Gabriel's Story

by David Anthony Durham

  THEY CARRIED ON THROUGH THE TANGERINE HIGHLIGHTS of dusk and for several hours into the night. The group’s mood sombered as the darkness deepened. Dunlop rode with his hands tied behind his back, silent, eyes distant, letting the horse tag along behind the others of its own accord. The girl was similarly bound, although blindfolded as well. Gabriel watched her from his position several horses behind, trying to read her body and gain some understanding of her thoughts. But she gave few signs to decipher. She sat on her horse with an erect back, with a balance she maintained with her legs alone, with a calm that was somehow defiant and defeated at once. The bright red handkerchief that was fastened around her eyes remained until they stopped and made camp, until they’d built up a fire and broken out the mescal stolen from the girl’s home. Only when the tone of revelry had been reestablished did Rollins yank the scarf from her eyes, with the air of a magician.

  The rapists toasted their deeds and talked of penetration and blood and the joy of total power as if there were no such thing as remorse, as if the louder their voices were, the less shame they felt, as if they would shout it up to God and see him blush. Rollins proposed that the girls had enjoyed it, that all women have something in them that likes it that way, that there is a little she-cat in them who may scream and fight but needs it like all the rest. He tried to get the girl to answer this claim, but she stared stonily into the air above the fire. Marshall said he figured that theory was based on some faulty logic, but Rollins stuck to it, saying he could tell she’d liked it and would soon be liking it again.

  But despite their words, none of the men touched the girl that night. They grew quieter. They sat, one and all, beneath a canopy of low-hung stars. The night was so clear and the air so delicate that Gabriel found himself wishing he could breathe in the stars and so take on their light, wishing he could touch them and be pulled up toward them, away from this place and these men. Before long, Rollins slept, snoring, his head thrown back. Dallas sat out on a ridge nearby and seemed for once to wrestle with his thoughts. Marshall lay on his back and talked to himself in a low murmur. James lay on his side next to Gabriel, head clasped firmly in his hands, silent.

  Gabriel watched them all, especially the girl, who sat cross-legged, bound, and still. She neither moved nor stretched nor slept, but just stared. She didn’t return his gaze. He looked back at the small fire of mesquite before him. The flames were like spirits captured within the wood, beings stretching up their arms into the night and tasting the air of freedom. They made him think back to the girl’s parents. What had happened to them? He tried to convince himself that Caleb had stayed behind only to make sure they were properly bound and could not give chase or run for help. That must have been it. That had to have been it, for they must not die. At least, if they lived, nothing was irrevocable yet. There was still hope. He went to sleep arguing with himself, painfully aware of how hollow his words sounded.

  Late that night Gabriel awoke. His eyes first took in the stars, which looked strange to him. They had rotated their positions, the familiar ones slipping from the sky while new ones came to take their place. He thought he had woken for no reason, until he realized that somebody was standing at the edge of the firepit, not more than ten feet away from him. The fire had died down to embers, but its faint red glow and the bone-white highlights cast by the stars illuminated the shape enough to give it form. He felt his pulse quicken. A tingling surged through his body, as if his blood had just come alive with tiny bubbles.

  The man was hatless, his shoulders stooped. He teetered a little, cleared his throat, and lifted a bottle. The moonlight sparkled on the glass. There followed a sound that at first Gabriel couldn’t place. It was a dry rasp, a gurgle, an expulsion of air just ordered enough to resemble speech. He listened, but it wasn’t until the silence after the sound that he knew what it was. Caleb had spoken. Gabriel held so still that even his breathing ceased. He waited, and the voice came again. This time, with effort, he made sense of the sound.

  “I could have you all.” The man tilted the bottle again. After he’d drunk, he stood teetering once more. “All of you, right now.”

  Gabriel could just make out his eyes, thin crescents in highlight, but he couldn’t tell where his gaze was directed. He tried to guess but was stunned by a realization that chilled him to the core. If he could see Caleb’s eyes, then . . . He slammed his eyes shut. A moment later he heard an expulsion of air, a guttural noise, and two soft grunts. It took him a second to realize that the sounds put together made laughter. The bottle fell to the ground. There was a rustling of boots on earth, and then he knew that the man had moved away a few feet and collapsed.

