Incident at Twenty-Mile

by Треваньян

  Incident at Twenty-Mile

  Треваньян

  Trevanian

  Incident at Twenty-Mile

  Dedicated to Owen Wister and Frederic Remington; the first for creating the mythotypic characters and the distinctive motivational values that power the narrative engines of the Western genre, and the second for establishing its visual vocabulary. Between them, they provided the idioms and the inspiration, not only for all subsequent writers of the genre, but also for the Western film, from John Ford to Sergio Leone.

  February, 1998

  St. Etienne de Baпgorry

  THE COMING OF AUTUMN to Vermont never fails to stir an irresistible wanderlust in me. Something minor-key and seductive in the fading melancholy of the season, something in the tart-within-sweet taste of old-fashioned pippins, in the smell of bonfires, in the rustle of ankle-deep leaves, makes me yearn to hit the road; and for me the direction of "going" is west, just as "coming back" means returning to New England. Perhaps this homing instinct is a tidal tug in my eleven generations of Puritan blood, but I suspect it has even more to do with the unnumbered generations of my Iroquois ancestors.

  The Fall of 1962 sent me drifting westward. I was an hour or so beyond Laramie, driving into the setting sun, when I recalled an intriguing place-name on an old map: a town called Destiny somewhere up on the northern flank of the Medicine Bow Range. It would be foolhardy, or at least barren-spirited, for a drifter to fail to keep an appointment with Destiny.

  There was no sign indicating the turn-off for Destiny because it was no longer an incorporated town, so it was nearly dark when, after two fruitless runs down long dirt tracks, plumes of red dust rising behind my car into the low-angle light of sunset, I found what was left of Destiny: two houses (one empty and for sale) and a gas station-cum-general store. None of them had felt a paintbrush for a very long time.

  The old man who ran the general store told me that back at the turn of the century Destiny had been a thriving little city serving a silver mine up in the mountains as well as the surrounding country. But when the Surprise Lode went bust, the spur line that connected Destiny to the Union Pacific Railroad was left to rust, and the community quickly dwindled to a handful of old folks with nothing to do but wait to learn the answer to the Final Question. Now most of the houses were gone; some had burned down, some had been pulled down, some had just fallen down during storms. "Hey, you could pick one up pretty cheap, if you're in the market!"

  I laughed this off and asked if he'd sell me some gas and put me up for the night, and he said, "Sure… if you're willing to sleep in your car. You can have breakfast same time as me. Crack of dawn. As for the gas, it's been five-six years since the tank was filled. I don't sell but sixty-seventy gallons a year, mostly to people hunting for souvenirs up around the old mine."

  The gas pump was a lever-operated affair that brought gas up into a glass cylinder with gallon measurements down the side. "What about some supper?" I asked. "Sure. But it'll cost you a buck."

  An hour later we were sitting at his oilcloth-covered table eating fried eggs and beans while we word-whipped the goddamned government, this rock-'n'-roll crap that passed for music, and indeed, "progress" in all of its confusing or threatening forms. He brought out a bottle of rye.

  Mr. Pedersen was a seventy-four-year-old loner who sometimes hankered for a chance to talk about what interested him most: the old days in Destiny and in the ghost town of Twenty-Mile halfway up the mountain. He had been a child in Destiny, but his family left when everything went bust. They moved to Cheyenne, where he grew up, found work, and married. He never had any children. ("Don't know why. God knows we tried hard enough, Meg and me!")

  Such was the lure of Destiny that he returned after Meg's death and took over the gas station-cum-general store, but when Interstate 80 came along and siphoned off the traffic, Destiny was condemned to economic strangulation. Mr. Pedersen soon became the town's only inhabitant, and his few customers were either folks who'd gotten themselves lost, or the occasional trophy-hunter who came to climb the old narrow-gauge railway up the mountain, looking for historical mementoes with which to decorate his den. One such history scavenger returned from the hard climb up to Twenty-Mile proudly exhibiting several "quaint" wooden burial markers he had pillaged from the burying ground. After he left, Mr. Pedersen decided he had better take a look around up there while there was still something left to see. He made the climb (a demanding task for a man then in his late sixties) to Twenty-Mile, and he camped out for two days in the old marshal's office, where he sketched a map of the town, naming the buildings and their functions. He also recorded all that was legible on the grave markers. I cite several of these epitaphs in this novel.

