‘Dude, he’s back,’ the clerk at the mini-mart declared into his cell phone with insufficient discretion to keep from Vince’s hearing.
He doesn’t care if I do hear, Vince thought. What in Hell makes me so fascinating? I can’t imagine what these yokels think of Geoff.
Vince had considered staying the night, but, as Geoff had little to offer in the way of meaningful accommodation (How can any place so lived-in be so unlivable?), and, as Geoff still seemed to prefer solitude, he’d decided against it. At least he’s okay, Vince thought. He just needs more time.
Vince pulled out a twenty-four ounce Styrofoam cup and filled it with coffee. It was going to be a long drive back. He put some loose change on the counter and left without saying anything to the clerk. He pulled out of the gas station parking lot and got onto the county road. As the dilapidated billboard diminished to obscurity in his rear-view mirror, he made a vow not to wait so long until the next time he came around.
The Walk Home
‘That was the best party we’ve had ever!’
Ellyn had drowned in a shallow pond during a fit of convulsive laughter after only eight short but love-filled years lived with her parents, so she now existed in a state of perpetual grace. It was always the best party they’d ever had. As Moira smiled down at the girl, with indulgence but in agreement, her cheeks flaked into cobwebs then drifted out into the night like twin pennants of frosty breath from underneath her bonnet. The effect was so apt to this winter evening’s walk that she could have been mistaken for a living, breathing thing. Seeing that the little ghost was fit to burst from excitement, Moira let go of her hand. Ellyn skated on ahead a few steps across the trackless snow then did, indeed, burst—into a hundred green firefly tails, dizzyingly swirling about each other. Moira released a laugh like a chorus of owls, far away.
‘That Mr Graff is so funny!’ Ellyn’s voice announced from nowhere. ‘Where do you think he comes from?’
‘Mr Graff came with the circus, during the Depression,’ Moira answered quietly. She continued forward, her hands folded across her apron, knowing the little one would follow.
‘But where did the circus come from?’
‘Wherever it will, I suppose. That’s what Mr Graff sometimes says. Now, when or where Mr Graff joined up with the circus . . . well, I suppose we’ll probably be risen up again at the end of days before he’ll tell us that.’
A hundred small, viridian stars raced past the hems of Moira’s skirt and coalesced into Ellyn’s form atop a narrow tree-trunk, a sprite on a stark, dead dais. ‘Mr Graff let me dance on his toes, like my daddy used to. Did you see?’ Ellyn asked. She lifted her feet clumsily in alteration, her arms stretched out to an invisible partner.
‘I saw,’ Moira replied.
Ellyn stopped dancing. She dipped her head and cocked it sideways. ‘I saw you dancing with the corporal.’ She giggled.
Moira lifted an eyebrow and grinned slightly as she passed Ellyn. ‘The corporal is a fine dance partner. He says I remind him of a girl from the USO.’
Ellyn hopped down and chased after Moira. ‘What’s a USO?’
‘They were the girls who would dance with the soldiers before they went off to war.’
‘Dancing is fun! I want to be a USO!’
Hollow birdsong again floated from Moira’s mouth. ‘I should think you’d be happy enough as a little girl.’
‘I am! I am!’ Ellyn confirmed with glee, skipping and twirling as they crested the hill.
The pond waited before them, frozen, a frosted mirror for the moon. Moira confined her despair behind a placid expression to leave Ellyn unperturbed. She chided herself for sullying their time together by thinking past their parting.
‘I love the dancing and the stories!’ Ellyn continued excitedly. ‘I like John Red Cloud’s stories about the tricky rabbit best of all! And the game! I think those boys will remember us for a long time, don’t you? I can’t wait ’til we do it again! Ooo, I just want it so much!’ Ellyn clenched her fists, then threw her arms across her chest and twisted back and forth while she raised her face to the heavens.
Moira saw a pair of eyes flash between the trees. A great stag caught her glance, bucked, and ran.
