by Kage Baker
“Mister, if that wheel comes off when we’re coming down the grade, it ain’t gonna be the smallpox kills you,” said the driver. “Now you just hush up and set tight. We’ll be on our way again soon’s we get the spare on.”
“Ay, what a wreck,” said Porfirio, crouching down to look at the wheel. “You want this thing repaired, señor?”
“It’ll have to be.” The driver handed off the reins to his partner and jumped down. “We can’t get new ones from the Concord folks nohow, what with the war. You got any spares here?”
“Si.” Porfirio jerked his thumb at the shed. “You leave the bad one, and I’ll see if I can have it ready when you come back down, huh?”
“Fair enough,” the driver said, going to unhitch the team. “Though I’m half minded to stay up in Frisco, the way things is going. This ain’t no business to be in right now. You heard about the Indian attack this summer?”
“Indians?” queried a soprano voice, and the baritone thundered out:
“Driver, you categorically assured me there were no savages to be encountered on this route!”
“Aw, shut your damn pie hole,” the driver said.
“What Indian attack?” Einar asked, bracing the corner of the wagon as Porfirio settled the jack under it preparatory to taking off the broken wheel.
“Happened in Minnesota,” said the driver, leading the first of the team to our watering trough. “Seems the Secessionists are paying ’em to make trouble. They been cutting down telegraph poles, too. You ask me, I think they’re smart enough to figure out they can raise all the hell they like with the Army busy fighting itself. Whoever’s behind it, I sure don’t fancy being stuck out here with a mess of Indians and Mormons and who knows what all between me and Teaneck, New Jersey.”
There was a noise like an asthmatic goose honking; it came from the passenger compartment. Juan Bautista and I looked at each other in puzzlement. He walked around to the other side of the stage to see if in fact it was a bird, but just as he disappeared, the last honk ended on a shrill indrawn breath and became evident as a fit of hysterics on the part of the soprano.
“Oh, we shall not survive! Ingraham, one cannot venture—into such places—without appalling consequence. Such venues. Such wretched venues, and such (for want of a better word) men!” she shrieked.
“Have courage, Caroline. It may be that we have escaped the Pale Rider in one form only to encounter him in another; but I say we shall reach the Golden Gate, though calamity leap headlong into our path,” said the baritone. I walked around the wagon to see why Juan Bautista hadn’t reappeared.
He was staring as though transfixed at a wicker birdcage, which was tied on the back under the trunk enclosure. The leather cover hadn’t been fastened down properly, and a flap had blown back, exposing a gnarled and clutching claw the size of a fist. What was in there, a dragon?
Juan Bautista’s face was stony with anger. He began to work on the knots that held the cage in place.
“Hey,” I said uncertainly. “Should you be doing that?”
He didn’t answer me. The knots were proving intractable, so he took out a knife and cut them. He hauled the cage out and down, exposing its occupant. The ranting from the passenger compartment stopped abruptly.
“Caroline, I believe our trunks are under attack,” said the baritone, and the gilded head of a cane thrust the window flap aside. A face glared out at us. “I thought so! Boy, I shall prosecute you with the utmost force of the law. How dare you?” the baritone snarled. He was a thinly bearded gent in a very loud checked coat. His gray gloves matched his beaver hat, though.
“How dare you?” Juan Bautista shouted, trembling with anger. I took a step backward. I guess he was mad about the treatment of the occupant of the cage, who was a very, very large something with talons. The cage was way too small for it; it must have been stuffed in there with tremendous trouble, and had scarcely any room to move. Its head was sealed in a leather hood like falconers use, and its legs were bound; all it could move were its talons, which were constantly clenching and unclenching on the floor of the cage, nasty with its droppings. Not even a perch, and no water or food. Erich von Stroheim gronked and snaked his head sideways to peer down at it.
“Put that back at once,” said the baritone.
“No,” said Juan Bautista. “Do you know what this is? It’s a Haliaeetus leucocephalus. Where did you get it?”
