by Ryan Ireland
iii
After the man opened the book and found the pages hollowed out, he stood, much like the stranger had: hands on the table leaning over the void of text. For all the man in his limited wisdom knew, this was the only record he could have of his existence. He thought momentarily of his woman, of the baby she must have birthed by now. He grabbed the book by the cover and flung it shut. As he did so, a couple objects flew out. A spittle of water dotted the desk.
His curiosity was roused and he located the objects that seemed to just materialize from the book. They were coins. He gathered them in his hand hurriedly. They were cold and wet, smelled of chlorine and fluoride. Men would kill for money. He put them into his pocket and ran from the office with his new-found fortune.
By now many of the fort’s inhabitants were up and moving. They acknowledged each other with nods and grunts. The man walked with his hands stuffed deep in his pockets to keep the coins from clinking together. Without a task being assigned to him, the man did not know what to do with himself. Most of the other men also seemed to have this problem. They gathered in groups and talked. One fellow upon awakening swore, stood up and urinated on his still slumbering companion. Those who were already awake howled with laughter. The incident of course turned into a fistfight that ceased only when both parties were properly bloodied.
The man continued on, walking behind a building. Finding a private place was proving difficult. Everything here—including the jakes—was communal. Without boundaries each man kept an eye on the other.
‘Hey,’ a voice called. The man turned and saw a big man stalking toward him. ‘You the pile a horse shit that come into the bunks this mornin?’
The man kept his hand in his pocket and gave a single nod.
‘What you run outta words now? Use em all up by the time the sun done rose.’
‘Sorry,’ the man said. ‘Just wonderin who was in charge a this place.’
The big man blinked, then leaned back. ‘You the fella who come up outta the mine a couple days back?’
‘I am, yeah.’
The big man nodded. ‘Maybe you aint familiar with this place. I’ll give you a pass this time. But next time you come into the bunkhouse with questions when we’re still sleepin, I’ll rip your head off.’ He didnt wait for the man to respond, he stalked off after another man and began berating him.
Suddenly it occurred to the man that if this fellow was up and about, there was a good chance the bunkhouse would be vacant. He started back across the courtyard, walking as fast as he could with his hands in his pockets. Before entering the bunkhouse he looked left, then right, stepped over the skinny fellow.
As he thought, the inside was vacant. He went down to his bunk and sat on the bottom, where the cripple used to sleep. He sat facing the door and took the coins out of his pocket. It was dim in here, but there was enough light filtering in through fissures in the structure so he could examine the coins. He held one up and turned it. The edge had tiny grooves; the front had an embossed portrait of a man. On the reverse side an eagle with its wings spread. Another had a man with a winged helmet, a pillar and a bush on the other side.
He sifted through the coins—just shy of a dozen of them—and found one with an Indian one side, a buffalo on another. Another piece of the same denomination had an anglo man’s countenance. On its opposing side a set of two hands clasped in a symbol of brotherhood, a set of tools crossed above them like the bones of a jolly roger. Wherever these coins had come from, the man figured it must be a place quite unlike any he’d ever seen.
The stranger emerged from the office and paused on the front step. He looked out over his creation—the fort with the collapsed scaffold heap, the fallen wall that opened up into the rubbled village. He’d remembered telling himself long ago that the world was a beautiful place. If only he knew now what his other self had known then.
It was in the moment when he touched the coin, picked it up off the floor. He knew of the children, who believed in the myth. ‘Stand with your back to the well,’ a grandparent would say. ‘Close your eyes. Think of a wish. Now toss the coin in!’ And he thought the thoughts of the children: the anxiety of moving into a new home, the desire to own new things, the wish to be somebody else entirely.
These were the issues solved with loose change.
The stranger chuckled to himself. He thought of the legends about paying a boatman in the land of the dead. He thought of the Irish family begging for two coins to cover their child’s eyes. Magicians who, through sleight of hand, could make the coin vanish, then seemingly reappear. He paused, gauged the sun—now past peak in the sky. Night fell earlier and dusk would settle in a few hours’ time. He figured the path of the man in his head and decided on the intersection point. Then he walked to the saloon.
Three
i
The man went into the saloon—a place with cracked adobe walls, open windows and filled with long plank wood tables. When he came through the door, the man stopped and looked about the room. Small groups dotted the floor. Some groups kept talking without paying the man any mind. At least one other group ceased their conversation momentarily to gawk at the newcomer. To his left the man saw a group of older men—men whose hair was grown white, their skin sagging. He took a seat with them.
One nodded when the man sat down, another gave a curt greeting. The bartender leaned over his counter and asked what the man would be drinking.
‘Whatever you got,’ the man said. ‘Glass a anything strong.’
This request sent a round of snickering through all the men who heard it. The bartender poured something from a green bottle into a clay mug with a broken handle. He patted the counter. When the man came to fetch his drink, the bartender intervened. ‘Hold on there, friend,’ he said. ‘Gotta pay before ya drink. Aint any of this payin when you done had your fill.’