  Gabriel listened for any sounds to follow, but there was nothing except the whisper of a high wind and the men’s snores. It was only after several minutes of tense awareness that he realized he was not the only one awake. He could just make out the outline of the girl, still upright, still staring before her, eyes and ears as alert as Gabriel’s.

  THE MORNING BEGAN WITH ARGUMENTS. Marshall protested the kidnapping of the girl. He said he cared not a lick for her well-being and liked the taste of her himself, but he figured they’d had her already and ought to just get moving. No use slowing themselves and giving some greasers an excuse to track them. Dallas and Rollins put up a united front, calling forth all possible strands of logic, from the improbability that anybody would even come upon the farm within the next month to lessons on the biological necessity of the relief the girl could offer. They’d already seen she could ride. Hell, in a day or two they’d probably have her cooking and doing the washing for them. Dallas even suggested that they could sell her once they got to California, thus earning hard cash to boot.

  But in the end, Rollins responded with action rather than words. He strode over to the girl, reached around her shoulders, and yanked open the torn front of her dress, exposing her chest. His rough hands cupped the small orbs that were her breasts, and this brought a smile to his face. He squeezed them, measured the weight of them, looked up at Marshall, and said, “Tell me you don’t want these along with us.” He slid one hand down and cupped the spot between her legs. The girl twisted her head to the side and spat. She set her jaw, and that was all. “And this down here, sweet as a Georgia peach and you know it. Come on, Marshall, my yanker’s been one swollen-up lonely son of a bitch for too long now. If we’re going to hell, let’s do it right, let’s take a little pussy with us.”

  Marshall looked at the man with disgust. “I guess thinking with your head don’t have anything to do with your outlook, does it?” Rollins didn’t feel he needed to answer. Marshall’s eyes drifted over to Caleb. He exchanged a long look with the man, then sighed. “I guess she ain’t got much to live for anyway . . . But if some son-of-a-bitch Mexican comes hunting her, I’ll serve you both up on a platter for him. Can’t stand a man who takes a little twat that seriously. Makes me wonder if your mother loved you proper.”

  So decided, they broke camp and moved on, inconvenienced only briefly by Dunlop, who launched into a vitriolic tirade against the men and their actions. Marshall stripped off one of his own socks, stuffed it in the man’s mouth, and bound it tight, saying, “There. Now don’t eat it, Dunlop.”

  THE NIGHTS WERE COOL ON THE COLORADO PLATEAU. They rode across a rutted, butted, and sand-washed landscape five thousand feet above the sea. They were in a country open to sky, moving vulnerably beneath it, closer to God and more insignificant for it. The land they traveled through was thick with chaparral and creosote bushes. They stirred up pigeons and quail, which lifted into the air with raucous cries and, more often than not, flew in line with the riders. Dallas shot five of them before Marshall told him that he should think about saving his ammunition. He did for a few hours, until some jackrabbits proved too large a temptation for him. He shot three in the space of an hour.

  For the first few days the girl did manage to slow their progress. She sat unresponsive in camp, had to be pulled to her feet and set in the saddl
e bodily. She was no longer blindfolded, and her hands were tied in front of her instead of behind her back, but she still refused to give her horse any direction. It would dawdle along at the end of its tether, following reluctantly. Every so often it would sink on its haunches and fight forward progress, once jerking Dallas, who was leading it, completely from the saddle. This happened so often on the second day, and so often at precarious moments for the lead rider—just mounting a ridge of slippery rock, just about to descend a slope—that Rollins finally deduced that the horse was acting on signals from the girl. From then on she rode James’s horse and he hers. Thus they picked up the pace.

