Heaven Is a Long Way Off

by Win Blevins

  “Come with us,” said Sam. “We’ll go to San Pedro, get a ship, get the hell out of here.”

  “Sure,” said Robber, “and you better get going. Those men were heading back to the ranch to pick Rubio up and charge straight here.”

  “Rubio can’t ride,” said Flat Dog.

  “They thought he could. And maybe they’ll come without him. Either way, they’re coming.”

  “Anyone in the pueblo will tell them where we are,” said Galbraith.

  The table broke into babble about how to slip down to San Pedro without getting caught. Everybody had an different idea—they agreed only that it would be dangerous.

  “Listen,” said Robber, but no one heard him in the talk.

  “Listen,” he said loudly.

  They fell silent.

  “I know where Rubio will never look for us.”

  They waited.

  “In a boat. On the Los Angeles River. Which ain’t never a river except now.”

  “Yes!” said some.

  “But if he sees us,” others said, “we’ll be sitting ducks.”

  “It’s a good idea,” said Grumble. “Devious.”

  In a whirlwind of talk they came up with a plan.

  They would borrow a rowboat from the mission. Robber would row Sumner, Julia, Esperanza, and Grumble down Arroyo Seco to where it flowed into the Los Angeles River just above the pueblo, and on downriver to the sea. Sam, Hannibal, and Flat Dog would ride along the bank above the river, on the lookout for Rubio and his men.

  “I’ll come along too,” said Galbraith.

  Sam liked that. Galbraith was the best shot he knew.

  “When do we leave?” said Flat Dog.

  “Now,” said Sam.

  Everyone stood up to get ready.

  “Sister,” said Julia in Spanish, “will you come as far as the sailing ship with me?”

  “Are you all right?” said Reina. Julia’s face was drawn, strained.

  “Flat Dog?”

  Her husband went to her, took her hand.

  “I think the baby, it begins now to come.”

  RIDERS IN THE rain. Sam’s eyes searched for dark figures in a gray world. Rain drummed on his hat and dripped off like a curtain. Rain slashed across the hills, the gullies, the landscape. He had trouble seeing, and that was dangerous.

  He looked southwest along the dirt track, where the riders would probably come from. He looked west toward the hills, where they might show up. He looked every direction but down toward the water. He, Flat Dog, Hannibal, and Galbraith had agreed to keep their eyes off the stream, for that would give away the secret. There the frail boat tossed on the swollen creek called Arroyo Seco, a boat bearing friends, bearing women, bearing his daughter, bearing a baby striving to enter the world.

  When he and Paladin forded the creek above, the surge felt rough. It looked rough and sounded rough. What a joke—Sam hadn’t even seen water in that gully before.

  Coy skittered along in front of him. Fortunately, the coyote paid no attention to the boat.

  Sam hoped Robber was good with those oars.

  He checked to make sure his powder was dry. He chuckled cynically to himself. If Rubio’s men show up, with or without the don, there’ll be no talking things over.

  He looked at Flat Dog. His friend’s horse slipped around on the wet track, just like Sam’s, Hannibal’s, and Galbraith’s, and the packhorse that bore their gear. Flat Dog’s eyes probed at the rain, and shadows in the rain. But Sam suspected the landscape he surveyed was inside. His wife was in labor down below, in the boat. His child was being born, maybe, in the rocking, plunging craft. Being born into a world of gray rain and black murderers.

  That was enough to turn any man’s insides into a desert.

  JULIA CURSED. SHE cursed in Spanish, for her pains seemed to have squeezed away her English. The pains came every several minutes. When they did, she blanched, her body went rigid, and her curses outroared the flooding waters.

  Mainly, and most eloquently, she cursed Flat Dog, the cause of these terrible pains, the one true culprit. She cursed the current, normally a trickle, now trundling along like a horse with a rough gait. She cursed the bumps and lurches. She cursed the rain, which soaked her. She cursed her need to squat. With the boat bouncing, she felt like she would bounce off to the left, or bounce to the right, and plunk into the river. But when she lay down, or took a seat on one of the hard benches, the pains were worse.