“You are mistaken, sir, that is a bald eagle, and it might interest you to know that it was a present to me from Chief Two Ducks of the Wyandotte Tribe on the occasion of my successful charity gala in Sudbury, Ontario,” said the baritone with a sneer. “Its name is Mister Liberty, and if you don’t immediately replace it, I shall be obliged to descend from this conveyance and beat you like the little thief you are.”
Juan Bautista proceeded to wrench the cage apart with his bare hands. It was only a wicker cage, of course, but the baritone was so shocked, it took him a full ten seconds to roar: “Damn your impudence. Driver! Are there no laws to protect passengers on this line? Driver!” He leaned across and shouted out the other window.
The driver and Einar came around the side of the stage just in time to see Juan Bautista grab up the poor bird and run with him. Erich was jolted from his customary perch and flapped along above them, and the three disappeared in the general direction of Hollywood Boulevard.
“Oh,” said Einar.
“Well, God damn,” the driver said, grinning. “I guess you’ll just have to file a Damages and Loss Report, mister. It will be reviewed by our claims representative, and when and if an award is made, you’ll be compensated by the company in the amount of the registered value of the goods as reported in the parcel manifest or in an amount up to but not exceeding the approximate value of said goods as denned in paragraph 3, article 2A in said document.”
“Blow it out your arse,” the baritone said.
“Ingraham!” gasped the soprano.
“My apologies, madam.” Ingraham gave me a peremptory tip of his hat. “Has the word lawsuit any meaning to you rustics? I see it has. You will make every effort to recover Mr. Liberty now, this moment, or I shall own you.”
“Aw, that bird was about dead anyhow,” said the driver.
“That is immaterial, sir. Are we to be deprived even of the services of a taxidermist? And are you aware with whom you speak? I, sir, am Ingraham Drew Culliman, of the Marlborough Theatre. Perhaps now you’ll wish to avail yourself of a post horse in the pursuit of my personal property?” Ingraham’s voice had risen to a frightening pitch.
“Never heard of you,” the driver said.
“A liar as well as insolent. And if I were to mention that the rara avis in dispute was to be the centerpiece in my latest variety spectacle, the Salute to Liberty? That the magnificent emblem of our presently divided nation was to be held aloft by Mrs. Culliman (herself gowned as Martha Washington) at the climax of a musical tribute certain to raise the spirits and cheer the hearts of our boys in blue? There are those, sir, who might construe your detestable negligence as the next thing to treason, which, let me remind you, is a hanging offense.” Ingraham brandished his cane.
The driver explained where he was minded to put that cane if Mr. Culliman shook it at him one more time, and added that Mr. Culliman was going to find it uncomfortable to sing or, for that matter, dance in any shows with the cane in that particular location.
“Hey, hey,” objected Einar, as Ingraham took off his gloves to engage in fisticuffs with the driver. “Take it easy. I don’t reckon we can get the bird back for you, but we’ll be glad to pay you for him. How’d that suit?”
Immediately Ingraham put on his gloves again. “Well, of course the bird was a gift, but, taking into consideration the difficulty of obtaining another when we reach our destination, which is San Francisco, where rates are astronomical . . .”
“Remuneration in gold, Ingraham,” Mrs. Culliman advised him.
“I’d say I couldn’t accept less th
an a twenty-dollar gold piece,” said Mr. Culliman, and leaned back on his cane and frowned magisterially at us.
Einar blanched, thinking of our budget. “It’s a deal,” he said in a hollow voice. We waited while he ran up to the inn and raided the emergency fund.
Mr. Culliman inspected the gold piece critically, nipping it with a careful incisor before tucking it in the watch pocket of his flowered waistcoat. “I daresay that’ll suffice. One really ought to inform the police in a matter of such flagrant disregard for laws concerning personal property, but as it’s the season of charity and goodwill toward men, I will let the matter rest without further prosecution.” He touched his hat brim with the ferrule of his cane. “Driver! Pray see to it that our trunks are better secured before we proceed.”
He vaulted back into the compartment and let the window flap fall. We could hear Caroline demanding to see the gold piece. The driver gave him a particular salute and lounged back against a boulder, rolling himself a cigarette.
