Retribution Road

by Antonin Varenne

  In early August, a letter arrived at the ranch. Inside the skeleton of the new house, its construction interrupted, Bowman opened the envelope.

  Sergeant,

  I have not slept since I got your last letter. I spend my nights with a lamp lit in my house. I can’t bear the darkness of the night anymore. During the days, I wander around, unable to speak to anyone, and as much as I’ve been able, I’ve tried to think about what we should do.

  I don’t have the strength anymore.

  Now that we know, it will probably be impossible to live normally. Our scars have opened again, after we had managed to forget them. Both of us have children. A life. And even if we are lying to ourselves, I want to continue living that lie. The pain might fade away with time. I will forget. That is my choice and I ask you to make the same one.

  We have too much to lose now. We have achieved the impossible. Why destroy what we have built?

  That man’s life must not ruin ours anymore. You said he was dead. Let him stay that way.

  I can hear you saying it through gritted teeth, Sergeant: “Coward.”

  This is not cowardice. We have already paid a high price for our guilt and carried out duties to which the rest of the world was indifferent. We do not owe anything to anyone anymore, apart from ourselves.

  We have changed. I don’t know what man he is today, the one hiding behind the photograph and article in the newspaper, but it is possible that his homicidal madness is at an end. He wanted to remake his life. Survive. Perhaps that is, like us, what he has achieved? He killed for reasons we know all too well, Sergeant. To steal, to get rich. The way he did it is another story altogether – our story – but what does that change in this country where the North’s businessmen send tens of thousands of men to their deaths in order to settle their differences with the South’s businessmen? What are his crimes in comparison, apart from a few nightmares that I had managed to stop?

  If he has found what he was looking for, why would he continue?

  That does not erase his crimes, but why should we continue to suffer for what he has done?

  I ask you to reconsider your decision, for the love of your daughter and your partner, in the name of all I possess now that is most precious to me. Don’t go there. Let us live and let God judge this man.

  He will be dead soon, like all of us.

  I beg you to give up, and to forgive me: I want to keep my remaining strength in order to live. Those who commanded us no longer exist. We are not soldiers anymore. This battle no longer makes any sense.

  That was the first thing you said to me, Sergeant, more than ten years ago now: “The one who refuses to fight sometimes wins the war.”

  Give up.

  If you start this hunt again, the man who died in that barn to save you will have been killed in vain. You now bear his name, and so does your daughter. Don’t let it die with you. Don’t become your own nightmare again.

  The Preacher

  Bowman had saddled Walden, and the mustang was waiting, tied to one of the posts in the small enclosure. He shoved food into his saddlebags, along with a blanket, a few tools for the journey, and ammunition for Jonathan’s old Springfield rifle. Into his pocket he put part of the money that should have been used to finish the construction of the house.

  He untied his horse, not daring to look at Alexandra.

  “I’ll be back.”

  Bowman put his hand on the pommel and climbed into the saddle, breathing heavily. Walden smelled Alexandra and Aileen’s hair. The little girl tried to caress the animal. Her mother pushed it back with her hand.

  “Stay here. You’ll be killed.”

  Bowman picked up the reins.

  Aileen lifted up her arms to him; she wanted to climb up on the horse and go into the mountains.

  Bowman rode under the sign for the Fitzpatrick ranch without turning around. He followed the shore until he reached the northern point of Lake Tahoe and the main road. There, he wove between the pioneers’ carts, heading in the same direction as them: West.

  5

  CARSON DAILY APPEAL

  7 July, 1863

  The mayoral elections in San Francisco, California, ended on July 1 with the resounding victory – by nearly a thousand votes – of Henry Perrin Coon, the candidate for the Vigilance People’s Party, who defeated the Republican candidate Robert C. Delauney.

  During a campaign marked by the concerns of the war, the two candidates chose very different programs.

  Henry Perrin Coon, of the Vigilance People’s Party, focused his on the issue of safety in the streets of San Francisco, institutional corruption, and the defense of Americans’ rights in the face of the ever-growing wave of immigration in the town and in this area of California. Coon, originally from New York State, has lived in San Francisco for ten years and is a father of four. In his acceptance speech, the new mayor declared: “This is not my victory, but a victory for the American citizens of San Francisco. Together we will work to make this great city a safe and prosperous capital, and we will support with all our might the Union in its battle and its coming victory over the Confederate rebellion.”

  Robert C. Delauney, of the Republican Party, while supporting the Union’s war against the South, had based his campaign around the town’s economic prosperity, its openness to trade with Asia and its financial independence from the federal government. An ambitious entrepreneur, specialized in the import and export of chemical products, Robert Delauney has lived in Sausalito, close to San Francisco, for three years. However, the much-envied example of his rapid fortune and the money invested in his campaign proved insufficient to win the election.

  In this period of war and ever-spiraling immigration, it was Coon, betting on the issue of security and other topics closer to the hearts of San Francisco’s citizens, who came out on top. Delauney saluted his adversary’s victory by declaring that he would remain a citizen with an investment in the political and economic future of the city, and that if his help was required, he would support Coon in any project that would profit San Francisco.

