Through Darkest America-Extended Version

by Neal Barrett Jr

  "What is there to know, Kari?"

  "There isn't anything."

  "All right …"

  "Howie, it's a place is all."

  "And you come from there?"

  "No"

  "But you said you'd . . . felt something for someone. I thought maybe . . .”

  She gave a sad little laugh. "Not there, Howie. You don't feel things there. You feel everything and not anything. You're supposed to, anyway."

  "That don't make much sense."

  "I don't want to talk about it any more, Howie. Not any at all. Okay?"

  Howie shrugged. He lay still and listened to the wind. He felt her heart beat against him and smelled her hair crushed up on the back of his neck. The cold ate into the place where his eye had been and made him want to bite his tongue with the pain.

  He tried to think about something else. What they'd do the next day. They'd go south, maybe. Where it was supposed to be a lot warmer all the time. They'd get food, and clothes, and there wouldn't be any soldiers anywhere. He'd take them so far nobody there would even know about the war. He wondered if there was a place like that.

  He was puzzled over what Kari had said—or hadn't said, really. Something pretty bad had happened to make her like she was. She hadn't always been like that. She just couldn't have been. And people didn't have to stay like they were, did they? They could change, and be something different. And Kari just had to. Because whatever she was, there wasn't anyone else he wanted. Not anyone.

  "Kari?" he said softly, "you awake?"

  "Uhmmmm," she said sleepily.

  "Kari, I think we ought to circle around real wide tomorrow, 'til we get pretty far from the city. Then I want us to head south. Real far, where it's warm. That all right with you?"

  "It's fine with me, Howie," she told him. "Whatever you think."

  She pressed warmly against him and wrapped one arm around his chest. In the half darkness he could look down and see the dim whiteness of her fingers on his shoulder.-He knew it didn't mean anything at all but he could imagine that it did. "What happened to you, Kari," he said suddenly. "Damn it I'm sorry, but I got to know that. I got to know what it was."

  She stiffened slightly but didn't move. "You can't leave anything alone, can you Howie?"

  "Not that I can't."

  "Pardo didn't tell you!'

  "He didn't tell me nothing but High Sequoia. I don't even know what it is."

  Kari was silent a long moment. "It's a place where you can get whatever you want, Howie. That's what it is. Whatever you want if you got the goods to pay. The best- whiskey and food and everything else." Her voice was distant, as if someone else were talking and not Kari at all. "My daddy taught me how to fix guns. He was the best there was till the sickness took him. A man from High Sequoia saw me shopping in the market. I was going on twelve. I didn't get away for four years. A man bought me and took me off. Me and a horse and two guns that didn't work. I fixed one of the guns for him and killed him and ran off."

  "Oh, Lord, Kari . . ." He wanted to turn over then and hold her but knew better. "I'm sorry. I didn't know it was something like that."

  "Why are you sorry, Howie? You're always sorry about something, or thinking how you ought to feel. Don't feel anything at all and you'll be just fine. That's something you've got to learn. I'm cold. I want to get some sleep. I don't want to talk anymore."

  Howie tried to think of something to say, but knew there was nothing that would do either one of them any good. He felt her against him. Felt her there like something hollow, as if she'd died and didn't know it. He knew this was close to the way it was.

  When he woke in the gray dawn he was stiff with cold. He sat up and saw he was lying naked on the ground with nothing over him at all. The pistol was missing. Kari wasn't beside him anymore. The horseblanket was gone; so was the horse.

  Epilogue

  By the end of spring he left the foothills of the high range behind. One day he turned, looked to the north, and saw that the distant peaks that had watched his path so long were only thin blue shadows on the far horizon. Ahead, the land stretched flat and hard. He knew he had reached the edge of the great southern desert.

  The heat felt good. Sometimes he just stood and let the sun fill him. Bake him clear to the bone. He didn't think he'd ever get too warm again.

  He loved the desert and marveled at the strange, spiny green things that grew there. He wasn't afraid of the land, but he respected it. He sensed that it could be cruel to a man who didn't know its ways. He never tried to cross that great, barren space, but kept it beside him, so he could know that it was there.

  The region that bordered the desert was nearly as dry and empty, but there was life there, too. Besides the green spiny things there were purple-gray bushes that hugged the earth and filled the air with dusty smells. Sometimes, there were stunted trees that looked like lean old men. He saw snicks and rabuts, and other things he couldn't name. The further south he walked, the more creatures he saw.

  There was water, usually from muddy streams no wider than his hand. He found a great, wide riverbed that stretched a mile or so from side to side. It was nearly as dry and parched as the desert, but there was water near its center, a foot or so beneath the harsh red soil.

  He had little to eat. But he got used to that…

  He couldn’t remember when he'd last seen another person. There had been some earlier, in the foothills. He'd sometimes stolen from them. Food and clothing and, once, a knife. But he hadn't tried to talk to anyone. He didn't want that. Not soon.

  He followed the dry riverbed down the long, endless miles, always keeping the desert in his sight. He decided the riverbed was a kind of border, separating the land where a man could live from where he couldn't.

