by Ryan Ireland
‘No,’ the lieutenant said to his fellow soldiers. ‘The commandante is more than a man.’
‘What is he?’ another asked.
‘Cant rightly say. Whatever he is though, he dont die.’
Whatever acts the commandante had committed in his lifetime became amplified in the recounting. As the men drank and talked, they built a new image of their slain leader. In doing so, they sanctified what he did and hallowed the places he occupied. Years later, men would do the same to the likes of Custer and Jackson—great men known for attempted genocide. Years earlier entire nations were wiped out by heroes like Cortés and Pizarro. They were beatified by history and elevated into a status of savior.
The office was as the stranger had imagined it. What little light there was came from starlight radiating in through the windows. The stranger circled the desk and sat in the chair. He opened the drawer with the keys and took them out. Then he turned to the glass-doored bookcase and unlocked it. His fingers ran along the cloth bindings of the books and stopped on a wide-spined tome without a label.
He pulled the book from the shelf and laid it on the desk with a dull thump. His eyes adjusted to the dark and he could see there was nothing written in the way of a title. Digging his fingernails into the stack of pages, he opened the book and found nothing. The center of the pages had been cut out to accommodate something. Whatever it had been, it was gone now. He swore to himself. For some time he just stood, leaning, hands flat on the desktop, staring down into the vacant sockets of this book.
Then, as metanoias happen, he came to understand what had been set before him. He stood up straight, rolled up the sleeve of his shirt and reached down into the hollowed space of the book. Inside it was cool and damp. He reached in farther, past his elbow. He stifled a burst of laughter and thrust his arm deeper, until his ear pressed against the desktop. He strained his arm and stretched his fingertips. In his mind, he imagined what artifacts of the world the commandante created he might find. He felt something soft, almost furry. He pinched part of it between his index and middle finger and pulled it from the book.
He set the dead bird on the desk. It was half decayed. For a moment, he stared blankly at it. Then his shoulders began to shake. Hiccups of laughter spilled out and soon his whole body shook.
He reshelved the book, locked the cabinet, and put the lanyards of keys around his neck. All these worlds, all these places that all of him had been to, were so beautiful he could hardly contain himself.
The man thought what he might say to his woman when he saw her again. He practiced words over and over again. Knowing that she understood little of his language, the man practiced what he would do with his hands, where he would direct his eyes. He spoke out loud and practiced his intonation.
‘I done been round the world,’ he said. ‘The only place worth comin back to was you.’ He thought he would take her hand, squeeze it. If she understood, she would lean in and kiss him.
He stumbled over some loose stones that made for poor footing. After a few more steps he said, ‘I wont ever leave you again.’ The echo of his voice resounded in resoluteness.
He tripped again and noticed the footing here was different than it had been. The clamor and scattering of stones was not present. He reached down and felt something cold and wet. What light there was barely exposed the vestiges of a miner, the wet flaps of skin and scalp. Nearby a wooden beam was splintered so the end flared out like the bristles of a broom. Bones and hair tangled in the fibers. The man vomited on the remains. He apologized, shook his head and staggered on.
He came around a bend and the light amplified. He squinted and his head pulsated in response to the surge of brightness. After letting his eyes adjust, he opened them and realized he stood at the bottom of the lift shaft. Ropes and timbers, bodies and rags of clothing littered the shaft. At the top the scaffolding obscured most of the daylight beyond. What shafts of light that did appear cut through the dust and vapor. It looked like the man could reach out and grab a hold of one.
‘I wanted to give up,’ the man said. ‘Wanted to lay down an die. But then I’d think of you. I’d keep on goin.’ He imagined the woman would understand, tears might well up in her eyes and she would say something back, letting it tumble out in that Mexicano language of hers.
