by Ryan Ireland
‘I’m a fur trapper.’
Again the stranger chuckled. He drank. He set the cup down. None of the men gathered therein spoke. ‘How much time you spend trapping furs?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Those furs, do you trap them all the time?’
‘Not now.’
‘But you call yourself a trapper.’
‘Thats right.’
‘But at this very moment you are a liar and a drinker—’
‘Now wait a minute—’
Several of the onlookers guffawed. The stranger seemed unaffected by the outburst. ‘I’m not saying that you dont—or havent—trapped some animals and skinned them. But for the most part youre traveling, going from one place to another. Blank spaces between each location.’
The trapper gave a sullen nod, said he supposed that sounded right.
The stranger smiled, held up his glass in a toast. The trapper did not reciprocate. ‘Most people dont want to hear that their lives for the most part are empty. They identify themselves by trade, the families they rarely see, but are constantly constructing, reconstructing in their minds. A gravestone is fitting. It exists in only one place, reminding others that you at one point were somewhere.’
Two of the old men exchanged whispers and stood up together and left the table. Most of the crowd, confused by the exchange, also dissipated. Just a few remained—the stranger, the man, an old timer and the fur trapper.
The sudden loss of interest in his speech did not deter the stranger. ‘These great empty spaces, scientists will grow to love them. And because science loves them, so will all of you. The great emptiness. It can give the illusion of movement, of progress. Didnt we all come west because it was empty?’ When no one responded right away, the stranger said, ‘Thats why I’m here.’
The trapper nodded. The old timer too.
‘It is a happy foolishness, this life.’
‘You aint a man a God is ya?’ the old timer asked.
‘Cant say I am, no. I’m not a man of the earth either.’
‘Just science.’
The stranger shook his head. ‘You havent been listening. Theres history to consider too.’
The trapper said that he’d drunk his share, tipped his hat and left.
‘What history you mean?’ the man asked.
The stranger drank the last of his grog. ‘This morning when I awoke—it was the last significant moment in my story—I went to the mouth of the mineshaft.’
‘You slept in a mineshaft?’
‘It’s where I woke up. But thats not important. I went to the mouth of the mine.’
‘So youre a miner then?’
‘No, I only woke up in a mine.’
‘But you had to’ve gone into the mine. Did you fall into the shaft an wake up after hitting your head?’
The stranger went to drink from his cup again, then remembered it was empty. He looked at the man. ‘Youre heading out into the sand desert tonight?’
The man nodded, said that was right.
‘You should be getting on then. Night comes on fast this time of year.’
The man stayed seated. But after looking at his company—now just the stranger and the old timer—he nodded again and left.
ii
The man walked out into the courtyard of the fort. The first lights of Aries were poking through the twilight and signaled the oncoming night. In his head, the man calculated his path, a south bearing until he came to the great swathes of sand that drifted up against the mountainside. The few coins he had left jangled in his pocket. He had nothing else. To stay alive he would walk clean through the night. When morning came he would sleep in the shadows of one of the dunes. Any respite would have to be short lived. Sleeping too long would mean another walk through the night—a full night with no water and no food.
In a few hours’ time the man reached the edge of the desert. A stream with silted water bordered the edge and he drank his fill. Then took care to soak a handkerchief and wad it into his pocket. Under the lights cast down from the heavens, the dunes looked to be cut of two shades of blue—one nearly white and vaporous, the other an indigo darker than the purpled skies.
The walk into the foothills of the dunes took longer than the man had anticipated. Darkness and the size of the dunes had deceived his vision. Gradually the sand lifted and sloped. Soon he took steps and watched the grains of sand give way under his feet so every step he took gained him little ground. He leaned into the slope and breathed heavily. The inside of his mouth became coated in dust. He stopped briefly and found a pebble, much larger than the grains of sand. He put it into his cheek to stave off thirst. Then he kept walking.
