A Century of Great Western Stories

by A Century of Great Western Stories (retail) (epub)

  She uttered only one word, “Joshua,” and the wine sound continued.

  BOTH HE AND Lana were back among the people now. Carole came to him.

  “Where’ve you been? Where is Charlotte? The phone is ringing constantly. Where is she?”

  “She’s on vacation.”

  “Today? I can’t believe you, Joshua. You always bragged about how she was there when you needed her.”

  “We don’t need her now.”

  “You really are mad. Mad! Today of all days we need her to answer the phone.”

  “Take the damned phone off the hook. No one ever calls good news on a phone, anyway. If they have anything good to say, they come and see you personally.” He walked away and left her standing there looking after him in much confusion.

  All afternoon he had been wanting to visit his old friend Chalo Gonzales from the Apache Reservation. They met when they were kids. Chalo’s father had worked the nearby orchards and alfalfa field for Joshua’s father. He and Chalo hunted, fished, adventured together off and on for years. He’d gone with him to the reservation many times and learned much of nature and Indian ways. Chalo had given him as much as anyone—things of real value. He found him dressed in a regular business suit and tie, but he wore a band around his coarse, dark hair.

  “Ah, amigo, let’s walk in the garden away from this …” and he made a gesture with his arm to the scattered crowd. “How does it go with you and your people?”

  “Slow, Joshua, but better. As always, there’s conflict with the old and the young. The old want to stay with their own ways. The young want to rush into the outside world.”

  “It’s the nature of youth to be impatient. It can’t be helped.”

  “Oh, sure, that is the truth. But our young want to take the best of the old and good ways with them. They want both sides now. Now.”

  “That’s good, Chalo. They’re right.”

  “But nothing happens that fast. It has been too many centuries one way. You can’t change it in a few years.”

  “It’s a big problem I admit, but you will survive and finally win. You always have, you know.”

  “You’ve always given me encouragement. I feel better already.”

  They talked of hunts, and later adventures when they both came home for the summer from school. Chalo had been one of few to make it from his land to Bacone, the Indian college.

  Joshua felt Chalo was his equal. He was comfortable with him. They stood together and talked in a far recess of the secluded garden where they could see the mountains they’d so often explored. Joshua felt a surge of love for his old friend. He knew what he must do. He’d spotted the root a few minutes back. He didn’t dare risk it with his hands. Chalo was almost as strong as he was in both will and muscle.

  He picked up the root and began drawing designs with it in a spot of loose ground, as men will do who are from the earth. Then, as his friend glanced away, Joshua swung it with much force, striking him just back of the ear. He heard the bone crunch and was greatly relieved to know he wouldn’t have to do more. Without any wasted time, he dragged and pushed him into a thick clump of brush. He checked to see if the body was totally hidden, tossed the root in after it, walked to the wall, and looked out across the desert to the mountains again. He was very still; then he turned, smiling ineluctably, and proceeded to the party.

  DUSK CAME SWIFTLY and hung awhile, giving the party a sudden subdued quality. It was the time of day that Joshua liked best. He finally escaped the clutchers and went to his study, locking the door and grinning at the phone Carole had taken off the hook and deliberately dangled across the lamp.

  He drew the shades back and sat there absorbed in the hiding sun, and watched the glowing oranges and reds turn to violet and then a soft blue above the desert to the west. He knew that life started stirring there with the death of the sun. The coyotes and bobcats were already moving, sniffing the ground and the air of other living creatures. Many mice, rabbits, and birds would die this night so they could live. The great owl would soon be swooping above them in direct competition. The next day the sun would be reborn, and the vultures would dine on any remains, keeping the desert clean and in balance.

  Someone knocked on the door. It was Carole.

  “Joshua, are you in there?” Then louder, “Joshua, I know you’re there because the door is locked from the inside. What are you doing with the door locked anyway?” Silence. “At least you could come and mix with your guests. You did invite them, you know.” She pounded on the door now. “My God, at least speak to me. I am your wife, you know.” Silence. She turned in frustration and stamped off down the hall, mumbling about his madness.