He grabbed a rope that dangled from a beam about fifty feet up. He placed his foot into a pocket in the rock. He began climbing. He used the ropes and supports. Once or twice he trusted an unsturdy foothold and nearly fell. After he ascended a couple hundred feet, he wanted to stop. His shoulders ached from being raised for so long. His fingers cramped and went numb. The closer he got to the surface, the colder it became. At one point, he highstepped his foot up onto a beam that stretched from one side of the shaft to the other. He shoved all his weight onto the booted foot and heard the nail pop through the sole before he felt the blister of pain. He howled in agony. But he had already begun this motion and he shifted the rest of his weight forward, the nail remaining stationary while his foot shifted forward.
Once he had enough support, he lifted his foot off the nail, the thin sole of the boot now greased with blood squeaked as it slid free of the nail. The man looked down, but he could see nothing. Wherever the bottom was no longer mattered. He knew the fall would kill him.
He kept climbing, the wound in his foot throbbing. He came to a point where there were no longer handholds—not a rope or beam—just a sheer face of rock for a good ten feet. The man craned his head round, saw a metal rod with a pulley on the end sticking out of the wall. He summoned up what strength he could and lunged for it.
He caught himself, wrapping one arm around the rod. The metal cut into the soft skin of his armpit. His feet dangled freely for a moment. He kicked. The toes of the boot scraped against the wall and eventually caught on something to help propel him farther up. So the climbing went for the next couple hours.
The man reached the clutter of the collapsed scaffolds at the mouth of the shaft when the daylight had begun to fade. He pushed up through the boards and beams of the fallen structure, sliding a planked tress aside. At last he was free of the mine. The fort looked different than the man remembered it. He stumbled off the heap of broken frames and stood staring back at some spectators. He opened his mouth to say something, but only a hoarse whisper came out. Then he collapsed.
Two
i
At first the soldiers—and the few miners who hadnt entered the mine when it collapsed—wanted a leader. Without any real consideration, they appointed the stranger, the folk hero and savior of Fort James. He resisted the private offers of leadership from the lieutenant, the subsequent offers from the sergeants. By default the men listened to each other in ranks. Only a few resisted.
Despite this return to militaristic order, the stranger remained the dominant force of reason in the fort. When he spoke—usually over drinks at the saloon—the men listened and his words became law. In rebuffing yet another offer to act as the lord over their desert manor, the stranger addressed the crowd in the saloon.
‘Why would I want to lead you?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘I have no power, no responsibility to anyone except myself. It’s a good life.’
‘Give you anything you want,’ a drunken soldier said.
The stranger shook his head and raised a finger. ‘Right now I can have anything I want. Empower me and then you’ll scrutinize everything I do.’ The drunk soldier raised his cup in a toast of agreement and began jabbering at another soldier. The stranger looked around the saloon. Men danced on the tables, lay on the floor. A couple old timers—miners who never considered fleeing the Indian attack—aggregated in the corner. One soldier in the center of the room rested his forehead on a table and vomited on the floor. Two more men stood behind the counter of the saloon skinning a jackrabbit with a dirk. ‘You all look like a bunch of goddamned prisoners anyhow,’ the stranger said.
The few men in proximity heard what the stranger said and they set down their drinks, ce
ased their conversation. The stranger repeated himself and more fell silent at the words. Soon all but a few men stared at the stranger.
‘Look to be a jailhouse,’ he said. ‘All you wearing the same color, taking orders and staying bound to a single place.’ He shook his head, remarked that it was sad. ‘Owning this world means you make up your own code and live by it.’
‘Truest damn thing I ever heard,’ a young soldier said. He patted the stranger on the shoulder and raised his cup. A murmur of agreement spread through the saloon.
‘Dont pretend to agree,’ the stranger said. ‘Not while youre all dressed in the same garb. Stop being soldiers.’
The young soldier pulled his navy blue coat off, then stood on the bench and ripped the gold stripe from the side of his pants. The other men in the saloon cheered and began to disrobe. Some of the men stripped down to their skivvies. Others ripped the sleeves from their jackets and pieced out their uniforms, traded one man’s kerchief for another’s belt. One man dropped his pants and underwear and began masturbating. A few men hooted and watched intently until a former officer broke a bottle over his head and he fell naked and bloodied to the floor.
