Another Like Me

by Albert Norton, Jr.

  Jack took another step toward the cliff edge, but a barrage of gunfire cut off his path. He was desperate to get to the bottom, to get to Robin. He tried to run down the path he had come up, only to find a rifle pointed at him. It was one of the Apache, who, thank God, recognized him and lowered the rifle. Jack ran past him. The gunfire in the canyon was loud and almost continuous. Jack tried to detour to the cleft Robin had earlier hidden in, hoping it would provide meager protection until the gunfire subsided again. Ahead of him, though, were several more Apache. He could not take a chance on being recognized as a noncombatant. For all his affiliation with the Apache, he knew fewer of them personally than he did the Diné. Jack jumped off the path to his left, toward the canyon. He could just see a bulge of stone projecting out below him, so he sprang for that. He was able to hang on to the rounded stone and then start back in the direction he’d come, only this time on a more level path below the one he’d just come down, and partially hidden from it. He was now partly covered from the canyon side by pinion pines. He tried to huddle into a corner of the rock. It provided little cover, but he was somewhat less conspicuous there. Jack hoped that the Apache riflemen would carry on past him, but he couldn’t see them. He was miserable to get to Robin.

  Jack looked around, planning his next bolt from this position as soon as the Apache gunmen had had enough time to get past him on the upper path. As he waited impatiently, huddled in his hiding place, a body fell onto the little rock apron in front of him. The head made a sickening crack on the stone. As Jack watched, it slipped over the edge of the outcrop, leaving a streak of maroon-colored blood. He looked up. The rock wall above the upper path tilted away from the canyon, but a large boulder bordered the path. About thirty feet up it ended in a platform, from which this man had evidently been thrown or pushed.

  The blood in front of Jack represented to him his own failure. He had no idea where Peter and Millie were, or if they were even alive, and now Robin was somewhere at the foot of the canyon, probably in the same shape as the body that had just bounced off of his small promontory. He’d failed to keep his little family away from the fighting. Far from staying out of the fray, they were in the very thick of it.

  The gunfire was more sporadic now and seemed to have moved up the canyon. Jack took this as his opportunity to escape back down the path to the canyon floor, and to Robin. He clambered back up onto the first path he’d run down. No Apache gunmen. He ran down to their starting point, jumped to the canyon floor, and started up-canyon for where he expected to find Robin. Jack was frustrated from trying to run in the loose sand, while Robin was, for all he knew, dead or dying. Jack could still hear gunfire, but it seemed to be further away. He found what he thought might be the spot below where Robin had slipped over the edge, but there was no sign of her, and no sign of the young Diné man she’d tried to save. But then, the irregular cliff face far above him made him unsure that he was even in the right spot.

  Jack ran up along the bottom of the canyon, toward the sound of gunfire, seeking cover where he could. He was intensely aware that even if the fighting died down, it likely wouldn’t be over. There was still a wave of Apache to come once those who’d gone to the Canyon del Muerto figured out there were no Diné there to kill. Jack rounded a stone corner that he thought might be his last likely prospect for finding Robin. There, in the middle of a sandy wash that would feed the main stream in flood, were several bodies, lined up all in a row. His heart in his throat, Jack ran out to them. He was relieved that he knew none of them, even as he was sick over the needless waste. He didn’t think Robin could have fallen this far east into the canyon, but he was certain he hadn’t passed her. Maybe someone had found her and carried her as the fray moved east, but why? He moved on, along the canyon wall, toward the shooting. He passed another body. And then two more.

  Millie was huddled inside a thicket of cottonwoods, leaning next to the canyon wall. Jack saw her only by happenstance through the broom straw and camphorweed in the sandy soil next to the streambed. He bustled into her little bower, and she looked up. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I’m fine. I lost Peter. He said to wait here, and then he disappeared.”

  “What about Rupert? Scott?”

  “I haven’t seen them since the beginning. I think they’re up there,” she said, pointing upstream to where the fighting was now more intense. With Jack’s appearance, she began fighting back sobs of fear and desperation.

  “Let’s get you out of here. I’ll come back for Peter.”

  Millie made no effort to resist. Jack could see that her taste for adventure was fully drained, and now she lived through the moments in dread. She was in good shape physically, though. Jack walked and jogged back with her, past the bodies. He wondered how many more bodies lay about them, up on the rocks or in out-of-the-way places along the canyon wall. Maybe Robin was up there somewhere, dragged out of the way for who knows what reason.

  No one was at the vehicles. There was still no sign of Apache from the other canyon.

  “I’ll be back soon,” Jack told Millie. She jumped in the back of the first vehicle, an SUV, and then cowered down below the level of the glass. Jack left Millie and began jogging up the streambed again. Praying. Praying to the God of this canyon, who was sovereign over the whole earth, that Robin might yet live, and that Peter would be alive, for Robin’s and Millie’s sakes, if not for his. Praying with the certainty that the question was under God’s dominion. And praying for Rupert and Scott, too.

