by Guy Adams
Hicks had picked the war veteran up in a run down hospital outside Tucson. When spared the potent medication Hicks forced down him—a cocktail of veterinary drugs that he had bought cheap while on the road—the man could be terrifying in his delusions. He would scream and shout at invisible demons, believing he was still under cannon fire or fighting to keep a bayonet from piercing his belly. The hospital had been happy to get rid of him.
"There's nothing we can do for him," the jaded doctor had admitted. "He's a casualty of war, he just hasn't laid down and died of it yet."
But there had always been more to him than just that. Whether it was a result of his injuries or something he had always carried with him, Soldier Joe was a stigmatic, blood flowing from wounds in his wrists. To an imaginative man like Hicks this was an opportunity of the highest order and he had been selling vials of calf's blood from the back of his cart (once a piece of rough theatre had convinced all onlookers that the blood came from his troubled messiah) ever since. The one thing Hicks hadn’t been willing to do, however, was look after the medical needs of his meal ticket. He was not a man who took naturally to the care of others. So it was Hope Lane, a woman who had always relished the protection of others, that had become Soldier Joe's nurse.
No doubt some would have mocked her for the deep attachment she developed for her charge. After all, it was not a love that could easily be returned, Soldier Joe was barely aware of her existence and couldn't, therefore, be said to have any feelings for her whatsoever. Hope didn't think about it. She felt what she felt and that was that. And when she should have died in the snows outside Barbarossa, had her broken man not lifted her in his arms and carried her to safety? They both owed each other their lives and if that wasn't a foundation for love she didn't know what was.
Now, it seemed, he had brought her somewhere else.
She stood on the streets of Wormwood, looking out across its empty buildings. There, not five feet away, stood Soldier Joe, his wounds dry, his eyes clear.
"Where am I?" he asked her, looking around and scratching at the thick stubble that had grown on his cheeks in the time since she had last shaved him. "I was... in the snow I think? And then..." He looked at her, not with the confusion that so often came hand in hand with the drugs but with a genuine curiosity, one that held a clarity of thought behind it that she'd never seen in him before. "You were there, I think?" he said. "In the snow?"
"I was," she replied, moving up to him and reaching for his hands. He pulled away slightly, leaving her feeling awkward and a little stupid.
"I know you," he said, but there was no conviction to his voice.
"I'm Hope," she said. "I've looked after you for... well, a long time."
"Looked after me?"
"Yes," she didn't quite know how to address that subject. Was this sudden sense of self awareness permanent? Was he healed somehow by being here? Or was this just a passing moment? Would he be returned to his broken mind and body any moment? "You were hurt," she said, "in the war... and you needed looking after because there were some things you couldn't do for yourself."
"The war," he said, nodding, "yes. I remember the war. The Confederates hit us on the river, trying to push us back into the swamps. We managed to move north but the artillery fire..." He raised his hand to his head, his fingers going towards the wound he had sustained there; a wound long gone, replaced by long hair. "I was hurt."
"That was a long time ago, you're much better now." Again she reached for him, again he pulled away.
"A long time ago..." He moved across the street, climbing up the boardwalk and positioning himself in front of the window of a general store. He looked at the reflection he found there—a man with long hair and a beard, styled as a messiah for the appreciation of dumb rubes.
It was someone he didn't recognise. "Who are you?" he whispered.
"The war's over," said Hope coming up behind him. "It was over a long time ago. But you were hurt really bad, a bullet to the head."
"How long?"
She didn't know if she should answer that, afraid of the effect the answer might have.
Still, she couldn't lie to Soldier Joe. "Twenty years. A little more... I'm sorry, you've been sick a long time."
"Twenty years?" He turned to look at her. "I'm only eighteen..." And then he realised the nonsense of that, the fact that he had lost more than half of his life to a mental fugue. "I got old..." he said, looking back at his reflection.
"I'm sorry, it's one hell of a shock, I know. I wish I could..." What? Make it not have happened?
