Inland

by Téa Obreht

  “I got the sense that everybody had found out what I had known for years: the West was too fine a promise to waste. They were heading there with their wagons and sheep and their trampling feet to make life that just bit harder and more crowded for folks like me who had known and kept this secret for years.

  “It does that to you, you know. Like no place else. Does it to every man woman and child. The plains were fated to it the moment the first man hauled himself up a good hillock, took one look at the countryside unrolling in every direction, sucked in deep, and told himself that all was designated for his own, solitary soul. Told himself: the sublime lives here, and I am the only one who sees it.

  “And thank God for that first bastard. Without him, we’d none of us be here.

  “He should thank us too. We keep him alive.

  “I hope the story ain’t too boring, Missus Lark. I am just shy of my point, I promise.

  “Anyway. I didn’t know if there was still wilderness for people like me. I kept overhearing again and again the song of Texas. The war had orphaned thousands of cattle there, unbranded and unremarked. All a man had to do was herd them up and make them his own.

  “That’s what I did. So did dozens of others, but there was room and stock enough for us all. Ten men could ride into a pastureland in the morning and by midday be the stewards of a herd so vast, its endpoint could not be marked on the horizon.

  “Once you had them, of course, you had to pasture them someplace. My old partner, Simon Velman—how he did press for Dakota Territory. Good grass up there. Good, mild summers. I knew well—I had seen it on my journeys. But in those days Red Cloud’s Sioux were raiding up and down the Powder. I told him, if you want to die so bad, why not just hitch yourself to a rope, and I’ll kick the chair out from under you so you can stand before the Good Lord and look Him in the eye and say truthfully that it weren’t self-solution? It’d be gentler than having some Sioux wildman tear your arms off here and your legs off there, and string your prick on a necklace to give his kids.

  “Apologies, ma’am.

  “So we came southwest to the Mogollon. People told us: ain’t no water, ain’t no grass. And if you think the Sioux are bad, wait’ll you meet the Apache. The whole place is just dizzy with Mexicans besides, and they been carrying on with the Indians every way imaginable for damn near two centuries now. Somedays they’re marrying and swearing blood oaths. But then it goes sideways, and they’re stampeding stock and snatching each other’s children to raise up as their own, just out of spite, just as a fuck-you to their enemies—whom they’ll be back to kissing and handshaking before the year is out, and all that slaughter for what?

  “I tell you, there were days when we crept through the canyons without so much as a clink out of our tackle. Even the cattle knew not to breathe heavy.

  “Simon Velman caught fever drinking from a muddy creek and it didn’t take him three days to expire. That was a surprise, and it hurt me. Felt like maybe if we’d gone his way, he might have made it to see whatever pasture we fetched up on. But as with Moses, so with any Jew worth a damn. He never saw what he set out to see.

  “And I went on. Just me and the steers and a few cowhands who were hungry enough, or didn’t care which way their lives went, or were dead-set on outrunning whatever wife or warrant loomed over them back east. This was where I renewed myself, Missus Lark. Riding with the cattle clinking along afore me and behind, nothing but yellow dust and horn. That sun was relentless save for when it got covered over by driving rain. It rained so hard sometimes that full rivers came tearing into the canyons, like they’d been switched on in whatever place underground all rivers sleep.

  “You seem determined to get rid of me. I’m coming to my point, Missus Lark, and will go for the Doctor then, though it break poor Miss Kincaid’s heart to meet me in the road and learn how little faith you have in her.

  “My point is: nobody believed it could be done. But I did it. I got those cattle over the barrens and came here to the greenest pastures and bluest skies, and I laid down my walking staff—same as you. Before me, there was no Ash River: only a handful of tents on a hillside that had no name.

  “You will argue with me, as your husband has, that you was all getting along just fine without me. Raising up your corn and wheat and losing your children to heatstroke.

