by Ryan Ireland
Tracking the caveman was easy enough. He lacked the cunning of most beasts the Indian had hunted over the years. Before the Indian set out, tracing the droplets of blood to their source, he ambled over to the mouth of the cavern to retrieve the rock he’d thrown. Not seeing it—for his eyes were cloudy with cataracts—he looked for any other implement he might use. He found where the throwing stone struck a stalactite, knocking it from the ceiling of the cave. Upon impact, the stone cone split laterally, creating a sharpened club. The ancient Indian took up the club, his elbow popping. He rested the weapon on his shoulder like a prehistoric Paul Bunyan.
Droplets of blood—bright against the flat stone of the ground—led the Indian to the wounded caveman. The protohuman sat on the ground, amidst his own feces, in a puddle of his own urine. He whimpered, held the side of his face and rocked back and forth. Blood matted down the fur on the back of his hand.
The old Indian squatted down to study the caveman. Only half aware of who the Indian was, the caveman peeked through his fingers at his assailant. He kept yelping, whimpering. This thing did not cry tears; it only called out in misunderstood pain. For he did not realize how imminent the danger really was.
The Indian stood, raising the stone club in the air. As he brought it down, the caveman, through some innate sensory system of danger, thrashed his arms. But it was too late. The club built too much velocity and broke on his forearm. The broken half continued on its path and bludgeoned the caveman. He fell backward, his eyes frozen in a wall-eyed fashion.
The last-second affront to the assault left the Indian sprawled out on the ground. He still held the stub of the weapon. He tried to let it go, but his hand wouldnt move. The Indian, aching more than when he first awoke, sat up. His arm dragged across the ground. Those two bones that make up the human forearm—the ulna and the radius—were snapped clean through. The skin bulged where the break occurred. Already blood pooled underneath, coloring the skin dark purple and stretching it into an unnatural sheen.
The commandante and commander met on a regular basis under amiable circumstances and conditions. They took turns inviting each other to their respective quarters. First the commander would invite the commandante to the fort. A lieutenant would show the officer to the headquarters, as it was termed.
‘New bookcase,’ the commander said as they took their seats. ‘Brought in on that wagon we found out there on the far side of the plateau.’
‘Fancy,’ the commandante said.
‘Next time we come cross a good find, we’ll move it to your office,’ the commander said. He took a green bottle and two short glasses from inside the bookcase and set them on the desk, poured some yellowed liquid into them.
‘I wouldnt want anything that nice,’ the commandante said. ‘End up getting stolen, broken.’
The commander took a sip of his drink, asked if things were really that bad on the outside.
‘Afraid so,’ the commandante said.
‘Should rein that in,’ the commander said. ‘Cant have anarchy surrounding my fort.’
The commandante looked down into his glass, swirled the beverage around into a whirlpool. ‘Thing is,’ he said, ‘think the problem might be from your fort.’
The comment took the commander aback. He gulped down the rest of his drink and refilled the glass. ‘That so?’ he asked. ‘What makes you figure?’
‘It’s the leave you give the soldiers, the freedoms. They come into the village and wreck the saloons. If they cant find a decent whore, they end up raping the girls. Lot of upset fathers out there.’
The commander nodded knowingly. He pursed his lips together after sipping at his drink. ‘You have a solution.’
‘Ive been thinking of one.’
‘I figured as much.’
‘You have to give me jurisdiction over the soldiers when theyre out in my village.’
‘That can be done.’
‘And if they commit a crime outside, I want to be able to get them after theyve gone back in the fort.’
‘Believe thats called an extradition clause.’
‘Call it what you like,’ the commandante said. ‘I need some justice to restore order.’
For a moment, the commander looked dissuaded. He took another sip of his drink, finishing this glass, then said, ‘Alright. Fine.’
iii
It took some time for the lift to descend the full length of the mineshaft. The man looked up as they descended. The stars were still blotted out by the smoke of the Indians’ fires. Around him the air grew cold and damp and smelled of dirt and lichen and sulfur. Whatever system of pulleys and ropes they used to lower the men—ten in each load—the clamoring of the metal facets ceased once they passed the halfway mark.