‘Until then you can think about all the good times you had tonight,’ Moira offered.
‘I can! I can think about all the good times. It will be just like dreaming!’
Ellyn turned and ran back up the rise. Moira was too startled to call after her: Ellyn was never petulant about her rest—though Moira considered she might like it if Ellyn did resist for a little while. She soon saw that that was not Ellyn’s intent as the girl turned back towards the pond again and called wildly, ‘Moira! Watch me!’ Ellyn threw herself, face-forward, down the slope, squealing. Her arms flared out and formed a ship’s wake. Her ethereal spray rolled forward into a ball, surging and flowing, finally re-concentrating into her familiar form at Moira’s feet. Ellyn raised straight up as if a puppeteer high above pulled her strings.
‘Did you see?’ she asked Moira.
‘I saw,’ Moira replied.
They came to the edge of the pond. Moira could see her husband’s blurred form waiting behind a tree around the other side. His right arm was cocked behind his back; she knew he held the hammer.
‘Can I skate for a while before I sleep? Will you watch me skate?’ Without waiting for an answer, Ellyn drifted out onto the pond and glided through a series of curves, a swath of lace trailing behind her, disintegrating.
‘I love to watch you skate,’ Moira said, mostly to herself. She settled onto the rough-hewn bench where Ellyn’s father still sometimes sat, looking out across the pond. Moira knew he was unwell. Would he know to come for her, she wondered. Moira knew she would miss this impish angel if ever they were to separate. But might not she finally pass on as well? Had she stayed overlong to play guardian to Ellyn? She dismissed these thoughts as inconsequential: Moira knew that if Ellyn’s father did not come for her, she would never abandon the girl, even if she must endure ceaselessly that other thing—the undeviating re-enactment of brutishness that marked her demise. Her husband’s form remained unchanged, but the pull of the black void around him deepened; calm and sedate as he appeared, something shuffled in agitation, some dread vibration beckoned from the other side of the pond, steadily growing more insistent.
Moira looked away. Ellyn was no more than a wash of light now, her peals of laughter faded to the tinkling of tiny icicles falling in the wind. Soon the girl was gone, and a small glowing dome sank slowly beneath the ice in silence. Moira rose and began walking. She looked forward, only forward, trying to ignore the presence hounding her and the inevitable fear welling up inside. A plume of cedar smoke billowed from a chimney up ahead. She saw the silhouette of Ellyn’s father as he drew the curtains closed against the cold.
Intermediary
The night had already cooled considerably, but Barclay was sweating. He swallowed and wiped a sodden sleeve across his brow. Hank, reclining on his cot in the tent-corner opposite, propped up on one elbow, didn’t react to the sudden movement. Hank appeared unperturbed, lost in inscrutable concentration. The dynamic pull between his repressed panic and Hank’s seeming calm stretched taut Barclay’s already fraying nerves. Barclay wanted to scream but was afraid if he opened his mouth he would scream forever. But he was also terrified of the silence, afraid that, without confession and pardon, there was no reprieve forthcoming from the agonies of his guilt. He wanted to scrub himself clean but he was days away from a shower. More than anything, Barclay wanted to stand up and go outside the tent, but he couldn’t. Three bodies immobilized him: the dead man five paces away face-down in the dirt, the skeleton they’d packed in the crate, and Hank.
Two hours earlier their local guide, Pacha, became intractable. Though Pacha’s English was limited, it was not difficult for him to divine the archaeologists’ intent to transport the skeleton out of Ecuador illegally. Barclay couldn’t remember how the row became viol
ent. Pacha became so loud so quickly, and even though there shouldn’t be anyone within miles of their camp to hear Pacha’s outburst, a terrible fright had seized Barclay. He remembered his hand squeezed tight around something hard and there was a flush of red across his eyes. A blink of blackness followed, then his head buzzed and he was struggling to breathe. He was swinging a rock pick at the purpling sky; dark droplets arced towards early stars with each threshing stroke. Hank was yelling in his ear but the words were lost in a rushing roar. Barclay felt constriction around his throat. His arm became rubbery and he dropped the pick. He fell limp on his right side. The tension eased, and he felt Hank’s arm slip out beneath his neck. Pacha lay on the ground before him, eyes wide with surprise; rivulets of blood coursed towards a hateful snarl pushed up by the ground.
