He decided he’d wait for the wheat farmer. He turned around and went back to the stogged automobile, the water already cooked from the ruts.

  That evening the western sky was heart red. The farmer broke him out and directed him to a place where a thin stream ran through the land and told him he could camp there for the night. He pulled off the road and bumped onto the field. He drove the Dodge across where had stood the heavy crops of grain. He came off the dry flat land and entered a band of cottonwoods that densified until there were only trees and he was passing through chains of last light and shadow and arrived at a barbed-wire fence and a place where the creek pooled flat and brown. Hung on the fence was a killed snake belly side up. An appeal for rain recently answered.

  Down by the creek he found a stone fire ring and an iron grate hanging from a tree. There were steel rods to make a spit and kindling and firewood beneath a ragged tarp. At the creek bank he discovered arrowheads that’d been washed to the light. Flash floods were as dangerous as prairie fires and twisters. Still, he wanted to be near the pooling water and kicked up dry cow manure for his fire.

  After so many months in the desert the grasses and flowers were an experience for him. Like a sleepwalker, he continued on. His boots wetted with the rising dew as he crossed the field. Even in this dry land, the air was dense with moisture and filled his lungs to capacity.

  He sprawled in the silky grass beneath the spangle of stars. He gathered bunches in his fingers. The grass gave off no scent, but pulled from the earth came a sweetness. He found the far bright star. These small things, he thought, and for a time the tight band was wrested from across his chest and the sound of the purling creek entered his mind.

  He wished for more rain. He wished for it to come down from the sky and wash across his face. He returned to the fire ring and started a fire and laid the grate across the heating stones. He fed the fire and sulfur teals of flame swam like water beneath the iron skillet when he set it on the grate. The skim of grease was heating and when it began to pop he’d fry his potatoes and when they were done he’d scrape them to one side and crack his eggs.

  24

  HE’D FINISHED OFF his eggs and potatoes and was spit roasting a chicken when he heard a human sound. Beyond the glow of the small fire the night was blued and the grasses tipped in silver. Someone was approaching in the darkness, their trousers making a wisping sound as they waded through the grass. He touched at the .45 he carried in the shoulder rig.

  “Halloo,” came a long call from the darkness. It was the wheat farmer coming through the moon’s light.

  “Come on in,” he said.

  “I called out because I didn’t want to get shot,” the farmer said with humor. He wore a blue short-sleeved shirt, blue overalls, and a blue bandanna loosely knotted at his neck. He carried a walking stick he swept before him.

  “Probably not a bad idea,” he said.

  “She sent me to bring you this pie.”

  “Please thank her for me,” he said, accepting the pie tin into his hands.

  “Why yes, of course,” the farmer said, becoming at ease and then he said, “Is that a government automobile?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Where are you driving it to?”

  “Driving east.”

  “You look about used up,” the farmer said.

  “I been eatin’ dry bread, if you know what I mean.”

  “Where you coming from?’

  “Down Mexico.”

  “You don’t say. What’s it like down there?” He spoke as if Mexico were an invisible star.

  “All’s that land does is hold the earth together.”

  From the darkness came the spearing cry of a prey bird. The farmer noted the cry for how unlucky the creature and adjusted his seat closer to the fire where he poked at it with his walking stick.

  It was strange to sit with this man. That this man should have a life, that he should have a family and his mouth would move, his hands gesture. At first he wasn’t sure of the man because he did not know him, but he was harmless enough.

  “It’s a fine night,” the farmer said.

  “Yes, it is,” he said, looking up and finding the star of his destination.

  “I just wish it wasn’t so dark.”

  “What is it you want to see?” he asked, but the farmer didn’t say anything. He walked his stick about the edge of fire.

  Then he said, “Which rumor do you believe? That Villa was paid to attack Columbus by the Germans?”

  “I don’t have anything to tell about that.”

  “How about the war overseas? Are we going to get in?”

  “You’ll have to ask the War Department,” Napoleon said.

  “I thought you might know and that’s why you are here.”

  “Why am I here?”

  “To set up a recruitment. To get ready. She thought that.”

  “Who?”

  “My wife. We’ve got two boys. One of them is old enough.”

  “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “How long have you been on the road?”

  “Not long long.”

  “There’s a town that way,” the farmer said, and pointed with his stick, its embered tip aiming the way.

  It was easy to tell there was something on the farmer’s mind. The farmer told him not to wait on his account and to go ahead eat his chicken. Then he spoke again.