  Gabriel kept his eye on James, who seemed less and less of this world. He no longer responded to comments thrown his way, no longer even met Gabriel’s gaze. Instead, he stared blankly at the passing land and the creatures in it. It seemed he’d forgotten the most basic actions of life. Marshall had to shout at him to get him to move; more than twice Rollins slapped him across the back of his head in an attempt to get a response from him. Gabriel did what he could to help him along, hitching and unhitching his saddle, fetching him food at supper, and rolling out his blanket in the evening. But he could tell that the boy’s being was somewhere else entirely, and he knew that he must bring him back, that James must come back and face the here-and-now if he was ever to escape it. He whispered this to his friend in their rare moments of solitude, but if the boy heard, he gave no sign. His eyes stayed wide and quivering and nervous, like those of a mouse beneath the canopy of the night sky.

  Gabriel never actually saw what the men did with the girl. They’d lead her away one by one during the evening. At first they’d return cheerful and boastful, teasing Gabriel and James about not being invited to the party. Dallas couldn’t help but demonstrate for the boys the way he’d “given it to her,” thrusting into the air as if to damage it. Even Caleb led the girl away occasionally. Rollins bubbled in protest at this but couldn’t muster the courage to voice it and shrugged it off instead, saying she was just a brownskin anyway.

  But as the days passed, the mood changed. Rollins began to return from his sessions with the girl with a strange look in his eyes, a bewilderment that he gave no voice to and that he tried to soothe with whiskey. By the third day Dallas stopped his boasting, and by the fourth he even passed up his nightly indulgence. Always the girl returned to the fire as stony-faced as before, stiff-backed, expressionless, and distant.

  WHEN THE SON LOOKED DOWN UPON HIS HOME with his companion, his heart was light. He turned to his friend and spoke, telling him how he would now meet his sisters and he’d see that they were the most beautiful girls in all of the Spanish-speaking world. There was something of the flavor of Mexico in him, and of Spain and that country’s ancient vaquero traditions. He wore Chihuahua spurs and dark pantalones and a low-brimmed black hat with crimson needlework decorating the band. His face was tan and handsome and warm still from the touch of a young woman in Santa Fe, a woman he decided he loved, although he’d yet to tell her this.

  As he descended toward the house, a strange feeling came over him. The stillness of the place made no sense, as it was midday. He checked his horse and angled slightly, moving around toward the front of the house. Then he saw them. He thundered down at a gallop, calling out for his family members by name and relation. The buzzards around his father’s body took flight with cries of protest, like avian undertakers disturbed at their rightful work. The son was off his horse before he’d even stopped it, slipping over its shoulder and hitting the ground at a full run. He bent to his father and just as quickly drew back from him. The man lay on his stomach, with his cheek resting on the ground, but even so the son could see that he had no eyes. He could see from the shredded material of his clothing where the birds had stuck their grotesque heads into his body.

  Just then another bird plodded out of the house, stood teetering in the doorway like a drunken glutton, and took flight. The son was inside in four great bounds. What he saw there sent up a howl of pain like none that either his companion or the horses had heard before. The son’s friend tried to enter the house, but the son pushed him out, saying it was not for his eyes to see them so. He asked him to ride back to Santa Fe. He didn’t tell him why, and the man didn’t ask, because he knew already.

  Through the afternoon, the son worked on the bodies of his mother and sister. He bathed them as best he could, laid them out upon their beds, and pulled their blankets up to their chins, as most of the damage done to their bodies began below the neck. He brought his father inside also, and he burned candles for them all, praying as if he still believed in God. After that, he walked out to the river and sank into its water on all fours. He purged himself into the flowing current and knelt there long after in silence. In this silence was a misery too loud to pronounce, and within that misery was a chaos of thoughts such as a man should never have. He wished to quiet them.

  Before the sun set that evening he had found the riders’ tracks. He knew the direction they rode and their number and guessed that they had only three days on him. He recognized the shoes of the gelding and understood then that it was not only for the dead that he must mourn. While he awaited his companions, he shot three buzzards from their circular flight and set their bodies aflame, asking God to do the same with their souls.