Once he reached the ridge of the dune he figured he should walk along it until he came to the first peak. From the peak he could gauge his path across the wasteland. He walked some way with considerably more ease and then the wind blew. The granules of sand pelted and prickled his exposed skin. Sand had worked its way into his boots and down into his shirt and pants. His eyes teared up as the wind kept blowing. He pulled the soggy handkerchief from his pocket and squeezed the moisture from the cloth. He had intended to use it later, but circumstances had forced him into this other spot. After unwadding the cloth, he tied it as a bandit might, with a triangle covering his mouth.
A couple hours later and the temperature had plummeted into a brutal cold. No longer could the man feel the sand whip against his legs; they had long gone numb. The cloth of the handkerchief stiffened with frost. He kept moving, knowing full well that to stop in the darkness meant resigning to death.
As the first peak came into view and he slogged one footstep after another, spillage of sand emanating with each step, the man felt a renewed sense of purpose. He closed his eyes and took a few more steps. In his mind, he thought of his woman, wondered if the baby had been a boy as the stranger said. He opened his eyes, then looked back down the slopes, out into the pan of the plateau, where Fort James lay against the shroud of night like a votive for the dead of this place. For a moment he pondered the stranger, felt as if his eyes were upon him. The man shook his head and trudged to the top of the sandy mount.
He looked out over the formless land, at the menagerie of shadow and shifting sands. The mountain pass hulked some dozen miles off, a hollow space in the ether of night.
iii
For some time the stranger and the old timer sat quietly. Each seemed to be tending to his own thoughts. Then the stranger asked where they had been in their conversation.
‘You was answerin that man’s question—the man you jus told to get up an go.’
‘Yes.’ The stranger spent a minute recollecting the course of the conversation. Then he began speaking again. ‘The return: how each time we revisit the past it becomes something else.’ He sighed, then continued. ‘I went out from the mineshaft and I watched the sun cut through an old scrag. I stretched. I felt like a newborn. It was at that moment, when I looked at the ground and I noticed a bird, a common bird—nothing too grand—lay dead in the dirt. Most of the flesh was gone. Little bones, white from the sun stretched out in tiny arcs. Had it not been rotting, had it been frozen, it would have been a beautiful thing.’
‘Got yerself a strange type a beauty.’
‘I knelt next to it to get a closer look. I put my hands on the ground and lowered myself down. Tiny pieces—microscopic bits—of the bird’s decaying body wafted up into my nostrils. I was that close.’
The old timer’s eyes narrowed. ‘Find that type a thing interestin, do ya?’
‘And these ants—reddish brown ones—burrowed through the bird’s flesh,’ the stranger said. He leaned forward as he spoke, a froth of spit gathering at the corners of his mouth. ‘One of these ants climbed to the tip of the bird’s rib bone—a string of osseous matter—his antennae were moving independently, a fleck of god knows what in his pinchers.’
The barrio was abandoned now. Even the barkeep was gone. The stranger stopped waxing on about the bird. Th
e world was quiet. Before the old timer could say anything, the stranger spoke. ‘I examined that ant and analyzed what he did, why he did it. I supposed the effects he had on the course of the universe. It was all the history anyone needs.’
‘Learned the secrets to the whole wide world from some ants?’ the old timer said. ‘Sounds like injun magic to me.’
The stranger picked up his mug and drank, wiping a dribble from his lip. ‘History is only half the equation,’ he said. ‘You have to add science.’ For a second time that evening he drew an arched pathway in the air before him. ‘Someday we will send men into the heavens and they will look down on us—us living like ants. They’ll circle the earth at a league per second, hurtling through a cold darkness without parallel. And when those men return, they will not have lived the same life as those who stayed here. They will have actually aged slower. They will be just a little bit younger than their brethren. If I were to spend my life making these journeys—going between heaven and earth—I would live forever, knowing everything.’
The old timer’s shoulders shook with stifled laughter. ‘Men living in the stars that never age. Fer a second you had me nearly believin it.’ He wagged his finger at the stranger.
‘I can prove it to you,’ the stranger said.