  Jack saw Peter’s foot first. It could have belonged to any recumbent body. It was mostly hidden by a boulder twelve feet or so uphill from the path. It was tricky to get up there, but Jack had to rule out that it might be Peter. Only when he rounded the boulder to look at the body did he see that it was, in fact, Peter. Jack kneeled down beside him then leaned his head down next to Peter’s mouth. Peter was breathing. Jack looked him over and found a wound in his side.

  “I’m okay,” he heard Peter whisper.

  “Sure you are.” Jack lowered his voice to a near-whisper. “I need to get you out of here, this thing’s not over. Millie’s safe. She’s waiting for you.”

  “K.”

  “I’ll find Robin.”

  “K.”

  It was a challenge getting Peter down the steep rock to the canyon floor. He was of very little help, with the wound, but he didn’t swoon. Jack sensed that it was not as bad as it might have been, though it had fully incapacitated Peter for now. Jack remembered his prayer.

  Jack had a long way to go to get back to where the vehicles were. Peter weighed every bit of 180 pounds, and, in addition, had to be carried gingerly.

  “Oh, what am I thinking,” Jack said aloud. He carried Peter over to a level bit of rock and laid him down again. “I’ll be back.”

  Jack ran back toward the vehicles. He paused at the rear of the first SUV and looked around at Millie, still lying on her side there.

  “Found Peter. Getting my car,” he said, and then he took off again before Millie could ask further about him. Jack found his vehicle and drove it up past the Apache vehicles parked closer to the action, sometimes having to drive creatively to get where he needed to be, once knocking off another vehicle’s mirror and another time nearly bottoming out at the edge of the streambed.

  When he reached Millie, she seemed to have somewhat recovered, and now was standing in the streambed, blocking Jack’s vehicle. She insisted that he take her. In just a few minutes, they reached Peter, loaded him into the vehicle, and headed back out. Ahead of them were new Apache raiders coming in.

  “I prayed about that, too,” Jack said.

  “About what?”

  Jack didn’t answer. He hoped for just enough time to get to Robin, and that she would still be alive before the fighting with a whole new group commenced.

  Jack jumped out of his vehicle, taking what he thought was his best chance at not being mistaken for the enemy. The first Apache vehicle pulled up to him. Cabe was drivi
ng. He started speaking to Jack before he’d come to a full stop.

  “I passed the other vehicles. Where are they?” Cabe asked.

  “Cabe, the battle has moved up the canyon. I don’t know who’s pursuing who. There are losses on both sides. It’s enough. Let’s end this.”

  “Is that all you know?”

  Jack sighed. This bit of information wouldn’t stop Cabe and the rest of the Apache. To the contrary, for all they could tell, it was time to ride in to the aid of their compatriots. “That’s all I know,” he said.

  Cabe spurred his SUV mount on. Its wheels spun a little in the soft sand of the wash next to the streambed. Jack stood impatiently, not wanting to wait for this whole second wave of Apache to roll past him. There was not enough room to pass between the canyon wall and a scattering of cottonwoods, but Jack could see that he could go deeper into the middle of the canyon and make his way around.

  Just as the last Apache passed, Jack glanced over toward the canyon wall again, as ever on the lookout for Robin. He held out hope that perhaps he’d missed something before, after all. This time, he spotted a zombie. The movie kind, and not the druggie wing of the Apaches. Fitting for the horror of the moment. But no, it was one figure hunched over, with another on his back. Her back. Dark hair hanging down as she struggled with her burden.

  Jack was out of the car in a flash, running. It was Robin. She was carrying, or trying to carry, the young man she had followed over the cliff. Jack experienced the greatest elation of his life, only minutes after his greatest sadness.

  “How’d you get here?” he asked, as he relieved her of her burden.

  Robin was struggling to catch her breath. She just said, “Your arm is bleeding.”

  Jack looked at the underside of his forearm. He was laughing incongruously inside the bloody canyon walls. “It’s nothing,” he said

  They moved over to the SUV and laid the young Diné man down in the back, next to Peter. Jack turned and hugged Robin earnestly.

  “Ouch,” she said. It came out muffled against Jack’s shirt.

  He released her. “Oh, I’m sorry. You’re hurt.”

  “Not until you squished me.”

  They returned in Jack’s SUV. Robin helped Millie assess Peter, and then turned to tend to the wounded young man, who was beginning to show signs of shock.

  They were close to the spot in the canyon below where Jack and Robin had first become separated. Jack looked over his shoulder to Robin as he drove. “You didn’t fall all the way to the canyon?”

  “No, there was another ledge. I landed on my back. And partly on this poor guy.”

  “You didn’t know that when you tried to catch him. You hung on to him when you thought you were going all the way to the bottom of the canyon.”

