Refiner's Fire

by Mark Helprin

  When Marshall awakened, the constable (who was to take back the boat) was at the helm, and the others were sprawled on the deck, lying on the equipment, with tarpaulins and jackets pulled over them to keep off the mist and spray. Marshall washed in the salt water, ate some biscuits, and brushed his teeth. Then he took the wheel for half an hour, steering straight and steady. As everyone began to get up, he went to the bow. There he straddled the tiny sprit and extended his legs outward so that with every pitch the soles of his feet slapped against the warm blue water. Dolphins formed an escorting vee. In their streamlined promenade they came so close that Marshall tried to touch them with his foot. They chattered with dolphin fluency and he answered back in imitation as they vaulted the waves.

  By afternoon the sea was sparkling and rough. As they were checking their equipment a ship appeared on the horizon, making from the direction of Haiti. It drew upon them rapidly, a fast collection of gray rectangles and black struts. Its bridge protruded like a brow; a round circle of color against the superstructure was like a compassed Sienese banner; and the guns and flags identified it as American. “Must be out of Guantanamo,” said Lucius. “Only an American or British ship would cross Jamaican waters as if it were home.” Marshall watched as it sped away resolute and swift, not even glancing in their direction, though the radars circled and twirled and undoubtedly struck them hard and invisibly. It moved toward Grand Cayman, cool, gray, and touched with fire.

  At night they had hot cocoa and roast beef sandwiches, and listened to waltzes on Radio Luxembourg. Lucius said that the idleness was good. In fact, they planned to rest in several of the stages, so that their assault would be an operation of peak form. They would suddenly burst in terror upon those who had been so habitually proud of terrorizing them. By the next morning they had rounded the east coast, and lay beyond the horizon waiting to go in when the full moon rose. Naturally it did, and they made for an isolated headland where they found a gleaming cove and disembarked on a shining beach, only to vanish into the dark as the constable raced for the open sea, glad that he would not be with them.

  It took all night to get to the foot of the Blue Mountain Range. There they slept during the morning and set off upward in the full heat of afternoon. Not a single farmer farmed the steep slopes. They were alone, struggling under seventy-pound packs (fifty for Marshall) to get a purchase on the trackless hills. Every hour they stopped under shady trees to drink, and to eat jerked beef and fruit. The birds sang deafeningly as usual, and the raiders sweated incredibly, panting upward under their paralyzing loads.

  The most unfortunate of them was Stanhope. The sea air had further sharpened the perpetual razor of his appetite, and he had gained a few pounds on the launch. But he kept his place in the six-man line as they slowly climbed a sharp slope, went over a ridge, and into a steeper valley yet. Marshall imagined that Dash was able to see him, that he was in her thoughts as much as she in his, that she would look out in back of the house and let her eyes follow the fields leading to the mountains, and know that Marshall was there doing something heroic. She had been betrayingly concerned when he had begun to fight Farrell. He thought that by fighting, by daring, he would draw her thoughts to him like a rolling ballad.

  But instead, he found his own activity hollow, at least while they made the difficult ascent with all the heavy equipment, and he discovered that he was lost in dreams of the great house and Dash within. As he labored step by step he imagined her in the hidden valley at Rica Vista and he knew that she was undoubtedly dreaming of Britain in much the same unrequited fashion in which he dreamed of her. He was in the center of a dream, a romance, and by his imagination he dispersed its energies as those without the dream concentrated their random scarcities into a rich image. He thought that those in Britain, for which Dash was longing, were longing themselves for the tropics and high adventure in mountains and jungles. If only the credits could be paid and repaid. The world was like a great reflective system of desires, a crystal so faceted and diverse that if he fell back he would be saved from the mountainous height by webs of dream-carrying light. He looked ahead at Farrell—stocky, blond, neat as a pin—and he said, “Farrell, just tell me one thing. Tell me the geographical location of your thoughts, not what you’re thinking, but where.”

  Farrell thought for a moment and answered in Irish accents as green and flexible as a plot of saplings, “And don’t you think that I’m capable of abstract thoughts? As it happens, I was thinkin’ about physics, atomic particles, and all that.”

  “The truth,” said Marshall.