  “But before me, there was no aguaje where a traveler could water his horses. Before me there was no stage route, no postmaster, no sheriff, no stock association. There was nobody in Flagstaff gave a good goddamn about bringing law to this place. People rustling cattle and people falling down cliffs and calling both an accident.

  “Before me, we were all the way inland.

  “You don’t get a railway in these parts unless there’s cattle bound for Chicago. So if I say it’s Ash River destined for that blessing, that’s how it will go. For when the railway comes, it’ll be my money christening it and my steers riding it.

  “When the Phoenix Sun sent up a kid to report on men proving up this valley, it was me they found. Myself. And when they asked me what it was made me choose this place, I told them true: I knew that the eight months a year when this was the harshest scald on the face of God’s earth would keep out everyone save the true and the good. I was pleased about it: the people who surrounded me were only the greatest and the best, baptized in sweat and blood. And we would share in our triumphs together, for they too had lost limbs and loved ones and sometimes even the edges of their minds. They too had overcome the harshest test a soul could face, and we shared in those struggles though we might never say a word about them to each other. We didn’t need to. You could look a man in the eye and know. English, Negro, Slav, Mexican. Don’t matter to me. We knew what it took to come home to this place, and we were for and with each other.

  “But you can’t have that with dissent. You can’t have it with people clinging to a valley what’s played out. You can’t have it with every goddamn soul feeling free to divert a watercourse or build a fence, just because it please him. You can’t have that with one side calling every poor man a saint, and every rustler a friend.

  “You can’t have it with Emmett Lark calling me ‘limey carpetbagger’ because it suits him to say it’s me doing the wrong because I call the law and strike the beggars down.

  “You can’t have it with Desma Ruiz pleading seniority, or with you clutching to your house for it don’t suit you to move thirty-five miles to Ash River, thankyouverymuch.

  “I am mad with love of this earth and sky and water. It’s mine, same as yours, and no fence you build and no letter you write to Washington will send me slinking with my tail tucked. It’s my work that raised this place up. And I’ll be damned if I’ll sit here and let you say that I don’t belong to it.

  “But—you’re a mother. If a gypsy had told you in the wayback days that your son would be king, even you would have hoped and willed it so.

  “Even now, to think of my own mother receiving the Sun and opening it to find those words—‘Merrion Crace: The Cattle King of Carter County.’ I could weep just thinking about it.

  “Perhaps that’s why I came here myself tonight, Missus Lark, instead of sending my men as some think I should.

  “Give me your hands. Don’t worry, Sheriff Harlan don’t mind. It’ll do his heart good to get a little stab. Give me your hands. Lord, look at your fingers. It’s like you tried to crawl out a grave. Are you much hurt? What will the Doctor think of us—disregarding your injuries to cosset the Sheriff here in his whinging and writhing over so small a thing as a broken leg?

  “Missus Lark. Nora. I ask you to mark once more that I am here personally, free of associates, or any lawmen, because you are a mother—and doubtless love the very bones of your sons. They are young men still, and have a chance yet to be kings themselves.

  “This morning’s trouble need not be the death knell of that chance. In fact, I woul
d prefer the opposite. I would prefer to think of this morning as the moment our friendly little rivalry burst its banks. Let us see it sink into the surrounding soil.

  “To that end, I am here to treat with you. To offer sensibly on the easement of your burdens, in the hope that you will shake my hand.

  “It has come to my attention that your husband’s debts on the Sentinel press are considerable. Cost upon cost—as we said. Incalculable monies have surely been spent to keep it in good repair. With your blessing, I would like to settle that account for you, tonight, once and for all. To the tune of, say, three thousand dollars.

  “The machine’s true worth makes fuck-all difference to me—I’m sure the balance will spend in time.

  “I make this offer on the condition that you put the Sentinel to rest. You need not remand it to my people, or destroy it, or indeed even remove it from your store. On the contrary. It would please me most if you revised its career as an instrument for printing announcements and placards. Perhaps even books, someday.