"Where is this?" he asked, looking around. "Where is everyone? How did we...?"
His legs began to give out and Hope grabbed him, a panic flaring up in her. Not yet! Don't let him fall back into the broken man he had been. "Come here, honey," she said, struggling to carry him over to the edge of the boardwalk where he could sit down. "Just sit a minute."
"Too much," he said, "can't take it in."
Oh L or d, she thought, but we've barely even begun. H ow am I going to tell him about this place?
"You were taken from the hospital by a man," she said. "Not a good man. And he used you, as part of his business. But he kept you confused. Gave you powders, drugs."
"I thought you said you took care of me, that doesn't sound like good care..."
"I did my best." She pushed away the surge of guilt she felt a that. "I made you as comfortable as I could but your head..."
"Yes," he replied, "my head." He reached up to touch it again. His fingers found the rough skin at his temple; the point the bullet had entered.
"You were never right," she said. "It damaged you too much. You didn't know who you were, where you were... You didn't really know anything. But I tried to make it better for you when I could. Tried to make you comfortable." She thought about the cage that Hicks had kept him in, locked up like an untrustworthy dog. "Coming here has changed all that. Coming here has brought you back."
He looked around. "And where is here?"
"It's a place called..."
"Wormwood. It's a town called Wormwood isn't it?"
"Yes." "I dreamed about it. I remember that. I dreamed about it all the time. And when I dreamed..." His wrists suddenly began to bleed. Jumping up in panic he stared at the impossible wounds. "What is it? What's wrong with me?"
Hope looked around for something with which to deal with the bleeding. "You're fine,"
she said, pushing open the door to the general store and scanning the shelves for anything she could use. "Just wait there while I get something to..." She spotted a stack of bed sheets, grabbed one, and stepped back out onto the street.
Soldier Joe had vanished.
2.
SOLDIER JOE DIDN'T know what he was running from. Soldier Joe didn't know very much at all.
He just knew that he had to shake off the feelings that were piling in on him, one after the other, before they buried him so deeply he'd never see the light of day again.
As he ran, drops of blood fell from his wrists and pattered into the dust behind him, nourishment to the soil of this impossible place.
He was by no means certain if the things he saw were in his head or tangible presences around him. How could he ever say? Did it even matter? He'd lived in dreams for longer than he'd lived in the real world, he was by no means certain whether one could be said to be more important than the other.
"Praise the Lord!" shouted a fat man stood on the boardwalk next to him, "for he is the bringer of all delights!"
The man vanished, reappearing on the roof of a building to his right. "Can I hear a ho sanna?" he cried.
The preacher , Soldier Joe, thought. Obeisance Hicks. As he ran, he remembered the feel of Hicks' leather belt. When the preacher had been too drunk to successfully lash with his tongue he had used his belt instead. Soldier Joe felt ashamed to have been so weak as to let him. To have lain there taking blow after blow.
He wished he could have the preacher here in front of him now, he
would have merrily repaid him for every single indignity.
But the girl had said he was dead. So the man that kept appearing out of the corner of his eye must be an illusion, just one more amongst many.
The girl.
She would be panicking now, of course. It was obvious that he was important to her. She wanted to mother him, to keep him under her wing.
Where was his real mother now? His father? Everyone he had known before he had gone off to fight? So many people lost their lives in war, he knew, but most of them didn't go on to truly appreciate the fact.
"Yea though I walk through the valley of death!" shouted Hicks, standing in the dirt just ahead of him, a Bible in one hand and a mug of whisky in the other.
The valley of death.
He stopped running and looked at his wrists. They had stopped bleeding.
"This is the blood of Christ," Hicks told him, taking a sip of his whisky, "given for you."
Soldier Joe reached out to him, meaning to force that tin mug into his mouth. Hicks was no more substantial than his religious promises.
Wormwood, Soldier Joe thought. What was so important about Wormwood?
The valley of death.
Yea though I walk... He remembered taking tea with a man on a battlefield. A dream. But important. The man had been called... Had been called...
