Neal Barrett Jr.

by Dawn's Uncertain Light

  “I don’t guess I got any reason,” Howie said.

  Sloan didn’t care much for that. “Did someone tell you to follow me, Cory? Who was it? I want you to tell me who it was.”

  “Sir, no one done that,” Howie said. “That’s the truth. I saw you and—you and her in the market. You and her and another man. Then I just—started following after you here. I don’t know why.” Howie tried to smile. “I guess I didn’t have nothing better to do.”

  “Sit down, Cory.” The woman spoke for the first time. Her voice was soft and nice, as beautiful as the woman herself. A real fine easy voice, yet it clearly belonged to a woman who was sure of herself, a woman who knew what she was doing. You wanted to listen to her when she talked, and hear what she had to say.

  “My name’s Elena,” the woman said. “Pour yourself some lemonade if you like, Cory. I’m sure you could use a drink. The body loses liquids quickly in the tropics.”

  “Thank you,” Howie said. He poured himself a drink from a clay pitcher. Whatever lemonade was, it tasted sour and sweet at the same time.

  Elena turned to Sloan. “I think Cory here is telling you the truth, doctor. I don’t believe anyone sent him here. That is the truth, isn’t it, Cory? You didn’t have any reason to follow us here.”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s the God’s truth.”

  “Well, you had no business doing it, boy,” Sloan said. “No damn business at all.”

  “I guess I know that,” Howie said.

  Sloan was clearly making an effort to control his anger. He leaned forward and gripped the arms of his chair. “You saw the people outside. The white people.” It was a statement and not a question.

  “Yes sir, I did.”

  “And what did you think about them?”

  Howie shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I don’t guess I thought anything at all.

  Sloan glanced sharply at Elena. “You see, he’s lying straight out. You saw something, boy. And you thought something, too. Don’t tell me that you didn’t,” Sloan slammed a fist on the table. “Dammit, you’d better be truthful with me. This place is no concern of yours at all. You’re here, and I can’t help that. But if you won’t talk to me, Cory, I can—”

  “Doctor …” Elena smiled and stood. She seemed to keep unfolding, like some kind of flower coming up. “Cory, why don’t you come with me,” she said. “Let’s just walk for a while,”

  Sloan started to protest. Then he sank back in his chair and ran a handkerchief over his brow. He seemed too weary to do anything else. He didn’t look at Howie again.

  “It isn’t always easy to let ourselves see things we don’t want to see,” Elena said. “That’s simply the way people are. We want to push things aside that make us feel real bad.

  “I guess that’s so,” Howie said. He wasn’t sure what

  Elena was saying, but it was fine to watch her talk. She was so tall and slender he had to look up while they walked. That had never happened to him with a woman before, but it didn’t seem awkward at all. Not with Elena. Elena was just the way she was supposed to be. Dark hair hung down to her shoulders, braided like he’d never seen hair done before, hundreds of tight little strands, each end decorated with bright beads. Her eyes were velvet brown, and seemed to tilt slightly at the corners, and her skin was as slick as dark glass. She walked with her back held straight, and though the clearing was covered with small stones, he never heard her steps.

  “Dr. Sloan talked to me some,” Elena said. “Before he called you in. He told me about you.”

  Howie gave her a wary look. “There isn’t much to say about me.”

  “Oh, I think there is, Cory.” She stopped for a moment and smiled, laying her hand lightly on his arm. Her touch made Howie feel funny inside, like when Lorene touched him, only different.

  Elena began walking again, keeping to the shade of the trees past the clearing. “Dr. Sloan told me what happened on the ship. How awfully sick you got when you saw that slaughtering going on. He also told me that you don’t eat meat. You likely didn’t notice, but the doctor doesn’t eat meat, either. None of us do, Cory. Nobody here.”

  Elena paused. “I do not believe anyone sent you here. I know you are traveling with a preacher from High Sequoia, and such men can be quite curious sometimes when it comes to other people’s affairs. But I believe what you say is the truth. That you came here on your own.” Her eyes found Howie and held him. “I also believe you were not telling the truth when you said you saw nothing … unusual about the young white people here. That’s not exactly so, is it, Cory?”