  An election, and two candidates, worthy of a great democracy.

  At the end of the article were the photographs of the candidates. Coon looked like a belli’cose pastor, Delauney like a wealthy lumberjack, with his shirt collar buttoned up to his chin.

  In Stockton, after crossing the Sierra and spending five days on the main track, Bowman moved away from the pioneers and headed northward, bypassing the vast network of lakes and rivers, the labyrinth of earth and water where boats were already leaving for the San Francisco bay. The region had been invaded by prospectors and miners, who for two days had been spreading from the track towards gold-digging sites and the large mines, where they would look for work.

  The excavation sites were bigger than those Bowman had seen in the Rockies. Water from huge hydraulic pumps sprayed down hills and valleys, transforming the earth into rivers of mud that were gathered and sifted by prospectors. Railways and high, fragile buildings were under construction – or in a state of permanent repair. Around the mines, workers lived huddled in slums made of tarps and planks, while the ground was strewn with rubbish and destroyed vegetation. A mine became a village, and villages became towns, or disappeared completely, leaving only disfigured valleys and scraps of abandoned constructions. On this side of the Sierra, the large valleys were better irrigated and slightly less hot than in the plains of Utah.

  For all those who did not continue towards the coast, this was the end of their journey. Outside the offices of mining companies, lines of men waited in the hot sun to be offered a job. Between the mines, small farms sometimes joined forces to give rise to other villages of a few families. The war was as far away from this place as it was from Lake Tahoe.

  Bowman arrived at the Sacramento River and paid for his passage on a ferry, which deposited him on the pontoon for the little town of Rio Vista. In the general store, he asked where the Fitzpatrick farm could be found. The shopkeepers explained how to
get there: it was a few miles north of here, on the banks of the river. Yes, they knew the Fitzpatricks. They came here regularly to do their shopping.

  Night was approaching. Bowman asked if he could leave something for them. He wrote a short letter and, in a knotted piece of fabric, left on the shop’s counter the photograph of Jonathan and Aileen, a razor, an embroidery and two gold wedding rings. The shopkeeper asked Bowman who he was, bringing a message for the Fitzpatricks.

  “It’s in the letter. There’s nothing else to add.”

  *

  Bowman went on his way. He rode slowly for part of the night, until he reached a forest of giant sequoias. He stopped at the foot of a tree as wide across as his log cabin, and slept for a few hours. When he woke up, he lit a fire to make some coffee. Shrouds of light fell between the trees, painting stains of light on the ground. The sergeant drank his coffee and slowly chewed some meat. The forest was like an abandoned sanctuary, guarded by motionless giants, each one a hundred and fifty feet tall, like a petrified army from an ancient myth. Bowman listened, as if he might hear the trees whispering to each other. They had been growing here together, next to each other, for centuries. They must know each other, and the idea came to him that they must have learned to communicate silently, that they were able to exchange ideas. Their bark was soft and warm. Their immobility and their imposing presence led Bowman into a slow meditation. He began to feel oppressed. The air was humid and heavy, as if there wasn’t enough of it between the massive trunks. The sequoias did not leave him enough to breathe and their high arms hid the sky above him. He put out his fire – perhaps it was disturbing them? – and got back on Walden and left the forest, taking care not to wake the giants from their sleep. Bowman felt he was being watched; his intrusion into this sanctuary was no longer tolerated.

  The next night, he slept near a little lake, and in the morning he stripped off to go for a swim. He had forgotten the smell of his body and clothes, when sweat and grime had become encrusted in his skin after days spent travelling. He thought about Aileen, about the baths he took with her in the mornings. He made his hands into the shape of a cup and filled it with water, holding his fingers tight together to hold it in. But the water trickled through the holes left by his stumps, and he was left empty-handed.

  By noon, he had reached the shores of the wide bay of San Francisco. He continued southward, on that increasingly narrow tongue of land, until, from the top of a hill, he saw the bay to his left and the ocean to his right. He decided to spend another night under the stars before crossing the last few miles that separated him from Sausalito, on the northern point of the strait, which he could see from his camp. The ocean wind brought the sound of the breaking waves to him. When night fell, he watched as San Francisco lit up on the other side of the strait. Ferries and boats wove across the bay, their lanterns advancing slowly over the black water. He lay down, facing the Pacific. The last frontier. A dead end. In his first life, Bowman had found himself on the other side of this ocean. His tour around the world was coming to an end.

  Perhaps he should have written one last letter. To Alexandra, Aileen, or Peavish. But he had nothing else to add. And the words would just kept going round in circles. He looked out at the black mass of the Pacific and the stars above: more eternal guardians, he thought, remembering the sequoias. The ancient trees knew that flight was futile. Bowman remembered already having breathed the air of this forest. On the deck of the Healing Joy, by the Burmese coast, after coming out of Wright and Cavendish’s cabin. The air of a coffin closed around him. Listening to the waves in the distance, Bowman realised that he had not passed through all these places with impunity. Each time, he had left part of himself behind, in time spent and life disappeared. Sergeant Bowman was now scattered all over the four corners of the world. There was not much of him left.

  He woke at dawn, saddled up Walden, and descended towards Sausalito.