  “Anything but the so-called newspaper. That should be left to more well-equipped folk in Ash River, who are closer to the truth.

  “Consider this a gift of freedom, if you will, in the grand tradition: I am not buying your press, but liberating it from the bondage of The Amargo Sentinel. Let it turn instead to more leisurely and pleasant pursuits, and spread no more lies about me and steer no more good Amargo folks from progress toward better things.

  “And we will consider all our past disagreements settled, and this morning’s unpleasantness square.”

  AFTER A WHILE, HE TURNED to Harlan. “I see she’s got no notion of what I’m talking about.”

  Crace had managed to roll up his sleeves and shed his suspenders and hang his coat off the back of his chair. His hands had grown warm around her fingers. She was beginning to suspect that by now, two shallow, even holes had bored down where his elbows rested on the table, and that tendrils of new mesquite had begun to coil about his ankles and probably her own, and that Harlan’s leg had gone sour and Josie—poor, poor Josie—would at any moment come staggering through the door with an accusatory look, unless she had already given up and gone to God. For who could blame her? This was what happened when somebody like Merrion Crace got going—for they all had stories, didn’t they, just like this, interminable and essential to the world’s workings. This was what she had been thinking when he began to talk about the morning, and the morning’s unpleasantness, and some part of her, half-hearing, had assumed he meant the incident with Ferdy Kostic at Desma’s.

  But no aspect of that matter would cause Harlan to look as he did now, perched at the very edge of his chair and staring down at the floor.

  “You been here how long?” Crace asked him. “And ain’t told her yet.”

  “I was fixing to, in my own course.”

  “For a man who’s so dead-set on delivering news personally, you sure take your fucking time.”

  Harlan looked at her. “There was a dust-up this morning at the Sanchez ranch.”

  Crace snorted. “Dust-up.”

  “An ambuscade. Two men with dogs put down Pedro Sanchez and his brothers. By the time I got to the field cabin, they was all kilt save Pedro himself. Do you know him?” She did not. “Before he died, God rest him, he counted his killers by name.”

  “What a stroke of luck,” she said. A strange cold shake had crept from her toes and up her calf. Her knee was jumping a little, and she feared the movement might keep advancing up and through her until her whole body rattled like cane. A nail on the underside of the table was digging into her knee.

  “So I must ask you once more, Nora: do you know where your boys are?”

  “In Prescott.”

  “When did you last see them?”

  “Last night—as I said.”

  “So you can’t be certain.” The effort of sitting up further twisted his face. She could tell by the way his leg lolled on the chair that all the feeling had left it. Perhaps his toes had gone blue. They might be blackening already. “If I were to scour every inch of your place. Look under the floorboards and in the springhouse. There’d be no trace of Rob or Dolan?”

  The realization, now, of what all his earlier prowling had been toward pushed that cold feeling further up her body. “Well I reckon if you haven’t found trace of them in the many, many hours you been pretending to be here on a social call, Harlan, you won’t find them now.” She had the sudden urge to kick the chair out from under him and send all that blood thudding back to his leg. “I take it Pedro Sanchez mentioned my sons.”

  “By name.”

  “Mighty convenient. Almost takes the sport out of your work.”

  “I’d rather it didn’t,” Harlan admitted. “And I wish I could tell you Pedro was dead when I got there, and it was some third party said Rob and Dolan’s names to me, for I know you’re hoping it was so. But I was there myself, Nora. I heard him say it.”

  “What a use of his last breath,” she said. “To waste it on a fucking lie.” He sat and watched her. He had come fully sober again, sober enough to wipe the sweat from his own eyes anyway. “They’d never do such a thing,” Nora said.

  “Would they not? They been all over the county every damn day accusing everybody who looks at them sideways of killing their father.” He pointed to the hallway. “Didn’t you just get done telling me how Dolan punched through the door last night—because he thought Emmett was kilt, and the Sanchez brothers to blame?”