The man nodded, said he understood. He slid one hand into his pocket and took out a coin, placed it on the counter. He hadnt taken more than a step back to his chair when the bartender asked just what the hell this was.
‘Coin,’ the man said. He sipped his drink. ‘Figured it to be enough.’
The bartender walked out from behind the counter. ‘I wanna know just what kind a coin puts a redskinned nigger on it.’
‘Lemme see,’ one of the old timers said. The bartender handed it over and the old men passed it one to another, some holding it farther away, others holding it close to their eyes.
‘Dont know where the hell you come to find a coin with a nigger’s face on it,’ the bartender said. ‘But I wont take it.’
Upon hearing this, one of the old timers pocketed the coin, then folded his hands on the table.
The man pulled another coin from his pocket, looked at it, then gave it to the bartender. ‘Hope this ones better.’ This one had a woman in a long flowing dress walking in front of a sunrise. The bartender studied the coin for some time, using his free hand to rub at his crotch, before remarking this one had a beauty on it.
‘Coulda gotten two drinks with this one,’ he said.
The man sat back at the table with the old timers.
‘Got money from all over, do ya?’ one asked.
‘No,’ the man shook his head. ‘Dont got a whole lotta coins. Just enough for a couple drinks.’
‘You rob someone to get those coins?’ another asked.
The man looked at his drink, shook his head. ‘Aint a robber,’ he said. ‘Just come this way to take care of some business dealings.’
This made the old men laugh.
‘Got some matters a business proper to take care of in old Fort Jimmy, do ya?’
‘I does.’
The old timer to the man’s right set his hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘What kind a business you in, son?’
The man sipped at his drink again. He let the heat of the alcohol flare through his nostrils. ‘Dont own a business myself. Come out this way to take care a some family business.’
‘If you l
ookin for a wife, you done come to the wrong place,’ an old timer said. ‘Place got as many women as we got bottles a decent drink.’
Everyone murmured in agreement. Two of them clinked glasses and duffed the remainder of their drinks.
‘Got me a wife,’ the man said.
‘That so?’
‘It is.’
‘What she look like?’
For the briefest of moments the man could not recall the face of his woman. He closed his eyes in a long blink and pictured her. ‘Pretty,’ the man said. ‘Prettier than the woman they put on that coin.’
‘Got tits on her?’ one of the old timers asked.
The man nodded, said yeah, sure.
‘She still all tight down in the holes?’ another asked.
The man finished his drink. ‘Dont rightly know what you mean.’
This admission from the man elicited the biggest laughter of all.
The old timer to the right explained it to the man: ‘When you stick her with your pecker does it feel like shes grabbin it or does it feel like youre priggin a bucket a cornmeal?’
No one waited for the man’s reply, they simply howled with laughter. The bartender came over and poured the man another drink. The man paid with a smaller coin—this one had a man with a winged helmet.
Once the laughter subsided, the man said he came this way to register his woman. She was with child.
‘Whaddya mean register?’
The man drank to wet his mouth before speaking. This drink was much more sour than the last. He coughed.
‘For the census,’ he said. ‘Register my family so they dont get taken away.’
‘Whats a census?’ an old timer asked.
‘It’s a—the thing I gotta do here at the fort for my family,’ the man said. ‘If I dont get em registered then the government can take em away.’
The old men exchanged looks, one shrugging and another raising his eyebrows. One said he never heard of such a thing. Then he asked where the man had been told about this census.
‘Fella came to my house I built out on the plains,’ the man said. ‘Told me bout the census.’
‘You leave him there with your wife?’
The man nodded. ‘Said he was a doctor. Said I could make it out to Fort James an back and I would miss the birth, but not by much.’
‘You left a stranger with your pregnant wife?’
‘He aint a complete stranger,’ the man said. ‘He done built a house a his own a piece down from mine.’
‘Hate to tell you this, friend,’ the old timer to the right said, ‘but we bin here a while ourselves and we aint never heard of a census.’
The man looked from one old timer to the next. Each avoided eye contact. ‘Why’d a doctor lie about that?’
‘Maybe he aint a doc,’ one old timer offered.
‘Be best if you get on back to your woman,’ another added.
The man’s mind tried to process the information he’d just been given. He hadnt drunk that much, but he felt the dizziness of excess. ‘How do I get back?’ he asked.
‘Dont know how you came in, son.’
‘Came in yonder way,’ the man said. He pointed out the window, toward where the village used to be. ‘Came up the cliffside, kind of circled the whole place before making it in here.’
‘And you come from the plains?’ one old timer asked.
‘Yessir.’ The old timers all exchanged glances. ‘What is it?’ the man asked. ‘Whats the quickest way outta here?’
‘Goin west, then cuttin south, take a pass in the mountains—probably the same pass you come through to get to this place.’
‘Theres a way to cut a day off, son.’
The man turned to the old timer to the right. ‘What is it?’
The other old timers said it was a bad way to go and implored their friend not to tell the man.
‘Youre a hearty boy,’ the old timer said. ‘You’ll make it alright.’
