by Ryan Ireland
A boat, as it sidled up to dock, blotted out the rising sun, making the immediate events clearer to the boy. The gangplank set down on the dock and the captain of the vessel met with the dock manager. Meanwhile the longshoremen huddled in groups. The boy watched as his father went from one group to the next, shut out of each. He went up close to the gangplank to claim the first spot in line. The manager and the father exchanged a few short words. Then, in going their own directions, the manager nodded to the old longshoreman.
Still, now with years passed and the images amplified in his mind, the man does not know why he did not call out. Yes, the sound of his voice may not have carried over the rooftops and over the din of the bustling dock workers, but at least he would have done more than witness his father’s murder. The old longshoreman stood by a feedsack from the boat, awaiting someone to help heft the other end. His father, being without company, came over to the old man.
The old man made a gesture to suggest switching places. He pointed at his lower back. The father shrugged and walked to the opposite side of the bag. He stooped to lace his hook into the burlap. In one sharp motion, the old longshoreman threaded the hook into the nape of the father’s neck. The boy saw the head spasm and fall limp when, with a final tug, the top of the backbone was ripped from the base of the skull. Another dock worker came over to the corpse and helped throw him into the water.
The boy backed off the balcony and into the room. The sounds from outside seemed to filter in more loudly than usual. In haste, the boy took the money from the crack in the wall and threw the bills into the footlocker.
The man went to the gate at the fort. He waited for a soldier to open the great wooden door, but none came. Peddlers roamed the streets, selling whistles carved from sticks. Across the way, a man called out, ‘Miracles and wonders, friends!’ The man recognized him as the medicine salesman from the day before. ‘Got one cure for everything. If you got a malady of the body, mind or soul, this here concoction is all you need…’
The man turned to the door of the fort again and pounded his fist against it.
‘Niemand dort für Sie,’ a beggar slouched by the door said.
The man only glanced at the beggar and pounded on the door again.
Then the man heard a bleating, a screech above the sounds of the village. He turned and saw the roofman riding on his mule. He pulled hard on the animal’s reins, coercing another shriek from the beast. He circled around the medicine salesman. The man turned around and pounded on the door again.
A slot opened up and a man’s face appeared in the framed opening. ‘Whaddya knockin on this door for?’
‘Want to talk with the commandante,’ the man said.
The beggar, though of a different tongue, had heard the words before and now he laughed. The soldier laughed too. ‘Sorry, partner, commandantes got a few other cards on the table right now.’
‘You there,’ the roofman called. The man spun around, thinking he must be the one being addressed. But it was not him; it was the salesman.
‘Yessir,’ the salesman said. ‘Do you care to try a spot of the medicine yourself?’
‘Ah, this should be good,’ the soldier said from behind the door. Another face crowded the opening to watch the unfoldings in the public square.
‘Dont think I want any of your nigger dust,’ the roofman said. ‘Got the niggers bein wiped out—entire villages of em—and here youre tryin to tell us this’ll save us.’
The salesman began to stammer a response.
‘Lemme ask you something,’ he said. ‘Wheres the dark boy you had with ya yesterday?’
Most everyone was quiet, the roofman commanding their attention from atop the beast.
‘Well,’ the salesman said. He licked his lips. ‘He was a-blind and I poured the medicine into his eyes—’
‘An wheres he now?’
The salesman’s voice dropped when he said the boy was dead.
From behind the door, two howls of laughter went up.
‘Dead?’ the roofman asked.
‘Yessir, when he saw the world for what it was with his very own eyes, his heart gave out,’ the salesman explained.
The roofman yawed the mule in a small circle, pulled a shiv from his vest and planted it in the temple of the salesman’s head. ‘The world,’ he announced, ‘is God’s greatest gift, right behind this life.’
The man turned back to the slot where the soldiers watched. ‘Aint you all gonna do something?’
‘Aint our call,’ one said.
‘You there,’ the roofman called. This time he pointed across the square at the man. ‘Wheres that shiv you come into town with yesterday?’
The man didnt bother searching his pockets; he turned and pounded at the door again. The sound of the hooves clopping against the dirt came on all too rapidly.
‘This man out here stole my mule!’ he called. But there was no answer.
‘Show us your pockets,’ the roofman said. He came closer.
The man’s fist was raw from slamming into the door. ‘I know bout those injuns,’ he called. ‘They followed me here.’
With that the roofman stopped approaching and the door to the fort was opened. The man dove headlong through the opening and did not look back even after the door slammed shut.
When the time came, the stranger went from one building to the next, killing the Indians in their sleep. More often than not he simply snapped their necks. He left the babies alone, letting them sleep. Only once did he wake an Indian. In one short blow, he ended the interruption. Then he went back and gathered up the babies, tossing them into a sack, then threw the bag with its contents still squirming and crying into the well. The sack floated on the scum of the well, the babies on top still alive while the ones underneath drowned.
Before the sun had risen, he’d disposed of all the corpses, leaving only the blankets and eating wares of the inhabitants. He moved those objects into the mortar pits, throwing some of the lighter livestock and some dogs in to mix the things about.
