The Everywhere Doors

by Brad Ashlock

  There were about ten dusty men gathered on the porch of the big ranch house. They looked like railroad spikes wrapped in worn leather. These were cattle drivers, genuine cowboys. Although Naumkin presently resembled these men, he knew his gritty appearance was unearned; he had simply wished it and stepped through a door. These men had been born on farms and ranches, had probably been on horseback as soon as they could walk, and knew the trails of young America better than the weathered lines etched into their faces. They were loud now, but their voices were still soft, still imbued with that buttery Southern gentleness that betrayed their hard features, rawhide skin, and prairie-wise expressions.

  Sam Duncan was among them, smiling, a mug of beer in his hands. “Ah, here they are! How’s the digging going, fellas?”

  “Going well,” Naumkin said.

  “Katie!” Duncan yelled at the front door of the house. She opened it and looked disparagingly toward her father. “Can you get the new workers a couple beers? They’ve earned it judging by the dirt on their faces.”

  Katie nodded and went back into the house to fetch the refreshments.

  “Thanks, Mr. Duncan,” Cal said.

  One of the hands, a man with jet-black hair and an upturned nose, looked Cal up and down and said, “That sure is a purdy outfit.” All the men laughed.

  “Dwight!” Duncan chuckled. “Take it easy on him now. He’s just a Michigan hillbilly.” More laughter.

  “Is that so?” Dwight said.

  “I guess it is.”

  Dwight looked to his congregation and said, “He guesses it is!” He looked back to Cal. I’m just giving you a hard time, Bubba. We love you Yankee sons of bitches, don’t we boys?”

  “Now, now,” Duncan said, still smiling. “There’s fun and then there’s fun. These area a couple of good ol’ boys.”

  Dwight sipped his beer and licked the foam off his top lip as Katie returned with two more mugs. Naumkin and Cal accepted them, and Katie returned to the house.

  “Well,” Duncan began, addressing the cowhands, “you men head out tomorrow. Katie’s been in the kitchen making y’all a big supper. It’s a long drive, and I want y’all to know I have full faith in your abilities. Now, listen to Dwight here. He’s made this drive three times now. He’s the boss.

  “You got that, Shorty?” Dwight slapped one of the men on the thigh.

  “So, let’s celebrate tonight a little, but not too much. Big day ahead.”

  Barbecued pork, the smell tangy and sweet, black flecks of pepper through the stringy meat that, when the grimy hands squeeze the bread, plops from the edges to land on the rest of the food on the place—cornbread, peas, corn on the cob (buttered and salted); all this amid clanking mugs of beer mixing with the dust around the mouths of the men, gray and sticky.

  Everyone has congregated in the main dining room in Duncan’s house. Eating in the ranch house must be an unusual event, as there’s a mess hall between the cabins. The men need to know they’re special, need to know that they are valued enough to be entrusted with the best specimens of Duncan’s herd. They tell old stories, old jokes, their thoughts on the journey ahead, compliment Katie on her cooking, and wax on politics. Naumkin and Cal remain silent, smiling and listening to the barrage of heavily accented voices that all seemed to blend into a soft nasally mumble. After the bellies had been filled and the old stories told and retold, Naumkin ventured a question: “Is there a river or creek near here? One that maybe pitters out, sort of dies? I think it’s in the woods. A lot of trees.”

  Dwight ignored the question and took another helping of pork, but Sam Duncan bit the inside of his cheek and considered Naumkin’s inquiry. “You mean Rouge Creek?”

  Naumkin and Cal couldn’t help glancing at one another, their eyes hopeful. “Rouge Creek?” Naumkin asked.

  “Yeah. It drains into the swamps. Why d’you ask?”

  “Isn’t there some good hunting around there?” Naumkin said.

  Dwight leaned back, burped, and uttered, “Near the creek yeah, but I wouldn’t go into those damn swamps if I was you.”

  “Why’s that?” Cal asked.

  “Water moccasins,” Shorty uttered through a cob. “Swamp’s full of ‘em.”

