Henri Ville

by M. Chris Benner

  "How did Anson know he was going to die? Or that it was going to rain? How did he know about the attack?"

  Henri lifted her arm and tilted the ridge of her hat upward a bit. Flecks of her blonde hair poked up, unwashed and untended. "He knew that much, did he?" Henri's eyes measured the sky with a quick look. There was a single, unassuming white cloud high up but it was an otherwise open, beautiful day, one warmer than it had been lately.

  "You want to know all that, you go see a man named Claim Bialik in a town 'bout a hundred miles northwest of here. You can bring them kids hidin' up over that ridge there, too. He's gonna need all the help he can find."

  Cant turned to the high ridge where the rest of the young stable boys were laid out and trying to hide, though they were hardly inconspicuous as their heads continuously pop up over the edge with eager expressions.

  "Help with what?" Drewbell asked, her eyes unmoving from Henri.

  Henri answered with an annoyed glance.

  "How do we find him?" Cant asked, gravely serious. There was something inside him that felt like the journey wasn't over, that the adventure was just beginning. And he felt a deep, desperate need to follow it wherever it led.

  Henri Ville recited the directions:

  "Go to the place where the Red Rock bends,

  50 paces east and then?"

  She stopped a moment.

  "Stupid Bialik and his stupid rhymes," she mumbled, thinking.

  "Ummmmm?

  Something, something valley for ten??

  No-wait.

  Into the valley of green and fend

  Through the thicket and pricker

  Of the devil's den

  Miles to travel

  Nevermore then Ten

  Dawn's wait to begin again

  Toward the winter's shadow

  And Carpatheon, its end."

  "You want your answers, boy?" She made sure he was staring in her eyes. Henri had found that people downright refused to meet her gaze more often than not, but neither of these two kids had any hesitation facing her. "You'll find 'em there. Start in the township of Worechester. If you're as clever as you seem, you'll find it."

  Then Henri Ville moved on. Passing between Drewbell and Cant, she pulled her hat back low, her eyes focused ahead of her, her snakeskin boots crunching the gravel, and she climbed back the way she had come one day earlier. Before disappearing in the haze of sunlight, a tall silhouette stood upon rock. It was an iconic imagine to Cant (and the American populace, after reading the writing of Cant in later years), and her sheer outline would become a symbol of the infamous gunfighter: hat pointed down nearly over the face; jagged edge of the bandana ruffling over the lower half of her face; and a long duster swaying in the wind, partly tucked behind two gun belts.

  Her voice called back, sturdy like rock?

  "If you do find that town, you tell that old bastard I'll be there soon. Tell him to get ready to go home."