  *

  A little fishing village on the bay, with houses on stilts and pontoons, and on the hills above, overlooking the strait, more luxurious residences, the holiday homes of wealthy San Franciscans and the first homes of a few rich citizens who preferred the peacefulness of the village to the agitation of a big town. Ferries took people to the capital, three miles away on the other side. Among these high, white houses was one, bigger than the rest, which Bowman recognised without difficulty. The first time he had seen it, in London, he had thought he was mistaken, that the house was a century old. This time it was new and it overlooked Sausalito, perched on the peak of the hill, at the end of an unpaved cul-de-sac.

  Bowman rode up to the gate of the stable. It was open. A black man was sweeping the driveway. He stopped what he was doing.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  “Is Mr Delauney there?”

  “In the house, sir. Would you like me to fetch someone?” Bowman grimaced as he climbed down from the horse. He was exhausted after days on the road, and his knees ached.

  “No need. Can you look after my horse for me?”

  The black man took Walden’s bridle. Bowman caressed the mustang’s breast and patted it gently.

  “Take good care of him.”

  “He’s a beautiful horse, sir.”

  “Yeah, he’s got a nasty temper, but I haven’t seen many as brave as him.”

  “I’ll take care of him, sir. He’ll be waiting for you here.”

  Bowman walked through the narrow garden in front of the house, reaching the main driveway that led from the entrance gates to the front door. He lifted up the knocker – a capital “D” wrought in ironwork – and let it fall. A young black woman in a servant’s outfit opened the door to him. On her cheeks, three lines of scars ran across her face. They looked like tribal incisions, but were more likely an owner’s mark or a form of punishment.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  “I’d like to see Delauney.”

  “Do you have an appointment, sir?”

  Bowman smiled.

  “Yes.”

  She moved out of the way to let him past.

  Despite the British style of architecture, the décor in the entrance hall resembled that in the Paterson ranch. Dark furniture, a mixture of the rustic and the refined. Rugs and paintings were badly arranged, and there were too many clashing colours. In various genres and formats, the canvases represented landscapes from America and from Asia, battle scenes, ships, windmills and horses.

  “What name should I announce, sir?”

  Bowman turned distractedly towards the servant.

  “Tell him it’s his old friend, Richard Kramer.”

  Bowman stayed near the door while she crossed through the entrance hall, its large glass doors opening onto a white stone terrace. She opened of one of these doors and disappeared.

  He waited next to a painting showing an Indian market, perhaps in Bombay or Madras, where the painter had obviously never been in his life. He must have worked from a photograph or someone else’s memories. Among the Hindus in turbans were a few American Indians in feather headdresses.

  The servant returned. She came to a halt a fair distance from Bowman and informed him that Mr Delauney was waiting for him on the terrace. She watched him walk past as she remained where she was in the middle of the large entrance hall. Bowman turned back to her.

  “You should leave the house.”

  She started trembling.

  “Mr Delauney already told us we should all leave.”

  “Good.”

  He walked to the glass doors and went onto the terrace. The sun glinted from the pale stone slabs. He squinted in the glare. The house’s grounds stretched out in front of him, at the foot of a short stairway. Some saplings had just been planted in a piece of land that was still without grass. At the far end of the grounds was a long, single-storey brick building, like an English cottage. The servants’ quarters.

  Bowman recognised the place, in spite of the increasingly numerous differences. Not in the design, but in the execut
ion. The recreation of the décor had doubtless proved too time-consuming for the house’s owner, as there were signs of haste and imperfections everywhere he looked. The trees were planted in a disorderly fashion, the cottage seemed too low, the windows too small.

  A metal pergola had been erected on the uneven stone slabs of the terrace. In all four corners of the terrace, climbing plants grew from earthenware pots, but they were still too young to give any shade. Bulrush reeds had been worked through the metal framework. The main house’s western façade was also a flawed copy. Whereas the original model had possessed an elegance, a refined presence, this one was austere, and its unbalanced dimensions made it look pretentious. This facsimile of a grand English residence lacked the original’s patina of years and its architectural expertise. As with the painting of the Bombay market and its American Indians, it was the fruit of a distorted reminiscence. Money and imagination had not been enough to fill the gaps in memory.

  *

  Delauney was sitting under the reeds in a wicker chair, at the end of a wooden, white-painted table, with a plate and a pitcher of alcohol in front of him. He put down his glass, removed the napkin that had been tied around his neck and put it on his legs as he watched Bowman approach.

  Bowman pulled out a chair and sat facing him, at the other end of the table.

  In the photograph printed in the newspaper, Delauney had appeared to have a round head, squeezed into a shirt buttoned up to its collar. But he still had the same square face that the sergeant remembered. The years had not left their mark on him as they had on Bowman or the preacher. His skin was still smooth, even if his hair was starting to thin at his temples.

  A man of about forty, in good health, dressed in a tailor-made white cotton suit, his shirt collar open, his hands large and strong, his little blue eyes sunken under blond eyebrows, his chin close-shaved, his lips taut and thin, his face blank. He looked at Bowman as if through a thick layer of time, his square head held slightly backward on his bull’s neck.