‘Tis a deep one,’ the cripple said, tugging at the man’s arm. ‘Dug ourselves right under hell, thats what we say. One of these days we’re goin to knock a support in place and knock the devil right off the jakes.’ He laughed at the joke, but the other men on the lift paid him no mind.
Finally the lift came to rest by a horizontal shaft. The way was lit with oil lamps backed with tin plates. The man squinted against the light. ‘Come on,’ the cripple pulled the man by the arm. ‘Got to walk from here.’
The men could walk upright, two abreast in this shaft. The floor was fairly even, the walls squared up nearly true. As they proceeded, the shaft became narrower, more stooped, and the men again fell into single file. Their path doubled back on itself and the man expected to re-enter the elevator shaft from another angle. But they did not. He conjectured after walking so far that this shaft cut underneath the lift. The oil lamps became fewer and farther between. Without question each man placed his hand on the shoulder of the man in front of him. The ceilings dropped even farther and the man readjusted his grip on the one in front of him. Now he held onto the man’s pant waistband.
The line of people slowed. This particular space allowed the men to stand. At first the man thought they had finally come to their worksite. In the dim lamplight he saw what slowed their progression. The men had come to a shaft that descended at a sharp diagonal angle. A rope ran down the shaft and the men grabbed it and backed down the shaft slowly.
‘Whatre we diggin up here?’ the man asked the cripple as they waited.
‘Nothing. Everything. We send the carts up through the vent shafts farther on. Those men get the privilege of sortin the goods.’
The man took the rope and stepped backward. He looked over his shoulder, trying to gauge how deep this shaft went. Some distance away he saw a lantern flit off and on; it was growing farther away as if he gave chase to a falling star.
Setting a bone was not a difficult task to perform on others. The Indian found it considerably more troubling to set his own bone. And seeing as he’d hurt his dominant arm, he lacked the dexterity needed for such an operation. For a while, he lay next to his slain predecessor. He thought about dying, how it might bring a closure to everything he’d seen. He thought better of it after a few minutes. Death only contributed to this world, creating yet another pocket in the earth of broken down carbons and fossilized remains. To die is to become a part of the world indefinitely. Fools will talk of achieving immortality through their works—they tell stories and create as if they were God—but in the end it all turns to dust. The places where your wondrous creations entertained others’ imaginations become hollow spaces, cavities, for the world to fester.
The Indian rolled over. He felt cold, laid on his side. He curled into the fetal position and pinned the hand of his broken arm with his knee. With his good arm he felt the break in the bones and aligned where they needed to go. He gritted his teeth and gave his body a sudden jolt. The bones in the arm shifted, locked into where they had broken. Pain seared up his arm into his head; it clouded his vision and he howled in agony. A grease of sweat rolled out across his entire body. He lay on his back, chest heaving and howling until he could not catch his breath and he chomped at the air with futile gasps.
He knew what he had to do next. He tried to clear the pain from his thoughts and concentrate on bracing his arm. He rolled back over to his good side and threw his weight forward. His vertebrae cracked as he leaned forward. He blinked a few times, breathed through his nose. After a million years of existence, he still functioned. Few things are as resilient as the human body.
He looked to the slain caveman and the shard of rock that struck the deathblow. The Indian shuffled in a hobbled crab-walk fashion to the corpse. He took up the rock and set to work on the body.
At first the commandante merely fined the soldiers who caused disturbances in the village. If they started a fight in the saloon and broke a chair and tables, they were told to pay on the spot or expected to provide restitution. In the beginning the soldiers balked at the ultimatum and went back to the haven of the fort. But the commandante pursued them, found them. The commander went with him.
‘Cant make me rightly pay,’ a soldier would say.