  “You won’t get that from him,” shouted Nielson from a ledge where he had put down his pack.

  “If you must know, it was Africa, black Africa.”

  “Right,” said Marshall, imagining a beam of light stretching across the South Atlantic. They rested.

  After some minutes, Farrell jumped up suddenly and bolted off into the brush, cocking his submachine gun as he went. The others scattered, until Farrell returned leading a tiny boy of about six. Clad in only a pair of ragged shorts, he himself was leading a chicken on a leash. They did not think it was very funny. The boy would tell his father, who might pass it up the line so that on arrival at the Rasta camp Lucius and his band would be gunned down. “What are we to do about this?” asked Farrell gravely. Marshall felt a terrible apprehension. He could think of no answer, and suspected that Farrell, or perhaps Nielson, would kill the child.

  But, seeing that the little boy was terrified, Peter spoke up, saying, “Vaitenzi eine Minute. Ich habe der Solution. Everyvon sprechen Deutsch. Sprechen Deutsch vehemently.” They began to scream German words.

  “Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft!” Marshall roared into the jungle.

  “Deutschland über Alles. Willkommen auf Deutschland. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,” screamed Lucius. Stanhope, who had read German at Oxford, recited perfectly and madly from Schiller. Nielson sang the Swedish national anthem, and Farrell blasted out Gaelic oaths.

  The boy began to shake in pure terror. He was so frightened that he closed his eyes. Peter took the opportunity to cut a short staff from a thicket of bamboo, and drape flowers over his head and shoulders. The child opened his eyes and stood frozen in front of them, clutching his chicken. They continued their German, repeating it over and over. Peter came from behind the boy and jumped into view, showing his teeth, eyes wide, flowers shaking.

  “Fiwa and obaca, takeel and manaca,” he chanted. Then he motioned the others to silence. “We are obeah men!” he said to the boy. “We go to see the devils The child was shaking back and forth, and a small stream began to roll down his leg. “If you tell anyone you see us,” said Peter, “we come at night and ... the devil come!” The little boy was perfectly still. He had been drained. “You understand, human boy?” He nodded his head. “Then run home, and tell no one, o human boy!” He was too frightened to run, so Peter turned him around and gave him a pat on his backside, and then he tore off into the bushes at the speed of light, grasping his rumpled chicken.

  “I give you my guarantee,” said Peter. “He will not tell even Saint Peter on Judgment Day.” He threw the “snake stick” into the valley and brushed the flowers off his shoulders. They felt relieved, and knew that the next day they would reach a high peak and rest on the summit.

  “The poor little fellow,” said Lucius.

  “What about the poor chicken?” asked Farrell, and they'resumed their ascent. It was so hot that memories and images were driven and set into them as if they were held over a raw fire by a smith to be seared and gleamed. They grew intent upon their march—so much so that there were times of steady pacing in which they forgot even women and the world.

  12

  FARRELL STOOD against the world, was bothered by nothing whatsoever, and maintained that he had long been living on borrowed time. He was maddeningly contrary and unfriendly, which, to his disgust, tended to bring him adherents.

  Lucius had ordered the best tropical camouflage uniforms from
London, but Farrell refused to wear them, preferring khaki or green work clothing. “I don’t like these camouflage suits,” he said. “They make you look like a tossed salad; and they always attract attention when you’re in the open or standin’ up. I never wore them in Africa, and I won’t now. Besides, I don’t like the cut.” Lucius shipped the uniforms back to London.

  When finally they were armed to the teeth, Farrell turned to Marshall and said, “Now that you’re armed, you’re your own worst enemy. Why? I’ll tell you why. Power is like a lion. It won’t sit like a cat in a boudoir. Although the weak don’t know this, when you have power you have to protect yourself from it. You’re a strange little beebuckle, Marshall. But you’ve got a lot of growing up to do.”

  “What’s a beebuckle?”

  “That’s just what I mean. You don’t know anything. You’re ignorant. Everyone knows what a beebuckle is.”

