Drifting Off the Coast of New Mexico

by Steven R. Boyett

  Now that’s a thing I never did notice till now: Tom never did take up the habit of suspenders, though he lived in the east for a good stretch. But I still don’t like it: our belts’d give us six foot — maybe seven with that belly of Tom’s — but the closest of them ex-hombres is nearly ten foot away, and his amigo’s another four.

  Packs quite a wallop, a Springfield does.

  “Well, one of us’ll run for ’em if it comes to it,” says Tom. He settles back against the rock with a loud sigh. “Till then I’d ruther come up with some better solutions.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  We’re quiet a bit, thinking heavy.

  “How’s rounds?” asks Tom.

  “Springfield’s empty. Six left here.” I waggle my Smith & Wesson. “You?”

  “Two and six.”

  “Leastways we’ll take fourteen of them cabrons down singin’ with us,” I says. My cheer sounds forced even to me.

  “Thirteen, Huck.”

  “How you figure? Six and two’s eight, and six is—”

  “I was thinkin’ of Bierce.”

  “Bierce?” I look at Bierce and then back at Tom before I understand what he’s driving at. “Christ o mighty, Tom. That’s…that’s a sin, ain’t it?”

  Tom laughs, though it looks like it hurts. “You picked a fine spot in your life to worry about sin, old man.”

  “Well, all I know is, I seen some awful sights in my day, but I never signed on for nothin’ like what you’re talking about. No, sir.”

  “You saw what they did to our horses, Huck. They’ll do worse to us if they can.”

  “Don’t much cotton to us gringos , do they?”

  “How would you feel if a couple thousand Mexicans marched on into Warshington to help give ol’ Woody Wilson the boot?”

  “Can’t say I’d like it,” I admit. “’Less I wanted him out myself.” I lean back against the boulder. “Still, it’s nice to know that, when they kill us, it ain’t nothin’ personal.”

  “Well, we wanted adventure.”

  “I don’t rightly recall saying that we part,” I says. “Seems to me like I wasn’t j’ined up with you two days before you was tellin’ me how nobody knew us no more and you wanted out. How you missed having adventures.” I slap the boulder. “Well, how you like it, old man? It ain’t like playin’ Robin Hood, is it?”

  “Well, why’d you come along, then?”

  I chew on this one before answering. It ain’t occurred to me to wonder it before. “We’re friends, Tom,” I say.

  He snorts. “Old friends.”

  “I heard that. But I still got six rounds that says half a dozen of them bastards is missin’ reveille tomorrow if I got any influence in the matter.”

  Tom looks like he wants to say something but changes his mind. And I get bowled over by one of my coughing spells, and it’s a long bad one this time. When it’s through with me I look at Tom and he’s got his head against the boulder and looking up at the sky. It’s full dark now and the stars are bright enough to see his face by. He’s pale and he looks pretty wore out. We’re both listening hard.

  Finally Tom says, still looking up, “What happened to you after the War, Huck? Where’d you go?”

  I clear my throat and spit. “Where I always go when there ain’t nowhere else,” I tell him. “I went back to the River.”

  “All that time?”

  “A good piece of it. The River was always good to me, Tom. Ever’ kind of fella I met anywhere in the world, I met him on the River first. Seems like the whole world was compacted there. Pirates and smugglers and gamblers, confidence men and N’Orleans whores, cane and cotton planters and land speculators, carpetbaggers and lawyers and card-tellers, teachers and preachers and painters and settlers. I saw races and fires and wrecks and smugglers; I saw Southern ladies dressed as men to get up North, and feuds and flat-out cold-blooded murders. Beautiful women and terrible men. It was all there, Tom, and no need to go nowheres else.”

  Tom’s eyes are shut now. “Not even to Africa in a balloon?” His voice is a whisper.

  “Not even there. That river’s home, Tom. She’s in my blood by now, and it seems like ever’ time I get too far away from her, everything just falls to nothing.”

  “Pretty far away from it now, Huck.”

  “Too damn far.” I want to ask Tom a question but I think I hear something so I set still. That devil in my lungs starts wanting out, but I make myself push him back down. After a minute I don’t hear nothing so I says, “Tom?”