“Is there trouble?” Porfirio asked, returning from the shed with a spare wheel. Einar and I shook our heads mutely.
Juan Bautista didn’t return until three hours later. Erich was back on his customary shoulder perch, and the eagle was still clutched in Juan Bautista’s arms. It had had the blinding hood removed, and it was a bald eagle all right, though a pretty sorry specimen to have cost so much. A lot of its feathers had been pulled out; and though I’m no judge of avian expressions, its eyes had a kind of fixed and glassy stare of rage that I’m sure live birds don’t usually display. It made Porfirio’s expression look mild by comparison.
One look at him, though, was enough to reduce Juan Bautista to tears.
“I tried to set him free,” he said. “I wasn’t going to bring him home. But he can’t fly. Somebody broke his wings, and they healed wrong. Please! Let me try to fix him. I can do surgery that’ll fix it so he doesn’t hurt anymore. I won’t keep him, I promise.”
“The bald eagle will be on the endangered-species list by the middle of the next century, you know,” Einar said helpfully.
Porfirio gritted his teeth and swallowed the fire and brimstone he’d been preparing to spill. “Why should I care?” he said, throwing up his arms. “Go ahead. The stink from sardines in your room is already enough to knock over a Turk, but you’re the one who has to live in there. Maybe this one’ll eat all the goddamn pelican chow I ordered.”
In fact, the eagle seemed to like it. John Barrymore (so named after lengthy debate between Juan Bautista and Einar) was definitely not a normal bird. Not cute or whim al, either, after the months of abuse and neglect he’d suffered. Psychotic.
At least he didn’t bite, and Juan Bautista managed to get him to stop pulling his own feathers out; but he destroyed every cage Juan Bautista made for him, no matter how roomy. Yet he never flew; he never even tried. He would stalk around like King Lear on the blasted heath, glaring at the whole world. Usually he followed Juan Bautista around, but occasionally he decided to travel his own path. It was unnerving, while reading the paper on one’s cot, to look up into his accusatory stare not three feet away. The only thing that sent him into a homicidal frenzy was anyone attempting to pick him up, so rather than risk his talons, one had to lie there and yell for Juan Bautista to come coax him away. I got pretty tired of this after the third or fourth time. I don’t know what the damn bird thought I’d ever done to him.
He was a symbol of many things, señors, not least of all this nation, crazed and self-destructive as it was. None of us could fly from that desolate place. Though the New Year arrived, there was a general feeling of the light going, waning, chilling, the feeling that we were journeying downward into darkness. The land sick, the people sick and crazy, certain ruin trundling toward us like a siege tower.
“WHAT A TEDIOUS TIME this is,” said Oscar, hitching up his trousers to protect the crease as he sat down. “I haven’t sold anything but black dye in weeks. All my Christmas business vanished in quarantine; with so many funerals going on, nobody wanted to buy presents.”
“At least your business will pick up eventually,” I said, pouring myself a cup of black coffee. “Mine’s going to hell without a return ticket. You should see it out in the temperate belt these days. I have to fight off the longhorns to get to my specimens. Everything’s being grazed right down to the ground. Extinctions, honest-to-God extinctions happening right before my eyes. Or would be, if I wasn’t collecting.”
“Oh, surely not,” he said. “Isn’t this region prone to droughts? Wouldn’t the local flora be resistant?”
“It’s resistant to drought, all right, but not to being eaten by starving cattle.” I sipped my coffee. It was bitter, but I drank it anyway. “Think of the way things looked this time last year. Remember how green everything was? The cattle herds do. They wander out every day, looking for the green. All their instincts are telling them to head for the salad bar after a long winter. Salad bar’s closed, unfortunately.”
Oscar sat straighter, struck with inspiration. “Ah, if only there were a rainmaking apparatus. Talk about supplying demand! Imagine how that would win the trust and affection of one’s consumers.”
I tilted the last bitter drops out on the dry earth. “If it didn’t work, you’d need a fast horse or a good tar remover.”