  He lost count of the days. There was warm sunlight, and there were cold stars. There were days with food and water, and days without. Each day began and ended much the same as the one before. Until the morning he woke, sat up, and saw the man.

  He was walking just on the edge of the horizon to the south, moving from east to west across Howie's path. Behind him trailed a small herd of stock. One, two, three, Howie counted. Four, five, six, seven . . . eight. Hardly even big enough to call it a herd.

  He was greatly surprised to see a human being. Why should that be, he wondered? Another man could be out here in the middle of nowhere. He was.

  He wasn't sure how he felt about the man. He was sure he didn't want to talk to him. If he just sat where he was, the man would disappear in a little while and he wouldn't have to worry.

  He didn't want that, though. He wanted to see the man, but he didn't want the man to see him. He didn't understand why this was so, but it was.

  It wasn’t hard to follow a man in the wastelands. He couldn't get away from you. All you had to worry about was getting too close. If you could see forever out across the desert, so could he.

  Howie kept out of sight during the day. After dark, he'd wait until the man built a fire and then he'd move in some. He never got too close. He just sat quietly in the dark watching the man's shadow move about the fire. After a while, he'd crawl back to his place, pull his blanket about him, and go to sleep.

  Before he slept, though, he thought about the man. What kind of man was he? He'd never gotten close enough to tell. What did he do? Did he live out here? He sure wasn't making any kind of living hauling eight head of stock around. Maybe he was just trying to get away from other folks, too.

  He'd think about things like that, or guess what the man's name might be, or how old he was. And then he'd go to sleep.

  One morning, about a week after he'd first seen the man, Howie woke up with a start, knowing something was wrong. The man stood right above him, big boots spread wide and a heavy, long-handled axe in his hands.

  Howie didn't move.

  "That's right," said the man. "Just stay quiet like." He nodded toward Howie's belt. "Slide that knife out slow and toss it aside."

  Howie did as he was told
.

  "You got anything else on you?"

  "No'

  "What's in your pockets?"

  "Some nuts. And a couple of them, green fruits." The man looked at him. "What kind of fruits?" "The kind that grows on the end of sticker plants."

  The man almost grinned. "You eatin' cactus buds, are

  you?"

  "I eat whatever I can get." Howie couldn't hold back any longer. Ever since he'd opened his good eye he hadn't been able to take his gaze off the man. Strong, wide chin, dark eyes, a broad nose, and—he was black! Just as black and shiny as pitch!

  "Something bothern' you?" asked the man.

  "You, I reckon," said Howie. "Damn . . . you ain't a nigger, are you?"

  The dark face didn't change. He motioned with the axe. "Get on up."

  Howie did. "What you goin' to do with me?"

  The man slung the axe over his shoulder and scratched his belly. "First I'm goin' to ask you why you been sniffin' my heels for 'bout a week. Sittin' behind bushes and watching a man eat his supper." The man made a face. "You got to have some reason for doin' somethin' like that."

  "I just wanted to, I guess," said Howie.

  The man shook his head. "Not good enough."

  "It'll have to be, mister." Howie looked right at him. "'Cause there ain't no more to it than that."

  The man seemed amused. "You're not much afraid of this axe, are you? Don't you figure I can use it?"

  "I figure you can. But I ain't goin' to stand here shaking, if that's what you're waitin' for."

  "How'd you lose the eye?"

  "A feller cut it out with a knife."

  "You fight him back?"

  "There wasn't much way I could."

  The man nodded. He dropped the axe down to his side. "You can come and have some breakfast if you like. I don't have no cactus buds, but I reckon you'd eat somethin' else if you had to . . .”

  There was a big flat pot of beans in the fire and loaves of hard bread that looked like they'd been baked in ashes. There seemed to be plenty. Howie dipped his cup gratefully. The taste of real food almost made him cry.

  The man watched him, eating just a little himself. He motioned for Howie to take more, if he liked, but Howie nodded his thanks. His stomach had been empty too long.

  He had a lot of questions he wanted to ask the man. Mostly, he wanted to know about niggers. There weren't supposed to be any since the War. But he guessed there were, all right. Did they live out here, in the desert? Was that where the man was going?

  He kept the questions to himself. The man probably had plenty of questions about him, too, but he hadn't asked much, considering.

  When he was finished, the black man took his own cup and Howie's and set them aside. Then he took the rest of the beans and the ash-colored bread and carried everything away from the fire and out of the camp into the brush.

  Howie watched, more than a little puzzled. The man sure didn't strike him as the wasteful sort—throwing a whole good meal away when food was hard to come by. He walked on, making his way over the flat, and when he finally stopped he just set the beans and bread on the ground. Right down on the ground where his stock was bedded!

  Howie was horrified. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. The meat jumped right in and fell hungrily on the food, dipping it out of the pot with their hands. Howie's stomach turned over. He could taste everything he'd eaten in his throat and he could have gotten up and killed the black man on the spot. There was no use hoping it hadn't happened before. This was clearly the man's regular habit, which meant he'd been scooping up beans, big as you please, right where stock grubbed their filthy hands the meal before!

  "Something wrong?" The man stood watching him across the fire.