  “Rouge,” Naumkin said under his breath. Rogue and Rouge, Dudley and Duncan, follow the threads out the maze or to the Minotaur, as long as it leads to Meeko Russell, what does it matter? It was a connect-the-dots.

  Cal asked where the river was, and Sam Duncan told him, but warned that the land belonged to Leonard Cabot, and he’d shoot a trespasser as soon as look at him. Cabot, Duncan said, owned the nearest cotton plantation. Duncan and Cabot stayed out of each other’s way and respected one another, but there had always been little run-ins, like when one of Duncan’s prize bulls had ended up missing. Someone had passed through Cabot’s property, cut the razor wire, and snatched the bull. Duncan could never link Cabot directly, but Cabot’s nephew, Wilber Cabot, ran a cattle ranch in nearby Granite Hill who was known as a rustler and cheat.

  Things quieted at the table. Sam Duncan thanked Naumkin and Cal for their hard work, and wished the other hands well on their way to Texas tomorrow. Surprisingly, most the hands helped Katie with the dishes (maybe not so surprising, she was a catch). Naumkin and Cal attempted to assist too, but they were practically guests and she shooed them back to the dining room.

  Naumkin, Cal, Sam Duncan, and Dwight Browne sat at the table. Dwight lit a cigarette and smoked it, his legs crossed over a chair. They all enjoyed the silence. After a big meal and a long day, there was nothing kinder. Naumkin finished his beer, and then he and Cal excused themselves. Duncan told them which cabin they could use. They went to it in the dark, found an oil lamp, and lit it.

  The cabin was clean. Naumkin and Cal undressed and curled under the coarse blankets of the freshly made beds. Cal wanted to go now to the swamps and try to find the door, but Naumkin reminded him about the water moccasins. There were probably things worth avoiding besides venomous snakes in that swamp on a moonless summer night. Between scratching their ant-bites, they hypothesized about parallel worlds, their mission, and the probability of its success. They talked until sleep overtook them.

  “Wake up!”

  Naumkin and Cal sat bolt upright in their beds. A hunched form lurked in the doorway, its center a bright yellow star. It stepped into the doorway. Naumkin reached for his guns on the floor, but then the black shape stepped into the room and the star strayed out of orbit to the side, illuminating the shape of a man, and then the details of a haggard face: it was Shorty, a lantern in his hand. Outside the open door behind the cowhand other silhouettes moved about the yard, grumbling. “Up and at ‘em!” Shorty said.

  “What is this about?”

  Shorty ignored Naumkin’s questions, leaned out the door and cried, “They’re up, Mr. Duncan.”

  In seconds, Sam Duncan stepped into the room. The lantern swinging in Shorty’s mitten of a hand seemed to set the shadows and light in the cabin at war; inky streaking shapes dissolved into reflected light only to emerge in distant corners, angrier and blacker than they had been. Sam Duncan stepped into this battle of light and dark, his flesh an impartial gray, like stone or the skin of the dead. Yellow light from the lantern glinted in his eyes as he sauntered between Naumkin and Cal’s beds. When he opened his mouth, the light seemed to dim, giving victory to the darkness. “Looks like you boys are gonna get a chance to see that swamp you were asking about.”

  Naumkin, still half out of bed, his fingertips touching the oily steel of a barrel, asked, “Swamps?”

  Shorty said, “We got us a loose nigger.”

  Duncan smiled, that old Gordon Dudley smile of bribes and cowardice, of charm and hate, of profits and jellyfish, of Arkansas and America, and said, “Leonard Cabot and some of his boys are here. Two of their slaves escaped. They’ve asked for my help and I’m giving it to them. I thought you boys would like to assist. There’ll be a bonus in it if you catch one.”

  Cal,
aghast, looked to the chess master. Naumkin sighed. If he didn’t agree to help them, to ride out there into the night and hunt down a man like a dog, something bad would happen, Naumkin could see it in Duncan’s eyes. Then another thought flashed through his mind like crystal breaking: he and Cal had to go to the swamp. That’s all there was to it. There were monsters there, true, but there might be doors as well. Naumkin nodded and sat back against his pillow, his guns on the floor.

  “Get dressed. We’ll bring up the horses,” Duncan said. He and Shorty left the cabin and shut the door.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Cal asked.