  They neared the summit of the highest mountain; their green clothing bobbed against distant patches of melting snow; sparkling white vapor clouds cruised at their level obscuring for a time the valleys and plains, and the thin line of sea beyond. Farrell ranted as if they were part of a city crowded with men and man-made things, subject to twisted social codes in which virtue stood on its head and feet were in the air. “Them!” exclaimed Farrell, “those bloody sons of bitches, the holy-mouth moral bastards, the apostles of comfort and weakness, the city-bred righteous vermin. They never seen nothin but each other’s asses. I’d like to crush ’em in my hand like soda crackers.

  “And furthermore, they don’t know the value of surprise. I look at one and I can tell you what he thinks about this and that. I can see it in his clothes and his ornaments (the bastards wear jewelry, even the men). They only eat soft foods, and never anything spicy. They don’t even fight back when you hit them. They live in things that look like filing cabinets. No wonder they’re predictable. It doesn’t have to be that way. For instance, look at me. I’m a Belfast Protestant, but I hate the damned English. They’re pompous bastards, but dear Lord if only England had continued to rule the world.

  “That’s the quick turn I like; that’s why they call a snare drum a snare drum—it surprises you and the balance is good when it comes in on a march and changes directions.”

  Marshall thought for a moment, straining under a load of guns, rations, shells, and other equipment. “Contrary to all I know and think, I feel that you are right, and I too love England.” The realization of this shocked him, to know that in the American Rebellion he might have been a Tory, unless, as probably would have been the case, he had been seduced by the notion of an army of farmers and brigands. But in either camp he would have tried for excellence in fighting throughout the unexplored woods and lightly settled coastal plains and savannas. In a stupor of exhaustion (driving for the top, they had not rested) he reviewed his own code—to love at risk; to explore; to fight when necessary; to hold tight and hard to the greatness of the West, loyal like a monk in the Dark Ages; to be fair and good and compassionate and strong; and to lay these things out, great as they were, like minor vassals before the Divinity. He could hear the ice crystals in the clouds, and the wind as it whistled past the highest point on the mountain.

  They rested on the summit. Over 360 degrees they saw nothing but sky and clouds stretching above land and sea. Peter, Stanhope, Lucius, Marshall, Nielson, and Farrell sat or kneeled on one knee, breathless at having come so high above things, breathless at what they saw. Lucius dropped his pack and took out his pipes. No one had imagined that he would bring them, but he knew their value. They were silent and still as he blew up the bag, getting red in the face—but it was cool up there, and icy, and green. He began to play “Amazing Grace,” the sound of the pipes damped among the clouds, his eyes fixed straight over the horizon. Different as they were, they were all moved, and their expressions showed it. It was not that they had come up the mountain, although that in all its meanings was part of it, but rather that they felt the power of the pipes. They were the West, and they were fighting for the West. Though Peter and Stanhope were Africans and Marshall a Jew, they had suffered and their generations had suffered and died and worked for the West, and like Lucius, Nielson, and Farrell they were wedded to it inseparably. A long time ago the ideas had been obscured, but not the facts, and not the feeling. Diverse as they were in that small band, they were fiercely loyal—and when Lucius played his hymn alone in the air their hearts and minds flew with it. The power and long aching presence of their civilization came to them with the sudden concussion of a snare drum. On a Jamaican mountaintop its order and variations had forged them into a single will. It was the climb, the thin air, the difficulty, the chance of defeat, all the troubles of Rica Vista, and the things they loved. They were taut and trembling as the cold air settled upon them and the clouds swept by. They were frozen as if in a photograph. Listening to the pipes, they felt the wide limitless glory of the West.

  13

  FOR TWO days they remained in a cave 500 feet below the summit. At night it was warm and dry as their fire burned brightly, shielded by a tarpaulin covering the cave entrance. Their meals consisted of dehydrated beef which they cooked in snow water, dehydrated potatoes cooked in the beef water, dried fruit, biscuits, and chocolate. Marshall loved these meals more than any he had ever had. He said, “When we get back to Rica Vista I’m going to eat this way all the time; it’s delicious.”

  “Don’t make me puke,” said Lucius, not realizing that Marshall thought that the absolute best way to eat was while running.