He waited a full week for the hunting party to return. There were four of them in total, each one carrying the dismembered prey he’d slain. As they approached, the stranger watched them slow, then stop, sensing something was amiss. The lead boy, a smallish one, held up one hand to his party. They waited until he entered the village. The stranger was waiting for him in the street.
The Indian boy asked where the villagers had gone. But the stranger did as was necessary and did not answer the question. He went out and met the remaining three. He killed the first two in one single action. Only the hunter boy was left. He did not tremble. And when the stranger went to shank him, the hunter boy deflected the blow with his forearm and ran past the stranger into the maze of buildings.
‘Dont think we can avoid each other,’ the stranger called out. ‘Eventually one of these alleys will bring us to each other. You’ll have to face your destiny.’ He let the echo of his voice fade and heard a skittering of feet over graveled dirt. He changed direction. ‘I knew it would be like this—just the two of us, chasing each other around a ghost town. Thats what people will call these places someday.’ He stopped and listened again, but there was nothing. ‘But you and me, we’re a lot alike—too alike.’ He laughed when he recited the old cliché: ‘This town aint big enough for the both of us.’
A sharp jolt of pain stung the stranger’s jawbone. The boy stood in a window, his arm already cocked back to throw another stone. The second stone blistered open the tight skin of the stranger’s forehead. He dove through the window. The boy was gone, crawled out through the adjacent window. The stranger, being too big to fit through the other window, ran out the door. Blood came out of his forehead in an even sheet, rolling down over his eyes. He walked one of the wider roads, out toward the edge of the village. ‘Every one you know is gone,’ he said. ‘You might as well be undone in time. This place aint a village any more.’
The boy stood by the well. He held a sharpened stick in one hand, a r
ock in the other. The stranger smiled until the pain in his jaw caused his lips to draw shut.
‘What are you making?’ the hunter boy asked.
The stranger was not surprised to hear the boy respond in a familiar tongue. It was his custom to converse in English with the villagers. He expected the laws of linguistics to hold true and for some of the boys to pick up the language. Enough time on this earth and every language becomes native.
‘You cant even imagine,’ the stranger said. ‘It’s unlike anything youve ever seen. Someday, when you see it, then you can imagine it. Thats the way imagination works.’
The boy launched the rock at the stranger. But the stranger brought one of his hands up and swatted the rock midair. They charged at one another, the hunter boy thrusting the stick into the stranger’s torso. He yowled in pain. The boy tried to pull the stick back out, but the wood had splintered inside and lodged in the ribcage. He let go and swung. His fist caught the stranger on the ear. The stranger’s head whipped around and his teeth clamped down on the hunter boy’s wrist. Now he cried out. The stranger stood, wheezing, and picked the boy up over his head. Then he tossed the boy through the animal skin cover of the well. He waited for the sound of the boy’s impact, but there was none. When he looked into the depths, there was no trace of him, just the sack of babies, and the stranger knew what had happened.
Two
i
First the man was brought before the lieutenant of the fort. Outside the main curtain wall the noises of the village surged. It seemed a controlled pandemonium. The lieutenant stood in a courtyard in front of a brick cabin with glass windows.
‘Sounds like the worlds endin out there,’ the man said.
The lieutenant looked away, squinted, said it sounds about how it usually does. Then he asked, ‘Whaddya know bout them injuns?’
The man opened his mouth to speak, but the soldier stopped him. ‘If you lied just to git in the door, we gonna throw you back out, stripped naked with oil all on your body. Let you bake in the sun. If that old sumbitch on the mule is out there he’ll make short work outta you.’
‘I wasnt lyin,’ the man said.
‘If you lyin to me just to see the ol commandante, he’ll a-sniff you out. Then youre worser off than dead.’
This time the man simply nodded. For a moment they stood, listening to the barking and bartering, the melee of the village.
‘Bout these injuns,’ the lieutenant said.
Inside his mouth, the man welled up some spit and swallowed it. He didnt want his voice to sound hoarse like those wandering desperate men who try to barter favors. ‘That sumbitch out theres ridin my mule.’
‘Dont give a goddamn.’
‘That mules my one way to get outta here. Tried to steal him from me yesterday when I first got into town.’
‘Bring up that mule again and I’m a-gonna cut out your tongue and feed it to you,’ the lieutenant said. He made eye contact with the man. ‘Brought you in here cause a the injuns. Whaddya know?’
The man swallowed again. ‘They follered me a while now,’ he said.
‘From wherebouts?’
‘Down cliffside there back a piece, an old village place—maybe their grandparents lived there or somethin.’
‘Howd they find you there?’
‘Well, they mighta been follering me before that too.’
The lieutenant spat. He didnt need to ask the next question.
‘Follered me from first mountain valley I come on when I rode in off the plains.’
By the gate of the fort, the two soldiers were opening up the slot and yowling with laughter. They took turns shoving each other out of the way and watching whatever spectacle of the streets was unfolding before their eyes.
‘You come all the way from the plains?’
‘Yessir.’
The lieutenant dragged the heel of his boot through the dirt over the stretch of spittle. ‘Problem is I dont rightly believe you.’
The man rubbed the back of his neck, shifted his weight from foot to foot. ‘It’s the truth.’