‘Lets burn the rags!’ a man yelled. And the men with a gathered heap of clothes went out to the courtyard. The moon above was big and jaundiced as if it reflected the flames of the burning clothes. The men danced around the fire until the moon disappeared and the sun broke over the horizon.
Some men slept on the ground, despite the patches of snow and the early low-hanging bands of fog. The sun already reached its apex and began falling by the time some of the men started to stir.
One roused and stood, his head still heavy with ache. ‘Look there,’ he said to his comrade. He pointed toward the scraps of scaffold. Some pieces of wood shifted and a man emerged. However haggard these former soldiers were, they remained in fine shape compared to this newcomer. The man who emerged from the hole looked as if he might say something, but then fell to the ground unconscious.
Before he woke the man dreamt of his woman again. He dreamt that he walked a path of tiled stones back to the hovel. For miles out to each side, great sleek-looking structures sat on parcels of green land. The windows of each home had glass and walls of brick. They all had doors with locks. It was a strange place. Out in the distance he could see his woman. She was in the middle of a wide path. The path was made of billions of stones pressed together and coated in tar. Markings like Indian war paint decorated the path. As he came closer to the hovel and his woman, he noticed it was located in intersection with another pathway. Above the misshapen tent and frame a yellow light suspended from wire blinked on and off. The woman went about cleaning the hovel.
The man kept walking on the sidewalks, his gait building to a steady trot. On the adjacent running road he spied a vehicle of sorts barreling down it. Exhaust streamed out of a stack in the top.
‘Es mi único amor en esta vida,’ he shouted, though his waking self would never know what these words meant.
The woman appeared to be deaf to his shouting and the truck plowed over the hovel with her inside.
The man started awake.
‘Thought you’d never come to,’ a voice said.
The man blinked rapidly until his vision cleared and he saw a face staring down on him.
‘Tended to the horses, when we still had some. Castrated a few. That makes me the closest thing to a doctor round here,’ he said.
‘I’m at Fort James,’ the man said.
‘Fraid so,’ the doctor said. He changed a compress on the man’s head. ‘Been watchin you for a day now. Bossman wanted me to tend to ya. Said it was a goddamned miracle you survived like you did.’
‘The injuns,’ the man said.
‘Theyre all dead,’ the doctor said, said it was thanks to the bossman. ‘Mean sumbitch he is, smart too.’
‘The commandante?’
The doctor snickered. ‘Commandantes been dead now,’ he said. ‘This bossman is someone else entirely… Miracle you made it like you did.’
‘Whos in charge then?’ the man asked.
‘No one,’ the doctor said. ‘Aint no one in charge. Bossman refuses to be the boss.’
ii
In two days’ time the man sallied forth from the doctor’s quarters. He went out into the courtyard of the fort and looked around. His breath was a vapor cloud. Piles of wetted snow huddled in shadowed places. Where the wall had fallen, snow dappled the rubble. What was once the village looked to be the ruins of a long forgotten civilization. The doctor had followed him outside.
‘Got your strength back?’
‘Yessir.’
‘Good. Hate to say it, but I aint a goodwill worker. Used to getting paid.’
The man dragged the toe of his boot through the dirt. ‘I owe ya then?’
But the doctor replied with a no sir, said the bossman ordered him to do it. ‘Besides you dont got money on ya. I checked your pockets when I took ya in.’
The man understood. Nothing in this world is free. In this case the cost was a horse doctor searching his pockets. ‘How long was I out?’ the man asked.
‘Been sleepin now for a day, day an a half. On an off.’
‘No.’ The man shook his head once. ‘The snow, the cold. How long was I down in the cave?’
‘You probably know better than anyone else. When you go in there?’
The man let a sustained pause in the conversation take place to see if the doctor was funning him or if he really was a dunce. Finally he said it was when the mine collapsed; he’d been trapped when the injuns attacked.
‘Fine then,’ the doctor said. ‘If you is a looter, jus say so. Dont give me some made up story.’