  It was fortunate for me that he made the map because a couple of years later a party of curio-hunters started a fire in the pot-bellied stove of Twenty-Mile's Mercantile Emporium. The rust-clogged stove pipe caught fire; it spread to the roof, whence the wind snatched the flames from one weather-dried old building to another until, in the end, only three were left standing, the three that stand there to this day… if something hasn't happened to them since last I was there, more than fifteen years ago now.

  Mr. Pedersen asked me what I did in life; I told him I was a writer; and he said that figured: a man with a real job isn't free to wander around the country. But for all that writing wasn't "real work," he admitted that for a long time he thought about writing a book himself, a book about what had happened up in Twenty-Mile, and what became of Destiny. He said he had poured one hell of a lot of rye into old-timers to get them to tell him what they remembered, and he'd written it all down. But what with the rheumatism in his knuckles and his eyes going dim on him, it didn't seem likely that he'd ever get around to writing that book now.

  I told him I'd love to read it.

  He eyed me from beneath shaggy eyebrows. "So's you can steal it?"

  "That's right."

  He scowled fiercely… then wheezed a laugh. "Maybe I'll show it to you tomorrow. I ain't promising, though. We'll see."

  It was evident that he hadn't had his fill of talking and he intended to keep my willing ear around for a while.

  The next morning after breakfast, I sat on the front steps of the general store and read Mr. Pedersen's randomly organized swatches and tales and notes, written in a round, painstaking Palmer hand, and revealing an uninhibitedly creative approach to spelling. I am thankful that he reproduced the old-timers' tales verbatim, capturing those sound-licking idioms and image-drenched similes that gave Western speech its unique piquancy, before it fell victim to television's anemic homogenizing of our culture. I have tinted this novel's dialogue with that evocative idiom, even stealing a few of those earthy Western similes: to be busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, for instance.

  Several times while reading Mr. Pedersen's manuscript my eyes defocused through the page as I envisioned the novel I could confect around these rough recollections, a novel firmly embedded in the conventions of the Western genre, but dealing with wider and more contemporary issues: with the end of a century, the end of an era, the end of a defining, and for American males a limiting, dream…. A last Western.

  State Prison, Laramie

  ALTHOUGH WYOMING HAD BEEN a state for eight years, the older guards still called it the Territorial Prison. Guard Private John Tillman (nicknamed "B B" by guards who ragged him about the "Baby Butt" smoothness of his cheeks) had been on regular shifts for only a month when he drew the duty of guarding the "moonberries" in the upper-deck security wing. He didn't know why the criminally insane were called moonberries; he had never asked, fearing it might be just another of the tiresome gags with which old hands tormented and humiliated new gu
ards.

  Tillman started his first tour of the special cells, stopping at each door to open the spy-hole and check on the inmate. The first moonberry was sitting on the edge of his cot, rocking himself and humming. The smile of perfect contentment on his bland visage gave no hint of his deeply held conviction that it was his duty to throw acid in the faces of children. "If I don't do it…," he had explained to the judge"… who will?"

  "The Politician" in the next cell was engaged in an ill-tempered debate with the space in front of him.

  The third moonberry recoiled into a corner when he heard the spy-hole being opened. He cowered there, hiding behind his hands and babbling, "Please don't hurt me! I didn't mean to do it! Honest to God, I didn't mean it!"

  "The Spook," as the guards called him, was afraid of everything. During the morning mucking-out rounds, a guard had to go in and get his shit-bucket because he was too frightened to bring it to the door, as the other prisoners did. Tillman humanely closed the spy-hole as soon as he had verified the Spook's presence. The old man repeated, "I didn't mean to do it!" then he slumped in relief and his eyes narrowed with cunning. He had fooled them again. He really had meant to do it. And he'd do it again if he got the chance! Those kinds of women had it coming to them!

