by Ryan Ireland
‘Alright,’ the young man said. ‘Yeah. Lets see the coffee.’ He nodded so the men knew what he meant.
‘Ja gut,’ the scarred one said. ‘Good.’ He reached into a sack slung across his back and pulled out a white bag, smelled it and closed his eyes. He staggered forward to hand it to the young man.
‘Set it down,’ the young man said. He pulled out the shiv and menaced the visitors. The scarred man dropped the bag and backed away.
‘Nein,’ the one with the walking stick cried. ‘Das ist alles, was wir haben.’ The rest of what he said became lost in sobs.
The young man edged forward, the shiv extended in front of him. He crouched and picked up the sack. Holding it to his nose, he inhaled deeply. The coffee might have been a little old, but it still had an aroma that reminded the young man of civilized places.
‘Food,’ the scarred one pled again. He placed his hands over his stomach and began to cry. ‘Vor einer Woche haben wir mien Pferd des Fleisches wegen getoetet,’ he said between sobs. ‘Schönes Ding. Ein weißer Hengst.’
The man with the walking stick sat down in the grass, his legs stretched out in front of him. He sat and stared at his feet. ‘Vielleicht wird er sich unserer erbarmen, wenn wir tot Sind, und uns begraben,’ he muttered.
At that moment, the young man realized the error in his thinking. If he simply stole from these men who had nothing to lose, they would have no issue with returning later to kill him. They thought he was hoarding food, eating well. They must have not seen his mule by the stream and when they did there would be little to keep them from taking it. The young man pocketed his shiv. ‘Alright,’ he sighed. ‘I got enough wood to build a fire, boil us up some leather straps. Give you somethin to gnaw on at least. Then you go north.’ He pointed and repeated the word north.
That evening the young man took some of the reins he’d cut from the wagon and boiled them with grass and leaves. They each held a strap, sucking and chewing on it. The guests, wherever theyd come from, had not been on their own for long, and they would die soon enough. It was as the stranger would say in a couple months’ time: this place is hard country.
‘Coffee?’ the scarred man asked.
The young man laughed and wagged his finger. ‘Clever prick, aint you?’ he asked. ‘No. No coffee for either of youse. Done traded for it an I aint sharin.’
The lame man was already asleep, the wad of leather in his cheek, a hand over his belly. Not long after, the scarred one also fell to sleep. The young man lay across the doorway of his hovel, hoping that the beggars passing one way or the other might disturb him into wakefulness. He fell to sleep, his hand gripped around the shiv.
In his dreams, he was in a darker place than he’d ever been—a cave of some kind, a manmade cave. He was far from alone. In the shadows, men toiled away, hauling buckets of rocks and lengths of lumber in. An old man, a cripple, took him by the hand and led him ever deeper into the mineshaft. They passed oil lamps, which brightened the shaft for a minute’s time. Then all went black until they came upon the next light. They traveled in this fashion—an alternating of light and dark—for a long ways. All the while the cold and damp of the mine became more pervasive.
‘We all the way down here in the bowels of the mine,’ the cripple explained. ‘Dig, dig, dig. Thats what the commandante wants. Drought? Dig. Niggers on the horizon? Dig. Always digging.’ The cripple took a lantern from a cross beam and when they came to an intersection of shafts they went into the darkest one. The cripple stopped briefly and held the lantern to illuminate a pile of tools on the floor.
‘Grab yerself a spud bar,’ he said. The man did as he was told and hefted up the iron rod. It was a simple instrument, three feet long with a flat end and a beveled end. The cripple grabbed a sledge hammer leaned up against the wall. ‘First ones in this part of the shaft today,’ the cripple said. ‘Means we get first pick where to dig.’
He set the lantern down and wandered a short distance to where rocks and boulders cluttered the tunnel.
‘Looks to’ve fallen in,’ the man said. ‘Caint say I want to dig there.’
‘This shaft,’ the cripple said, ‘aint ours. Go through here an we’re in a different place altogether.’ He chuckled and his laughter echoed in the shaft. ‘Come now,’ he said. ‘We have work to do.’