“Never happened to me,” he said, waving a hand airily. “I am no charlatan. I carry nothing but merchandise of the highest quality.”
“You are a good little machine,” I said.
“The best,” he replied with conviction. “How can you persuade mortals to trust you if you lie to yourself? And where’s the passion, the suspense, the triumph of the whole business, if it’s all a sham? Really, the field material is almost of secondary importance, because you can’t obtain worthwhile data in an artificial situation. I’ve worked with partners whose heart just wasn’t in the Deal, if you know what I’m saying. No focus on the act of enticement at all, merely on obtaining data. They might as well have been clockwork automatons, and don’t you think the mortal customers didn’t sense it. No, sirree. They froze up and hadn’t two words to say about themselves.”
“Basic characterization,” I said in agreement, remembering what we were taught in school. “Believe in your character, and the mortals will, too.”
Oscar held up an admonitory finger. “More than that. Believe what your character believes, and the illusion is unbreakable. A method guaranteed never to fail, under the most adverse circumstances. When the most important thing in the world to me is getting that gentleman or lady to make a purchase—when I have them craving it, whatever it is—their souls open, and they reveal all manner of secrets about themselves. They would never suspect I wasn’t human, even if they saw gears and cogwheels flying out of my mouth.”
“Well, but—really, we are human,” I said uncomfortably.
“Just so!” He nodded his approval. “That’s the attitude to take if you want a successful career, you may depend upon it.”
I stared at him, and at last I asked, “So . . . have you always been stationed in the New World?”
“Native of this country, I’m proud to say!” He smiled in fond remembrance. “Born if not bred here. That Croatoan affair. No memories of a mortal life at all, of course—recruited as an infant. Orphaned, I gather. Some nasty business with the local redskins. No hard feelings, naturally. Quite an irony, wouldn’t you say, that savages with stone tomahawks were the shapers of my destiny, with all its splendid artifice? I went straight back into the field after my graduation, too, never been back to a base since. Never wanted to! Why in blazes would I want to loll around idling, watching holos, when all the glamor and excitement’s out here?”
“You find this glamorous?” I jerked a thumb at the bleak hills.
“Heavens, yes.” He was incredulous I should even ask. “This is the very edge of the world! You can’t go any farther out in America, not until we acquire Alaska and Hawaii. And what’s my function here? To document the force
s of civilization at work, as they transform this murderous wilderness into a place where decent folks would want to live. The more savage it is, the greater the challenge. It would be exciting enough if one were only a spectator; but look at me. I’m not only bearing witness to Manifest Destiny, I’m an apostle of it, by gum!”
I decided he was crazy too. “How do you mean?” I asked.
“By advancing the standard of living through the availability of fine merchandise, of course. With every labor-saving device or can of stove polish I sell, chaos is dealt another blow in this wilderness. Even when I don’t actually conclude a transaction, even when those penniless folk stare openmouthed at the splendor of my wares but come not forth to buy, they go home with visions of a better world dancing in their heads.” Oscar rose to his feet and swept off his hat.
“And they’ll desire those visions, and there will be those among them who dare to improve their mortal lot, that they might purchase some measure of that splendor, some glittering prize, though it be but a fragment of the glorious whole. The idle will seek employment, the chronically hapless will become sober and industrious, and noble ambition will animate the frames of those who now lie torpid and indifferent to what they might have, if only they would rise to embrace it.”
There was a breathless pause.
“Oscar,” I said at last, “you will go far.”
“Excelsior!” he said, and thrust his hat skyward as far as he could reach.
At this moment, we both noticed the approach of a vehicle. It was the wrong time of day for a stagecoach. Whatever it was, it had turned off the Camino Real and was rolling up our own little canyon, going right to the door of the inn. We turned to stare.
It was a fine two-horse open carriage, slightly antique, oxblood in color, with the arms of some grand old Spanish family blazoned on the body. It had been blazoned there an awfully long time ago, though, to judge from the way it had faded. A black man in a red coat drove it, and seated within was a mortal lady of our mutual acquaintance.