  “Going to the swamp and hoping we find the slaves before they do.”

  Naumkin and Cal dressed and stumbled out of the cabin. They asked one of the hands for the time, and it was about two in the morning. There must have been twenty men, most on horseback, assembled in front of Duncan’s house and gripping torches. The light off the torches seemed to be fueled by the heat of the prior day. Like Shorty’s lantern, the torches signaled a war between fleeting shapes of brightness and blackness that wrestled amid the tree branches, grass, eye sockets, and yapping mouths. Naumkin could guess who Leonard Cabot was right away. Cabot stood next to a powerful black gelding. Cabot’s hair looked like puffy white cotton, as if the man had eaten a bit of his crop everyday for breakfast and now needed to have his skull cracked like a pod and the white fluff yanked out of his brain. Like Duncan, he was sturdy with hard muscle somewhere under his potbelly, stubbly jowls, and leather overcoat.

  Shorty rode up with the reins of two horses in hand; one horse was Goldie and the other, black as Cabot’s steed, must have been the one Duncan had called Shadow. The horses had been saddled. Their eyes were wide and white with trepidation in the dark, and froth foamed between their lips and their bits. Behind Shorty, Sam Duncan joined the throng on Mystic, acknowledged Leonard Cabot, and then rode up to Naumkin and Cal.

  “You’ll go with Dwight and Shorty. Dwight knows the swamps like his mother’s teat. Listen to what he tells y’all, keep your eyes open and your mouths shut. And be careful. Nothing more dangerous than a cornered coon.”

  Naumkin grabbed Shadow’s reins from Shorty, and pulled the sleek animal near. Cal mounted Goldie, his eyes looking every bit as terrified as those of the horse between his knees. Naumkin grabbed the saddle horn and pulled himself up, swinging his left leg over the sturdy animal. He remembered his ATV back in another world, another time. He pulled back on the reins and Shadow whinnied then snuffed at the air, nostrils aflare.

  Leonard Cabot mounted, looked round, and said, “We’ve got twenty men. We’re all splitting up into groups of four. We can cover more ground that way. We’ll ride out to my plantation where Rouge Creek empties into the swamp, and split up from there. If you go to shoot ‘em, don’t kill ‘em unless you have to. Now, it’s just an old man and a boy, so they couldn’t have gotten far.” He looked around at the faces of the crowd again. “And I appreciate the Duncan men for agreeing to help.”

  “We all have to stick together,” Duncan said.

  “Let’s ride!” Dwight shouted. The crowd of men erupted into high-pitched shouts and animal calls, waving their torches and their rifles. They looked like they were about to go to a whorehouse by the fire in their eyes. Then Naumkin noticed someone on the porch whose eyes made her look as if she were on her way to a funeral. Katie Duncan’s stare locked onto Naumkin’s. Ashamed, he turned away and saw Dwight Brown motioning for him and Cal to approach. Naumkin heard the front door of the ranch slam shut behind him. Naumkin and Cal rode up to Dwight and Shorty.

  “Just go where I go, and keep quiet. Got that?” Dwight huffed.

  “We got it,” Cal said.

  “Good,” Dwight spat and headed off to join the others who were riding off toward Cabot’s land.

  “I don’t like that Dwight,” Cal said.

  “Dwight Brown, white and brown.”

  “What are you—”

  Shorty shouted: “Come on, slowpokes!”

  Naumkin and Cal dug their heels into the horses and rode toward the specks of diminishing torchlight as if heading toward a night that swallowed its own stars. The land rolled beneath them from tall grass to a stubbly clay, to cotton fields to woods, and finally to the Rouge. There were more instructions from Leonard Cabot, more encouragements from Sam Duncan, and then they, after a few insistent pleas from Dwight Browne, decided what directions each group would go. Naumkin and Cal followed Dwight and Shorty across Rouge Creek into the forest. Out of earshot from the other groups, Dwight said, “We’re going up to the mill. Most of Cabot’s sons of bitches don’t even know about it.” Shorty flashed a grin of tombstones.