‘Take it right out of your wages,’ the commander said.
The commandante had another method of assuring payment. ‘Arab would pay good money to have a tuft of your ginger scalp,’ he said. ‘You pay the saloon four dollars for the furniture or I’ll take it in hair.’
The soldier paid.
‘Cant say I approve of threatenin the soldiers,’ the commander said as they walked from the fort back out into the village.
‘Take something from a man he never had,’ the commandante said. ‘That wont affect him, just feels like he never earned it. I wont take deducted wages.’
The commander weighed the logic and nodded his head. ‘Some of the soldiers feel like theyre bein cheated out here in the village. Feel like theyre bein charged higher prices because theyre soldiers with a steady wage.’
‘Hardly blame a business owner for meeting the market demands.’
The commander laughed. ‘Just think it might be best to show some gratitude for the soldier’s commitment to protectin the fort if they were a bit more reasonable in their barterin.’
The commandante weighed this statement and agreed. ‘Done,’ he said. ‘The village will treat them as one of their own.’
The commander smiled. ‘Appreciate it.’ His smile faded quickly and he confessed that affairs inside the fort were almost more than he could bear.
‘Hows that?’ the commandante asked.
‘Bein here,’ the commander said, ‘makes my men edgy. We do the excursions, sure, an they kill up a fair amount of injuns. But my numbers are dwindling, got fewer men than we came in with.’
‘I see,’ the commandante said. They walked past the Arab. ‘Ayugad ladayka seyada?’ he called out. The Arab waved and yelled back in his gibberish speech. He held up a jawbone on a leather lanyard, feathers stuck between the teeth.
The commandante responded in equal measure and laughed.
The Arab laughed in agreement. The commander, not being privy to the conversation, forced a smile.
The two officers kept walking. ‘Didnt know you spoke other languages,’ the commander said.
‘A few.’
They strolled to the commandante’s office, a cubby with a flapwood door, single latch on the outside. A thinned and scraped-down animal hide stretched over a window that set a good ten feet off the ground. They entered and sat on wooden chairs with rope backs at an old saloon table.
‘Cant offer you anything but water,’ the commandante said. ‘Dont have liquor.’
The commander took a flat bottle from inside his coat. ‘Not to worry,’ he said. ‘I got my comfort here, next to my heart.’
‘Wish I could offer a solution to your personnel shortage,’ the commandante said.
The commander threw his head back and slugged down some of the flask’s contents. ‘Could recruit from the village,’ he said.
‘You could,’ the commandante agreed. ‘Cant say many of the men would want to enlist.’
‘Might be able to contract them out so theyre not full soldiers.’
‘Make them mercenaries? Have them go out and hunt down the Indians?’
The commander shook his head. ‘I know, it’s a poor idea,’ he said. ‘Dont rightly know what to do.’
‘Want a suggestion?’
‘I would, yeah.’
The commandante leaned forward, rested his elbows on the table. ‘Have the villagers take care of the fort like they do the town.’ He held up his hand to keep the commander from interrupting. ‘You probably got fifty, hundred soldiers tied up in keeping that fort running. Let my villagers do that work and pay them well.’
‘And theyd be my men then?’
‘Its only fair,’ the commandante agreed.
Most all the young man’s meals came from scavenging. Down near the grove of saplings—what he left of the saplings after constructing the hovel—he set up snares made of baling wire and twine. He watered the mule, carried back a canteen from the stream each day. Once or twice he rode the mule out a ways, studied the horizons, listened for anything not of this place. But there was nothing.
At night he lay outside the hovel, maybe building a small fire from twigs, grass and dry mule shit. When the flames dissolved into little more than glowing coals, he looked at the sky, found Andromeda, then located Cassiopeia. She was hanging upside down, his father would have noted. He sat up, intending to change the direction he was laying; he wanted to correct Cassiopeia, set her free.
