The Ends of the Earth

by Lucius Shepard

  I plucked the knife from Randall’s hand, wanting to kill him myself. But I had invested too much in his salvation. I hauled him erect and over to the window; I smashed out the glass with a chair and pushed him through. Then I jumped after him. As I came to my feet, I saw the painted men closing in from the front of the PX and—still towing Randall along—I sprinted around the corner of the building and up the slope, calling for help. Lights flicked on, and heads popped from tent flaps. But when they spotted Randall, they ducked back inside.

  I was afraid, but Randall’s abject helplessness—his eyes rolling like a freaked calf s, his hands clawing at me for support—helped to steady me. The painted men seemed to be everywhere. They would materialize from behind tents, out of bunker mouths, grinning madly and waving moonstruck knives, and send us veering off in another direction, back and forth across the hill. Time and again, I thought they had us, and on several occasions, it was only by a hairsbreadth that I eluded the slash of a blade that looked to be bearing a charge of winking silver energy on its tip. I was wearing down, stumbling, gasping, and I was certain we couldn’t last much longer. But we continued to evade them, and I began to sense that they were in no hurry to conclude the hunt; their pursuit had less an air of frenzy than of a ritual harassment, and eventually, as we staggered up to the mouth of the operations bunker and—I believed—safety, I realized that they had been herding us. I pushed Randall inside and glanced back from the sandbagged entrance. The five men stood motionless a second, perhaps fifty feet away, then melted into the darkness.

  I explained what had happened to the MP on duty in the bunker—a heavyset guy named Cousins—and though he had no love for Randall, he was a dutiful sort and gave us permission to wait out the night inside. Randall slumped down against the wall, resting his head on his knees, the picture of despair. But I believed that his survival was assured. With the testimony of the clerk, I thought the shrinks would have no choice but to send him elsewhere for examination and possible institutionalization. I felt good, accomplished, and passed the night chain-smoking, bullshitting with Cousins.

  Then, toward dawn, a voice issued from the radio. It was greatly distorted, but it sounded very much like Randall’s.

  “Randall J.,” it said. “This here’s Delta Sly Honey. Do you read? Over.”

  Randall looked up, hearkening to the spit and fizzle of the static.

  “I know you out there, Randall J.,” the voice went on. “I can see you clear, sitting with the shadows of the bars upon your soul and blood on your hands. Ain’t no virtuous blood, that’s true. But it stains you alla same. Come back at me, Randall J. We gotta talk, you and me.”

  Randall let his head fall; with a finger, he traced a line in the dust.

  “What’s the point in keepin’ this up, Randall J.?” said the voice. “You left the best part of you over here, the soulful part, and you can’t go on much longer without it. Time to take that little walk for real, man. Time to get clear of what you done and pass on to what must be. We waitin’ for you just north of base, Randall J. Don’t make us come for you.”

  It was in my mind to say something to Randall, to break the disconsolate spell the voice appeared to be casting over him; but I found I had nothing left to give him, that I had spent my fund of altruism and was mostly weary of the whole business…as he must have been.

  “Ain’t nothin’ to be ’fraid of out here,” said the voice. “Only the wind and the gray whispers of phantom Charlie and the trail leadin’ away from the world. There’s good company for you, Randall J. Gotta man here used to be a poet, and he’ll tell you stories ’bout the Wild North King and the Woman of Crystal. Got another fella, guy used to live in Indonesia, and he’s fulla tales ’bout watchin’ tigers come out on the highways to shit and cities of men dressed like women and islands where dragons still live. Then there’s this kid from Opelika, claims to know some of your people down that way, and when he talks, you can just see that ol’ farmboy moon heavin’ up big and yellow over the barns, shinin’ the blacktop so it looks like polished jet, and you can hear crazy music leakin’ from the Dixieland Café and smell the perfumed heat steamin’ off the young girls’ breasts. Don’t make us wait no more, Randall J. We got work to do. Maybe it ain’t much, just breakin’ trail and walkin’ point and keepin’ a sharp eye out for demons…but it sure as hell beats shepherdin’ the dead, now, don’t it?” A long pause. “You come on and take that walk, Randall J. We’ll make you welcome, I promise. This here’s Delta Sly Honey. Over and out.”