  Joshua turned his lounge chair away from the window and stared at the wall across the room. There were things he had to see before he made the final move. Pieces of the past that he must reconstruct properly in his mind before he took the last step.

  It did come. As always he heard it first, then saw it form, whirling like pieces of an abstract world—a new world, an old world, being broken and born, falling together again. The Spanish returned. They came now with fresh men, armor, horses, and cannon. They marched and rode up the Rio Grande setting up the artillery, blasting the adobe walls to dust. Then they charged with sabers drawn and whittled the shell-shocked Indians into slavery. They mined the gold from the virgin mountains with the Indians as their tools. And then it all vanished inwardly.

  There was quiet and darkness now until he heard his name. “Joshua, Joshua, Joshua.” It came floating from afar as if elongated, closer, closer. She was there. He leaned forward in the chair, his body tense, anxious. She stood by a river of emerald green. It was so clear that he could see the separate grains of white sand on its bottom. The trees, trunks thicker than the hacienda, rose into the sky. They went up, up past his ability to see. The leaves were as thick as watermelons, and fifty people could stand in the shade of a single leaf. The air danced with the light of four suns shafting great golden beams down through the trees.

  She moved towards him through one of the beams and for a moment vanished with its brilliance. Now she was whole again, standing there before him. He ached to touch her. He hurt. An endless string of silver fish swam up the river now. The four suns penetrated the pure water and made them appear to be parts of a metallic lava flow from a far-off volcano. But they were fish, moving relentlessly, with no hesitation whatsoever, knowing their destination and fate without doubt.

  Again the word came from her as she turned and walked down the river, vanishing behind a tree. “Joshua.”

  For a fleeting moment he heard the song. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, there was just the darkness of the room. He didn’t know how long he sat there before returning to the party.

  He moved directly to the bar in the patio and ordered a double scotch and water. His people were scattered out now, having dined, and were back onto the drinking and talking. The volume was beginning to rise again. It was second wind time. As the bartender served the drink, he felt something touch his hand. It was Maria Windsor.

  She smiled like champagne pouring, her red lips pulling back over almost startling white teeth. She smiled with her blue eyes, too.

  “It has been such a long time,” she said.

  “Maria, goddamn, it’s good to see you.” And he hugged her, picking her off the floor without intending to. She was very small and at first appeared to be delicate. But this was a strong little lady. She was a barmaid in his favorite place in El Paso when he first met her. He’d always deeply admired the polite and friendly smoothness with which she did her job. One never had to wait for a drink, the ashtray was emptied at the proper moment, and she knew when to leave or when to stand and chat. Joshua had introduced her to John Windsor, one of his junior vice presidents, and now they were married.

  “I love the portrait Aleta did of you.”

  “Well, I feel embarrassed hanging it there, but what could I do after she worked so hard on it? How are you and John getti
ng along?” he asked.

  “How do you mean? Personally or otherwise?”

  “Oh, all around I suppose.”

  “Good,” she said. “Like all wives, I think he works too hard sometimes, but I suppose that’s natural. Here he comes now.”

  John shook hands and greeted his boss without showing any apparent fear and revealing a genuine liking for him. He once told Maria that he’d love Joshua to his death, just for introducing her to him. He was about five eleven, straight and well-muscled, and had thick brown hair that he wore longer than anyone in the whole international organization. He, too, had a nice, white smile.

  Joshua ordered a round for the three of them. He raised his glass: “My friends, you’ll be receiving a memo in the next few days that I think you will enjoy. Here’s to it.” Several days before the party, Joshua had made out a paper giving John Windsor control of the company. It had not been delivered yet.