  “She apologizes. We have the two sons and she doesn’t want them getting any ideas.”

  “I understand.”

  “When do you think we’ll get in?”

  “Hard to say,” Napoleon said.

  “I wish I could see the point of it, but I cannot,” the farmer said. Then he told how the war overseas had been very good to him, what with wheat a dollar and seventy-five cents a bushel. His face was no longer an exhausted face, but just the tired face of a man after a long day’s work that was ended until tomorrow.

  “Tomorrow will be better than today,” the farmer sighed.

  “We believe that, don
’t we. The future will be better than the past.”

  “Yes, I think we do.”

  “Why do we believe it?” Napoleon wondered aloud.

  “I don’t exactly know,” the farmer said.

  “I don’t either,” he said, and tossed more of the dried cow manure into the fire.

  “They say the rain follows the plow, but I don’t believe it. As good as it looks, it doesn’t look good.”

  “Kind of late for not believing,” he said, and with his knife he pried a leg from the chicken. Fat sizzled into the fire. He offered it to the farmer who took it and then he pried away the other leg for himself.

  “In this land these people are all good republicans,” the farmer said.

  “I suppose they are.”

  “I wouldn’t live in any other land.”

  He finished off the leg he was eating and the farmer finished his and they threw the bones in the fire. The farmer smacked his lips and thanked him. He then drew a pipe and packed the bowl with tobacco he carried in a leather pouch. The pouch was strung to a brass safety pin fastened at the breast pocket of his blue cotton shirt. He struck a match off the seat of his pants.

  “There was a killing recently,” the farmer said, reaching out with the match that he might light his cigarette. “It has people on edge.”

  “Who was kilt?”

  “Two little girls,” the farmer said, and told how a week ago two white sisters ages sixteen and twelve had gone together to pick berries three miles north from town. The family dog returned home alone.

  “You have killed men?” the farmer asked.

  “I have killed men,” he said.

  “In war.”

  “In the trade of war.”

  “Does that weigh on your mind?”

  “My conscience?”

  “Your conscience.”

  “No,” Napoleon said.

  “Mexico?”

  “Mexico, yes.”

  “According to the physician’s report, the girls had been outraged, meaning raped.”

  “I know what it means,” Napoleon said.

  “They caught the fella did it. They lynched him from the bridge crossing.”

  “Is that how they do people around here?”

  “I believe so. Is it different where you come from?”

  “No. Not much I suppose.”

  “People around here don’t wonder what their lives are to be. If they do, they don’t share their thoughts with anyone.”

  “You think they got the right man?”

  To this question the farmer shrugged and it was clear to see his mind attach to a memory he felt as sharp as thorns.

  From his pocket he took out the package given him by the girl in Mexico. He held the package in his lap and with his folding knife he slit the string that tied the package. He carefully unfolded the paper, wrap by wrap. It was a swedge-tipped knife with deeply cut finger choils. It had a white jigged-bone handle and nickel silver bolsters and was stained with blackness.

  “What’cha got there?” the farmer asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just a knife.”

  “We lost a little girl a while back,” the farmer said. “They say if you wear out two pairs of shoes in this country you never leave. They didn’t say anything about losing children.”

  “I am sorry for your loss,” he said, and thought how there was history in all men’s lives. He had his own and this was this man’s, the loss of the little girl child. He pinched the ember from his cigarette and booted it out. Then he stripped the tobacco from the stub back into his pouch.

  “It’s good pie,” the farmer said. “She makes a good pie.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  “Do you have anyone? A wife or the like?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “When are you coming back this way?”

  “I don’t know that I ever will.”

  “Well, when you do I’ll still be here.”

  “Give these to your boys,” he said, and handed over the arrowheads he fished from his pocket.

  “They’re all gone now. The buffalo and the Indians.”

  “I was around here when they wasn’t.” He pinched off a nostril and blew his nose into the dirt. Then he pinched off the other one and did it again.

  “It was a long long time ago.”

  25

  THAT NIGHT WHEN he unrolled his blanket in the grass he had the odd thought he was too tired to sleep. He imagined a pillow, stuffed with goose down, where he could rest his head and settled back and let his head to the good soft pillow he imagined.

  This land had surely taken some years off his life and he could not blame the landed men on a night such as this, their cool rooms and their beds so soft. Their houses ticking quietly as they shrugged off the day, as they ever so slowly responded to the earth’s invisible movement.