  He takes so long answering that I’m switched if he hasn’t fallen asleep.

  But then he says, soft, “Yeah?”

  “What happened to us, Tom? What happened to you?”

  And again it’s a long time before he says anything, and I hear him draw some long breaths and I wonder if he hasn’t nodded out after all. But then he says, so faint I got to lean towards him to hear it, “We grew up, Huck. We got old.” His voice gets stronger as he builds up a good steam. “We was boys, god dammit, and that’s all we was ever supposed to be. But we got old, and the world kept turning and it turned away from us. ’Cause that wasn’t in the bargain, and the world was done with us when we wasn’t boys no more. And there’s no more buffalo, and there’s no more Injuns, and there’s no more Frontier. There’s Gatling guns and mustard gas and fly-planes droppin’ dynamite on boys in ditches.”

  He coughs a bit, then says, raspy, “Oh, Huck — it ain’t a world for boys no more.”

  “Well, how do we get out of this, then, Tom? Ain’t there something writ down in Ivanhoe, or Robin Hood, or them books about pirates or Romans that you can use? That’s how you always got us out lickity-split and scot free, was all them books you read. You always got a plan, Tom. Like them guns them dead Mexican boys are holding right there — if we can get to ’em, we can hold out a bit longer. Maybe make the box canyon and lose the Federales. Reach the Rio Grande. It’s a river, Tom; we’ll be safe there. I can get us anywhere from there. I’ll get us home. So come on, hoss, what’s the plan?”

  “I’m tired.” His laugh’s pretty weak. “Just tired is all.”

  He moves his hand from his back and I catch a glimpse of it gleaming in the starlight. For a second I think to ask him where he’d got water from, but then he gives another little cough and I realize what’s happened to him and I’m stepping across Bierce and grabbing Tom’s shoulder and pulling him a little ways from the rock. He don’t put up no fight.

  The back of his shirt is just drenched. He leans heavy agin me when I try to lift up the tail, but it’s dried and stuck to his skin and I don’t want to start it flowing again.

  “Aww, Tom,” I say. “God damn.”

  I lean him back against the rock and he looks up at me all sheepish and boy-faced. “Told you I had a stitch,” he says.

  I keep watch most the night. Tom’s leaning heavy on my left side, and Bierce is pillowed on my right leg. I’ve got Tom’s loaded Colt in one hand, my Smith & Wesson in the other, Tom’s other Colt with two rounds left in my holster. I’m sure if I was apart from the situation and watching it I’d find it downright comical, but being in the thick of it just makes me envy anyone who can be apart from it. Reports of this life are greatly exaggerated.

  When the halfmoon comes up I’m remembering a time on board the paddlewheeler Crescent City when the pilot was bringing her in to Hannibal. He was a fiery redheaded cuss with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue, and he saw me haunting the texas and asked me was I interested in piloting. This was one of the times I run away before the War and the thought of being a pilot had never crossed my mind. I told him no sir, but I p’inted out a lot of landmarks and soundings where the water don’t run but a couple marks, and he looks me up and down and starts to asking me about other p’ints on the river. And do you know, I knowed ever’ damn one of ’em, and I knowed what time of year was good or bad to run ’em, and whether in rainy season you run or put in, and where they’s shoals and low-lying wrecks, and this
pilot — Sam, his name was — he let me stay behind him while they brung her into port, and told me to look him up if ever I “felt the lack of piloting in my soul,” ’cause I was a natural if he ever saw one, and he made sure I knowed he didn’t hand out that word like candy.

  That is all a long time ago.

  It’s coming up on ten, I reckon, and the Federales ain’t tried again. They must think we’re better armed than we really are, or for sure they’da come at us by now. I figure there’s two likely times they’ll try, and that’s midnight and dawn. Tom’s beside me breathing deep and slow, and I got my duster ’round him to keep him warm. These desert nights are cold as a well-digger’s ass, but it ain’t bothering me none. Fact it feels kindly good. Eases my lungs somewhat, and even settling in my bones it lets me know that I’m alive.