  “No. I guess it isn’t.” For some reason, he found it hard to lie to Elena. It didn’t seem to hurt too much to tell the truth.

  “Something happened to you, Cory,” Elena said gently. “I don’t know what it was, but something made you get sick there on the ship. I believe that happened because there is something you don’t like to think about. Something very deep inside. You know this thing, but it is so painful to you, you don’t want to look at it again.”

  Elena took his hand. “Come with me, Cory. I want you to meet someone. I’ll just be a moment.”

  Elena left him under the covered porch and slipped through a narrow door. The white people sat in exactly the same positions in which Howie had seen them last. He tried to look at something else. Elena returned, a young man at her side. He was stockily built, with neatly trimmed brown hair. He was white, but his face and arms were deeply tanned. He looked at Howie with a pleasant, easygoing smile.

  “Cory,” Elena said, “I’d like you to meet Tom. Tom and I are great friends. Isn’t that so, Tom?”

  “Yes ma’am, Miss Elena,” Tom said. He looked at Elena with pride, and open adoration. Turning to Howie, he thrust out his hand. “I’m real pleased to meet you, Cory.”

  “Same here,” Howie said.

  “Tom goes to school here,” Elena said. “Tom, Cory might be interested in hearing what you’re learning.”

  “I can read,” Tom said. “And write some, too. I’m not real good at sums, but Miss Elena says everyone doesn’t have to be good at everything they do.”

  “That’s right,” Elena said. She tousled Tom’s hair. “Thank you so much for coming out. You can go back and help Louanne now if you like.”

  “Pleased to see you,” Tom said. “Maybe we can talk again sometime.”

  “That’d be fine.” Howie said.

  Tom disappeared. Elena led Howie to cane chairs at the far corner of the building. “Now,” she said, sitting across from Howie and taking both his hands in hers, “I want to tell you some things about Tom, but first I’d like to talk a little more about you. I want to know what happened to you, Cory. That might not be real easy, but I’ll try to make it all right. I’m going to trust you, and I would like you to trust me as well,”

  Elena squeezed his hands and leaned in very close, so close he could smell the fine spice of her skin. “Tell me about yourself, Cory. Tell me who you are. Tell me about you.”

  Elena’s dark eyes seemed to peer right through him. It seemed as if a strange kind of strength and understanding were flowing directly from her hands into his. He felt her kindness and her love, a love that was so different from anything he’d known that the tears began to scald his good eye. The intensity of her presence was almost more than he could bear; yet, he wanted to tell her everything, every hurt and every pain, every bad thing that had happened in his life.

  The words spilled out in a rush. He told her about the Bluevale Fair when he was twelve, about the way the farm looked, the way the fields turned colors in the spring. He told her how Carolee had been picked for Silver Island, and what a fine thing everybody thought that was. With the tears coming hard, he told her what Colonel Jacob had done to his mother and father, and what he, Howie, had done to Colonel Jacob after that. He told her about joining the big meat herd heading west to feed the army, how he’d never really been in the army at all, but everyone figured that he had, and it was easier not to t
ell them any different. He told her how he’d come to get mixed up in the war for Colorado, where Colonel Jacob caught him and took his eye, and would have done a lot more if the Rebel artillery hadn’t blown the town apart when it did. He told her about the girl, Kari, how they’d gotten away together, and how Kari had stolen his horse after that and left him dry.

  How he’d walked forever then, and wound up in Mexico, and seen the black man in the desert with the survivors from Silver Island. He told her about Tallahassee, and even about killing Anson Slade. About going to Silver Island to look for Carolee, though he knew he’d never find her alive. Finally, he told her about the survivors he’d found in the ’glades, how there were still people there, people who’d gotten away.

  And when it was over, and all the words were gone, Elena took him in her arms for a while and told him how the hurt would go away.

  “I know you can’t believe that now,” Elena said, “but it will. It will someday. I promise you, Cory, that time is going to come.”