It didnt take long for the commander to summon the commandante to his office. He appeared more haggard than a few days before, when the commandante last saw him. Bags were under his eyes, his hair and uniform unkempt.
‘Your men,’ he began. Then he paused and uncorked a bottle, held the bottle at ready. ‘Dont know a goddamned lick of English.’ He drank.
The commandante nodded. ‘It’s a common thing out in the village. We got all types out there. They speak a common language though.’
‘An whats that?’
‘Barter. Money. Trading—whatever means they have to survive.’
The commander sniffed. Set the bottle down. It was mostly empty now. ‘Money,’ he said to himself, then directed his gaze at the commandante. ‘And whats this bout chargin my men a tax?’
The commandante feigned a moment’s worth of confusion. ‘Thought we had agreed to treat your soldiers like my villagers. Remember, they were being charged an exorbitant—’
‘I recall,’ the commander interrupted. ‘What I dont rightly remember is you addin a tax.’
‘It’s what the villagers pay.’
Leaning forward on the desk, the commander asked what happened to the villagers who welched on the tax.
‘It’s a loss in revenue,’ the commandante explained calmly. ‘As the officer of the village, I have to collect on the loss. I send the people to the Arab. He takes what he thinks is fair.’
The commander slugged back the last of the bottle’s contents. ‘Explain that part,’ he said. ‘About the Arab. Tell me why he cut the heart out of one of my men for failing to pay a tax he didnt know existed.’
‘That soldier was a half breed. Part Mexicano. A Mexican dried heart on a chain is said to be good luck.’
For a time, the two men sat quietly—the commander staring at the floor, his eyes bloodshot, beads of sweat rolling down the back of his neck, dark spots under his arms. The commandante watched. Often times, and usually at death, people speak of plans. They saw whatever happened, no matter how heinous, that it was part of some otherworldly schema. The commandante could have lied, said it was part of some plan. The truth was worse though—this was simply the way of the world.
‘Probably could have saved your man if you spoke either language,’ the commandante said.
‘You speak the Arab’s language,’ the commander said. ‘And it aint savin him.’
‘Hows that?’
The commander smiled. ‘Soon as you stepped in here my men—the ones who speak English—cut that Arabian nigger to pieces.’
The commandante was not surprised. He raised his eyebrows and sighed. ‘I didnt come in here looking to start a war,’ he said. ‘I think it might be best to say we reached a balance.’
‘You plannin on lifting the taxes on my men?’
‘No,’ the commandante said. Then he asked how the commander planned to talk to his civilian workers.
‘Maybe I should talk with them through money,’ he said. ‘It is their common language.’
The commandante feigned amusement. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘But if you wanted to sidestep the payment part, I could speak to them.’
‘Know ever tongue of ever man in the village, do ya?’
‘Yes.’
As he opened the side drawer of the desk, the commander did not take his eyes off the commandante. He pulled out another small glass flask. This one only had a couple fingers of liquid in the bottom. A drag of backwash hung suspended in the alcohol. He waited a good long time, studying the commandante. He swigged down the alcohol.
‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Suppose your jurisdiction will expand since youre interpreting for my troops.’
&nbs
p; ‘It would make sense.’
Under his breath, the commander cussed.
The commandante interrupted. ‘Place like this cant have two minds—cant be two things,’ he said. ‘Let me give out the orders over all of the fort and I’ll make certain theyre your commands.’ He placed a hand over his heart. ‘Be your words spoken through me.’
Conversation had worn on the commander, he slumped forward in the chair as if fending off sleep. From around his neck, he pulled at a lanyard. There was a key on it. He unlocked another desk drawer, took out a box and used another key to unlock it. He pulled out the pistol. ‘Know what this is, dont you?’ He pointed it at the commandante.
‘I do.’
‘Got this from a general at the fort before we were sent out,’ he said. ‘Only one in the whole company with a gun. Armys going to issuin a gun to each soldier. We were told to pick up rifles at a place up north, a big fort with plenty a rations.’