  Every few minutes the boat bottomed out on a place too shallow to float. Everyone but Julia got out into ankle-deep water, dragged the boat through, and jumped back in before the jumpy thing got away. She damned them all, the grinding stop, the rough passage, and the jouncing as her fellow passengers jumped back in. She damned the lot of them, loudly and creatively.

  Grumble, who had spent his life in low dives among vile-tongued men, was impressed at her eloquence. Sumner was much amused.

  Except for Julia’s magnificent performance, Grumble would have been grumbling. He had chosen a life of art, the art of the con. He was not a fellow for physical heroics, nor flight in wretched weather from enemies bearing the lust to kill.

  Manning the oars, Robber hollered at Grumble, Sumner, and Reina from time to time to bail water out of the bottom of the boat. He had given them each buckets for the purpose. Julia cursed the water, which sloshed around and soaked her back and her bottom and the place where the baby was worming its way into the world. She cursed the baby, she cursed the bailing, she cursed the splashes, and she cursed the stupid rain.

  Reina and Sumner took turns holding Julia in her squatting position and holding Esperanza. This child was showing her usual good spirit, looking around at everything with an expression of wonder. She never uttered a complaint.

  Julia made up for Esperanza’s reticence. She amplified her cursing now. She damned all male animals—they had those stupid appendages they just had to, had to, had to indulge—Those damn things are the authors of pain in the world.

  “This creek is feisty,” said Robber. “When we flow into the Los Angeles River, it might turn into a monster.”

  “I’ve never seen the Los Angeles River aroused,” said Grumble.

  “You ain’t seen it after this much rain.”

  Julia denounced the curse God put on women in the Garden of Eden, the pain of bearing children, never to end, never to end. She cursed God himself, who was just another male. And she cursed His Holy Mother—I don’t give a damn why, I’m just cursing her. At the start of every labor pain, or when she couldn’t think of anyone else to curse, she returned to execrating Flat Dog.

  Grumble heard oaths that were new on the horizon of his personal experience.

  “Here comes the river,” said Robber, gesturing to the right. He rowed the boat toward that bank. Where the new current plunged in, the water roiled, the waves tossing into the air. It reminded Grumble of a horse herd stampeding, their manes flying—it was as loud and scary as a stampede.

  Robber heaved the boat through the roiling where the two currents met. The new, big current seized the small craft and turned it backward.

  Robber yelled at the river, pulled fiercely on the oars, pivoted, and got himself faced downstream again. The boat rocked and bounced on the bucking river.

  Everyone got splashed head to toe, as though they weren’t already wet enough.

  Then the water eased off to mere jostling, and full speed ahead, lickety-split.

  Reina and Sumner patted Julia, held her, arranged the wool blankets tight around her. “They can’t keep you dry,” said Sumner, “but they’ll keep you warm.”

  Julia swore bitterly.

  Soon Robber warned his passengers, “The Zanja Madre dam is coming up.”

  “Dam?” said Grumble, Sumner, and Reina in one voice.

  Robber looked at them. “How do you think the fields get irrigated? This dam makes the ditch.”

  “What are we going to do?” cried Grumble.

  “Pull the boat ou
t and portage it around.”

  Julia spewed out imprecations.

  Grumble said, “Just tell me what to do.”

  Robber nodded, as though to say, Good man.

  He stood up at the oars and peered downstream. “I can’t see it.”

  They all looked downstream. The rain thinned, and the sound of the river blocked out…

  “Oh, shit,” said Robber.

  He dropped to his seat and rowed like hell for the left bank.

  “We’re not gonna make it!”

  Julia shrieked.

  Now they all saw the dam of mud and brush. In a sheen of light the river thrummed straight over it.

  Robber stood up and stared frantically at the dam. Frantically, he maneuvered, remaneuvered, got them a stroke this way and a stroke that way. “I don’t see the best spot to go over,” he hollered. “We may flip!”

  The bow jutted into space. The bottom scraped.

  “Oh, God,” yelled Robber.

  “Madre de Dios!” bellowed Julia.

  Sitting in the stern, Grumble felt the waters swamp that end of the boat. “We’re sinking!” he shouted.

