by James Wade
“Tad, look after the horses and don’t get spooked when you hear shooting,” she told the boy, him still sullen over the empty can. “C’mon, Mr. Dawson. Bring your guns.”
She’s going to kill me, he thought. He’d deflected her advancement the night before and now she was out to exact her revenge.
She led him out from the cottonwoods on foot and together they scrambled up the rocks of a stunted plateau and then more carefully navigated the steep descent of the far side. With a wall of rock at their back Charlotte told him to walk and so he did and thirty yards later she called, “Stop,” and he did this as well and turned to see her and thought she was beautiful at any distance.
“Seems far,” he said.
“If you can shoot far, you can shoot close,” she replied, and he had nothing to say to this.
The sun was up in full but it had not yet heated the air and it sat low in the sky as a spectator to the earth and its happenings. What was left of an oak long since fallen had been bleached by the dust and the sun and upon it Charlotte placed the cans in a row, and there they rested as if on an altar and Randall charged with defying God.
Charlotte moved to the side though not so far as Randall would have liked, and Randall drew one of the Colts and fired and missed and took a better aim and missed again. He stared at the gun, inspecting it as though the fault could not have been his own and to further this suggestion he holstered the weapon and pulled the second pistol from his belt and took even longer still in the aiming before he fired.
“Again,” she called, and again he sent a bullet whistling into the dirt and rock of the far ridge while the cans stood defiant in tribute to their oaken God.
“Move back,” she called.
“Don’t you mean forward?”
“Back,” she repeated, and he complied with growing frustration.
He fired two more bullets and was now growing accustomed to the failure in the way a betting man is accustomed to the loss of his money.
“Back,” she called again and believing it could get no worse he diligently walked further from the cans until she called stop.
A whiptail lizard darted across his path and disappeared into the sagebrush, reemerging on a small rock some ten feet away to assess this unfamiliar predator or perhaps just to sit on the rock and watch the strangeness of the world as it unfolded.
Randall raised his arm and searched for the cans and they were visible but barely and he shot and missed as was his routine.
The smell of smoke and powder filled the air in ten- and fifteen-yard intervals and Charlotte told him once more to step back and even the lizard had grown tired of the procedure and moved on.
This time Randall used both hands and squinted into the growing distance and found the cans smaller than the sight on his pistol. Aim. Squeeze. Miss.
“Come here,” she called and Randall prepared for his lesson, hoping the woman had noted some error in his act which had caused the bullets to fly false. He kept his head down as he walked, lost in his own analysis of his regrettable performance and was only pulled from his thoughts when Charlotte yelled stop.
He did so and looked up at her and she motioned to the cans and called, “Again,” and the tins were now so close that he may well have counted the ridges on their sides and he drew and aimed and fired and sent the middle can spinning backward violently. Without waiting he fired again and it was another hit and he holstered the gun and looked back to Charlotte.
“We should’ve started this close,” he said.
She pointed to the ground around him and there he saw his own casings—not two, but several—and when he looked back up, Charlotte had gathered the fallen cans and started back up the ridge. Randall smiled and followed.
21
The town sat south of the Sierra del Muerto, where the winds wash down from the peaks to taunt the Apache plume and the earth slopes inward on all sides, as if trying to close its fist around a secret. Nestled deep in a hidden valley of dogwood trees, the brightly colored rooftops of Perry Springs reflected the soft light of the morning as we made our descent.
What began as a spiritual community founded by those who believed the hot springs possessed healing powers and more, grew into a village of artists and gypsies and outcasts and, because of its location in this remote twist of desert, became a vital trading post for western travelers.
We stopped and sat our horses on the last ridge above the town and I tried to catch Sophia’s eyes but she wouldn’t look my way and instead Shelby met my stare and nodded and licked his tongue across his chipped teeth.
“Alright, fellas.” Grimes rode to the head of the column and there was an excitement in his eyes, a fervor-like longing that I couldn’t place. “Tom, Grant, Beau, and Tall Boy, handle the coats and extra duds. Jimmy, you and the doc and Shelby help Cookie with the food. The rest of you, get what you need. No more than a shot and an ale. We got a lot of riding ’fore we get back home. I don’t want you walleyed if we end up having to shoot our way out of here.”
Some of the men laughed and Grimes grinned back at them. My blood went cold.
“Marcus and Caleb, y’all stay here with Sophia. We’ll be back by noon.”
“Tough break, little brother,” Shelby said as he and Bullet passed, and I saw his face was still colored with bruises but no longer swollen and the doctor had sewn what looked to be a cotton flap to the inside of his hat so that it hung down over his missing ear.
“Now you will see,” Sophia said and pointed her horse toward the shade of an old spruce.
I stayed mounted on the hillside, watching the riders move slowly down the winding trail that led to the east end of town and they moved like one, a great dirt worm slithering over the land with Grimes at the head.
“Come on now, young Caleb,” Marcus called to me. “We best get these wagons ready.”
