by Boyd Brent
“He sure was. Now would you care to explain how two souls are able to inhabit a single body?”
“I hope you will not mind my quoting the words of another. There are more things in heaven and earth, Ted, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
“That was Shakespeare you just quoted.”
“I had every reason to believe you were a learned man, Ted.”
“I heard it somewheres, is all. Must have stuck. But you know what they say, if you hurl enough shit at a man, then some is bound to stick.”
“An apt description of human learning and development through the ages. Thank you.”
“That's quite alright.” Ted crossed his arms and looked down at the dirt. “It seems to me that Dave is a force for good.”
“Never has language been utilised to make a truer statement.”
Ted looked up from the ground. “And you?”
“I will not lie to you, Ted. I am a work in progress. But I am fortunate to have a fine example to follow.”
“Dave's example?”
“That's right.”
“I suppose we are all God's creatures.”
“It pleases me to hear you say so. Ted?”
“Yes?”
“I am nearing the surface. Please stand back.”
Ted looked left and right. “Back?” The ropes passed through Gull's hands and he stumbled forwards, crashing to his knees. He got up and staggered to his left, fell, then got up, turned and lurched back towards the wagon. Ted called out, “You having some kind of fit?”
Gull reached for and grabbed the front of the wagon. Presently he said, “I believe the danger has passed. I was overcautious. Dave would have been very upset if I allowed any harm to come to you.” Despite this reassurance, Ted took a step back. “There is no need to back away. The danger has passed.”
“You got eyes in the back of your head?”
Gull turned to face him. “In a manner of speaking.”
“I do not doubt it. Where is Dave?”
Gull tapped his temple. “Here.”
“When might he be coming back?”
“As soon as I can locate him. In the meantime, I suggest we continue our journey until the sun goes down. It would appear we are headed west.”
“That's right. California.” Gull turned and stood facing south. Ted watched him. He hawked up some phlegm, spat, and shook his head. He walked over and stood beside Gull. To the south an expanse of brown and grey, out of which the heat rose and shimmered. “Dave said he was looking for someone … said you knew where they might be at. They south of here? In New Mexico?”
“Further south. In Mexico.”
“You ain't thinkin' of heading straight down there and leaving an old man stranded?” Gull looked down at the old man and smiled, and in so doing he bared his teeth. Ted continued, “I am not picking up much in the way of intent one way or another. Unless, that is, it is your intent to murder me in cold blood.”
“Perhaps my smile of reassurance requires practice.”
“And then some. I'll be honest: I do not think it was Dave's intention to take me all the way to California. Just to the nearest town … one inhabited by God-fearing folk.”
Gull looked over Ted's head to the west. “The town of Pioche is seventy point two miles due west.”
Ted turned his head in the same direction and muttered, “Seventy point two miles …”
“We will not make it before sundown. I will attempt to make up the ground Dave would have covered had he not been interrupted.” He walked over to where the ropes lay and picked them up. Ted hurried to the wagon and climbed up on the seat. “I do believe I am sensing a competitive spirit in you, Gull.”
“I prefer to look upon it as friendly rivalry.”
“Men's perspectives on things are apt to differ.”
“I believe I am in the presence of a great philosopher.”
Ted lowered his hat and reclined into a position of comfort. Under his breath he muttered, “Giddy up now … so says Plato.”
They had not travelled far when Ted looked up from under the brim of his hat. He sat up as though responding to a jab in his ribs and raised his voice over the creak and grind of the wheels. “I believe we got company!”
Gull was at full sprint, the balls of his feet thumping the ground like muted pistons. He turned his head a little to the left. “I have been aware of them for some time.”
“You reckon they're Indians?”
“Their countenance suggests not.”
Ted squinted at the approaching company, no more than a dark speck amid the distant haze. “And can you tell from their countenance whether they are friend or foe?”
“Four men on horseback. They are transporting human cargo. Thirty-two individuals. All chained.”
“Negroes?”
“That would be my summation also.”
“Slavers headed back east. Might be okay, then. Although some of 'em got reputations as being meaner than hell.”
“Would you prefer to hide in the wagon, Ted?”
“I might be old, but I'm no coward. Thinking on it, it might be for the best if you let me do the talking. Oh, hell. Just how am I goin' to explain this here situation? Maybe you should hide in the wagon.”
“I see no need to hide at this time.”
“Well, at least stop and put on some clothes.”
“Exposing my skin to direct sunlight makes this task possible.”
“And what do you imagine these folks will say if I tell them that? They will probably take us for unchristian abominations. Shoot us and be done with it.”
“I will not allow any harm to come to you. Dave would–”
“I know I know. He would not like it.”
“I suggest you recline and make yourself comfortable, Ted. Pull your hat down over your eyes. Rest. I will ignore them also.”
“Ignore 'em? Some might consider that rude. Folks have been murdered out here for less.” Ted shook his head. “Ignore 'em he says ...” He sat back and pulled his hat down over his eyes. “While I'm at it I'll ignore this ache in my backside. Maybe that'll pass me by also.”