But when he sat up, he saw a light on the horizon—another fire. This one glowed large as if a pyre meant to signal an army. The young man went to his hovel and found the shiv, placed it in his trouser pocket. Then he walked south and lay in the grass, waiting for morning, waiting for whatever was out there to come.
iv
The caveman’s arm bones provided an adequate brace for the Indian’s own arm. He lashed the skeleton pieces to his own arm with braids of the caveman’s hair. He moved his arm. There was still considerable pain, but the brace of bone immobilized the broken point in the bones. It was as he had speculated—the skeleton of the protohuman, hard enough to crack the stalactite, would offer him decent protection as well as support. The Indian marveled at his own ingenuity.
Given this boost in confidence, he took the stone he’d used to sever the arm of the caveman and scrape the meat off the bones, and began cutting at the other arm. He cut the hand off at the wrist and set it aside. Then he cut the arm off at each joint, filleted the muscle. Strings of tendon clung to the osseous matter and he allowed them to stay. Stripping the body of flesh exhausted him. Blood and guts spilled out across the flat rock and he was covered in a viscera of bile and brains and sludge. He pulled the innards of the chest cavity out. When the work of emptying the gizzards from the body became too involved, he rested by using a corner of the rock to slake the skin off the severed hand.
For two days the Indian worked on the caveman’s body—removing the bones, cutting muscle and tendon, twisting the skull free of the neck bone. He stopped only briefly to eat of the only food supply available. He set back to work, strapping the wet bones to his body—femur against his thigh, ribs wrapped around the trunk of his own body. He even took the skull, now void of brains, and chipped the crown away and made a helmet out of it. He laced the vertebrae together using long sinews taken from the protohuman’s leg. It was a clumsy suit of armor, but it could take the load off his arthritic joints, relieve the ache in his bones soft and compacted with osteoporosis.
When he walked down from the mount, he carried only the lower jawbone of the caveman as a weapon. Other cavemen caught sight of him and hooted in displeasure. They ran hysterically through their horde pointing at the Indian as he approached. The bones clanked together disharmoniously. A rock flew up from the horde and was deflected by the ribcage of the armor.
The Indian paused and noted the suit’s effectiveness. Then he flung himself, jawbone raised, into the crowd with a vengeance he’d not felt since he was a young man thousands of years from now.
Come
first light, the young man assumed the hovel to be safe. Whoever was on the horizon in the night must have passed on. He walked toward the hovel.
‘Hello,’ a voice said. The young man spun around. Two men dressed in burlap sackings stood side by side. One had a stripe of a scar running the length of his neck and up into his hairline. The other used a walking stick.
‘Crept up on me,’ the young man said.
The men nodded. ‘You have eat?’ the scarred one asked. He made a motion as if feeding himself from the palm of his hand.
‘No,’ the young man said. ‘No food here. Best if you an yer brother here move long.’
‘Bitte, seine Sie gnawed if, Herr,’ the one with the stick pled. ‘Soldaten haven ins alles genomes, was wir hatten. Sie haben ins nackt zurueck glassen.’
‘Caint rightly help you,’ the young man said. He slid his hand into his pocket, grasped at the shiv. ‘Just go on and git.’
‘We coffee,’ the scarred one said. Now he made a drinking motion, his fist acting as a cup.
‘Verhoekere niche das einzige, was wir haben! Du machst einen Fehler,’ the one with the stick cried. He slapped at his companion.
‘Womit werden wir es brauen?’ the scarred one asked. He turned his attention back to the young man. ‘Please, Herr, good coffee.’
It had been some time since the young man had any coffee; since he’d smelled it. He figured the last time to be over in the bird islands, on the other side of the ocean. His father had traded a gunnysack of hogs’ feet for fifteen pounds of beans. Some of the sailors boiled the beans whole, others smashed them and boiled them. The young man’s father told him to take one bean at a time and suck on it; doing so would make it last longer and keep his piss from turning brown.