Barclay clasped his hands together but failed to still their quaking.
‘Relax,’ Hank growled from his gloomy corner.
A tremor shot up through Barclay’s shoulders; a stifled whine emerged as a pathetic gurgle from the drooped corners of his mouth. ‘Relax’ was the worst thing Hank could have said. What does he mean, ‘Relax’?! Barclay knew Hank couldn’t be as cool as his opaque pretence indicated. If their roles were reversed, Barclay would never accept his partner as a murderer so complacently. He would be yelling and stamping his feet even now. Only his guilt as the aggressor muted Barclay’s panic. What was Hank’s excuse? Why was he deferring recrimination?
The uneven trill of unknown insects rolled outside the tent. Sparse raindrops began to pat against the khaki vinyl. The eastern slopes of the Andes were an unlikely destination for an archaeological expedition. The dryer plateaus of the upper Andes with their well-preserved Incan ruins better served most researchers. But Barclay and Hank had pursued their course based on stories of contact between the Conquistadors and the Jibaro peoples. The territory lay on the periphery of the Incan Empire’s greatest expansion, as well. Though the search would be difficult (the trek to the interior had already tested the limits of their endurance), the possibility of formalizing theretofore ill-defined cultural interactions presented an intoxicating aspiration to the duo.
Incan stonework offered a well-delineated plot for researching their lost civilization. The ancestors of the Schuar (Jibaro, a derivative of ‘savage’, was considered a derisive term) had built no such enduring structures, leaving no signposts for excavation. Barclay and Hank utilized local lore to guide them in their search. Pacha had had a thorough knowledge of the territory, a fair compendium of verbal tradition, and, most importantly, he was unafraid to take the two white men through the temperate jungle slopes to areas most of his people would superstitiously avoid. It was precisely this fearful deference that attracted the archaeologists. Experience had taught Barclay and Hank that ‘hauntings’ and ‘curses’ often served to protect a site from plundering. Moreover, such reputations were sometimes conferred where terrible violence had occurred; such violence might inspire rapid abandonment of any artefacts left at these scenes of despair.
Barclay stared at the powder-blue plastic crate sitting atop the collapsible table in the centre of the tent. He periodically flashed his gaze between the crate and Hank’s taut expression, visible between the thin, telescoping table legs, to make sure his partner didn’t notice his primary focus. Barclay’s legs began to ache. He wanted to stand, but knew that if he did, he would be compelled to look again at the contents of the open container, and feared his interest would arouse Hank’s suspicions. No other archaeologist in the world would begrudge him his interest—or themselves be able to look away from the incredible find. But the blood spilled earlier had coloured all consideration, and curtailed all appropriate joy. Two tears ran down Barclay’s cheeks as he lamented the loss of his professional triumph. Whatever ugly course lay before him, pride was an unthinkable prize. For the rest of his life, any moment of quiet contemplation would put him back in this tent, at this time, with the same question he had asked himself one hundred times already: What have I done?
Hank grunted and cleared his throat by way of answer. Barclay hated him for his composure. Barclay wanted to scream at Hank, to make him come to life and react how Barclay thought he should: to hate Barclay and blame him for this intolerable circumstance, to remonstrate him for his sin, to hit him and push his face in the dirt right next to Pacha. Instead, Hank sniffed and folded his hands over his chest.
Barclay chortled nervously. Hank looked at him.
‘The spearhead,’ Barclay said.
Hank grunted his understanding. Their first find seemed such a small thing now; their joy at finding it seemed distant and almost nostalgically naïve.