  Tillman passed by the large two-bunk cell that was currently unoccupied and went to the last door on the corridor. A wave of horripulation ran up his spine as he reached out for the spy-hole because this moonberry, a man named Lieder, was the most dangerous man in the prison. The guards always spoke of Lieder with a certain pride. He was the baddest of the bad, and they were the ones chosen to keep society safe from him. "Which must mean we're pretty tough ourselves, right? After all, we managed to keep 187 inside." Number 187 had been their most famous inmate, Robert LeRoy Parker, a horse-thief who did eighteen months in the Territorial Penitentiary under the alias George "Butch" Cassidy.

  "But 187 was a Sunday school teacher compared to this Lieder. Don't be fooled by that fella's smooth manner, kid. He's slick as greased shit. Keep on your toes all the time. He's busted outta two places, and chances are he'll try it again, sooner or later. You just make sure he doesn't do it on your shift, or the warden'll reach down your throat and snatch your lungs out!"

  "Yeah, kid, and do you know what Lieder does all day long, lying up there in his cell? He does what your mama told you would ruin your eyesight. He reads! His cell is chock full of books and magazines and newspapers! Read? He's at it from first light to last. Mostly history and politics. But he's got one favorite book that he reads over and over."

  "What book is that?"

  "Oh, you'll hear about it. You'll hear all about it."

  It was the guards who provided Lieder with books and magazines, in part because it was the easiest way to keep him calm, and in part because they were afraid of him. He had once informed a watch sergeant, with calm sincerity, that if he didn't get a newspaper every week, he would punish him and his family when he broke out. The sergeant had dismissed the threat with a sniff, saying there was no way no moonberry would ever get out of the security wing. None never had, and none never would. But the next day he came with a newspaper under his arm. Well, hell's bells, what's the point in taking chances? Look at his record, for the love of God.

  When he was only fourteen years old, Lieder had inflicted a weekend of hell on his hometown just south of Laramie, shooting out windows, setting fire to the school, and holding three children hostage in a livery stable he threatened to burn down if anyone approached. He was eventually cornered and sent away to a privately run home for wayward boys dedicated to "reforming" tough kids through a combination of spirit-crushing punishments and long sessions of prayer on their knees with their arms stretched out until their shoulders knotted with pain. At eighteen, he broke out after seriously injuring his spiritual mentor while they were praying together for his salvation. A three-month rampage characterized by gratuitous and inventive cruelty had the whole southeast corner of Wyoming peering into shadows and flinching from sounds before Lieder was recaptured and committed to the Territorial Prison because no other institution had the facilities to deal with the boy who had punished a tenaciously evangelistic preacher by shooting him four times, once through each palm and once through each foot, to provide him with the stigmata of this Christ.

  Lieder was rescued from a lynch mob and sentenced to perpetual confinement as a menace to society. Once inside, he became a model of good behavior, never causing trouble, always polite, often helpful. But he escaped while working in the prison broom factory (as foreman), and was on the loose for nearly four years. After joining up with the northern, "Union Pacific" stream of Coxey's army, that uniquely American blend of lofty intent, quixotic diversity, righteous wrath, and carnival hokum, Lieder became disillusioned and returned to cleave a trail of pain and violence across southern Wyoming and northern Colorado. At some point, he experienced a kind of political revelation; victims reported that even while he was torturing them to discover where they had hidden their money, he ranted on about how he had joined William Jennings Bryan's crusade to save the farmer and workingman from being crucified "on a Cross of Gold," and to protect them from the hordes of foreigners swarming across the ocean to steal Americans' jobs and contaminate their pure blood by seducing their women. His frenzies of violence culminated in an assault on a farmer who had expressed his intention to vote for McKinley over Bryan. Beginning with the farmer, Lieder had methodically punished the whole family with an axe handle, and done it so thoroughly that none of them were able to testify later. The farmer's memory never fully returned; the two children were left brain-damaged and with an abiding horror of strangers; and the wife's catatonic withdrawal from reality was so total that she ended her years in care. Despite Lieder's claim to have been "sorely provoked" and to have acted for the good of his beloved United States of America, the judge condemned him to life internment in maximum security.