  He left them glowing in anticipation and went to find his favorite kin, Aleta. As he moved, the eyes of hatred moved with him … drunker now, braver. He walked into the garden, bowing, speaking here and there, but not stopping. The moon, hung in place by galactic gravity, beamed back the sun in a blue softness. The insects and night birds hummed a song in the caressing desert breeze. The leaves on the trees moved just enough to make love. There was a combination of warmth and coolness that only the desert can give.

  Aleta had seen her uncle and somehow knew he was looking for her. She came to him from where she’d been sitting on a tree that was alive but bent to the ground. She’d been studying the light patterns throughout the garden for a painting she had in mind.

  “Uncle Joshua, it’s time we had a visit.”

  He took both her hands and stood back looking at her.

  “Yes, it’s time, my dear. You are even more beautiful than the best of your paintings.”

  “Well, Uncle, that’s not saying much,” she said, being pleasingly flattered just the same.

  He led her to an archway and opened the iron gate. They walked up a tiny, rutted wagon road into the desert. The sounds of the gathering became subdued. The yucca bushes and Joshua trees—that he’d been named after—speared the sky like frozen battalions of soldiers on guard duty forever.

  “Remember when we used to ride up this trail?” she asked.

  “Yes, it seems like yesterday.”

  “It seems like a hundred years ago to me.”

  He laughed. “Time has a way of telescoping in and out according to your own time. That’s the way it should be. You were a tough little shit,” he added with fondness. “You were the only one who could ride with me all day.”

  “That was simple bullheadedness. I knew I was going to be an artist someday, and you have to have a skull made of granite to be an artist.”

  He was amused by her even now. “But you also had a bottom made of rawhide.”

  They talked of some of her childhood adventures they’d shared. Then the coyotes howled off in a little draw. The strollers stood like the cacti, listening, absorbing the oldest cry left.

  When the howls stopped, he spoke. “I love to hear them. I always have. I even get lonely to hear them. They’re the only true survivors.”

  “That somehow frightens me,” she said with a little shudder.

  “It shouldn’t. You should be encouraged. As long as they howl, people have a chance here on earth. No longer, no less. It is the final cry for freedom. It’s hope.”

  They walked on silently for a spell. “You really are a romantic, Uncle. When I hear people say how cold you are, I laugh to myself.”

  “You know, Aleta darling, you’re the only person who never asked me for anything.”

  “I didn’t have to. You’ve always given me love and confidence. What more could you give?”

  “I don’t know. I wish I did.”

  “No, Uncle, there’s no greater gift than that.”

  “Aleta, the world is strange. Mankind has forgotten what was always true—that a clean breath is worth more than the most elegant bank building. A new flower opening is more beautiful than a marble palace. All things rot. Michelangelo’s sculpture is even now slowly breaking apart. All empires vanish. The largest buildings in the world will turn back to sand. The great paintings are cracking, the negatives of the best films ever made are right now losing their color and becoming brittle. The tallest mountains are coming down a rock at a time. Only thoughts live. You are only what you think.”

  “That’s good,” she said, “then I’m a painting, even if I am already beginning to crack.”

  He liked her words and added some of his own: “You know, honey, the worms favor the rich.”

  “Why?”

  He rubbed his great belly. “Because they’re usually fatter and more easily digestible.”

  “Do you speak of yourself?”

  “Of course,” he smiled. The coyotes howled again, and he said, “I love you, my dear Aleta.”

  “And I love you.”

  He stroked her hair and moved his hand downward. It had to be swift, clean. With all his strength, even more than he’d ever had before. He grabbed her long, graceful neck and twisted her head. He heard the bones rip apart. She gasped only once, and then a long sigh of her last breath exuded from her. He gathered her carefully in his arms and walked out through the brush to the little draw where the coyotes had so recently hunted. Then he stretched her out on the ground with her hands at her sides and gently brushed her hair back. She slept in the moonlight.

  He walked swiftly back to the hacienda. As he left the garden for the patio, Rob stepped in front of him.

  “Joshua, have you seen Aleta?”

  “Of course, my boy, of course.”

  “Well, where is she?”

