by David Xavier
When Father Benito found him he approached him with a concerned voice and a candle outheld, so that when Salomon raised his face, the candleflame gathered the sweat and tears and the red dust on his face as blood, and Father Benito staggered back, for he had only read about one man who prayed with blood in his pores, and Salomon grasped the priest’s robes so he could only retreat so far and hold the candle with one trembling hand so the flamelight wavered over the bloodstained face of this stranger, and he held his breath at the words this man cried – Oh God, take this pain from me – as if he were calling to let this chalice pass from his hands to the Father’s there on the church floor, so he screamed out as the stranger’s hands climbed upon him and pulled at the rope hanging from his waist, and he raised his arms above his head when those hands gripped for his own, tipping the candle cup to drip hot wax down his arms and drop the candle to extinguish and roll in the sudden darkness upon the cold floor to the moonsquares from the windows, where it rolled to a stop between two stone bricks and glowed one final breath before exhaling a wisp of smoke. The stranger released him and retreated.
Father Benito spoke to the darkness. “Who is there?”
A groan from the shadows.
“Speak up. Who is there?”
“A sinner, Father.”
“Of course. We are all sinners. You are in the place where sinners are welcomed the most.”
The stranger did not speak.
“We are all God’s children, are we not? He does not abandon us in even our most sinful state. This you believe? You would not have come here otherwise, yes? My son?”
The priest gathered himself forward and searched the floor for the candle cup. It had clattered to where his hands could not find it. Father Benito reached far over and picked the white candle from the stone cracks. On his knees he fumbled in his robes and struck a match, holding it forth to a scuffle of movement in the dark. He held the withered black matchstick to the candlewick until he had to shake his fingers or be burned, and he pushed the candleflame into the darkness. Salomon was standing over him, his face alight by the flame. The priest nearly dropped the candle again and sat back.
“Don’t be alarmed, Father.”
“Who are you?”
There was a moment of silence. Salomon knelt to better address the priest. “I am no one of consequence. A name you would not know.”
“You can say it. There is no need to be ashamed under God’s roof. He calls us to his altar. You came to confess.”
“I came to give you these.”
Salomon pushed his coat aside and pulled three bags of gold dust from his waistband. He dropped them in front of the priest.
“What is this?”
“A gift.”
Father Benito hefted one bag and looked up, his eyes wide in the moonlight, but he could not see Salomon’s face. He untied the strings and shoved his hand in, pulling out a handful and letting the dust sift from his fingers and glitter in the windowlight. He looked up again and Salomon was gone. The church door opened. The stranger’s figure filled the door and the priest reached out.
“Wait don’t go.”
Salomon turned his head. The priest dropped the bag and walked on his knees.
“Take confession with me. Your sins are weighing. Your heart is filled with sadness, my son.”
“No,” Salomon said. “With madness. With vengeance.”
“Revenge is the Lord’s.”
Salomon faced the night. “I know,” he said. The door closed after him and hymnbooks fell over on the shelves. Sleeping birds in the belfry flew from their nests as the bell hummed.
They killed again days later. A band of five travelers entered at the same point in the canyons, toting too much equipment and carrying forth in conversation, rattling deep into those red gullies, looking up at the cool rock walls without suspicion. They came to a division where the canyon trail separated into four paths, and from these paths the bandits appeared. They stood their horses quietly and the Americans stopped and looked from face to face. One man nodded.
“Mornin.”
The bandits did not answer and the Americans looked to each other for a possible explanation or thought. One of them turned in his saddle and saw Tsunipu had appeared behind them. He turned his head back to Salomon.
“What is this?”
The bandits drew their pistolas and dropped four of the Americans where their horses stood. The gunfire between the chambered walls was such that Marquez looked up and around through the smoke in a searching way. The fifth American turned and ran the way they had come, fleeing with eyes wide and a mumble. Tsunipu pulled his knife and swung it at head level in a sprawling reach. The American rode on without vision or thought, red jets pulsing upon his shoulders, the head rolling to a stop with eyes blinking out of sync and sand in the mouth.
They disposed of the bodies in the same arroyo where no man would find them, where beetles would devour the flesh and worms would crawl the tissue, snakes would slither the cavernous skulls.
Salomon saw these skulls when he dozed in sweat under the sun and in his bedroll by the fire. He saw the cracked and knobbled bone and the gaps between the teeth widening in the decaying smile of the insane, and as the light rose he saw blackness fill the hollows where eyes once rolled about. And he saw the skeletal dances over the flesh of his Juana and the arms of bone tossing his child back and forth, and he woke drenched and screaming with pistolas drawn and only the dying firelight like flames of hell to point at.
“Christ Almighty.” Arturo gathered his bedroll and saddle, his eyes staying on Salomon. “I’m liable to get shot sleeping around you.”
He started off into the night, dragging his sleeping things over sage and cactus and disappeared.
Marquez inched his way up out of his bedroll to look. Salomon wiped his face and sat taking large breaths with his eyes closed.