  They assembled their equipment one evening, went over the plan, arose the next morning, and cut through impossibly thick brush for hours until they got to the first tributary of the White Water. Whereas moving through brambles and vines had yielded a mile an hour, they went three times as fast when walking in the ice-cold stream bed. Soon they came to a point where they were up to their thighs, and here they met the White Water itself. They were not anxious to test Marshall’s theory, especially since the water was so cold, but they blew up the flotation bladders, lashed in their equipment, and set off on the little river in a group—knowing that they would soon separate, but pledging never to pass Lucius. That way, they could consolidate as fast as the current brought them together. At first it was slow going. They had to stand up every now and then to clear rocks and push themselves over gravel beds.

  But soon they were floating, sliding, running, and crashing down the leaping river. It gradually became momentous and terrifying, but they were not terrified, since they took it in stride by stages, which is to say that they were hypnotized and entrapped by it, and completely oblivious of the danger. The White Water was full of black pools, high waterfalls, and rapids. It was frothing, clean-smelling, frigid, green, clear, blue, and it ran through deep gullies and glades of thick jungle rising from the banks. Orchids, vines, and trees hung above them. They choked on mouthfuls of fresh water, and laughed when they collided with one another, or, when caught behind a boulder or a fallen log, one of their number cursed exquisitely and flailed his arms like an infant trying to escape his buggy. All the while they were aware of the contrast between cold rapids and green jungle, and of the dancing mist which hung over the river and reflected the hot sun in prismatic bands as thick as the vines.

  The water was thundering. It had started as an insignificant white sound and, in the few hours that they drifted, had become utterly ear-shattering. They could not shout above it. It was not just one sound, but thousands of combined single sounds which changed continually—some gaining, some losing intensity—the pitch and tone forever varying. When they reached the canyon fork, where they would land several miles in back of the encampment (downwind from the dogs), the cold water, rushing sounds, flying spray and foam, straining logs and limbs (they were brown and continually wet and they moved rhythmically as if animate), and raging streams overwhelmed them and almost prevented them from reaching a tenuous point on shore, where they clung together against the current, ho
lding as best they could to crags in the rock wall they had to climb. The canyon was like a numbing crucible of molten ice. It held them breathless inside while they bent their heads to look at the cliff top.

  “How can we get up that wall?” asked Stanhope, hardly heard above the roar. He was obviously beside himself even though he had lost five pounds in the freezing water on the way down. Farrell pulled out his bayonet and rammed it between two rocks. They fastened a line to it so that they could hold on and not be swept away. This enabled them to rest before the climb. It was only about forty feet, but they were exhausted and numb and it was almost vertical, with few handholds. Marshall felt obliged to volunteer, but remembered the cliff of eagles. Nielson, the oldest, and seemingly the worst candidate, said, “Someone has to go up before we freeze to death,” and began to pull himself to the first handhold. He knew how to climb and was not afraid to do what he had to do for getting up, including a frightening traverse to an untested ledge. The higher he got the better he climbed, because he knew there was little choice, and because the sun warmed his hands and made him feel human again instead of reptilian. At the top he pulled himself over a toupee of soft grass, and rested in the hot sun, due to which he immediately began to steam. He threw down a fishing line and pulled up a climbing rope, so that everyone (including Stanhope) scaled the cliff in good order. They quickly disappeared into the brush, moving quietly with weapons ready.

  Half a mile from the village they climbed into an enormous vine-crossed sea grape tree. Perhaps two dozen buildings the color of wet straw were visible in irregular lines, between which were corrals of cows, horses, and pigs. Because they were downwind they could smell the animals, but the animals couldn’t smell them. White smoke came from several dinner fires. Beyond the village a completely green expanse rolled now and then to right or left with the curve of the riverbanks. It was strange to be so entirely inland, and not see or smell the sea, which, even at Rica Vista, had always made its presence felt. In a band of a hundred yards around the thatch huts were cultivated plots protected by wooden fences and barbwire. There seemed not to be many men inside the compound, but those who were visible were armed with rifles and automatic weapons. Lucius shook his head back and forth, amazed that this pitiful grouping had defied the law for so long. Two companies of marines airdropped or heliborne would have served to take them prisoner a long time before, if hands had not been tied (Lucius did not make the political decisions of the Commonwealth).