Two men rode on horses before the slaves, and two rode behind them. All rested the butts of their rifles on their thighs and swayed gently in their saddles, looking about as bored as men can look. Between them, thirty-two black men hobbled along barefoot and in rags. They were draped from head to foot in shackles of medieval design – old rusted contraptions that wore away skin and bone both. But it was not only flesh and blood that capitulated under that metal, it was that thing within a man that animates him – crushed not by the weight of those shackles but by their implication. The two slavers at the front of this party noticed the approaching wagon. They exchanged a glance, kicked their horses and rode on ahead. Two hundred metres from the wagon they glanced at one another again and slowed to a trot. Two rifle shots rang out like thunderclaps, and Ted removed his hat with a flourish and smiled through a mouthful of gums. Frozen in this attitude he spoke to Gull without moving his lips. “They'll be expecting you to stop … you hear me? And while it may well be that you are able to catch lead in your teeth, I got no teeth left.”
Two more shots rang out. Gull stopped. The two men were close enough now for Ted to see the expressions on their faces – the expressions of men who having dreamt of an abomination had woken the following morning to discover one perched on their beds. They glanced at one another again and levelled their rifles at Gull. Ted waved his hat and grinned like an actor projecting to the back of the theatre. The rider on the left had a broad red face and small blue eyes that vanished whenever he squinted, and he squinted now as he said, “What in the name of…?”
His companion was leaner and darker, with round brown eyes that showed all the compassion of a grizzly bear's. This man said to the first, “You speechless there, Bert? I ain't never known you speechless.”
Bert looked at Ted, still grinning and holding his hat out in welcome. “This here well-
endowed fellow belong to you, old man?” he said.
“Belong to me? No, no. We are all good and free men here.”
“You implying something, old man?”
“No.” The lean man-grizzly straightened his back and surveyed the whole. “This wagon must weigh half a ton. I can only assume that my eyes were deceiving me back there. This blind man could not pull it even an inch.”
“My eyesight is better than yours,” said Bert.
“And?”
“And this blind man was running flat out.”
“If that was the case then he could not have been attached to this wagon.”
“He is attached to it now, and as the Lord is my witness he was so attached when he was runnin' flat out.”
Gull cast the ropes from his shoulder and stood up straight. Both riders dropped their reins, shouldered their rifles and aimed at his heart. Gull raised his hands. “I am unarmed.”
“We will decide what you is and what you ain't, boy. You care to explain where you found the strength to pull this here wagon?”
Gull began to quote the same lines of Shakespeare that he had used earlier, while Ted groaned quietly to himself.
When Gull finished, Bert leaned and spat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “More things in heaven and earth, huh? Seems to me you neglected to mention hell. My grandpappy was a preacher … and if he could see this he'd swear the devil had a hand in it. Him all sat up there and droolin' over your butt like that.”
Ted took off his hat and held it in his lap. “My wife passed six months back. What you are suggesting is disgusting. Plain and simple. And as for his unusual strength … well, good Christian folk like you boys must have heard the story of Samson and Delilah?”
“Samson and Delilah, he says. This man is no Samson and you sure as shit ain't no Delilah.”
“He probably looks a lot more like her when he puts on one of them dresses he has in his wagon.”
Both men laughed, and when at last they'd stopped Gull said, “We mean you no harm. And now we must be on our way.”
“That a threat, son?” asked Bert.
“Please don't refer to me as son.”
“And why not?”
“Dave doesn't like it.”
Bert looked at Ted. “Does he not, now?”
“I'm not Dave,” said Ted. The slaves shuffled up alongside the wagon and a man shouted, “Hold up, niggers!”
Gull glanced to his right and into the wide eyes of a dozen black men. He looked up at the men on the horses. “Neither would Dave approve of your subjugation of these men.”
The lean man-grizzly leaned and spat. “Would he not, now?”
The other two slavers rode up alongside him. The third man cast his gaze over the naked-man-turned-beast-of-burden and the old man who'd made him so. “Holy mother of …”
The fourth man said, “I don't think there's anything holy about this.”
“That would be my thinking,” added Bert.
“Please,” said Ted. “Our wagon train was attacked by Apaches some miles back. They slaughtered every last one of my party, and buried me up to my neck in the dirt … which is where I would still be if not for this fella.”
The fourth rider got down from his horse. “You really strong enough to pull this rig, son?”
The lean man-grizzly said, “Don't call him son. Dave don't like it.”
The fourth man walked up to Gull and waved a hand in front of his face. “You called Dave, blind man? Is that your name?” Gull shook his head and smiled reassuringly. The man drew his revolver. “That look supposed to scare me?”
“Maybe we should just leave 'em be,” said the third rider. “Be on our way. They're white men, which makes 'em free men.”
“An adequate display of empathy,” said Gull. “For this reason you will leave here alive. I think it's what Dave would have wanted. As for the rest of you, that will no longer be possible.” Gull turned his head towards the slaves. “I must free these men. It would be the empathic thing to do, but more importantly it's what Dave would have done.”