“You dream of her still?” Marquez said, lifting his sombrero from his face.
“For always. But she does not come to me often anymore.”
Marquez sat up. “She does not like me being around. She stays away.”
“She liked you.”
“But now she sees me from the heavens. There are no secrets from the dead. They can see into any man’s heart. Into his past. They can see what manner of man he is and is not. They see past the masks we put on to fool the living.”
“I would not think she would pry into your business.”
“She does not have to pry. It is there for all to see. All the souls in heaven. All the saints. The Blessed Virgin Mary. It is there for them to turn their heads and see plainly. I killed my family, Sal. The Comanche did not cut their throats and throw them down our well. I held the knife.”
“Whether you held the knife or not, the Comanche killed your family.”
“This is not true. It was I. I have seen it in my head so many times that now I do not believe the Comanche were even there. It was these hands. I thought I could escape it the farther I went, the more time had passed. The more good thoughts I held in my head. But no amount of good deeds can correct such a violent act. Only a fool would think so and show up at the gates of heaven and expect anything other than for the clouds to open beneath his feet and be pulled down into the pits of hell by fiery hands. It is there for all to see and to judge, and when I die I will see it myself, and do you know what I will tell the man at heaven’s gates? This is what I will say to him. I killed my family, Señor, as you well know. I tried to hide it from you. I buried it so deep that I did not know the truth myself until much later. When it was as plain for me to see as the skin on my body. The eyes in my head. When I accepted this truth it was a burden lifted from my shoulders. I could breathe again for I no longer held a secret from myself or anyone else. From God. He knows me. I killed again, Sal. He knows this too. When I left your rancho I wandered the forests and did not see another man again for a long time. I thought it would be that way until I died. I released my horse. I sat naked upon desert
stones and did not eat or drink for days. I tried to die out there, so I would not have to live inside my skin and know the evil in my bones. The sin in my heart, on these hands. It is difficult to die, Sal. An old man came to me in the desert and fed me. He put his canteen to my lips and did not hold a single drop back. He filled me with food and he clothed me in the serape he wore and put me atop his best burro and sent me away. I thought this man was God himself, Sal. I thought it was him come to save me. To tell me to live again and do greats acts of charity for mankind and change the world like I am the great Juan Diego of Guadalupe or something. The man was not God. I know this because I rode that burro across California in search of my great mission. My mission for this world. I did not find a sign. There was no voice to guide me. I used to stand in the wind and listen and make up his stories for my own good. But it was not his voice. I was talking to myself. I killed a man in Escondido because he was beating the burro. I put my knife in him so deep it touched his heart and stopped its beating. This could not be God’s plan for me. I fled across the river, to Baja California, where a man told me that I was a coward for letting the Americans take California. I strangled this man until he did not move again and he lay there in the dirt with his mouth open and his breath was now the same as the wind. I came back, Sal. I worked on the rancho with El Flaco. I resisted his daughter but I did not resist his wife. I am a man made of evil things. I cannot help it. I shot a man in Montecito because of a few reales. Coins, Sal. I killed a man for coins. And now what do I do? I kill men for gold.”
Salomon sat a long time looking into the fire before he spoke. “I do not kill for gold.”
They sat still the both of them and only looked up when footsteps approached. They held their pistolas close and peered out into the darkness. Arturo appeared again.
“Where is that indian?”
Neither man by the fire could answer. Arturo came lumbering back and dropped his things back by the fire. He threw open his blanket and picked at the visible burs before falling back into it and slapping the saddle once before settling. He looked over his shoulder.
“I would rather get shot here by you than scalped out there by that indian. That man should be in a cage.”
They stood mounted side by side the four of them and watched the rising dusts of forthcoming riders for months. They cut down each approaching party in the cool twists of the canyons and took their gold. They took their rifles and pistols. They took their knives. They searched their bags and found paper cartridges and blackpowder. They found dynamite. Marquez held a large knife to the sun and smiled. He looked to Arturo and held it up. Arturo leaned and spat.
More travelers came down El Camino Real, heavily armed, in larger numbers. They came into the canyon, looking around with guns drawn. An object came hurling over the stones from somewhere, first one then another. The riders watched to see what it was, a stone with a message written, perhaps. A surrender. While the other riders kept their eyes up, one of them leaned from his saddle to inspect the object and saw that a fuse was running out of length to burn.
“What’s it say?” one of the riders asked him.
He looked up at his fellows, his face gone to death early.
Salomon and Arturo stood against an outcropping atop the canyons. Tsunipu lay nearby, sprawled on his back, watching the high spread of clouds move by like a thin linen blanket. He was moving his lips as if to speak in silent prayer to some moving spirit. Arturo jutted his chin toward the indian.
“What is he doing?”