  VIII

  The land was overwhelmingly green after traveling north a full day. By the second, snow-covered mountain peaks could be seen piercing the pale blue sky and, at night, flickers like starlight littering the far-off. The morning air was sharp and cold and stung like ice water in Henri's chest. Dinners were brief and in darkness. Dire would eat oats and carrots from Henri's one hand while the other rubbed the horse's mane. They would share from a water pouch. Henri and the mare had a kindred enjoyment of silence as they ate, or rode, or settled and rested. On the third and final day, Henri stopped and pulled up the bandanna a bit to puke what little food was in her stomach, sick from dehydration, exhaustion, and a lack of nutrition - or so she assumed. Afterward, she wiped her mouth, and lowered the bandana back over the bottom half of her face. It was at this moment that Henri spoke for the first time since leaving the gravesite of Anson Sharpe. The sun was near set in the west. Her voice was raspy from a lack of use and sore from vomiting. She cleared her throat three times before noticing that something had startled inside her. Something was breaking. It wasn't that her vocal chords were sleeping but, quite the opposite, a strong will inside her wanted to speak out. A small amount of tears emerged before any words and they were subsequently wiped from her eyes before they could fall. In sorrow, she first spoke of Anson. Her talk of the gentleman Sharpe was short, her eulogy. Dire's eyes wandered as she told it. How Anson was an asshole. A whore. A philanderer. How he was smart and a good man despite himself and how there was a very real, very large chance she would never be able to return home because of his absence. Then Henri removed the bandana covering the lower half of her face to scream. A frustrated bawl erupted from her body, one of anger and venom and accompanied by spittle. Dire jumped and backed and looked to Henri's face for comfort only to find that it had changed entirely, and what was once black and white bone had become the defined jaw and gnashed teeth of an ordinary (though beautiful and dirty) female face. Henri cursed a blue streak at the darkening sky. She demanded forgiveness. She threatened to destroy everything, all creation - she would tear it down with her bare hands. Even if it took the rest of her life, she would stop this. Murder the responsible parties. Finish it, finish everything - she just wanted it to be over. Time passed and the anger turned to determination. Wicked-black clouds swarmed the sky of a once beautiful day and this, too, caused the mare to panic, but Henri held Dire close. She told the swirling clouds and the ramping winds and the growing blackness about certainties. She would succeed, Goddamnit - she was certain even though she couldn't see it clearly. But something was there, in the back of her mind, a picture of the future taking shape: It started as a faint nagging on her senses, like a slight, low-frequency buzzing; then it seeped in deeper, and it felt like a dream long after its been dreamt, where details remained - colors, emotions, wisps of movement, vague faces - but the details weren't grounded, they were ethereal, intangible (a gazebo, sunlight through the branches of an oak tree, the color red but one too bright to be blood). It wasn't a dream, though, more like a feeling that had sprouted images and her mind refused to leave them alone, folding up each little spark and tucking it into the same part of her brain reserved for fading memories, leaving her with a hazy feeling that all of it was already over, that the end had been her goal, her victory. Just like Anson knew he would die, Henri knew she would live, and that she would succeed. It was a certainty. The storm was approaching, a wall of grey spinning earth as it shred everything above ground. There was one more thing, and just before she rode off, Henri begged through lingering tears. The wind was so loud it couldn't be heard by anyone, and it didn't need to be. She wasn't asking for much but she had to plead, just once, if only to herself. Her pleading was simple:

  She just wanted to go home.

  IX

  That first day, Cant, Drewbell, and the young, incorrigible stable boys traveled over a hundred miles northwest and camped for the night. The next day, the boys stayed back while Cant and Drewbell continued to the nearest town, one called Fraiser. No one had heard of a town called Carpatheon. None could describe it or help with its location. There was a cartographer in the town and he had maps that spanned several counties and states but, when all was said and done, no town called Carpatheon. Nothing even close. Cant inquired about the "red rock" or "winter's shadow" but, again, the cartographer looked puzzled.

  "You sure you ain't gettin' yurself confused?"

  "Yeah. Carpatheon. She said a hundred miles north, which is about here." Cant placed his finger on the map. There were nearby mountains and wide swathes of open land, most of which had been purchased but not developed.

  "No, no, not the name. That you're looking in the right place. The Carpathian Mountains ain't nowhere near here, son. They're in Eur'pe."

  Cant turned to the older man, curious.

  Something the cartographer had said struck a chord of familiarity.

  "What are the Carpathian Mountains?" asked Cant, trying to place where he had heard the name before.

  "Oh, gosh. Here." The older man - wh
o had been a gentler type and willing to help - bent toward a shelf and removed a thick book entitled The Maps of Europe. Cant checked the index and found the Carpathian Mountain Range, which ran from Romania through Poland?but he quickly decided to call it a day when his eyes could no longer tell the difference between the Carpathian Mountains and the local maps of the surrounding mountain ranges he had been staring at. It was irrelevant, anyway.

  Cant settled for a few maps of the area and they left.

  This struck up the first and only "argument" between Drewbell and Cant:

  "Henri made it up to get rid of us," Drewbell moaned shortly after their visit to the cartographer, while they slowly rode back to the stable boys.

  "I don't believe so," a calm, somber Cant answered.

  "Why? Yes she did. It doesn't exist."

  "I believe it does."

  "Why?"

  "I just do."

  "Well I don't."

  "Henri didn't appear to be lying."

  "And you're really good at knowing that?" Drewbell asked, sarcastically. "As good at that as you are finding towns that don't exist?"