  “Look, I don’t follow your wife around. She’s certainly more capable than most of taking care of herself.” Joshua moved on. Rob followed him a few steps, looking at his back with glazed eyes.

  Grebbs grabbed at him in one last desperate hope that Joshua was saving the announcement to the last.

  “Joshua, I have to talk with you. Please.”

  Joshua stopped and looked at the man. He was drunk, and that was something Grebbs rarely allowed himself to be in public. He looked as if pieces of flesh were about to start dropping down into his clothing. His mouth was open, slack and watery.

  Joshua said, with a certainty in his voice that settled Grebb’s question, “Grebbs, you’re a bad drinker. I have no respect for bad drinkers.” And he moved on.

  Grebbs stared at the same back the same way Rob had. He muttered, actually having trouble keeping from openly crying, “The bastard. The dirty bastard. I’ll kill you! You son of a bitch!”

  The thing some of these people had been uttering about Joshua now possessed them. A madness hovered about, waiting for the right moment, and then swiftly moved into them. Now all the people of music started playing at once. The Russian was dancing even more wildly, if not so expertly. The belly dancer swished about from man to man, teasing. The mariachis walked about in dominance for a while, then the brass group would break through. It was a cacophony of sound that entered the heads of all there … throbbing like blood poison.

  Carole started sobbing uncontrollably. Lana began cursing her husband, Joseph, in vile terms—bitterly, with total malice. Joseph just reached out and slapped her down across the chaise lounge, and a little blood oozed from the corner of her mouth. He could only think of a weapon, any weapon to use on the man who he felt was totally responsible for the matrix of doom echoing all around. We always must have something to hate for our own failures and smallness. But this did not occur to Joseph, or Lana, or Carole, or the others. Only Alfredo, the guitarist, sat alone on the same old bent tree that Aleta had cherished, touching his guitar with love.

  Maria took John aside and told him they were leaving, that something terrible was happening. She was not—and could not be—a part of it. He hesitated but listened. They did finally drive away, confused, bu
t feeling they were right.

  Grebbs dazedly shuffled to the kitchen looking for a knife, but old Juanita and her two sisters were there. He then remembered an East Indian dagger that lay on the mantel in the library as a paperweight. In his few trips to the hacienda he’d often studied it, thinking what a pleasure it would be to drive it into the jerking heart of Joshua Stone III.

  He picked it up and pulled the arched blade from the jeweled sheath. He touched the sharp unused point with shaking fingers. At that precise instant, Rob felt in the back of his belt and touched the automatic. He removed it and put it in his jacket pocket. Joseph Helstrom looked about the patio for an instrument to satisfy his own destructive instincts.

  Joshua entered the door to the cellar, shut it, and shoved the heavy iron bolt into place. He called on all his resources now in another direction. An implosion to the very core of time struck Joshua. Now, right now, he must visualize all the rest of the history of his land that occurred before his first childish awareness. Then, and only then, could he make his last destined move. It began to form. The long lines of Conestoga wagons tape-wormed across the prairies and struggled through the mountain passes, bringing goods and people from all over the world to settle this awesome land. They came in spite of flood, droughts, blizzards, Indian attacks, and disease. They were drawn here by the golden talk of dreamers, and promising facts.

  The ruts of the Santa Fe Trail were cut so deep they would last a century. The mountain men took the last of the beaver from the sweet, churning waters of the mountains above Taos and came down to trade, to dance the wild fandangos, to drink and pursue the dark-eyed lovelies of that village of many flags.

  A troop of cavalry charged over the horizon into a camp of Indians, and the battle splashed across the adobe valleys in crimson. Thousands of cattle and sheep were driven there and finally settled into their own territories. Cowboys strained to stay aboard bucking horses, and these same men roped and jerked steers, thumping them hard against the earth. They gambled and fought and raised hell in the villages of deserts and mountains, creating written and filmed legends that covered the world more thoroughly than Shakespeare.