Salomon glanced at the indian, but did not answer. He turned his face again toward the canyons. The blast came upward from the rocks, a volcaniclike burst of dust and larger debris. Arturo ducked with his hand holding down his hat. The rock walls rumbled and small stones shook loose. Tsunipu stayed where he lay until the rain of pebbles seized, then he opened his eyes and stood in one motion. The canyon would not empty of smoke for days, even with the winds that howled through the passages. They came down the canyon trail and found Marquez looking around at the sky with a finger in his ear. He was working his jaw.
“How much did you use?”
Marquez walked toward them. “What?”
“How much dynamite did you use?”
Marquez looked around and lifted his hands and dropped them. “I can’t hear you.”
The bandits walked among the remains. There was nothing to collect from the riders. Shreds of clothing, rifle stocks cracked in two, limbs from horses and animal heads separated with mouths hanging open. Less of the riders. If they carried gold at all, the wind had taken it from the air.
Salomon rode south with the riches they did have. He rode from small town to large: Los Olivos, Lampoc, Calico, Agua Mansa, Valencia, Santa Clarita, Alma, and Santa Maria. Boys told their fathers of a man they saw among the hovels, the flicker of a shadow between the huts, placing bags of gold at the doors. Salomon sent a boy through the church doors during Sunday Mass. The churchgoers stopped in mid verse and turned their heads one by one as the boy approached the altar, until the hymn had transformed from chorus to murmur. The boy dropped the bag he carried, exhausted, and the gold spilled over the floor. Father Benito closed his eyes and crossed himself.
Salomon visited the missions along the way and stuffed the collection boxes. He saw a notice tacked to one of the adobe walls. A reward had been posted in his name, collectible in dollars from the American government. The drawing was crude.
Still, riders came down El Camino Real seeking cattle with gold in their saddles. They came with armed escorts and scouts. And still, they were ambushed, sometimes deep in the canyons when their confidence clouded their awareness. One rider escaped the gunsmoke and rode fast through the turns and sandstone alleys, losing himself in the maze, the hoof beats pounding like drums through every cave and hall, awakening canyon walls either left long in silence since ancient times of wanderers or altogether deaf and mute since creation.
The bandits followed him for days through crags and underbrush and crawled on their bellies in caves where the trail ran out, firing into the blackness when fear prevented them from crawling further. They found his horse wandering saddleless without bridle or restraint of any kind and soon found the saddle and leather stripped and left in the sand.
“He is lost,” Marquez said. “He has given up and turned his horse loose.”
The lost rider’s tracks crossed and recrossed the canyon trails in long strides, until finally they stopped altogether as if he had vanished completely or had been taken by some holy sympathy come to save him. Marquez dismounted and stepped about with his hands on his hips and kicked over the tracks.
“What is he, some magician turned to bird?”
Salomon looked to the canyon walls and traced a thin cleft in the rocks to the top.
“He has not given up. His horse cannot climb as he can.”
They found the rider atop the canyons slumped in the shade of a lone joshua tree grown from a gap. He held a pistol resting at his side. As they rode up, the man blinked slowly and slurred some words but did not raise the pistol. Salomon slid from his horse and crouched before him.
“Where are you going?”
The man shook his head, rolling it on the joshua behind him. “I don’t know.”
“You have wasted our time here chasing you.”
“You’ve wasted mine.”
“What were you going to do up here? Fly home?”
“I said I don’t know.”
Salomon took the man’s pistol and looked it over, hefting it. He turned it over and inspected the intricate design, the size of the weapon. A dragoon’s pistol. He looked at the flash pan. He cocked the hammer and held it to the man’s forehead. His men behind him glanced to each other, and when he pulled the trigger they flinched at the click. Tsunipu did not react. Salomon hefted it once again.
“Where did you get this?”
“I found it.”
“Next time I think you will carry it loaded, yes?”
; “The next time, I think you will be the man on the run.”
“The next time is for me to decide, I think. You would be wise to avoid this place.”
“You won’t allow a next time. We both know I’m not leaving here alive.”
Salomon did not answer. He tucked the heavy pistol in his waistband. “You are very thirsty, yes?”
The man nodded and tried to swallow. Salomon turned on his haunches and caught a canteen thrown by Arturo. He held it to the man’s lips, then capped it. He squinted to the sky.
“Do you not know these canyons are dangerous? What would you have done if you were snakebit? Or chased by wolves?”
“Or Mexican murderers.”
Salomon looked at him. The man was breathing hard, his sweat beginning to seep again.
“Murderers?”
The man nodded. Salomon stood and the man had to shift to hide in his shade. It gave Salomon a halo.
“Is that what you think I am?”
“What else?”
“Just a man. I am just a man whose wife and child were killed by Americans like you looking for gold.”
“I’m not looking for gold. I came here to buy cattle.”
Salomon spat. “You carry a lot of gold for a man not interested in it.”
“I’m just a man too. Like you were. I’m a man with a wife and a child who still live.”
He stood looking down at this man. He crouched again and held the canteen to him once more and the man drank, spilling drops down his chin.
“Then fly home to them.”