Ready for what, I wasn’t sure, but I followed Marcus nonetheless and it occurred to me now would be the time for Sophia and me to make our run.
The long snake of men had reached the town and the body began to split off in different directions. Marcus lifted a piece of cut oak from the wagon’s back and handed me a stack of Indian blankets.
“Fo’ blankets in each wagon, then come help me cut this rope. Gone need eight, maybe ten pieces.”
Marcus moved methodically and with his eyes down and I recognized his manner and it reminded me of Shelby before he did something stupid.
“What are we doing here, Marcus?”
He looked up at me, confused. “We gettin’ the wagons ready, and making sure Miss Sophia don’t run off again, I reckon.”
I stole a glance under the spruce where Sophia sat and talked to her horse. I hadn’t given much thought to the chance of her fleeing without me, but all of sudden my stomach started to knot up and I realized I may need to make a choice pretty soon.
Marcus was a former Ranger, but his demeanor didn’t suggest it. He seemed gentle and kind and I knew better than to believe any of it. He’d gun me down if I ran. I’d have to overpower him, maybe kill him. I didn’t like the thought or my odds.
When I finished with the blankets, I walked to where Marcus sat in back of the first wagon and took stock of the rope being cut and the large blade being used. My rifle was in the saddle holster and Marcus looked too comfortable with that knife for me to try anything. And what if Sophia was wrong? I’d met a handful of cutthroats in Longpine and they didn’t have the mind Grimes did. They didn’t long for a better world where folks were treated equal and peace was a priority. There was something happening here, bigger than myself. Maybe he really could help my brother. Maybe once folks saw his vision, enough people would join him and the outlawin’ would fall by the wayside. Maybe a lot of things, I thought. Maybe I’m a damn fool and falling for everything like Sophia had talked about. I was pulling myself in both directions and felt the panic waking
up and stretching its arms through my body and my knees buckled up on me and I steadied myself against the wagon.
“You alright, there, Caleb?” Marcus asked and kept cutting the rope in identical pieces and there was thunder so loud in my head I had to grit my teeth to keep from screaming.
“What’s the rope for, Marcus?” I choked out, gripping the large wooden wheel with white knuckles and trying to control my breathing. “How come they didn’t take these wagons into town to load ’em with supplies?”
“Easy now,” Marcus said. “You don’t look too good.”
“What’s the goddamn rope for?” I yelled and I saw Sophia move around the opposite side of the wagon and I saw the small medic blade in her hand and remembered her morning with the young doctor and I knew this was it and it was all I could do not to vomit.
The first gunshot echoed up the ridge like a fast-moving blizzard to freeze us all. We waited, the three of us, looking to one another for confirmation or denial as if we weren’t sure of the sound or its legitimacy or our own sanity. But soon enough the second report came, followed closely by a third, and the adrenaline of the moment shocked us into motion. Sophia turned and quickly tucked the scalpel somewhere in her long skirt just before Marcus leapt from the back of the wagon. I was already running toward the horse to grab my rifle when, my senses heightened, I heard Marcus cock the hammer on both his pistols.
“Hold on, boy,” he said and I stopped a few feet from the scabbard and put my hands up.
“You heard them shots, something’s going on down there,” I told him.
“Yessir, I reckon it is. But I can’t have you riding in causing a mess.”
“A mess is what it sounds like they already got.”
“They be just fine. Now come on back over here and set on this wagon with me ’til them boys get back.”
I could feel Sophia eyeing me and Marcus too and I knew we could overpower him but at what cost and whatever I thought of Shelby I wasn’t sure I was ready to have him dead, or maybe I was afraid it wouldn’t be me that killed him, and all these thoughts shattered in another flurry of gunfire.
“You’ll have to shoot me in the damn back, Marcus,” I said. “I’m going down there to see what’s what.”
I swung my leg up and into the saddle and turned the horse down the trail to town and gave him the full heel and we flew forward and no shots rang out behind us.
The guns grew louder and the world hotter as I raced into the canyon and there was a rider coming on hard and fast and before I could unsheathe the rifle the distance had closed and I could see my brother’s face and it was wild with fear.
“Shelby! What’s happening?”
“We got to get, little brother,” his head shook. “We got to get now. They’re fighting the whole damn town.”
More gunfire and it was slung against the canyon walls and echoed around us and no man could tell if there were two shots or twenty and they seemed to sound from all directions and Shelby’s head turned, frantic, as he searched for danger and found it everywhere and none of it to his liking.
“We got to get,” he repeated, and with both heels digging into Bullet they retreated, horse and rider, into the hills at a frightened and furious pace.
I pulled the rifle and rode with it in one hand and rode the way my brother had come and rode into the town, where there was death immeasurable.
The bodies lay crooked and inhuman, as if in a child’s drawing, limbs splayed in unnatural positions and smatterings of deep scarlet covering holes from which their souls had surely fled. No living thing walked the streets save a few dogs who appeared to not share my panic. The shooting had stopped but I recognized the horses tied near a square and put mine that direction at a quick trot.