  Bierce starts drawing fast shallow breaths and jerks against my leg. I know what’s happening and who it is he’s rassling, and there ain’t nothing I can do but put a hand on his shoulder for him to hang on to if there’s to be any hanging on.

  But there ain’t.

  There’s an awful emptiness after Bierce lets out that long trailing rattle. Maybe I should fill it up with some words, but I don’t have none. Tom’s the one for words. And maybe I should be ashamed, but I don’t want Bierce touching me no more. He’s gone and there ain’t no more comfort to give him.

  I edge away from Bierce and Tom rouses. “Huck?” His voice is thick and far away. “We’re still friends, ain’t we?”

  “Old friends, Tom.” I pull my duster tighter against him and keep my watch like a good soldier.

  ’Round midnight the coyotes start to howl.

  Voices wake me up. The rock’s cold against my back and my side; it feels like it’s sucked all the heat out a me and left behind the kind of deep cold settled in my bones that even a fireplace don’t thaw out, a cold long past shivering.

  Them voices ain’t speaking English.

  I open my eyes a sliver and there’s cold dawn light and hard-edged shadows and about a dozen Federales milling around right in front of us like we ain’t worth bothering with. One fella with a funny little mustache and brass buttons on his capitan jacket is tearing pages out of Bierce’s journal. The morning breeze scatters them like leaves. One of ’em fetches up agin my leg and flutters there like a butterfly.

  Old: in that stage of usefulness which is not inconsistent with general insufficiency, as an old man. Discredited by lapse of time and offensive to the popular taste, as an old book.

  I see that the Federales have took me for dead because I got Tom’s dried blood all over me. The lump in my stiff hand is Tom’s loaded Colt. I ain’t so much scared as I feel like a damn fool. I’m trying to remember falling asleep, but I can’t. I remember coyotes howling. I remember Bierce letting go in the night. Remember Tom’s blood—

  And a terrible dread comes into my heart. It can’t be true and it ain’t right; it goes against our whole life and ever’thing that’s supposed to be.

  What’s cold at my side ain’t rock.

  I can’t clamp down on the cry that bubbles out from deep inside my ruined lungs. I open my eyes all the way ’cause there ain’t no point in playing ’possum no more, and I’m raising Tom’s Colt as the Federales look my way, and them brass buttons are catching the morning sun as the capitan begins to turn, and all that’s left and all I know is, there’s six rounds in the Colt and a river roaring in my ears.

  “Every man is in his own person the whole human race, with not a detail lacking.”

  —Mark Twain

  Story Notes: “Drifting Off the Coast of New Mexico”

  I had just finished re-reading Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” probably for a writing course I was teaching at the time. I’m not that big a Hemingway fan (a dart that Papa, were he alive today, would likely survive). In any case, I had just finished reading the story when the radio played Rush’s song “Tom Sawyer.” One of those weird relays clicked in my head, and there you have it. How you get this story out of Hemingway and a Rush song is one of life’s little mysteries. Maybe if I’d read a different Hemingway and listened to a different Rush song, I’da got a different story. I dunno. And I’m not gonna find out, either, cuz it would entail (a) reading another Hemingway story, and (b) listening to another Rush song. No, thanks.

  I suppose there’s a bit of Butch & Sundance in this, too.

  “Drifting” was originally written in third person. I got about halfway into it and realized it just wasn’t working. I’ve learned that, when I paint myself into a corner, it’s often a good idea to let the paint dry, so I put the story aside for a couple of weeks. One day Huck — an old, melancholy Huck — just started talking to me. I think it helped that I grew up in the South and have a decent ear for Southern idiom. My father has more homilies than Carter’s got pills.

  I have always loved Twain’s writing, and have read a lot about Samuel Clemens’ life, so little phrases from his work and references to his life are buried throughout the story. Tom’s life loosely parallels Twain’s here — living in Hartford and New York City, working as an apprentice printer in St. Louis. At one point Huck mentions Tom working for C.L. Webster — a company owned by Clemens. It’s Huck, though, who worked as a riverboat pilot. He even mentions meeting Clemens on the paddlewheeler Crescent City. His speech about the river is from Twain; Tom’s reply is an allusion to one of Twain’s two Tom Sawyer sequels.