  IN FOUR DAYS THEY COVERED ALMOST TWO HUNDRED MILES and saw no other human beings. On the afternoon of the fifth day they bisected a wide expanse of open mesa, the soil clothed almost uniformly with short fat shrubs, small plants abloom with pale white flowers. That evening they stopped early and set the horses to graze. Rollins blindfolded the girl again, and the men slipped naked into the creek near camp and washed the filth off their bodies. Gabriel had to be instructed to do so by Marshall, but once in the chilly, forgiving water, he felt some of the tension within him slip away. He imagined the water could wash him clean, could not just soothe his skin but enter into him and ease away the stains, the pain, the guilt that wrapped around his heart and slowed its beating. He closed his eyes and tried to quiet his thoughts.

  When he opened his eyes the sun was setting. From where he sat, in a small bowl of water, it seemed to be dropping directly into the pool with him. He wondered if this was what the sunset looked like in California, wondered if he’d ever see that place, or see his family again, or ever again feel that his life was in his own hands.

  As if in answer to some of these questions, Marshall came into view. He spotted Gabriel and walked toward him, barechested and seeming larger than usual. He carried a metal canteen in one hand. The skin of his chest was thin and opaque, pink and, despite the girth of his torso and the muscles clearly outlined there, somehow fragile. Gabriel realized he’d never seen the man shirtless, and something about it struck him as obscene. He turned his gaze down to the dark water in which he sat.

  Marshall sat down at the edge of the pool. He slipped one bare foot into the water. Dirt and debris floated away from it. He fingered the canteen, then lifted it absently to his mouth and took several large gulps. The wince that ran across his face and the way it eased into a sort of relaxed pleasure indicated to the boy that the canteen was full of whiskey. Marshall wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and sat contemplating the reflection of the sky in the water’s surface.

  “You think killing’s wrong, don’t you? That’s what’s got you acting so damn high and mighty. You gonna tell me you never thought of killing someone yourself?” Gabriel didn’t answer, but the man didn’t seem to expect him to. “What if somebody raped your mother? What if some lanky, no-toothed son-of-a-bitch Confederate tied you to a pole and made you watch while he did it to her? Had her get on her knees like a dog.” Marshall paused and allowed the boy to form the image. He met the boy’s eyes this time and waited for an answer. “Wouldn’t you track the bastard down and put a bullet through him?”

  “I might—”

  “You might?” He offered the boy a drink. Gabriel started to refuse, but his hand seemed t
o rise from the water of its own accord and grasp the metal canteen. “Shit, I know you better’n that. You wouldn’t even need a gun. You’d beat the living shit out of him with your bare hands. You got an anger in you just like all your race. Rightly so. All it takes is enough anger. Put the right person through the right ordeal, and they’ll kill faster than they can think.”

  Gabriel took a drink. He surprised himself, not actually knowing he was going to do so until he felt the thick liquid sliding down his throat.

  Marshall looked up at a thin line of birds passing above them, then continued. “Yeah, I reckon anybody’s been born out of a woman can understand that. But if you’re gonna say that killing somebody is wrong, then it’s got to always be wrong. It don’t get right just cause they deserve it, does it? And it don’t get wrong just cause they don’t deserve it. You following me?” The man motioned for the whiskey and took another swallow. “Shit. You ain’t following me. I ain’t even following myself. That’s a problem I developed lately. When I was your age, I used to have notions that made some sense, but then I grew up, and I saw more than my share of things, and then sense got plain thrown out the window, along with God and all his lick-spittle little angels. I’ll tell you something. Listen here. We’ll see if I can’t add a little more clarifying confusion to your thoughts.” He motioned Gabriel closer and told him a tale he said was of his youth, a thing he’d seen with his own eyes and knew to be truer than most things he’d seen since.

  While a boy, he’d worked on a ranch outside Austin owned by a man named Clemmins. This Clemmins was a strange man in Marshall’s eyes, was then and always would be. He had an avowed faith in Christianity, something that he pressed on his men, so losing many of them to less religious operations. One spring a traveling preacher came through, calling himself a missionary and intent on continuing the work the Spaniards had begun with the natives to the south. He stayed a fortnight, drank with Clemmins, and talked of religion and God and the destiny of mankind. When he left, he was full of zeal; two months later he was dead, scalped and robbed of everything on him.