They had found the intact spearhead just before mid-day. They patted each other on the back exuberantly in celebration of their discovery. The specimen was an excellent example of sixteenth century Spanish metallurgy. Either a Conquistador had travelled through this region, or at least a confiscated weapon had found its way to the slopes of the east Andes. The archaeologists began to set up a grid radiating out from their initial find. As they did so, Barclay discovered a large flat rock angling back towards the slope, as though the stone was settling into a depression beneath the rock. With Hank and Pacha’s assistance, he slid the stone aside. What they found beneath now rested in tissue paper in a powder-blue plastic crate.
The skeleton was intact, stuffed into a squat position in the small depression. All clothing had rotted away. No other artefact was found among the bones to identify their owner. Clinging to the spine and the ribs and the pelvic girdle, and in loose clots and solid pools in the mud of the shallow grave, was a fortune in gold.
A manic joy seized them. They rushed the excavation of the skeleton and the accompanying gold. Expectations roiled dizzily in their heads as they worked. It was the archaeological find of a lifetime—and it came with treasure attached. Before the last fleck of metal was retrieved from the pit, the three men began to weigh the two values against each other.
Barclay heard a faint rubbing sound beside him. He looked down and was surprised to see that he was the source of the disturbance. His thumb shuddered unbidden over the cracked leather cover of his wallet. He stuffed the wallet in a zipper pocket in his cargo pants and sat on the offending hand. He didn’t want to look inside again, to see the photo of his wife (separated) with his daughter sitting on her knee, to suffer again under the innocence of their eyes.
His career had sputtered shortly after it began and then stalled completely after the birth of his daughter. Barclay often lamented that she’d only ever known him as a failure. That shame poisoned his relationship with his wife. She’d never asked for anything from him but him; he had never felt that was enough to offer. He’d carried the creased reminder of his failure across a continent with the hope that he could nurture that bulb into something different, that he could bring forth something new from dark roots. He clung to it as he clung to hope for the future, to a chance to regain what he’d lost as a man and a father. And though now he wanted nothing more than to see them again, to be out of this damnable tent and to suffer the trite discomfort of an awkward weekend visit, he wondered if he could hide the monster he’d become. His damnation from disappointment to demon seemed complete. Yet he knew as well that a kind of deliverance sat mottled and muddy in that powder-blue plastic crate. Barclay knew he had to get back to them, not only for all that they meant to him, but for what he could finally provide for them. Though every atom of his being ached with revulsion for what he had done, he doubted if he would retract the act if it meant surrendering the spoil. Barclay considered his depravity with deepening abhorrence even as his commitment to possession increased.
Despite all that he had to occupy his thoughts, it had proved impossible not to guess the calculations: There were easily sixty-four ounces of gold in the crate, a conservative minimum value of ninety-thousand dollars U. S.; more refined measure might reveal worth half again over that impromptu estimate. Barclay wondered if weighing the gold more prec
isely might ease the decision-making he and his partner could not long avoid.
An owl called three sustained even hoots at surprisingly close range. Barclay’s body tensed instinctively. A flutter wafted behind him as the owl left its perch and flew off. All insect song followed in its wake and the forest fell silent. Only the meagre rain persisted.
Across the sudden quiet came whistling tones, undeniably of human origin, carrying a noncommittal melody of faint, drawling notes to the tent. Hank pushed up and swung his feet to the floor. Barclay’s hands formed arthritic talons in the air as they bent towards his chest. The whistling became louder, floating over an unhurried shuffle. Barclay looked at Hank. Hank cocked his head, listening intently. He caught Barclay’s gaze and spared him only a split-second of a hard glance to command silence. Barclay looked at the electric lamp hanging from the cross bar and realised it was far too late to extinguish. Not far from the tent, the whistling dropped away with a hollow slide. There was a soft thump, a few seconds’ silence, then another soft thump: the sound of a boot nudging the ribs of a man on the ground.
Black Horse and Other Strange Stories Page 5