  She held him away from her then, and a lovely smile touched her face. “Somehow, when I saw you. I thought it might be you. I know about your meeting in the desert. I knew about that before you told me. I knew about the boy with one eye.”

  Howie stared at her. “Why, you couldn’t know that. There isn’t any way that could be!”

  “The man you met, Cory. His name was Earl Seevers, and he was my father. He was bringing those people down here. All the way through Mexico, and the awful desolation below that. He brought them right here to this settlement.”

  Howie shook his head in wonder. “He came here? Well—is he here right now? Can I see him?”

  “No, Cory.” Elena looked away for a moment. “He died, shortly after he got back home. But he brought the people here. Two are still with us, but the others are at another settlement farther down the coast.”

  Elena ran a hand across her throat. “The people Father brought back told us what happened at Silver Island, the horrors that your government has seen to do, you are not alone in your pain, you see. There are others who know, and understand the terrible things that have been done.”

  For an instant, Howie could almost smell the smoke of the evening fire in Mexico; see the old man’s face.

  “I couldn’t stop thinkin’ about that bunch he had with him. They looked like stock, but he kept hinting maybe they wasn’t. Fed ’em people food from the fire, and said one of ’em could talk.” Howie looked down at his hands. “That’s when I found out. I went and talked to the boy who could speak. I didn’t know. I didn’t ever guess how such a thing could be….”

  Whatever you’re thinking, it ain’t that,” the boy said. “You couldn’t know it. Not ’less you been there, you couldn’t. Hadn’t anyone ever got out of that place before us. What they did there is use you like they want. You ain’t meat, but you’re by God close enough to it. “

  Howie felt something give way inside. “Use you how? What are you talking about?”

  “They do it ’cause stock gets weak and don’t breed good anymore. Meat don’t care if it’s humpin’ its sister or its ma, and that makes the blood go bad. You can’t stop ’em doing that, so they put good blood back in the herds. Only it ain’t meat blood. It’s people’s. The boys got to serve the best mares. The girls are put in with healthy bucks—”

  “Goddam, you’re lying!” Howie exploded. “No one’d do a thing like that! No one!”

  “They can do whatever they want,” the boy said.

  Howie was shaken. “Someone … someone’d find out. They couldn’t do that without someone findin’ out.”

  “Isn’t anyone going to do that,” the boy said. There was no feeling at all in his voice. “It’s down in the old keys and you don’t get close unless you belong. It’s a lie, the whole thing. Silver Island and kids gettin’ picked at a Choosing, going to live in some fine place where everything’s pretty and nice. That ain’t what it’s for. That ain’t what it’s for at all….”

  “Oh Lord, Cory!” Elena laid a hand on Howie’s cheek. “I was right in thinking what I saw in you. You’ve been through a whole lot of hurt, a whole lot of awful hurt.”

  “I didn’t know his name,” Howie said. “Didn’t even ask, He told me—that he’d known Carolee. That they didn’t always cut your tongue right, and she could talk. She told the boy about me and our folks sometimes, and how it was back home. And then the people in the `glades, they knew her, too.”

  He looked up at Elena. “It’s awful what they done. They didn’t have no cause to do that!”

  “No, they didn’t, Cory.” said.

  Howie looked at Elena, squinting his good eye. “That boy you had me meet. The one named Tom, who said he was going to school. That’s what you do here, isn’t it? You and Dr. Sloan and the rest. You take care of folks who got away from Silver Island.” He nodded at the people on the bench. “There was folks like them in the ’glades. Some of ’em just like that. They couldn’t say nothin’ because the men at Silver Island had cut their tongues. You can make ’em talk again, can’t you? You can make them get better, like Tom.”

  Elena looked at the ground and ran a hand across her cheek. She turned to Howie then and studied him a long time, not saying anything at all, just bringing up her hands to Howie’s face, touching the corners of his mouth with the tips of her fingers, then finally bringing her hands flat together, as if she might be starting to pray.

  “Cory, you understand some of what I said. Now you’ve got to understand the rest. We had people here from Silver Island—but no more than the ones my father brought back. The ones you saw in Mexico. There aren’t any others here. That’s all.”