  Clemens was born in 1835, when Comet Halley was paying the sun a visit. He once remarked that he had come in with the comet and would go out with it. He was as good as his word: Twain died on April 21, 1910, the year of Halley’s return.

  Ambrose Bierce may seem an odd presence in the story. Bierce was a humorist, writer, and bitter cynic whose commentary and even appearance somewhat resembled Twain’s. He disappeared in Mexico in 1914, probably killed in the siege of Ojinaca. He’s there to reinforce the sense of Twain in the story, and also because I just plain like the idea of him talking Tom & Huck into fighting in the Mexican revolution.

  About the Author

  Photo by Molly Feathers

  Steven R. Boyett lives in southern California and wouldn't have it any other way. He has been a writing teacher, editor, martial-arts instructor, and professional paper marbler, among other things. His short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and he has also written comic books and a draft of the movie Toy Story 2. Scorpius also publishes his fantasy novel, Ariel.

  The Best of Steven R. Boyett's Short Fiction, Including Stories Never Before Published

  The Author of Ariel and Architect of Sleep captivates you with tales of fantastic realities and everyday wonders.

  Live the final moments of Oz, and the final days of Tom and Huck; share the private life of a familiar gilled Creature; enter the surreal, transformative universe of Salvador Dali in the company of a certain celebrated talking mouse, in only a few of the nineteen stories in this extraordinary collection.

  ISBN: 1-931305-04-8

  Return to Copyright Information

  Scorpius Digital Publishing Titles

  After the Vikings, by G. David Nordley - Interwoven Stories of a Future Mars

  The Algis Budrys Omnibus, Volume One - Some Will Not Die and selected short fiction

  Ariel, by Steven R. Boyett - A magical adventure through a world where fantasy and reality have collided

  Beyond the Valley of the Cyberpunks, by Bruce Bethke - Short fiction by the Campbell and Philip K. Dick Award-winning author of Headcrash and Cyberpunk

  Dark Corners, by Barry B. Longyear - A master of science fiction takes you to the darkest places in the human soul

  Dreamlode, by John Meaney - Short fiction from the BSFA Award-nominated author of To Hold Infinity, Paradox, and Context

  Fine Cuts, by Dennis Etchison - View the bright lights of Hollywood through the dark lens of Dennis Etchison's imagination

  Flesh Wounds, by Brian A. Hopkins - 30 subtle and disturbing
stories by the Stoker Award winner

  Ghostland -Three haunting novellas by the Nebula Award-winning master of the modern ghost story

  The Goddess Letters - A timeless myth made new again by the Western States Book Award winner

  Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams

  - The science fiction cult classic reissued with sequel novella “Solip:System”

  The Hedge, the Ribbon, by Carol Orlock - A storyteller, a hedge, and a ribbon weave a magical spell into the everyday reality of a small town. Winner of the Western States Book Award, by the author of The Goddess Letters

  Hemogoblins, Stories to Chill the Blood, by Alan M. Clark and Friends - Stories to astound, startle, and amuse, illustrated with paintings by award-winning illustrator Alan M. Clark

  Hong on the Range, by William F. Wu - Louie Hong's adventures through a New West of cyber-enhanced cowboys and mechanized singing steers, by the author of A Temple of Forgotten Spirits

  Hours of Darkness - 21 of the 21st century's best horror writers spin tales about what happens in the dark

  Immortal Khan, by H. Doug Matsuoka - A tale of taoist masters, love, and laundromats, told in screenplay form

  Living Midnight, by H. Doug Matsuoka - A dark future tale of mystery, music, and murder from the IEB Award finalist, author of Immortal Khan

  Mars Dust and Magic Shows, by Mark Bourne - Unforgettable Stories from “science fiction’s best-kept secret”

  Mobius Highway, by Howard V. Hendrix - Science fiction stories from the brilliant and daring author of Empty Cities of the Full Moon