The commandante shifted in his seat. ‘Suppose you have one gun,’ he said. He made a gesture like he held an insect between his thumb and forefinger. ‘You take it out of the box, it’s the same as firing a bullet. Everything happens so fast you cant possibly chase it down, cant put a bullet back in the chamber.’
‘Aint gonna want to take my bullets back,’ the commander said. He put the gun back in the box, the box back in the drawer. ‘Just remember when youre speakin for me, who has got the power.’
v
Anything that resembled a human, the Indian laid waste to. He found families huddled in caves and set a fire at the mouth. If they ran through the flames and smoke, he cut them down with the sharpened jawbone. From a mountain ledge he watched nomads pass by; then he dropped rocks on them, watched their bodies buckle and fall.
Every few years he stopped and made repairs to his suit, tightened the bones fast to his skin. Any hair he had prior to the suit was now worn away. He took strips of hide and made intricate coverings for his hands, a chin strap for the skull cap. Neanderthals saw him coming and they either ran and hid or hooted, fists pumping in the air. The Indian slayed them with indifference. He wandered to one side of the known world and looked out on the black and tumbling sea, mist flying up the air. Far out a whale curled to the ocean surface and spewed a plume of water into the air. The Indian picked up handfuls of sand and let it run through his knotted knuckles. Then he walked back through the mountains where someday strip mines would peel away the countryside. He went through a pass not yet discovered by Lewis and Clark and wandered deep into a murk of forest and glade. Alligators, bigger than any man, wagged through the swamps, slept half submerged. When one reared up at the Indian, its mouth scissoring open, he moved swiftly to one side and brought his jawbone dagger down through the animal’s eye. He paused for a day and extracted the teeth from the alligator, strung them with a strip of its hide and wore them across his chest like a bandolier.
Ever farther west, he encountered great wooled tusked beasts that trundled through drifts of snow. He watched the Neanderthals attack in packs and wrestle them to the ground, hacking at the baying beasts with clubs and spears. They pulled the muscle out from under the fur and ate it while the animal still writhed. When the Neanderthals were finished, the Indian killed the hunters as they had killed their prey.
He came to an edge of the plains fenced in by mountains that jutted from the earth with sharp fury. Instead of walking into their depths, he turned and walked their length, keeping them in the periphery of his right eye. The farther he traveled, the warmer it became. He ate scant meals of whatever he could find—insects and cobwebs, leaves and compost. He did not stop to defecate, preferring to shit as he walked. For weeks he did not sleep, progressing through night and day alike. Above him the sky spun like a pinwheel out of control—stars rotating and moving, swarms of stray stars streaking across the night, the sun blazing away on the same terminal path day after day.
The mountain range merged with his path and he climbed hills populated with conifers. As he walked, he pulled the pinecones from the boughs and licked the sap from the barbs. What few humans he saw here he also killed, in one fashion or another. Some time later he camped in the woods, made a territory for himself. He wandered there a good many years, waiting for a proper man to appear, waiting for the stranger to come. He took bundles of sticks and sharpened the ends, made a fence of pylons to ensnare a hasty invader. But none came. He constructed perches in the highest trees so he could see out for miles in each direction. Still there was nothing. Eventually he came to expect his body to give out. No body—even with a suit of human bones—is expected to last a billion years. He lay in his encampment, letting the moss grow around him, letting his body sink interminably into the topsoil. He closed his eyes like the stranger would so many years from now in his mineshaft bed. He tried to think of another lifetime before this one. But he could not; his own life covered everything now.