  "I believe it does exist. And I'm going to find it. And I'm going to find the fellow she said I'd find."

  "What does it even matter? So you find this guy and you ask him your questions and what? He tells you to mess off. Then what?"

  "Then I wait for Henri."

  "Why? What answer do you think they're going to have for you?"

  "I don't really care much about the answers. I just feel like I need to do this." He paused and turned toward her. "Don't you?"

  "Um?I don't know."

  They rode on.

  "Well, you don't have to come with me. And if you do, you're not to question what I'm doing or why. You're either in with it or out. I will not be questioned or talked back to." Cant glanced at her once more as they rode side-by-side. "Please watch your tongue and, please, do not be impolite."

  Drewbell felt the slight blush of shame.

  "I need you to answer me."

  She looked back at him.

  "Okay. I'm in with you."

  "Okay."

  "So what do we do?"

  "We go back and think."

  Drewbell and Cant reached camp shortly after.

  It had been set-up some miles from town and far out between the two nearest trails. All of the boys had come, including Andrew, Lewis, Walter, Thomas, Vernon, Nathan Jr. 1 and Nathan Jr. 2, and they were an animated group, all except Cant. (This had always been the case, though he had become graver lately.) The brothers were off ambling together, as they often did, while the rest of the boys chased each other in the open land, laughing and shoving. Walter was the smallest and he got it the worst most times (including this one), while Andrew was the biggest, and often the more brutish, of the bunch. Lewis and Thomas were more followers, listeners, agree-ers to whomever led. And Vernon had a loud, occasionally rude, often funny mouth on him.

  All of the boys rushed up to Cant and Drewbell upon their return, each eager for news. There was none. Cant explained that it would take some time, that they may be camping out there for the next few days while he thought. The boys nodded, none of them concerned. This surprised Cant.

  "Does this not bother the lot of you?" he asked the group.

  No one understood the question.

  "Does it not bother you that we are lost to the wind? That we have no direction."

  "Nah, we know you'll figure it out," Andrew said with an encouraging shove.

  "Yup."

  "Yup."

  Lewis and Thomas agreed in unison before heading over toward the fire.

  "And you'll be the first we eat if you don't," Vernon chuckled as he took a seat. The entire gang was rather dismissive, everyone returning to the fire for dinner, everyone except Walter, who was tiniest, and he remained behind, staring up at Cant with giant, round brown eyes.

  "You okay, little buddy?" he asked the smallest of the group.

  Walter tugged on Cant's sleeve, pulling him down to whisper, "I'm scared."

  Cant grew concerned.

  "Of what?

  Whispering lower, he answered.

  "Are there vampires out here? You know, like in that book? They vampire's come out at night?"

  Cant smiled.

  "No, good buddy. No vampires in these parts. And may I be so bold as to suggest that they don't really exist, 'cept maybe in that book I sometimes read." Cant's collection of books, apart from the true life tales of US gunslingers and bank robbers, consisted only of older gothic fiction, like Mary Shelly and Bram Stoker and Edgar Allen Poe. They had been his uncle's, in Massachusetts, one of the few possessions his uncle allowed him to take while ushering him out. Cant hadn't been much of a handful while living with his father's brother's family, but he had been an unnecessary mouth to feed and his life was eventually traded to a cattleman in exchange for goods and services tendered. Cant then rode with the cattleman nearly a year before, penniless, the cattler traded Cant for a few nights in a brothel.

  The gothic fiction was all that remained of Cant's life in Massachusetts.

  "You sure none's them real?"

  Cant nodded and gave the young man a wink.

  "Trust me."

  This seemed to soothe Walter enough and he winked back, running over to join the others in front of the fire. Dinner had been bought in town (with money Marielle gave the boys for their travels) and they roasted the meat and vegetables in a large pan over the fire. The young boys ate heartily. Drewbell mainly nibbled on uncooked vegetables, silently watching Cant as he stared out toward a mountain range in the distance. Night fell and the boys brought Cant food, which he refused. Around the campfire, the second oldest (at 13), Andrew, tried his best to tell stories of Henri Ville by mixing what they had seen along with the stories they had read.