  “Had I known what you were after, I would never have told you so,” she said. “I wouldn’t have let you within a mile of the place.”

  “No,” Crace put it. “But for lending a considerate ear, it seems the Sheriff did get a mighty close shave.”

  She thought of the shave—the talk, the precious hour wasted, Josie in the ditch with her shoulder torn out and her ankle twisted back, for what? a vestige of some belly-flutter, some reduction of loneliness nobody should ever admit needing—and that reliable Volk rage came roaring. She turned to Crace. “Why are you here?” she asked. “If there’s truth to any of this, it don’t concern anyone save my sons and the law, with the possible exception of Pedro Sanchez’s widow.”

  “I rode point ten years with Pedro. The dead have a right to be spoken for.”

  “May we all leave such a friend in this world—someone who’ll use our blood to bargain for the decommission of a weekly newspaper.”

  Crace bit back a smile. “Pedro wasn’t the kind of man who asked terms. He knew that whatever is done is done for the good of all.”

  “Nora.” Harlan sat forward and leaned across the table toward her. “If Rob and Dolan run off now—if they don’t come forward and admit themselves to the law—they’ll be wanted men.”

  “But if they confess to something they did not do, and I decommission my printing press—they can come home?”

  He looked at Crace. “If they come forward and make a full confession, we can begin to talk about settling the matter peaceably.”

  She sat back. “You know, Harlan, when people kept on about how you were in Merrion Crace’s pocket, I laughed them out of my house. You might have started by telling me all this the moment you set foot at my door. Before the printing press came into it.”

  For the first time, she saw anger in his face. “I was working up to it, Nora. It don’t come easy to tell a—friend that her boys are outlawing themselves while she sits at home waiting for them. But then I was felled in the gulch.”

  They sat now in a silence so wretched she could hardly find her breath. Air came to her in little bursts. She could not remember how it felt to draw deep breath. Poor Josie, she thought. Breathing through broken ribs in the barn.

  “I tell you what,” she said. “How about, instead, I wire every soul I know in Cumberland what was said here. And when Emmett gets back, he prints a full recap
itulation of every detail—including that the Sheriff, in the midst of reelection, attempted to coerce a defenseless mother to force her sons to confess a crime they didn’t commit?”

  “Foremost,” Crace said, “calling you defenseless would be a singular joke. And second: I doubt that Mister Lark will have much to say about this situation. Busy as he is in California.”

  “California?”

  What now? Crace was lifting his coat from the back of the chair and feeling around in the pockets. He would’ve been faster getting flake out of a vein. From some deep inner pocket, he finally extracted a square of yellow paper, and unfolded it with exaggerated ceremony. His spectacles soon followed it out of the coat, and she sat in silence, watching him adjust them on the bridge of his nose.

  “This is a letter,” he said, “from Mister Emmett Lark, formerly of Amargo, Arizona Territory, received by the Ash River Clarion two days ago and set for printing in their next issue.”

  He read it aloud to her, and she sat there picturing the words. “Dear Mister Bertrand Stills. I thank you kindly for your letter of last month, to which I have not had the opportunity to respond owing to the journey I have lately made to the town of Los Angeles, California. Perhaps you may be aware of Mister Merrion Crace’s intention to assemble a county council to begin remedying some of the difficulties of these past few redoubtable months in Ash River and the surrounding areas. Though I would be honored to accept Mister Crace’s offer to chair such an assembly, I feel it is my duty to inform you that I hope to make the excursion I am currently undertaking a permanent one. While I will be back and forth every so often to Amargo in the coming years to make arrangements for my family to join me, I feel that my withdrawal from the community will leave me inadequately informed to decide on the important issues at stake. I would be grateful if you would do me the honor of taking my place on the council. I await your answer eagerly in Los Angeles. Yours respectfully, Emmett Seward Lark.”