  Chapter 30

  Jack walked out into the night air. It was colder even than it had been on the previous night. Behind him, the restaurant was aglow with oil lamps. In front of him, across the street, was a rock outcropping by the road, looming twenty-five feet or more above it. He crossed over the street and walked around the hill so that it separated him and the restaurant. Now it was well and truly dark. No lights anywhere. There was only a sliver of moon. He looked at the stars overhead. It is an old cliché that stars can look so close and so real that one might reach out and touch them, perhaps take one in hand. But Jack didn’t feel that way about the starscape above him. The stars were cold and aloof and distant. Instead of experiencing the brilliance of these faraway reputed masters of fate, Jack felt an impression of darkness pulled over the brilliance of the heavens, with the tiniest of pinpricks in that darkness to let through just a tantalizing bit of heaven-light.

  It was a strange world, made stranger by man’s inexplicable self-destruction. Jack thought about the frustration at not finding peace, about the wantonness of carnage once blood began to flow, about his worry over Peter and the uncertainty of Peter’s recovery. But most of all, Jack thought about those almond eyes of Robin’s when she discovered him and he her—when he rejoined the human race. That event was not only a return to human self-consciousness for Jack. It was a bookend to that later event—watching Robin fall headlong to her apparent end, heedless of her own safety, after the wounded Diné.

  She was right. We all die. We don’t say that our immortality is required before we are willing to recognize God for who He is. So we should not quibble over the many imperfections and failings and disappointments that attend us during our short lifetime. To be consistent, we would say that God is not, because we die. But if we say that God can be, though we die, then why complain of the lesser perturbations in our existence before that death? In life, there is only grace. Not only the grace exercised by God, in relieving us of consequences of our less-than-Godlike state, but that other kind of grace, which is exercised by us. Kindness. Consideration. The Golden Rule. The equanimity with which we encounter difficulties, hardship, chaos, pain, cruelty, suffering. The projection of peace and goodwill. Our decency, one to another. Grace means walking in beauty, as the Navajo had it. If the grace in others or ourselves is eroded, that does not mean that human purpose fails as well. It just means that our failures obscure that common grace.

  The savagery following Junie’s death, and Roland’s, did not cancel God, nor even argue for His absence. It was just a specific of the larger proposition that we each of us have a beginning and an end in this life, and there is either purpose for each of us and for all of us, or all is chaos and meaninglessness. There is no in-between. The chaos that is, we recognize as such. But it argues for order—its opposite. And likewise, our sensitivity to the prospect of meaninglessness argues for the existence of purpose. Purpose means God, and God means purpose.

  Jack had returned to an awareness of human consciousness on a snowy day in Luna, New Mexico. And then to consciousness of God on another snowy day in Alpine. Then somewhere along the way, he recognized the incongruity of a God who might create but then step back, heedless of His creation falling to chaos or to meaninglessness. If His creation held together, it held together to a purpose—an inscrutable purpose perhaps, for people, but a purpose whether people in their gropings attained it or not.

  The Diné were wrong. And so were the Apache. There could be no reconciliation between them because there would never be a common ground. No mutual recognition of common purpose without a medium—a common language, a common consciousness, a mutual self-awareness that encompassed also a common consciousness of God. God who would light the internal world of each of them, Diné or Apache or Outsider, so that it might be visible not only to Him, but also to each other. The outward material things of the world—animal, plant, mineral, the solid earth—these are objects to our inward, subjective experience. Only another person or God Himself can become other than object. A subject to subject interaction is what we desire most. A face-to-face interaction in which one person thinks of himself as what he thinks another sees. That mutual recognition—when we see another like me—is not another’s mere animal awareness of another like-kind animal, but rather that other’s ability to hold the same consciousness of me. God authors this. His consciousness of us and our awareness of it precedes our ability to be face-to-face with one another, awakened to the other’s consciousness. This specialness of man, to man, comes from God.

  Peter would recover. The bullet had lodged inside him, but it would come out. Not without painful amateur surgery, but it would come. Already he had antibiotics that stemmed infection. It was of great help to him that he was young and quite healthy otherwise. And that Millie attended him.

  The Diné and the Apache—that is, those who survived—were together, sharing such resources as they had to take care of the wounded and to stay warm and fed. There was a sense of being chastened by the loss of life when numbers already were so few. Life is precious, whether the number of souls measures in hundreds or in billions. Whether we have contact with every living person on the planet or the smallest subset of them, we partake of that whol
e community when we address one another in this mutual awareness.

  Jack walked out onto the plain and took in the breadth of darkness all around him. And then he walked at an angle from his starting point, so that the rock outcropping would no longer interfere with his line of sight to the little restaurant where the whole world was. The pale yellow light in its windows shone humbly in a sea of darkness. Jack turned toward the light.

  THE END

  About the Author

  ALBERT NORTON, JR. is a novelist and essayist. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia and blogs at www.adarklingplain.com