  Howie was too angry to hold back. "Maybe I got no business saying it, mister . . . but I sure never seen a man feed good beans and bread to his stock. An' off of pots meant for people, at that!"

  The black man's face didn't change. He squatted by the fire and squinted far off like he was chewing something over in his mind. "They ain't exactly stock," he said finally. "They just kinda 'pear to be."

  Howie didn't look at him. He just sat real still where he was. If he'd learned anything at all about people there was one thing certain as night: You couldn't ever really figure a man inside, even a man you knew some. And he sure didn't know this one. He wondered if he could get up and out of there on his bad leg before the man could grab the big axe again.

  The black man read him easy. "I'm just telling you." He eyed Howie squarely. "You was the one asking." He poked a stick in the fire. "They was wandering 'round half starved when I come on 'em. Picking up leaves and bugs and whatever. Looked more like a bunch of bones than anything. Got all this far, though. Halfway 'cross the damn country."

  Howie considered. "Just how you figure-that?"

  "Figure what?"

  "Where they come from."

  The man stopped his poking and looked up. "One of 'em told me, is how. Rest of them got their tongues cut but this one talks so you can understand him some. You don't believe none of this, do you?"

  "About meat talking?" Howie studied his hands. "Mister, I ain't arguing with a man that's feeding me breakfast. But I'm saying if one of them . . . if something talked to you, it sure ain't meat."

  The man gave him a humorless grin. "Well, that's what I'm saying too, ain't it?"

  While the black man gathered up his things Howie kicked dirt over the fire, though there was nothing on the land to burn away. Neither spoke about it, but when the sun blazed up and turned the land hard as brass they started out together. Howie didn't ask any more about the others. They trailed along behind, always keeping a distance. The black man didn't seem to notice they were there.

  They walked the long day, together and not together, neither pressing the other, taking their company for what it was. When they did talk, Howie found the black man knew surprisingly little about the world beyond the desert. Was there a war? He hadn't heard about it. The name Lathan meant nothing to him. He did know men came down_to the desert more than they used to, moving to the south and then coming back with horses. He knew what the horses were for, but wanted nothing to do with them himself. A man'd be a fool to get on the back of such a thing.

  When the night came and they stopped for the evening meal, Howie ate sparingly. He told the black man he was much obliged but didn't want to deplete another man's rations, when there was nothing he could contribute himself. The man said nothing, but understood it was mostly because of the stock.

  They'd stopped for noon under the sparse shade of a mesquite. It was the highest point on the flatlands as far as the eye could see, no other object being more than a foot off the ground from one horizon to the other.

  "If I'm askin' something I maybe shouldn't, just say so," Howie said. "What I'm wondering is where all this goes, and what's after it." He caught the black man's eye, and the little touch of caution there. "I wasn't askin' where you was headed," he added quickly. "That's sure no business of mine."

  "Didn't figure you was," the man nodded. He snapped a dry twig and worked it around in his mouth. "North you know better'n I do. And east too, I reckon. I never seen either and don't want to. South is nothing at all. Just more of this. You start calling it Mexico somewhere down the line. Only it don't change the land none to call it something different."

  "What's down there?"

  "I said nothing. Or nothing I know of."

  "There's horses."

  "There's horses. Nothin' more than that."

  "And west?"

  "West is California. There's plenty there . . . none of it much better'n where you come from, I don't reckon. There's cities. And people." His eyes brightened some. "And ships. There's an ocean there, blue as it can be. And once in a while a ship comes in to port. Long and, dark, with big bright-colored sails. And people that don't look nothing like me . . .”

  He grinned, "… or like you, either."

  Howie was curious about that.
"They ain't from here, you mean?"

  "No. They sure ain't from here."

  "Where, then? There isn't anyplace else."

  "Well, I guess maybe there is."

  Howie thought about that the whole day and part of the next. He tried to picture what one of the big ships with colored sails would look like. And people that weren't the same as either him or the black man. What kind of people would they be? And where did they come from? There were other places in the world before the War. Everybody knew that. But there weren't supposed to be any now.

  The business of the black man's stock was on his mind, but it wasn't a subject Howie felt like bringing up again. Where the man was taking them—whatever they might be— sounded too much like asking about the man himself. And that was clearly something the man didn't want to get into. Howie couldn't much blame him. If there weren't supposed to be any black people, and no one figured there were, there might be a good reason to keep quiet about where there were some more.

  Once, he'd let the man know real plain about that. "I can take off some other way. Whenever it pleases you. I figure you got places to go that ain't the same as mhie."

  The black man looked at him a long moment, then said he'd sure let Howie know.

  Howie didn’t have to bring up the stock again. The man did that on his own, coming back to the fire one evening after staying a long time in the brush. "One of 'em is pretty sick," he announced. "Don't figure he'll make it for long." His dark eyes got hard and thoughtful. "Reckon he's been through enough for anyone, without crossing a place like this. Don't know as I done 'em a favor taking them on."

  The man's face, which always seemed to hide a great and silent strength, was suddenly drained and weary. He squatted by the fire, big hands on his knees, and watched the popping coals.

  Howie felt he ought to say something, but didn't know what. Maybe the man didn't want to hear anything just then.