  Robber heaved on the oars, and the bow tilted downward.

  They teetered over the dam.

  Julia screamed.

  The bow dived into the river several feet below. The undertow grabbed it.

  The stern swung around the bow.

  Robber rowed furiously, trying to jerk the stern downstream. Current boiled over the dam and into the boat.

  Robber roared as he made a mighty heave.

  With a sucking sound the bow popped out of the undertow.

  All of a sudden their craft was small, flooded, and low and wobbly in the water.

  “Bail!” shouted Robber.

  The passengers bucketed water from the boat to the river. Bucket by bucket the boat floated higher. Soon it was on the water and not in it.

  Finally, Robber could row to shore. He jumped out and held the boat with the painter.

  Julia cursed Robber.

  After Grumble, Sumner, and Reina clambered out, Reina holding Esperanza, Robber lifted Julia from the boat and set her on the ground.

  She didn’t protest. She was silent for the moment, her face grim and fixed, her mind riding toward the agony to come, plunging on the wild and stampeding stallion of pain.

  Robber turned the boat upside down, then righted it, and pushed it back into the river. They got in, helped Julia get balanced in her squat, and headed downstream.

  Grumble muttered to himself, “Heaven is a very, very long way off, and hell is hounding our heels.”

  THE WIND PICKED up and the rain fell harder.

  “Look sharp,” said Sam.

  In Indian country you knew where enemies might be. In the underbrush along the creek. In the timber. Behind the ridge. Here they could come from any direction.

  They turned the horses away from the river, along the irrigation ditch, to avoid giving the boat away.

  Here on the eastern edge of the pueblo he could see too many hiding places. Crooked tracks led away from the bank, and hovels dotted the byways. A few structures were adobes. Any wall, any pen, any bush could hide an enemy.

  No call for an honest fight here. Ideal spot for an ambush.

  He didn’t know whether he was chill from the rain or from fear.

  An old woman came out of a hovel hunched over, a multicolored blanket draped over her head. She looked at the four riders passing along the river. Her mouth dropped into a U and she hurried back inside.

  Sam strained his eyes down every track, around the edges of every building and fence, behind every tree, and saw nothing or everything. In the rain—streaming down, whipped by the wind—in the rain everything moved. Or nothing.

  Long after the pueblo was behind them, his skin prickled. Turning in his saddle, he could see only hints of the village, dark shadows in the rain.

  THE RAIN WAS the backdrop, unnoticed. Grumble paid it no mind, and the other boaters stopped grousing about it.

  Though Julia’s protests were unrelenting, Grumble accepted them as he accepted the rain and cold. Reina said, “The pains are coming closer together.”

  Grumble was tired. He couldn’t remember, ever, being so tired. “How far?” he asked.

  Robber didn’t answer.

  “How long to the harbor?”

  “I don’t know. By road from the pueblo, twenty-five miles. By river, I don’t know. Longer.” He looked at the current. “The river’s going godawmighty fast, but it’s a long way.”

  For an hour or so, the ride had been fast and uneventful. Grumble thought wearily, Just the way I want it. He grimaced.

  “Will we make it tonight?”

  “If we do, it will be way, way after dark.”

  “Julia’s not gonna wait that long,” said Sumner.

  The men looked at each other. In the rain and the mud it would be one miserable night.

  And the baby? Grumble wondered. Can the baby survive?

  “The other river’s coming up,” said Robber.

  “Other river?”

  Robber smiled slightly. “The Rio Hondo.”

  Robber was a man of the waters, Grumble knew. He understood swells and tides, storms and following seas. It was no surprise that hills and the rivulets they formed, rains and the currents they created, these would be within his ken. People who didn’t understand such things, well, Robber probably thought them a little silly.

  Grumble didn’t mind.

  Robber pointed out the Rio Hondo coming in from the left, another lift to a current that was already bounding. “I’m going to hug the left bank,” said Robber. “We want to feather into this new force as silky as possible.”

  Grumble was collecting Robber’s jargon of the waters.

  “It won’t feel like a feather, though,” said Robber.