A man in a bowler cap with a dark mustache and a fine suit burst from a building and out onto the wooden thoroughfare. The chain from his watch swung as he ran and he looked over his shoulder and must have seen nothing, but ran faster still. He saw me and froze and neither of us spoke and he looked behind him again and then took to running once more.
I looked at the faces on the ground as I passed and none of them were familiar to me and yet in them I saw my mother and the boy and myself. I counted in their still eyes all the sunsets of a lifetime and when I was finished I counted the lifetimes themselves and saw that none of them ended or began but rather they were as I was. All of us breathing and bleeding and freshly dying like the flowers of the field as they push through the dirt and grow and bloom, and a man points at the field and remarks on the beauty and never does he single out a petal or a plant, and so it is we all live and die as one and none and together and alone.
I did not tie the horse and trusted he would not flee and if he did I wouldn’t blame him and I entered the saloon on the square with rifle in hand. A man I had seen in camp sat behind the piano and had just begun to play and Jimmy behind the bar was counting bottles into his arms and the men dotted the tables laid out across the wood floor and the scene itself may have been almost common were it not for the women and children and a few men gathered to the corner and, in it, huddling against one other, with some crying and shaking and others bleeding and all of them staring out at the men smoking and drinking. Their eyes trembled and were blinded by what they’d seen and what they might see again.
“Caleb,” Grimes said and there was little emotion in his voice. “I see you came a-runnin’.”
“Thought there was trouble.”
“Well, there was a little, but it didn’t last. Get Jimmy to pour you a drink.”
“I’m alright.”
“Are you? Your brother didn’t seem to have the stomach for this after all.”
“What is all this?”
“We can’t very well create a new world without women. It’s pretty basic biology, son.”
“You’re kidnapping them.”
“We’re liberating them from a world they have been enslaved by. When they arrive in our camp they’ll have more freedom and choices than they ever had here.”
“But they can’t choose to stay or go.”
“That’s correct. No liberty is open-ended, and as always, freedom comes with a price—usually paid up front.”
“You killed so many.”
“Apparently folks don’t take kindly to people taking their women. But that’s alright, this way we won’t have to worry about anybody tracking us when we head into camp. Sort of a two-birds situation, wouldn’t you say?”
“You’re a goddamned madman.”
“Caleb, don’t be so sullen,” Grimes said, and he appeared hurt by my words. “Remember the story I told you, about Lightning? If you truly want to rid the world of monsters, you need something stronger and scarier to lead the way. Well, here I am.”
I could feel the multitude of eyes watching me. No one moved except Grimes who simply leaned back further into his chair and smiled. I thought of Sophia and Shelby and even my own life, which I came to realize in that moment I wasn’t ready to let go of.
“Well,” I said, looking around the room with a wide grin. “I hope they at least got some good whiskey.”
The men laughed and stomped their feet and banged their glasses on the tables. Grimes never took his eyes off me as I moved toward the bar.
One of the men in the corner, he looked to be the bartender displaced by Jimmy, came out of his crouch and pulled from his apron a small pistol likely slipped to him by one of the women and he rose with it aimed toward Grimes.
No one seemed to notice and the world slowed and at once I was outside of myself, watching me swing the rifle toward the corner. My spirit reached out to stop my body but there was nothing to be done and so I turned away from myself and asked forgiveness not from God but from the man, as I was sure to see him on the other side, and if he was a vengeful man he would be waiting for me and even if he was a man of peace he may be wa
iting still.
My shot buried into the man’s chest and exploded from between his shoulder blades and the bullet lodged deep into the wall behind him and his lifeblood was distributed on the others and there were many screams and shudders. The men all turned to watch the man die in the corner, but Grimes never took his eyes away from my face and I felt them there and returned his stare and he nodded and I nodded back.
“Boys,” he called, and everyone was silent. “Meet your new brother.”
And again the men hollered and cheered and soon the saloon was filled with howling and I played the only part I could and I tilted my head back and let flow all that was inside of me.
22
Randall had taken to watching the stars on most nights and his feelings for all that looked back at him were changing. The expanse of the universe had once filled him with anxiety and uncertainty and brought with it in its enormity a questioning of faith and purpose and other ego-driven notions which he in turn rebelled from, shutting away the immeasurable illimits of all that is, and focusing rather on what he could control.
Yet the more he forced himself to look the more he saw, and though he understood no greater truth than before he now found a calmness to the magnitude of the night sky and the sweltering symbols upon it. Each constellation the same and always creeping up from the horizon and taking its turn and then settling back into the abyss and leaving the supremacy of the night to some other cluster of brilliance and all the while ignoring the shooting stars as they emblazoned their legacy across the sky in an extremity of drama and dying, never to be seen again by this world or another.
The constellations are strong and sturdy, Randall thought, and he kept that in his mind and he told himself he would work in every moment to display the steadiness of twilight and when he woke in the morning he would face his first test.
“People coming,” Tad said in a manner more frantic than the last and he shook Randall awake. “Coming hard.”