He had told Soldier Joe he would meet God. That was why he was to come to Wormwood. To meet God.
Alonzo, the man's name had been Alonzo.
Where was Alonzo?
3.
HOPE FOUND SOLDIER Joe stood outside the saloon, staring at the doors. For a moment she thought he had lost the mental clarity he had only just regained, then he turned to her and she saw that he had simply been deep in thought.
"Sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have run. It was just too much. Still is really. But I'm trying, one step at a time."
She took his hands, trying to clean the blood from his forearms. He pulled away.
"Don't. It's fine, leave it."
She looked so upset at the thought that he smiled. "It's not personal. You don't have to nursemaid me is all."
He held out his hand. Cautiously, she took it.
"I like to help," she said. "Someone needs to look after you."
"No they don't. Not anymore. I can look after myself."
Hope tried not to let the fear she felt at that show in her face. After all, she should want him to be well. She just didn't know where that might leave her. "We need to go in there," he said, nodding towards the saloon. "I'm not sure how I know that, but I do, so there's no point in questioning it. I have enough questions without adding to the list."
Hope looked at the saloon. "What's inside?"
"I don't know. But probably a man called Alonzo. Maybe even God."
She stared at him, not sure what to say to that.
"Don't worry," he said, "I'm sure he'll be pleased to meet you."
He led her inside the building.
4.
THEY FOUND THEMSELVES not inside the saloon but in a large room made entirely of glass.
Soldier Joe stumbled slightly as he crossed the threshold, his immediate impression being that he was stepping out into thin air. Everything was so highly polished that it was impossible to discern the lines. The walls and ceiling were clear, looking out onto sky, but below them the floor was filled with a vibrant world whose perspective changed continually. One minute they were looking down on the empty streets of Wormwood; then the view changed to empty fields; then it changed again, showing the streets of a city, though its buildings were so strange to Soldier Joe's eyes he could barely credit it as such. It was like walking out onto a riot of visual information.
At the far end of the room, reclined on a glass chair, was Alonzo. In front of him a table was laid for tea, a clear glass teapot making the brown liquid appear to float in a bubble before him. "Come in, come in!" Alonzo said, standing up. "I've been waiting for ages! I do hope the tea hasn't gone cold." He glanced at it. "If it has its easily fixed. If only everything in life was as simple as tea. Perhaps that's why I like it?"
"Alonzo?" asked Soldier Joe.
"You remember me! Excellent, that does make things easier, I was hoping you would."
He turned to Hope. "And the lovely Miss Lane of course. We haven't met but I could hardly bring one of you here without the other now could I?"
He walked forward, feet moving across that maddening floor, now showing a raging ocean, waves reaching up to wash the soles of his boots as he passed.
He took her hand, raised it to his lips and kissed it.
"I hope you don't mind meeting here," he said, sweeping his arm out across the room. "It can be somewhat disorientating to begin with but once you get the hang of it it's quite simply my favourite place in the whole Dominion."
He sat down, cross-legged on the floor and waved them over, his face suddenly like that of a jolly child. "Come and have a go!"
Slowly, Hope and Soldier Joe joined him, each lowering themselves rather unsteadily to the floor.
"I call it the observation lounge," said Alonzo, "because from here you can see every thing." He looked up and the smile on his face was smug. "Ever."
"Ever?" Hope Lane asked.
"Absolutely. Well... the future is a little unreliable naturally. You have to take things with a pinch of salt. What you see one day can be completely different the next. That's what happens when you give mortals free will." He rolled his eyes as if discussing the most basic error imaginable. He seemed to realise this was perhaps tactless, and began to back pedal. "Not that you don't deserve it. Life would be terribly dull for all concerned without it after all. If we all knew what was going to happen then where would the fun be, eh? I'm just a bit of a planner I suppose. I like to be organised."
He waved his hand over the floor and the image of the ocean blurred and began to swirl.
"Anyway, forget all that, it gets confusing. Let's start with the basics."