  The solid ground gradually dampened. The horses were sinking just past their hooves. According to Dwight, they’d circle around the edge of the swamp, stay out of the deep marsh and water, and make their way to the abandoned mill. The trees became denser. Just above the rotten smell of the swamp lingered the pong of drowning oaks. Naumkin knew they were going to the chocolate factory again, the chocolate factory of this world and time: beyond the oaks were the river chokes.

  In the lantern light, Dwight and Shorty looked like phantoms. They were just ahead of Naumkin and Cal, making sure the way was solid enough for the horses. Cal tried to whisper something to Naumkin, but before he could get the first word out, Dwight shot a glance at him so cold the first syllable froze on the tip of Cal’s tongue. The atmosphere at the edge of the swamp made Naumkin’s flesh crawl. The air tasted like the slime that coated all the tress and looped vines. Every space of the bog seemed to sprout some kind of rooty tangle, slimy outgrowth, or wisp of weed. The swamp’s song played along with its visuals: croaking frogs, an old rotten branch creaking in the heat, the suction slurp of the horses’ hooves plunging in and out of the mud.

  They followed Dwight around the edge of the swamp for half an hour until coming to an area of higher elevation. “We walk from her,” Dwight said and dismounted. The others got off their horses and tied them to a nearby tree that jutted from the earth and split apart the top like a lightning-struck crucifix. The horses had that scared look in their eyes again, except for Dwight’s animal; his horse was too brainless to worry. The mud was springy beneath their feet; roots wove through the ground and held the muck together like plaster in a net. Dwight slid his rifle out of its case; in the dark, it looked as if he were magically drawing the gun from his horse’s body. Naumkin touched the smooth mahogany of his pistol grips. His body was charged with adrenalin. He tried to channel it to the moment at hand, the now, tried to not allow himself to anticipate how things might go—just let events develop and react as needed. Cal looked to Naumkin, his fingers drumming the nunchaku sticks around his neck, and winked; maybe he had winked, it was too dark to tell, but it reassured Naumkin to think that’s what his student had done. Shorty loaded his pistol, looked to Dwight for approval and, grinning, slammed it into its holster, pulled it out and aimed it at Cal, quickly returned it to the holster only to draw it again and aim it at Naumkin. shorty laughed and re-holstered the weapon a final time.

  “Pull that gun again and I’ll blow your goddamn head off,” Naumkin said. He had surprised himself. The sentence had hiccupped from his mouth and his Ukrainian accent had been shed.

  Dwight cuffed shorty aside the head, sending the still grinning cowhand’s hat into the mud. “Both of you shut the hell up,” Dwight hissed.

  Shorty scowled, retrieved his hat, and, trying to brush off the dirt, wiped a wide black smear across the brim. “Now why’d you go and do that, Dwight?”

  Dwight grabbed Shorty by the neck and shoved him. Shorty stumbled a few paces then landed on his ass in the muck. “How many times do I gotta tell you, Damn it! Shut the hell up!” Dwight kicked the ground and sent a splash of mud at Shorty, peppering Shorty’s ruddy face.

  As Shorty got to his feet, Dwight walked around a grassy mound through ankle-deep water. Naumkin and Cal didn’t allow Shorty to fall behin
d them; they waited and then followed Dwight and Shorty into the dark. The quartet only walked a few minutes before coming to the mill. They could discern its angular outline rising flat from the weeds, water, and gloom. Dwight raised his rifle above his head and ventured through the water toward the mill; the water was up to his hips.

  “Dwight, we don’t even know if those niggers are here. I don’t think—”

  Dwight slowly turned and faced Shorty, his eyes like water moccasin eyes, reptilian, merciless, and bloodthirsty. Shorty shut up and waded in. Naumkin pulled his guns from their holsters so they wouldn’t get soaked, and followed Shorty. Cal brought up the rear. They pulled themselves up the bank and sank up to mid-shin. Shorty had accidentally dipped his lantern in the stale water. This left them with only Dwight’s lantern to see by. Naumkin could just make out the ramshackle remains of a simple structure connected to a ferry-like wheel that had been used to power whatever grinding had gone on before the swamp had claimed the mill.