  "That Lieder's crazy, all right," the guard Tillman relieved explained, "but he's not stupid. He's done folks all kinds of hurt, but he never kills anybody, 'cause he knows he'd hang for it. No, he's no fool. What he is is evil. Pure distilled two-hundred-proof evil. And crafty? He can talk the birds down from the trees. So you be careful, kid. And I mean careful." All this made Tillman wish he hadn't promised his wife that he would speak to Lieder. But… a promise is a promise.

  He opened the spy-hole to find Lieder pacing angrily across his field of vision, a book open in his hand. "Yes! And this 'time of tribulation' must mean the war in Cuba! What else could it mean?" He disappeared from sight for an instant as he reached the near corner of the cell, then he turned and strode the five paces back to the opposite corner. " 'The tribulation will pass,' " he quoted from the page before his face, " 'and the nation will rejoice! But in its rejoicing, it will little note the insidious rot eating out its core! This rot will spread, until a leader rises from among the People to smite the invaders!' " Lieder softly closed the book and looked out through his barred window to the horizon, "… to smite the invaders…" he repeated in a tone of wonder. Then he threw himself onto his bunk. "Smite them!" In a suddenly calm tone he spoke to the ceiling, "You'd be the new guard. What do you call yourself?"

  "Ah… Tillman."

  "Tillman," he repeated. "I like to know a man's name. I think it's important to know a man's name. Well, Mr. Tillman, welcome to the land of the moonberries. You got something for me?"

  Tillman cleared his throat. "I got this week's paper. " There was an embarrassed silence. "How… ah… how do I…?"

  "You're wondering how you can give it to me without opening the door."

  "Well… ah…" Tillman certainly didn't intend to take any chances.

  Lieder stood up. "They roll the pages up and push 'em through the hole. And you know, I honestly believe that's the best way to do it. A man would be a downright fool to risk coming in here."

  Tillman ineptly rolled up the first sheet of the four-page paper and slowly introduced it into t
he spyhole. It suddenly flew through his fingers as Lieder snatched it in.

  "Good news," Tillman said as he started rolling up the second sheet. "Looks like the fighting in Cuba's all over. They've signed a… a something… with Spain."

  Lieder stared fiercely at the paper. "A protocol… whatever the hell that is. Those pig-ignorant bastards in Washington have been tricked! Fine young American boys fight and die to teach foreigners who's who and what's what, and the politicians sign a protocol! Spain palms off Puerto Rico and the Philippines on us! And that stupid McKinley thinks he did good! Those sly Spaniards have slipped us the poison spoon, Mr. Tillman. Slipped us the poison spoon! They've palmed off a couple of million illiterate greasers on us, and first thing you know they'll come streaming over here to steal jobs from Americans! Give me that!" He snatched the second sheet in through the spy-hole and scanned it rapidly. "Stupid bastards!"

  Tillman had been looking for the right moment to speak to Lieder about what his wife had suggested, but this sure wasn't it.

  "I'm interested in your opinion about something, Mr. Tillman," Lieder said. "Who do you think blew up the Maine?"

  "Ah… the Spanish, of course."

  "The Spanish?" Lieder laughed. "It was those anarchists! One of those immigrant bastards put a time bomb on board when she was still in harbor in America!"

  "But… why would they do that?"

  "To lure us into war! To draw our soldiers out of this country and leave them free to take it over!"

  "That's crazy! There ain't-"

  Lieder spun and glared in rage at the spy-hole… then he smoothly masked his fury behind an eye-smile. "Well now, maybe you're right, Mr. Tillman." He showed his teeth in a broad grin. "Crazy men do sometimes say crazy things. That's how we know they're crazy, isn't it? Mr. Tillman, would you tell me something?"

  "What's that?" Tillman's tone was stiff. No slick moonberry was going to talk him down from the trees.