The view below them began to grow clearer. A birds-eye view of a caravan making its way along a dusty track. The road was lined with plane trees. In the distance a mountain range, further still the beginnings of a small town.
"And... closer," said Alonzo, pointing his palms at the floor and then sweeping them apart. As he did so, the image zoomed in and they were directly above the caravan.
"Hicks," said Hope, recognising it. "But he's dead."
"Not at this point he wasn't," said Alonzo. "This is a few months ago."
He placed his hands together, finger tips extended towards the roof of the caravan. "Let's take a peek inside, shall we?" He parted his hands and the roof of the caravan appeared to part with them, exposing the inside of the vehicle.
Solider Joe looked down on himself, curled up in the small cage that had been his home for so long. Next to him sat Hope Lane, slowly feeding him a thin-looking stew.
"Ahh," said Alonzo, "isn't she lovely? Who could have asked for better? I wonder what she's saying?" He clapped his hands and suddenly the room was filled with noise, the horses’ hooves on the trail, the rattle of the wheels, the creak of the axle.
"Eat up, Soldier Joe," Hope heard her past self say. "It's not much but it's better than nothing. I make what I can with what he gives me." They watched as she fed him another mouthful. The past Soldier Joe groaned and rolled in her arms, the stew escaping from the corner of his mouth.
"Do we have to watch this?" Soldier Joe asked. "It's awful."
Alonzo shrugged. "It's life. If you get caught up on whether things are nice or not you'll soon go mad in here. I find it's best just to take things as they come. Nothing stays the same for ever." He waved his arm over the floor again. "For example..." The view changed to a vast, white plain of snow. A small dot moved below them. Alonzo repeated the trick with his palms and zoomed in. They could now clearly see it was Soldier Joe carrying Hope Lane. "Roles switch, lives change," said Alonzo.
He swept his arm across the floor again and now it
was the camp outside Wormwood viewed from a great height. Crowds were sweeping one way and then the other. At this distance it looked like corn moving in a field. Then there was the sound of gunfire. Alonzo sighed and clapped his hands, making the room silent once more. "You lot always fight if we let you."
"If you let us?" Soldier Joe looked at him, a fragment of his dream returning to him. He had been sat with this man observing the battle by the banks of the Tennessee River. The battle that had all but done for him. Alonzo had said something similar then. "You said something like that before."
"Probably," Alonzo admitted. "It's a bugbear of mine I'll admit. I wish you wouldn't kill each other all the time." He shrugged. "I know it's hard to work against human nature but there you go, we all have our ambitions. Putting an end to that is one of mine."
"An end to fighting?" asked Hope. "That's my hope. As I mentioned earlier, I'm a bit of a planner and it seems to me that with a bit of work, a little nudge here and there, we might be able to get things back on track down there."
Soldier Joe got to his feet, trying not to look down. "I don't know about any of that," he said, holding out a hand to help Hope stand. "This is all a bit beyond me."
"Nonsense," said Alonzo, jumping up. "The human mind is wonderfully elastic. It's terribly good at accepting things. He always found that. I think it rather went to His head at times."
"He?" asked Hope.
"Yes," said Alonzo, moving back over to the tea and beginning to pour out three cups.
"You know Him." He handed her a cup and then passed another to Soldier Joe.
"He's not terribly involved these days. He felt it better just to let you get on with it." He picked up his own tea and took a sip. "But my, how he still obsesses though. It's funny. When He made you we all wondered what the fuss was. You all seemed so fragile, so..." He tried to think of the word before apologetically settling on: "pointless. Sorry, I appreciate that probably sounds hurtful. Don't mean it to. It just seemed strange. For millennia there was just the two dominions, the Dominion of Circles and the Dominion of Clouds." He gestured around them, signifying that in which they were currently standing. "Then came you lot. A lazy afternoon experiment that went on to dominate everything. You're all anyone ever thinks about. And yet there you are," he pointed at the crowd beneath them, "fighting amongst yourselves and making a shoddy old fist of life, all things considered."