  Randall pulled himself to his feet and took a faltering few steps toward the mouth of the bunker. I blocked his path and he said, “Lemme go, Curt.”

  “Look here, Randall,” I said. “I might can get you home if you just hang on.”

  “Home.” The concept seemed to amuse him, as if it were something with the dubious reality of heaven or hell. “Lemme go.”

  In his eyes, then, I thought I could see all his broken parts, a disjointed shifting of lights and darks, and when I spoke I felt I was giving tongue to a vast consensus, one arrived at without either ballots or reasonable discourse. “If I let you go,” I said, “be best you don’t come back this time.”

  He stared at me, his face gone slack, and nodded.

  Hardly anybody was outside, yet I had the idea everyone was watching us as we walked down the hill; under a leaden overcast, the base had a tense, muted atmosphere such as must have attended rainy dawns beneath the guillotine. The sentries at the main gate passed Randall through without question. He went a few paces along the road, then turned back, his face pale as a star in the half-light, and I wondered if he thought we were driving him off or if he believed he was being called to a better world. In my heart I knew which was the case. At last he set out again, quickly becoming a shadow, then the rumor of a shadow, then gone.

  Walking back up the hill, I tried to sort out my thoughts, to determine what I was feeling, and it may be a testament to how crazy I was, how crazy we all were, that I felt less regret for a man lost than satisfaction in knowing that some perverted justice had been served, that the world of the war—tipped off-center by this unmilitary engagement and our focus upon it—could now go back to spinning true.

  That night there was fried chicken in the mess, and vanilla ice cream, and afterward a movie about a more reasonable war, full of villainous Germans with Dracula accents and heroic grunts who took nothing but flesh wounds. When it was done, I walked back to my hooch and stood out front and had a smoke. In the northern sky was a flickering orange glow, one accompanied by the rumble of artillery. It was, I realized, just about this time of night that Randall had customarily begun his broadcasts. Somebody else must have realized this, because at that moment the PA was switched on. I half expected to hear Randall giving the news of Delta Sly Honey, but there was only static, sounding like the crackling of enormous flames. Listening to it, I felt disoriented, completely vulnerable, as if some huge black presence were on the verge of swallowing me up. And then a voice did speak. It wasn’t Randall’s, yet it had a similar countrified accent, and though the words weren’t quite as fluent, they were redolent of his old raps, lending a folksy comprehensibility to the vastness of the cosmos, the strangeness of the war. I had no idea whether or not it was the voice that had summoned Randall to take his walk, no longer affecting an imitation, yet I thought I recognized its soft well-modulated tones. But none of that mattered. I was so grateful, so relieved by this end to silence, that I went into my hooch and—armed with lies—sat down to finish my interrupted letter home.

  Tracy and I had boarded at White Eagle, which is the next-to-last stop before the train enters the Bad Patch, and we had bought tickets clear through to Glory, where I had some friends who still trusted me enough—or so I hoped—to front me a loan. I had screwed things up proper in White Eagle, running my business into the ground and skating a thin line between plain failure and out-and-out fraud. And I had known that Tracy was getting ready to make a move, that she was fe
d up with our life. I expect that was why I had risked the ride to Glory—the prospect of losing his only support has driven many a man to desperation. The wonder of it was, I realized, that Tracy must have felt equally as desperate about her own prospects, otherwise she wouldn’t have joined me. And I could not decide if this was a good thing or bad, that we were each other’s last, best hope.

  Somehow we had managed to convince ourselves that the trip was a golden opportunity, but seeing the drawn faces of our fellow passengers brought home what a starve-out proposition it really was. Neither of us wanted to let on we felt this way, however, so we smiled and held hands and pretended to be full of spit and determination. That was easy to do at first. The sun hung high in a notch between two mountains, gilding the snow and throwing indigo shadows from the firs, making a rare beauty out of the decline of day, and since there was plenty of time before we would reach the Patch, before the changes would begin, we were able to relax somewhat and enjoy the scenery.