The old timer rolled his eyes, said he would like to hear this. He leaned forward and rested his chin on his clasped hands.
The stranger’s voice brokered no guile. ‘When I sat down here I added and subtracted, postulated and theorized—I did all the fool things a man of science does. Ive had time enough to think it over and I realized tonight I would meet you and tonight I would kill you.’
The old timer coughed. ‘Pardon?’
The stranger looked down to where his hand rested on the table. A cleaver, speckled with rust, a wooden handle, lay next to his hand.
‘That some sort a sleight of hand there?’ the old timer asked.
‘What?’
‘That cleaver there.’ The old timer nodded to it. ‘Makin it appear like that.’
‘It’s been there, friend,’ the stranger said. ‘Been there since youve known that I was going to murder you.’
‘You aint gonna murder me.’
The stranger snorted a stifled laugh. The old timer looked down into the earthenware well of his cup. ‘You got no real cause to kill—to murder me.’ He looked to the stranger. His eyes glassed over with the glaze of alcohol. ‘It’s the grog here,’ he said. ‘Worms at the head, makes the tongue loose. I—I didnt mean what I said.’
‘What you said—’
‘Yessir.’ The old timer looked at the cleaver, the handle lightly touching the stranger’s fingertips. ‘Dont even recall what I said exactly.’ He laughed, hiccupped. The stranger joined in the laughing. The old man wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist. He threw his head back in yawping laughter, the hard lump of his adam’s apple bouncing up and down. He didnt notice when the stranger stopped laughing and sat watching him carry on. Eventually he sighed an end to the rumpus. ‘Should we have another drink?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Not much a drinker, is ya?’
‘Prefer to be sober when I split your head open.’
Again the old timer’s eyes glassed over and drifted their sights to the blade resting at the stranger’s fingertips. ‘Dont even reckon what I said to set this off.’
‘Las palabras no son importantes. El universo se acaba aquí.’
The old timer shook his head.
‘¿Usted no habla español?’ the stranger asked. ‘Et le français?’
‘Someone send you here?’ the old timer asked. He pointed his finger at the stranger. ‘Send you here to murder me? You—I mean, you yourself aint got no real cause.’
‘Você tem razão. Eu sou somente o efeito.’
The old timer sat in the chair, a slow sobering realization deepening the folds in the skin of his forehead.
‘Ive always been here,’ the stranger said. His hands remained flat on the tabletop, his gaze cutting into the old man. ‘So have you.’
‘No sir,’ the old timer declared. He shook his head in an exaggerated fashion. ‘Got the wrong man, you do. I’s come from out Arkansas way.’
‘Youre not listening,’ the stranger chided. ‘That state, Arkansas—Akakaze in the Sioux tongue—with its population of fifty-five thousand souls, famous for the Little Rock Nine and the National Guard—it all just got invented.’
‘Dont think I rightly get what youre sayin, son.’
‘Thats unfortunate,’ the stranger said. ‘You been dumb and afraid your entire existence then.’
‘An youre gonna kill me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘It was set in motion,’ the stranger said. ‘Someday people will park their cars—their pickup trucks—right here; they’ll go into the store, buying bread made two states away and freighted in. They’ll buy medicines and develop photos of their last vacation. Their cars will sit idle and leak oil and power steering fluid in the exact spot where your brains are going to spill out on the floor here.’
The old man bit at his lower lip, said it sounded like nonsense to him. The stranger said the time would come and they would see. The old timer suddenly looked sleepy. ‘Jus go on and do it if you got the notion to.’
‘It’s not time yet,’ the stranger said.
‘What do you mean it’s not time yet?’
The stranger stared at the old timer as if waiting for the right moment to come. When he blinked, the old timer flinched.
‘You really dont got to do this,’ the old man said.
The stranger chuckled.
‘You is crazy,’ the old man said. ‘Shoulda figured you for a loon, dressed the way you is. Seen you cut down that injun, but I dont think you got it in you to cut down a proper folk.’ The old timer stood, swayed. He looked downward at the stranger, the demure figure. The old timer took a single step, then whirled around to seize the blade.