‘Whyd a sumbitch like you ride burroback into the mountains?’
‘For the century—I mean census.’
The lieutenant chuckled. ‘Alright there, pardner,’ he said. ‘I’ll be goddamned if youre a-lyin to me.’
He turned around and opened the door to the brick cabin, ushering the man to follow him.
Quite some time passed before the stranger saw anyone come near the village. Once or twice, well past dusk, when Ursa Major and Ursa Minor battled for the heavens, a fire would go alight in the dark horizon. The stranger gazed upon those encampments from afar, knowing those men huddled around the flames. They traveled together out of fear, not daring to go into these darkest of places by themselves. President Polk gave them vision, a sense of mission from his east coast house, saying this was it—this place was the destiny of the revolutionary grandchildren. A hundred years later another president would send men to the dark side of the moon, shadowed from even the glow of earthly lights. In a hundred more years, men would talk again around fires, telling stories of their grandfathers’ heroics. This is our history: periods of darkness with flares of light to gather around and build into myths.
Another time, a whole season later, two men passed on horseback. One pointed to the village, the other looked, holding a hand over his brow as if in a salute. The stranger, hidden in a tower, peeked out from a slitted window. In his mind he made a mental inventory of the buildings. Every blanket was folded, turned down. What straw he had was forked into neat piles by the stableyard. The well was now a sinkhole filled in with dirt. Any evidence of previous inhabitants was gone. After the two men rode off in the same direction whence they came, the stranger crawled out of his hiding spot, went to the shanty by the well and began digging at the floor. In his mind he calculated the folds in time, the movement of the earth’s crust—the things that would later be termed as plate tectonics. From the hole he extracted a clay pitcher. Though dusted over with age, the edges chipped and the handle long gone, it felt like it was a mere week ago he’d buried it. In a single action, he broke the pitcher and pulled out the garments from within. He beat the dust out of them until they resembled the shade of blue he recognized.
The boy took the footlocker and his father’s money down to the livery at the opposite end of town from the docks. The livery owner eyed the boy.
‘Youre the castaway,’ he said.
The boy nodded.
‘Without your pa?’
The boy didnt need to think when he said he didnt have a pa no more. Whether the livery owner understood what he meant or not wasnt apparent.
‘I got some money,’ the boy said. ‘Need a horse.’
The livery owner laughed gently, then stopped when he saw the boy pull out the stack of bills. ‘Well, I could get you a horse, sure,’ he said. ‘Just you headin out of here?’
‘Yessir.’
‘All by you lonesome?’
‘Guess so.’
The livery owner rested his knuckles on the counter and weighed a proposition in his mind before he spoke any further. He peered over the counter at the footlocker next to the boy, then examined the stack of money. ‘Tell you what, bub,’ he said. ‘Do this—go off by youself and you aint gonna be no boy. You’ll done be a young man.’ The boy liked the way that sounded. Up to this point running away was a mode of survival. But here, now, it made him into a more mature being. ‘You gonna need more than a horse.’
The boy nodded though he didnt know exactly what he was agreeing with. The livery owner said to follow him and together they went to the stables.
‘This’ll do you real fine,’ the livery owner said. He stroked the mane of a mule hitched up to a wagon. The animal seemed docile enough. The wagon was not in total disrepair. ‘Could make it quite a ways,’ the livery owner said. ‘Make it all the way to the ocean on the other side of the country, I’d wager.’
Finally the boy asked how much it wo
uld all cost.
‘Everything you got, bub. Thats the cheapest I can let it go for.’
ii
The Indian boy came to and his first breath sucked in dirt. He coughed and tried to move his arms, but they were pinned to his sides. When he tried to open his eyes, granules of dirt fell into them and he blinked rapidly to clear them from his vision. Through the tears that welled up he could see a white haze he took for daylight. Everything in his periphery was dark. He quickly assessed that the only parts of his body he could move freely were his feet. Over and over he flexed his ankles, dug his toes into the soft ground and pushed. A fraction of an inch was gained. More dirt fell into his eyes. He gasped another breath, the weight of the world literally pressing on his chest cavity. For hours he repeated the action. Toward dusk the Indian boy thought he had stopped making progress, then realized it was an illusion: with the darkening of the sky, the progress was not readily evident.
All through the night he continued to dig his toes into the ground and flex his ankles. By morning he could barely move. As the sun rose, he felt its glow warm the top of his head. That gave him motivation enough to press on. An hour later he emerged from the burrow. He collapsed on the ground and sucked in the fresh air.
In his mind, he sorted out the events. He remembered being thrown by the stranger into the well. The impact of the fall was momentary. He remembered hitting the sack full of babies and infants, hearing some abbreviated cries from the ones that managed to survive afloat in the muck.
The Indian boy figured that such a fall into a pit that no longer contained a proper liquid must have broken every bone in his body. But no bones were broken. And now that he was conscious, he was here—in a foreign place altogether. He rubbed the dirt from his eyes the best he could—for his hands were also filthy. As far as he could see in every direction there was nothing except grass. Mountains, the natural border scrawled across every sky he saw growing up, were gone.