  Following behind the conductor as he collected tickets was Roy Cole, who was an institution on the line. He was in his late forties, rawboned, with salt-and-pepper hair and a seamed, tanned face whose dour expression was accentuated by a ridged scar that ran from the corner of his mouth along his jaw. He wore jeans and a loose black shirt, and cradled in his arms was a shotgun with silver filigree embellishing the stock. He stared at us hard as if searching for evidence of guilt. Which was more or less the case. The train made the trip only when Cole felt conditions were right, and since he knew better than anyone the changes that could occur and the signs to look for, no one objected to his scrutiny. If you were going to change, your best chance for survival was that Cole could protect you. But when he fixed those black eyes on mine, the pupils as oddly configured as chess pieces, it felt like my skeleton was getting ready to jump out of my flesh and run for the door at the end of the car. I wanted to ask whether or not I was going to undergo a change; but before I could work up the courage he had moved on and was examining yet another passenger.

  For the first hour the ride was uneventful. Sunset was a sweep of burnt orange above the western peaks, with lavender and a sprinkle of stars higher up; the snow crystals in the air were fired and flurrying like swarms of live jewels, and the glow shined up the tumble of Tracy’s black hair, put a gloss on the beauty of her face, which was something special under even ordinary light—with its fine bones and sad eyes, like the face of a troubled angel. And as we passed into the flat country I felt that we had left the bad times behind and were only alive to the good parts of what had been. We talked some about our plans, but mostly we reminisced about our days in White Eagle. From the way we laughed and hugged each other, you might have thought we were newlyweds and not two losers on the run from fate.

  “’Member Gordon?” I asked Tracy at one point. “That ol’ boy rode a sorrel mare…you used to say he looked like he was always poutin’? Well, back ’fore we got together, this tent show come to town.”

  “Doctor Teague’s Medicine Show,” Tracy said, and I replied, Yes, yes, now I thought of it, I believe that had been its name.

  “Anyway,” I went on, “they had these monkeys. Chimpanzees. And the word was, the owner would pay fifty bucks to anyone who could whup one of ’em. Wellsir, ol’ Gordon considered himself a helluva fighter. It wasn’t just he thought he was good at it, he thought it was a noble pursuit. Once I ’member we were drunk, and he got this faraway look and says to me, “Ed,” he says, “y’know, fightin’ ain’t just rollin’ ’round in the dirt and gettin’ bloody. It’s the purest form of physical ’spression there is.”

  Tracy giggled.

  “So the thing was, when Gordon heard ’bout the monkeys, ’bout how they could whup any man, he was first in line to give ’er a try. He felt he was upholdin’ the pride of all mankind against the animal kingdom.” I chuckled. “Lemme tell ya, it was pitiful. There was this little pen with a dirt floor they fought in, and Gordon he’s bouncin’ up and down on the balls of his feet, throwin’ left jabs at the air, and the monkey he’s just squattin’ in the dirt, starin’ at Gordon like he never seen such a fool. Finally Gordon gets frustrated ’bout the monkey not doin’ nothin’, so he steps up and wings a roundhouse right”—I demonstrated—“aimin’ for the monkey’s head. That’s all it took to get the monkey goin’, ’cause the next thing y’know it’s all over Gordon. I mean it happened so damn fast, it was a blur. One second the monkey’s windmillin’ its arms at Gordon’s chest, and a second later Gordon’s lyin’ on his belly and the monkey’s jumpin’ up and down on his back and snatchin’ out handfuls of his hair.”

  “Oh, my God!” said Tracy, laughing so hard that she started to cough.

  “Gordon just wouldn’t accept defeat,” I went on. “After we’d got him patched up and he had a few drinks in him, he starts talkin’ ’bout it ain’t fair a man’s gotta fight a beast without there bein’ some kinda handicap imposed. A human bein’s bone structure, he said, wasn’t as strong as a monkey’s, and if he’d had some protection, it wouldn’ta been no contest, he woulda kicked the monkey’s butt ’cause his manner of fightin’ was scientifically superior. So next day he goes to see Ben Krantz and gets him to carpenter up a helmet out of wood and leather that’s got bars across the face and paddin’ inside. Then he heads back down to the tent show and demands another crack at the monkey.” I shook my head in dismay. “They started out the same, with Gordon bouncin’ ’round and the monkey squattin’ and givin’ him this look that says, Fool. Then, ’fore Gordon can even think about throwin’ a punch, the monkey jumps up and rips the helmet off Gordon’s head and goes to poundin’ him with it. He smashed the goddamn thing to pieces on Gordon’s skull and laid him out worse’n before.”