  "She soared in on a flaming eagle, guns blazing-"

  "No she didn't," Vernon cut him off.

  "Ah, it was a great big viper-"

  "Nope," Vernon shook his head.

  "A wily kangaroo-"

  "Totally different continent-" Vernon informed Andrew.

  "Stuff it, Vernon," Andrew spat.

  The kids wanted Cant to read to them.

  "Not tonight, guys," he called over. He had been in the same seat all night, just outside the light of the fire.

  "Come on, you ain't even gotta read none'a Henri or anything. You can read one'a them scary books."

  "Not tonight."

  And with that, Cant left for a walk.

  "Where's he going?" Drewbell asked the nearest boy.

  "Cant always goes walkin' at night," the boy answered.

  ***

  The Nathans made breakfast and Cant joined everyone after another long walk. Drewbell sat across from him and remained silent. Cant hardly spoke a word, orders to maintain the integrity of the camp, like gathering wood for the night fire in case they stayed another night. It was their third day and progress had to be made.

  Drewbell moved to sit beside Cant, her first time close to him since the day previous. "Did you find the red rock?" she asked, just seeking a response. She didn't much care about the rhyme or the maps or the destination. She had wanted change. This was change. This was different. This was a journey and, with him, it felt worth it?even if the town didn't exist, even if the purpose was nil.

  "No."

  She prodded with a few more questions, trying to be helpful, at which time he voiced his frustrations in stout assertions. There were no rocky landmarks on any maps of the area. Rocks weren't often red this far north, where the lands were flush with grass and life. Just shy of wandering around, looking for a crooked red rock, he had no clue what the next step would be.

  "You'll figure it out," she reassured him. "Can't sit here forever, right?"

  He looked at her as if wounded, briefly, but then his eyes focused, narrowed, and a look of determination took them over. His attention turned back to the maps and he pointed.

 
; "Roderick's Curve. It's a town 'bout thirty miles from here."

  "What's there?"

  "No idea. But it's a start," confided Cant, standing. "Can't sit here forever, right?"

  ***

  Roderick's Curve was a scattered community, with houses built hundreds of yards apart and a small handful of shops grouped together at the farthest edge of town. Drewbell and Cant slowly rode the wide path, which was hardly worn by travelers, and if had not been for a sign welcoming them, neither would have known they had even entered a town at all.

  "Where is everyone?" wondered Drewbell, her eyes searching the distant houses.

  When Cant didn't respond, she found his attention elsewhere, on something ahead. For a moment she didn't follow his gaze but instead stared at his determined face. He had a masculine, well-defined jaw, one that always looked very tense. His steely blue eyes were always eager, always focused. His shaggy dark mane was a mess, though, as was hers. The thought crossed her mind that they should stop in the next barber they crossed. Her family had never been one to groom, and any grooming they did themselves, but Cant was handsome and, after a haircut and maybe a rinse with warm water, he might actually be quite dashing?

  Her eyes returned forward to see what lay ahead and quickly found the source of Cant's attention. An extremely wide building was a few hundred yards away. It had looked black in the distance but, as they approached, its dark shade of red revealed itself in the overcast day, though it was also an eerily calm, still day, with the hint of chill on an occasional gust of wind. It felt like evening by mid-afternoon and it would be an early nightfall. Cant wanted to return to camp before night settled, help the boys, make sure everything was set before the deep black that was surely to follow such an overcast day?

  But he wanted to know what was ahead.

  The building had several hitching posts, to which more than two dozen horses were currently tied and mulling in place, but no people were in sight, not even stragglers, no one under the long, arching awning that surrounded the structure on all sides, and it was accompanied by a blanketing silence as they approached. All of it was maroon, even the porch floorboards and furniture lining the exterior, everything except the slanted black roof and the egg-shell white of the awning's support beams. Cant and Drewbell rode their horses all the way around the wide building (which reminded Cant of a slaughterhouse) in a search of a front, only to discover that all four sides were the same, each with an entrance in the center, opaque, maroon-colored windows, and half-tables with chairs and spittoons scattered along the porch.