‘I went down on the lift, went to where—’
The doctor walked away.
As the sun rose up farther, the earth warmed. Shadows not shaped as they had been before betrayed the snows that hid. In some spots the snow melted away altogether. Perhaps he had not been down in the mines that long, the man thought. Cold snaps happen. He came around the corner of a building and found a group of men sleeping on the ground. A few of them groused and stirred in the early morning sunlight. One such sleeper’s eyelids barely opened. ‘Whatre you lookin for?’ he asked.
‘Wantin to know whos in charge here,’ the man said.
‘No one.’
‘Got to be someone. What about the census?’
The sleeper grunted and rolled over. The man walked on and came to the bunkhouse. A skinny fellow lay on the stairs leading up to the entrance, his head pillowed on his folded arms.
‘Cuse me,’ the man said. He tossled the skinny fellow by the shoulder. The body slumped over and the shirt opened. An entire side of the fellow was black and shiny, bruised from neck to waist. The man put his hand on the man’s sternum and he felt nothing in the way of life. He stepped over the body and into the bunkhouse.
The fire in the pan at the other end of the house had gone out. It smelled musty in here now. Surprisingly only a few of the bunks were filled. He could see his bunk, saw someone sleeping there, laying on his back like he fell to sleep studying the stars.
‘Anyone here wake yet?’ the man asked.
‘Wasnt til you open yer yawp.’
In the dark another added he would close up the man’s mouth with a couple timber nails—put them right through his lips.
‘Just late in the morn,’ the man said. ‘Figured I might find someone—’
‘Found some men who’ll cut the voicebox right outta yer throat if you keep it up.’
The man backed out of the bunkhouse, nearly tripping over the limp body of the skinny fellow. He went back around to the courtyard. A few men had finally risen, milled about. Then the man walked to the office.
The stranger lay in the bunk. In his mind he repeated what the man had asked: Is anyone here wake yet? He slowed the words down, broke them apart and listened to how the man’s voice wavered when he spoke. In his mind he could see the events
leading up to the question—the man talking to the sleeper, finding the skinny fellow. The stranger then could see how the skinny fellow died too; he could see his childhood, conception and birth.
The man had backed out of the bunkhouse. The stranger thought of those footsteps, tentative and small. He plotted them as men would plot points on a map and figured a course. As the man walked back across the courtyard, the stranger saw what he did.
He could see what the man saw at this moment. The office was as the man had last seen it, only dark now without the wall sconces lit. Again the man called out in a child’s voice, asked if anyone was here. When no reply came, he went into the office. It looked as if the commandante was still here, maintaining this place. The man went to the desk and examined the papers scattered thereabout. Circling around the desk, he tried the doors to the bookcase. They were locked. He looked through the glass at the spines of the books. Then he saw it—the census book. If he could just write his name—any name in there. He rattled the knobs of the bookcase doors and sighed.
He searched through the drawers of the desk and under the desk, but found no keys. The man took a stack of papers from the desk and held them flat to the glass of the bookcase, then punched it. The glass pane popped and broke. Carefully, the man pulled out the remaining shards. He tried to reach in and pull out the giant book, but found that breaking one pane would not suffice.
When the stranger witnessed, through the man’s eyes, his struggle to obtain the book, he sat up in the bunk. This must not happen. Since he slept in his clothes, he neednt dress and he stalked out of the bunkhouse, trooping over the body of the skinny fellow. At first he walked briskly, then he flat out ran. He threw open the door of the office and made his way inside.
The man was already gone. Shards of glass lay on the floor. The giant book lay open on the desk, the hollowed pages exposed. He noticed droplets of water soaked into some of the papers. He touched the spots and closed his eyes, trying to extrapolate the events from the evidence. But there was nothing he could see; this book had opened up too many possibilities. Then he noticed something shiny—a copper disc on the floor. He picked it up, examined the coin in the low light. On one side there was a profile of a man who was not yet president, just a fellow building log cabins. The reverse side had two shafts of wheat, the words one penny inscribed between them.