  We collapsed against one another, laughing. I don’t guess the story was all that amusing, but we needed laughter and so we milked the moment for every ounce. I was glad Tracy could manage it, because even under the best of circumstances she was not a happy woman. She had been raped by her daddy when she was just out of pigtails, and that had set her up for a string of disastrous relationships. She had told me more than once that I was the first man she’d been with who hadn’t beat her, and I thought her feelings for me were less genuine attachment than relief. She had come to depend on men in an unhealthy way, to use their mastery as an excuse for not striving to better herself. I expect she figured it was easier to let a man keep her down than to face up to what she was becoming. Or maybe it was just that men had made her feel like that. Though I liked to see myself as being a step up in class for her, I knew that I was only the latest in a line of masters, that my uses for her—disguised as love—were crueler than bruises in their deceit, and would likely cause her more grief in the long run. Yet knowing this hadn’t persuaded me to let her go; I kept telling myself that if I did, she would just find someone else to misuse her. And, too, I enjoyed dominating her. While I had my charitable moments, I was at heart a taker, a wielder of power—the problem was that I had no power to wield except where Tracy was concerned. I believe the most compelling reason that I clung to her, however, was fear. I was expert at denying that knowledge, but I had to work at it. And my most successful form of denial was holding out the hope that beneath the layers of our falsity there was something real, an ember of love, or at least honest emotion, that—given some kindling and a little wind to puff it alight—would warm us for the rest of our lives.

  “Maybe,” said Tracy, coming up for air, “maybe the monkey’s how come Gordon was always poutin’.”

  “Could be,” I said. “It’s for sure he never did get over it. He’d talk ’bout that monkey like it was some sorta legendary hero…a great man whose like’d never come our way again. He was a funny ol’ boy, that Gordon.”

  The train was pulling into Lorraine, a collection of shacks gathered around a couple of larger frame buildings, a hotel and one that housed an assay office and a general store. Beyond the town the terrain was rolling, snow-covered, with a few golden
rectangles of winter wheat glowing in the decaying light, and beyond the wheat, beyond the Spring Hills, whose sheer granite faces showed slate-blue, lay a dark haze that signaled the beginning of the Patch. Seeing it sobered us, and we sat for a minute or two in silence.

  “Maybe we should get off,” Tracy said dully. “Lorraine seems ’bout far enough away from White Eagle.”

  “You know that ain’t so,” I told her. “’Sides, won’t nobody here lend me money.”

  “I can always go back to whorin’.”

  I was startled by the defeated tone in her voice. “The hell you say!”

  “It ain’t much different’n what I do with you.”

  That angered me, and I refused to respond.

  “What’s the point?” she said. “We go here, we go there…we still the same people.”

  I started to speak, but she cut me off.

  “And don’t go sayin’ you gonna turn over a new leaf! I can’t ’member how many times you promised…”

  “I ain’t the only one who’s got bad habits they can’t cure.”

  That stopped her a moment. Like me, though she might not admit it, she knew our union was a comfortable trap, that its comforts were a guarantee nothing better would come along for either of us.

  “I still don’t see the point,” she said. “If we ain’t gonna do nothin’ different, what’s it matter where we end up?”

  “Well, go on then,” I said. “Paint yourself up and be a whore if that’s what you think’s right. But I don’t wanna watch ya at it.”

  She bowed her head, watched her hands clasping and unclasping in her lap. I could tell the crisis had passed.

  “Why’d you’d come with me?” I asked. “You knew there’d be risk.”

  “I reckon I thought takin’ a chance might be like magic or somethin’, and we might come through it better off than we was. I know that sounds stupid…”