A screech pierced the night and the Indian opened his eyes. The sky, more than ever, swarmed with flitting fleeing stars. Close on the horizon a concussion arose and the sky went awash in what looked like a sustained flash of lightning. Trees blew over and the forest rumbled. The Indian pulled himself up from the soil and ran toward the source of the pandemonium. He ran through trees that stood like pillars of fire. Flames reached out and lashed at his skin. His skin melted and fused with the bone suit. He sloshed through a steaming creek, dead fish floating atop the bubbling water. The hillside he climbed on all fours felt as if the soil had been tilled and left to dry. When he reached the top of the bluff he looked down into a crater as big as the base of any mountain. Screams seared from the center of a giant hole, a ring of fire belted out in every direction. Other meteors pelted the distant skies. The immense heat from the center of the hole radiated the Indian’s body, blistering his skin and shriveling his nipples and penis into nothing. What hair he still had—his eyelashes and pubis—turned to cinder. The constant rush of wind and sirens of heat deafened him. His eyes felt roughened as if sand was thrown into them. This, he imagined, is what it is like to watch the world end. In the recesses of his mind, he compared this to his childhood and knew that no, this was not the end of the world; this was the beginning of the modern era. He dropped the jawbone dagger, backed up and ran headlong, leaping into the crater.
The young man awoke before the beggars. He rifled through their burlap sacks and found nothing except a lock of hair and a child’s shoe. When they finally awoke a couple hours later he told them to go. ‘North,’ he said and pointed. He signaled they would find food out that way. ‘Lots a food,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ the scarred man said over and over again. They took their sacks and tottered off into the north country.
The young man resumed his daily rituals of checking snares and gathering mule dung. He practiced throwing rocks he had pulled from the river at birds. More often than not he hit the fowl. He rode his mule up the slough to the south and let it graze while he scanned the horizon. Weeks passed without incident.
One day on his return trip from the slough, he came to a creek, where he hitched his mule. Several burros drank from the creek, a dark-skinned man with a mustache stood next to them.
‘Hola,’ he said and smiled.
The young man slowed his step and looked at each of the Mexican’s animals. Their backs were piled high with bundles and wicker baskets. ‘Afternoon,’ the young man said.
‘Vimos a tu casa arriba,’ the Mexican said. He pointed north, toward the man’s hovel. ‘Varios hombres—uno débil—dijo que venga aquí.’
A few wagons trundled in on the horizon with more Mexicans. They had dogs. A few women, clad in rags, rode on the back of one of the wagons. When they saw the creek, they jumped down and ran to the water. One stripped down to nothing and jumped into the stream, screaming. Another did not move from the wagon. ‘¿Usted piensa que ellas nos traerán a un buen precio?’ He raised his eyebrows at the young man. When one of the women stood, he groped at her breast, said bien over a
nd over.
‘Yeah,’ the young man agreed. ‘Bien.’
‘Le daré una de mis mujeres aquí,’ the Mexican said. ‘Si usted nos da comida.’ He made the familiar eating motion.
‘Aint got any food.’
‘¿No hay comida?’
‘None.’
The last woman finally slid from the wagon and began to waddle over to the creek. She was with child. A couple wagon hands chided her, followed her, exaggerating her gait. One man spat on her. She came to creekside and bent with great difficulty to drink. ‘Esta cabrona se lo dió a un hombre gratis,’ the Mexican said. He made a motion like he was humping the air. ‘Le digo a mis mujeres que chupan a los hombres. Pero ella lo hizo entre sus piernas.’ He looked down on her with contempt.
The woman cupped her hand and slurped up some water. She rubbed her face. One of the other women sat next to her and felt her swollen belly. The young man studied her. ‘What’ll you do with her?’ he asked, pointing to the pregnant woman.
‘La perra está dañada,’ the Mexican said. He made a face like he ate something bad. Then he smiled. ‘Pero todavía funciona la boca.’ He made a motion like he was performing fellatio. He laughed.
The woman heard the words and understood them, but she continued washing her arms in the stream. A couple tears rolled down her cheeks. The young man, even confronted with the nude whore bathing in front of him, could not look away from the pregnant woman. ‘I’ll give you food,’ the young man said. He did not take his eyes off the woman. ‘I have meat and roots—I could make a stew. Have some coffee too.’
‘¿El café?’ the Mexican asked. He smiled, then his eyes sharpened. ¿Qué desea usted?’
‘I just want her to stay here with me,’ the young man pointed to the pregnant woman. ‘This is a better place for her—better place for a child.’