  He rubbed at his bloodshot eyes. He could not remember the last bed he’d slept in, but that was okay. The bed he’d made for himself was comfortable enough. No matter how tired he was from the road and how comfortable his made bed, for a long time his mind wandered at the edge of wakefulness.

  The night heavied and he wondered if there would be a storm again. He reached out, his waterproof close by, the knife with the jigged-bone handle, the .45 closer.

  The dead began to unbury themselves.

  Let it happen, he thought.

  He wondered how many more days to the river and the St. Louis Bridge. Soon there’d come a night, the automobile running smoothly beneath a moon set in the sky like a silver dollar, the western side of the big river, running north atop a levee, the pale-faced moon bloody on the red earth where it went down to the water and the moon path whitening and glittering across the water, the stars so deep in the water and their lights beneath the water’s surface and a shooting star coming out of the sky and lasting but a few bright seconds before disappearing, the river’s glister shining and the braiding channels lit from within by the path of submerged and burning light.

  He can see the river. He can see its surface catching a dim blur of lights. In his eye he catches the bounce of glitter-white light coming off the wide flowing water. Then there is a bending in the river and it is gone. Then the bridge and across the river. It will be soon now when the automobile will rattle over the high bridge above the wide water and cross to the other side.

  He smiles and in the forward cast of his mind he can see all the way home to a day in the future when they’ll come for him.

  They’ll be sitting on horseback outside the door, his brother and Teddy, and between them the Rattler horse on lead. When the Rattler horse sees him, a black sideways gleam comes into its eye. The horse nickers and stamps and the jar of its hooves cracks the frozen ground beneath. Sparks flash from steel shoes against rock and ice. He touches at the Rattler horse and under his touch he feels its trembling neck. He drags his fingers over the hard scars where the bullets found their entry.

  “That horse went for quite a wander,” he says.

  “It has seen more of the world than most,” his brother says.

  Then another rider is arriving in the dooryard and he cups a hand to shade his vision.

  “There’s someone wants to see you,” his brother says.

  The rider is bundled against the cold and invisible until he unwraps his woolen scarf and it’s Bandy.

  “Cold enough for you?” he says to the boy.

  “Cold as the nose on a froze dog,” the boy says.

  That night the cold sky is smokelike and the moon orange and holds place in the sky as if set aloft from the earth solely for their benefit.

  There is a flowery smell in the air, like that of a woman, strange and sourceless, and from the stables the occasional tromp of slow bodies shifting hooves. There is the murmur of a storm, currents of warm air. The stars, they pale.

  Then the sky overclouds and a wind springs up and they listen to the heaving of the wind through the trees. It’s a warm wind, the first w
arm wind in months. Ruminant and lost, the years disappear and there is a childlike look in their eyes as each man appreciates the other’s silent recall.

  “You find enough of what you’re looking for?” his brother says.

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Maybe you have to look harder.”

  “Maybe.”

  His brother tells him they are requested to proceed to France at as early a date as practicable.

  “The General said it wouldn’t be quitting if you decided not to go.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Go,” Xenophon said.

  “I’ll go then, if that’s what we are doing.”

  “Which horse will you take?”

  “I don’t know. Part of me wants to leave the old cutthroat here, but I am afraid he will kill someone. What do you think?”

  “Better take him. Where we’re going we’ll need all the killing we can get.”

  When they awake the winter morning is cold and purple hued. The fires are banked and the cookstove cherries at the joints.

  “What o’clock is it?”

  “It’s six. It will take seven days to cross the ocean,” his brother says, looking at his pocket watch as if it were a watch of days and not minutes and hours.

  “The horses are packed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then perhaps we should go.”

  “Yes.”

  He steps out into the morning beneath the gray sheet of the cast sky. He takes the Rattler’s face in his hands. He adjusts the headstall and tugs at the buckle on the throat latch. He draws the cinch tight and taking the reins in hand he swings up into the saddle.

  The black horse his brother rides suddenly erupts in a high ballotade and then makes to the side, cantering backward on three legs. It performs a reverse pirouette with feet crossed and then moves forward with grace and tranquillity. His brother raises his hand in tierce as high as his right ear and thrusts to the front. Their father raises his own hand and they hold rigid and smiles break across their faces. The dogs—they begin to bark.

  His father turns to him and salutes and he snaps off the samelike gesture and they smile on each other.