  It felt like they hit a rock. The bow bumped up and sideways. Julia yelled, and followed that with a spew of Spanish babble.

  The river jabbered louder, and nattered and gabbled, and gurgled. It whacked the gunwales and slashed its waves over and into the boat, drenching the occupants. It slapped and jiggled the boat, squirreled it sideways, and teeter-tottered it. Robber was furious with trying to keep it straight. After a jigger-jerky ride, they slid into water that wasn’t quite as rough.

  Robber spun the boat sideways, so he could see upstream and down. His eyes rounded, his lower lip trembled, and he said, “Oh, shit!”

  Grumble looked up the little rio. Toward them roared a wall about two feet high, a wall of churning water.

  “Flash flood!” cried Robber.

  Every eye was fixed on the roaring wall. They gasped for the last breath they might take on this earth.

  The waters fell like an avalanche on the stern of their boat. The bow tilted toward the sky. The undertow grabbed the back end and ripped it sideways. The boat corkscrewed, the bow shot upward, and everything and everyone in the boat pitched into the tumult.

  Grumble thought of nothing but grabbing Julia. He seized her under the arms and kicked like hell. Water ripped them, it rocked them, it buried them, it threw them high—it pummeled them and somersaulted them—it flung them like dirt from an explosion.

  Yet being flung aside and whirled around meant…Grumble lay on his back and kicked like hell. “Kick!” he hollered at Julia, and felt her motions down below. “Kick!” He thrashed on his back, sometimes with his head underwater, Julia on top of him, faceup.

  The eddy grabbed his shoulders and jerked them upstream. He made his last cry sound epic: “Ki-i-ck!”

  Waves tumbled and flummoxed him. He kicked. Then suddenly he was sure they were going upstream instead of down. He fought for his breath, for his sanity. They bobbed along like corks. By God, they were going upstream. The current blasted downstream like a train of runaway wagons, and this eddy mildly eased its way the other direction.

  He turned them toward the bank. In a few minutes he could actually stand up. It seemed
like a miracle.

  He took inventory.

  Ten paces above them was Sumner, on his hands and knees in the shallows.

  Another twenty paces above Sumner stood Robber, hip deep in water, his arms wrapped around Reina, her arms wrapped around Esperanza. They all had expressions of absolute stupefaction on their faces.

  Reina fussed furiously with the blankets around Esperanza’s face. The child sneezed, and everyone laughed.

  Only the boat was missing.

  THE ROAR OF wild waters, then the shouts—the four riders looked at each other, then whipped their horses down the grassy slope toward the river.

  “Help!” Grumble yelled.

  Flat Dog jumped off his horse on the fly, sprinted to the bank, and plowed through the water to Grumble and Julia. In a jiffy he had his wife on grass above the bank, resting.

  “Blankets!”

  “They’re soaked,” called Robber, who was holding Reina’s hand and pulling her out of the river.

  “Blankets anyway!”

  Sumner staggered toward the bank.

  Sam saw one dark shadow in the water. He jumped in and found the water was only waist deep. An arm’s length beyond him it was raging. The shadow turned out to be a blanket, and he ran to Julia with it.

  Ignored, Grumble crawled out of the water, crawled to Julia, and sagged to the ground.

  Everyone hovered over Julia.

  She said in Spanish, “The baby’s coming now, the baby’s going to come now, the baby’s coming now.”

  THEY MADE CAMP right there. In a few minutes wet canvas was tented to make a sort of shelter, and Flat Dog had a small fire going.

  Robber found the boat a quarter mile downstream, caught on some brush, and brought it back.

  Sam and Hannibal staked the horses and went on foot to scout. Rubio or not, the party had to stay right here. Though the air felt swollen with moisture, the rain had eased off. They topped the rise behind the camp and looked up their back trail. Mists hung low. Sam’s eyes swept the grasses, bushes, and trees with his naked eyes. Then he lifted the field glass and swept them again. Coy cocked his head, as though listening.

  Reina and Sumner made Julia comfortable near the fire. Grumble mumbled the prayers left from a Catholic boyhood in Baltimore.