The fourth man levelled the pistol at Gull's head. Before he could pull the trigger his hand was upturned and the barrel of his gun inside his own mouth. Gull smiled reassuringly whilst relocating the man's brains into the face of Bert's horse. All four horses were badly spooked by this noisy relocation of brains, not least Bert's horse. It reared up and shook its head in an attempt to shake off the organic mask. Bert struggled one-handed with his reins and attempted to aim his rifle. Gull's pistol was a single-shot carbine, and had no further use except as a missile. He hurled it at Bert's head with a force that cracked his skull front to back. In the next instant he leapt onto the back of Bert's horse, snatched away his rifle and held his corpse as a shield. Gull applied sufficient pressure to the horse's ribs to get its attention, then swung it about and, as the lean man-grizzly struggled to control his own mount, Gull relocated his brains into the face of the third man. This man responded to his organic mask with less grace than had Bert's horse – considerably less. Although his own horse bucked like a bronco, he released his grip on the reins, clawed at his face and tumbled off onto the ground, where he lay unconscious.
Ted lowered his backside slowly onto the wagon's seat. He looked uncertain as to the appropriate response – laughter or tears, or maybe he should just sit back and retreat under his hat like a snail? What he'd just witnessed made him feel as slow as a snail.
Gull slid Bert's body off his horse and turned the horse to face the slaves. They all watched him – every man amongst them. A lone voice said, “You mean what you said? About setting us all free?” Gull located the speaker towards the rear of the group. He rode the horse over to the man and him asked his name.
“Terrence Curtis,” came the reply. Terrence was shorter and skinnier than the rest, but what he lacked in bulk he made up in attitude. “You mean it? What you said?”
Gull considered smiling reassuringly again, but thought the better of it. Without expression on his face or tone in his voice he said, “Yes, Terrence. I meant what I said. You are all free men.”
Terrence raised his shackled hands against the sun and studied Gull's face. “We will never be free men, but I'll take my chances as a fugitive. And in that I expect I speak for every man here.” Gull cast his gaze over the rest who gave no indication of whether Terrence spoke for them or not. Terrance continued, “The man whose mount you ride … Bert… he has the keys … in his saddle bag.”
Gull climbed down from the horse and crouched beside Bert's body. He withdrew a pistol from his holster. The gun was a six-shooter, and all six chambers were primed with powder and ball. Gull unbuckled the dead man's holster, fitted it to his own waist and slid the gun home. He repeated this process with the second dead man, then turned to face the slaves with a six-shooter on each hip.
Fifty
Once Gull had unshackled the slaves, he applied himself to digging the graves of the dead slavers. Several amongst the party of blacks had offered to help hide the 'evidence', but Gull said he would not hear of it. He told them they'd doubtless experienced their fair share of manual labour already and besides … here Ted chipped in between puffs on his pipe: “Dave wouldn't like it.”
“That's right, Ted.”
Ted shook out the match and tossed it away. “Having spent time with Dave, I'm inclined to agree with you.”
Gull stood in a partially dug grave and leaned on the shovel like an English gentleman on his cane. He cast his gaze over the party of freed slaves. With the exception of Terrence Curtis, they sat or lay in the same order they'd been chained. Terrence had relocated himself to the front of this party like its self-appointed head. Gull turned his white eyes on Ted. “These men are exhausted.”
Ted was sat on a rock with his arms folded and his hat pulled low over his eyes. “I expect they'll be just fine after a night's rest.”
“These men are hungry.”
Ted cleared his throat. “I'm sure they
'll be just fine after a good feed.”
“We must feed them.”
“Feed 'em? Suppose I could shoot a rodent or two, now we got guns. Maybe a rattlesnake.”
At dusk the men gathered about a campfire. The sky was a ruddy crimson that matched the wall of rock to the north. They supped on boiled coyote, and from the pot above the fire came the smell of coffee. One amongst these men had bound hands. He was the third slave-driver, and his name was John Torrance. John had been brought back to consciousness by the smell of cooking, but had been too groggy and too witless to leave immediately. His wits were returning now, and as he ate he took care not to make eye contact with any of his former possessions. One in particular, a man called Isaiah who weighed three hundred and fifty pounds, had not taken his eyes off him. Having served up each man's food, Ted now sat on the ground beside Gull with his own plate. Gull put down his plate, rested his hands on his legs and pressed the tips of his fingers together. “Have you given any thought as to where you will go to evade your oppressors?” he asked. “I would suggest north. They look less favourably on slavery in the north.”
Without taking his eyes from John Torrance, Isaiah said, “White men will make slaves of black men anywhere he go, I reckon.”
“A white man has freed you, Isaiah,” said Terrence.
“He sure did. And I have never seen a whiter man. Never hope to, neither.”
A chorus of “Amen to that” rose from the supping fugitives.
“Do you want to kill that man?” Gull asked Isaiah.
“Thought of little else for some months. He done whipped my brother until he begged the Lord for mercy, and then he whipped him some more … 'til he could beg no more.”
“What is preventing you?”
“You. Saying he was pardoned.”
“I said that?”
“I reckon.”
“And that is enough? To prevent you avenging your brother?”
“Maybe it is and maybe it ain't. It seem to me that pardoning this man was somethin' you needed to do. You might have the appearance of a blind Christ – and there ain't a man here who has not wondered at those scars on your hands – but …”