But the stranger was already swinging the cleaver. First it sailed through the forearm of the old man on its parabolic trajectory. The down arc of the swing stopped when the blade buried into the old man’s skull. The force of impact caused a fine mist of blood to spray out across the exposed breadth of the blade. Thicker, lumpier blood and matter wept from the aperture in the old timer’s head after he fell to the floor. The stranger squatted over the body, watched the stillness of the man’s chest. He stood once he smelled the rankness of the old man’s bowels releasing.
Day came on quickly, pooling the shadows of the dunes. The man trudged on. Without the stars to guide him, he turned his sights to the sun. It blazed as a whitened orb. In his mind the man calculated where he needed to head. He kept up the pace for some time and drank the last of his canteen’s contents. He picked a distant mountain peak and made it his goal. By midmorning, the sun had risen and it baked down on the sands with a mounting fury.
The man thought it best to sleep, let his legs rest. He traipsed to a low spot carved into the ridge of the dune. He plopped onto the sand and used his heels to kick out a spot to accommodate his body. He spat out the pebble so he would not choke on it in his sleep. As he reclined into the bed, he took the handkerchief, unfolded it and wrapped it over his eyes, nose and mouth.
Despite the wind and the constant barrage of sand, the man slept soundly. In his dreams he stepped out of the desert and directly to the plains. The stranger—yes, that man from the barrio—he was there, a bird perched on his shoulder.
‘¿Qué hace usted aquí?’ the man asked.
‘Funny,’ the stranger said. ‘I was going to ask just that.’
The man walked past the stranger toward the hovel. As he came closer to the hovel, his face prickled with flames and the ash from the burning structure pelted his face. He squinted against the fiery tongues and saw a set of blackened bones amongst the timbers. He turned to ask the stranger if this was so, but the stranger had gone. When he turned back to examine
the bones, he saw that the ribcage of the skeleton housed a much smaller and misshapen skeleton.
The man awoke abruptly. The sand whipped at his face and he sweated. Whatever dreams he had dissipated in the scorch of daylight. Pulling the handkerchief from his face, he sat up and gauged the sun. To make his way home he needed to walk against the sun, the full force of it beating down on him. In the bottom of a dust bowl he found a few sprigs of tall grass. The man pulled them up, roots and all. He gnashed the flora in his teeth and sucked the liquid from the blades and roots. He started up a dune. With each step he slid back, sags of sand collapsing behind each footfall. He reached out toward the slope and on all fours he began crawling out of the bowl toward the dune crest cut sharp against the sky. The faint countenance of the moon hung above like a half buried relic. But even the moon slipped away from the man, the earth rolling on underneath his trudging. The movement westward ho and once upon a time glimpsed our future only briefly. Our destiny always lay just beyond the horizon. And some who stood looking out over all of creation saw what the future beheld and turned to go back. But the earth is a cruel instrument and it continued on, the ground turning beneath their feet, the horizon ever changing, the future never here.
Once atop the dune the wind whipped around the man. Ghostly mists of sand blew off the peaks around him. Blisters raised by the unrelenting sun began to weep, pierced by grains of sand. In this morphing land, his path was fixed—a line cutting across the shifting sandscape toward a mountain pass. He walked, casting a backward glance. Along the ridge of a distant dune a figure rode a white horse. His existence flickered in and out with the rising waves of heat. From what the man could see the figure trooped on without regard for the canticles of the sun, a dust rising in his wake like an ether of the outer universe. For a moment the man thought to call out. But his throat was slaked dry and the stranger seemed to bid him no mind. The stranger passed as all things do, blurring into nothingness and then into oblivion. The man watched him go. Then he blinked and turned. His woman awaited him, he knew. He tried to figure out how old their child would be. He began the calculations in his mind as he began to walk. He set his gaze on the horizon and thought about the world to come.