  Elena nodded toward the bench. “Those folks, and Tom, they’re people too, but that’s not what everybody calls them. We don’t use the words here, but I’ll say them so you’ll know. Tom and the others here with us are stock. Meat, Cory. That’s who we’re trying to help.”

  Howie felt cold all over. He stared at Elena in disbelief. “No, now that can’t be. Meat’s meat, and—”

  Elena brought a finger to his lips. “Listen. Listen to me,” she said. “You know the truth the same as I do, Cory. You know. That’s part of the pain you’ve got bottled inside. The thing you don’t want to see. The hurt isn’t just about your sister, or what they did at Silver Island. You know the truth, Cory. It’s a terrible truth to know, but it’s there and it won’t go away. Stock and people are just the same. There isn’t any difference at all. It’s the most horrible lie there ever was. The Great War killed most of the animals people ate, and the rest got slaughtered real fast. They had to believe that awful lie. That some folks were meat and some weren’t. That made it all right. They told themselves stock were different, that they didn’t have a soul. If they told themselves that, they could eat and they wouldn’t have to starve. A lie that goes on a long time starts to look like the truth, but that doesn’t change a thing. This lie’s had a long time to grow, but it’s still a lie, Cory. It won’t ever be anything else.”

  Howie’s throat felt dry. Every muscle in his body wanted to tear itself apart; it was only the calm, soothing voice of Elena that kept him silent in his chair, that, and the touch of Elena’s hands.

  “But stock can’t talk,” Howie said. “Hell, they ain’t hardly got a brain. You ain’t going to make ’em say a thing—”

  “Cory …” Elena looked off into the dense green wall past the clearing. “Cory, if I took you away from your mother when you were born, and put you in a room with a lot of other children, just like you—if I put you there and no one ever spoke to you at all, just fed you and kept you locked up, what do you think you’d grow up to be? You wouldn’t know a thing, now would you? You couldn’t talk, you wouldn’t know about clothes, or what anything was for. You’d grunt and defecate on the floor. You’d eat and sleep and stalk around, and mate with whatever was close by. No one could tell you from stock. You’d be just the same. And that’s the difference between people and meat. The onl
y difference there is. One child is brought up in a pen, the other in a house.”

  Elena looked at the people on the bench, and a terrible sadness filled her eyes. “The real little ones work out pretty well. They’re not as smart as regular children, because it isn’t important to be smart in a herd. The young we have here are bigger, stockier, than children raised in a home—because that is important. Big males get the females first, when they’re breeding in the herd. And ranchers breed for size, too. So the children we get aren’t smart, but they’re larger than other children. The only thing is, they’re weaker, in a way, because inbreeding makes them that way. Stockmen know that, Elena said grimly. “And the men at Silver Island knew it, too. They could see the herds’ blood getting thin, and they knew just what to do about that.”

  Elena glanced once more at the bench. “Even if you’re healthy as can be, and smart as anyone you know, something happens if you don’t start using your brain real early. We don’t know why, but it’s so. That bunch is in their twenties. They aren’t going to get much better than they are right now. We’ve had Tom since he was five, and he’s nineteen now. He’s doing real good—but he’s always going to be a little slow. There’s no fixing that. Five’s just too late to start.”

  The enormity of what Elena was saying, what she and the others were trying to undo, struck Howie like a blow. “But what good’s it going to do?” he blurted out. “You take a handful of those—those whatever you want to call ’em right there, dress ’em up and maybe teach them to read and say, ’Morning, nice to meet you.’ They’re me-meat—I can’t think of any other word, ’cause that’s what they are now. Lord, there’s meat everywhere—thousands of ’em, maybe millions, I don’t know. You can’t do a thing about helping all of them. Not a damn thing.”

  “I know,” Elena said. She kept looking past him, past the thick barrier of trees, and somewhere beyond that. “We’re trying, though, Cory. I know we can’t do much, but we’ve simply got to—try!”

  Elena looked at Howie then, and Howie saw all the terrible sadness in the world. “Don’t you see? Things have got to change. That has to be. It just has to be…. “