Then he told the man about a patch of desert. ‘Gotta cut through on the diagonal,’ he said. ‘Bout ten miles a nothin but sand. You good with navigatin?’
The man said he was.
‘Good. Bear south and east, straight line. Cut at least two days’ time off your travels if you cut through the desert.’
Another old man interrupted. ‘If you decide to go that way, make certain you do it in a day. Any longer than that and you’ll end up as vulture droppins.’
A third old timer sniffed. ‘He done went on one fool’s errand, of course he’ll go through the desert.’
‘Might actually be best to cut through the desert,’ the other said. ‘Gets cold this time a year. At least it might be warmer out there in the desert.’
‘Could consider leaving tonight,’ a new voice said from the far end of the table.
The man did not recognize the stranger. Time spent crossing whatever spandrels they encountered had aged them both. His voice too changed with the consumption of alcohol. They sat at opposite ends of the long table. Between them men told jokes, stories, one sang to himself as he slugged back another shot.
‘The return is always something jarring.’ In the air the stranger traced an arc with his index finger. ‘We go these great distances and carry memories. And when we get back—’ he spread his fingers open as if the trajectory he drew exploded into nothing ‘—the world is a different place altogether.’
‘Care to tell us where you from, stranger?’ one of the old timers said. ‘Always talkin bout walkin.’
It took a moment for the stranger to swallow his drink, let his tongue run over his palate and answer the inquiry. When he did answer, he simply said he came from beyond the horizon.
‘Wherebouts? Eastways? Farther west?’
A few more men ceased their conversation and looked to the stranger for an answer.
‘I come from all over the place,’ he said.
A couple men snickered. By this time everyone in the saloon stopped talking and listened.
‘You a drifter then?’
‘No.’
Finally the man spoke. ‘Dont I know you from somewhere?’
‘From some other time, probably. From right now.’
One old codger sighed, scooted back in his chair and left the table.
‘Listen good,’ said one of the old timers. ‘We just tryin to be friendly like here. Aint a need to be coy with us.’
The stranger stared at the man for what seemed like a long time. Nearly all the men stayed quiet. ‘I walked through the graveyard where you are buried on my way in here,’ the stranger said. He turned his head and stared at the old timer.
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘Did you have dreams last night?’
The old man cursed the stranger, took his drink and left the table. Other men feigned to restart the conversations they had been carrying on.
‘I had dreams last night,’ the man said.
‘They were of your wife—of your woman.’
The man’s brow furrowed. ‘Yeah. They were.’
‘You some type a magic man,’ another asked. One man replied he knowed the stranger was a magic man when he done saw him slay that boned nigger.
The stranger chuckled and shook his head. ‘I’m a man of science and of history.’
‘And you can tell me what my dreams were by usin science and knowin history?’
‘When you woke this morning, you lay in a bed that wasnt yours. Your pecker hard in your drawers.’ A few of the men cracked smiles. But the stranger did not break cadence. ‘You dreamt of fucking your woman, or at least you recognized her as your wife in the dream. But you woke too early, woke to another voice calling you back into this world. And when that person left the room, you closed your eyes and tried to redream what you had just lost, do what you needed to do.’
The man looked puzzled.
‘What did you do after that?’ the stranger asked.
‘I got ready to go out into the day.’
‘B
ut you must have sat up in bed, ran your hand through the scratchy side of your beard. You must have stood up and walked across the room to where your boots lay next to a makeshift basin.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Or perhaps you didnt. You dont remember. It never happened.’
‘No,’ the man said. ‘Youre right. I did do all those things.’
The men who still listened exchanged grumblings.
The stranger shook his head. ‘You didnt do any of those things until I said them.’
‘No,’ the man insisted. ‘I did. It just didnt seem important.’
The stranger broke his gaze with the man and looked individually at each man still seated at the table. ‘Lived a bunch of years and you be authorities on this world. Vast majority of our lives are driven by survival, by the basic functions—shitting, pissing, eating, sleeping.’ He sighed. ‘You all think the quickest way from here to wherever is a straight line. Could be a line through a mountain, crossing the plains, traversing the desert.’ He clucked his tongue. ‘Clever clever humans. So easy to predict. Someday a locomotive will have a set of tracks running just a quarter mile north of here.’
‘Youre a surveyor for the rail companies,’ a bystander exclaimed. ‘We’re goin to be a train stop!’ He raised his mug. A few men smiled and clapped.
‘No.’ The stranger held up his hand. ‘You’ll be dead by the time the train runs by here. This whole place will be dead.’
The bystander set his mug down hard so the grog inside slopped out onto the table. ‘Now wait a second.’
‘No,’ the stranger said. He looked to the other side of the table. He posed a hypothetical question: ‘The train is moving and a man walks backward through the cars. Is he in the same place for longer?’ No one answered. ‘Thats fine,’ he said. He looked back at the bystander. ‘You dont see everything like I do. Your life is just a few memories stitched together. Even right now, your existence is just me. I am what you will remember. You’ll select what you want to remember, what you will construct into what you call yourself.’
