Outrider

by Steven John

  Perhaps it was the liquor settling in or the long days adding up, but all of the men seemed to fall into silent reverie at the same time. Silence reigned but for the crackling, whistling fire for a good long time before Hernandez spoke.

  “So, what do you spend your time thinking about, Scofield?”

  Scofield took in a breath to crack another joke about Tripp’s “Mexican ass,” but exhaled again as he actually pondered the meaningful question.

  “Be straight honest with you, I don’t know. There’s not a singular thing I find myself thinking about, like a . . . like the one that got away or the good ol’ times I this or that, y’know? I think about riding and about my horse and the job. That’s sure. I wonder about other people. What the fuck is some guy doing right now in Europe or Russia or wherever it’s daylight? Sittin’ at a desk or riding along on a train or . . . or waiting in line. I wonder how it is that we few wound up out here. That we ended up in this day and age knowing the smell of horseflesh and what silence can sound like. I . . .” he paused, searching for the right word. Four sets of ears waited patiently for him to find it.

  “I marvel at it. At this,” his hand described a wide arc across the desert night. “And I can’t imagine life being like anything else. But I know if I’d been born a different day, a town over, whatever, y’know, it all probably woulda been different. It’s impossible to know what’s coming, but just . . . fuck, boys, it’s amazing to trace the trail you’ve already walked. Just amazing.”

  Thoughts formed in his head—complete thoughts; meaningful thoughts with poignant memories attached—but he knew it would be no use to try and voice them through his whiskey-thick lips. Scofield had no idea if he had made his point or not, or even if he had really had a point to make, but at least internally he felt good for having spoken a little bit of the monologue he kept running in his mind day in, day out.

  Noah Fisher of all people, not a man known for profundity, broke the silence. “If my dad hadn’t died I bet ma woulda stayed back in Philadelphia and I’d be punchin’ controls working a drill press, just like pops. Probably drunk by noon right there on the job, just like pops.”

  “What did him in?” Eric Bay asked. His older brother shot him a look that no one, including Eric, happened to see.

  “The bottle and a weak heart, I guess. I dunno. After we got to Vegas I never much asked my ma about him. She hated him every bit as much when he was dead as she did when he was alive, y’know? Stayed real angry. It made me not want to be around people much.”

  “That’s why I’m out here. People? The fewer the better. Present assholes excluded, of course.” Scofield said quietly.

  Hernandez chuckled. Then, suddenly, he was laughing out loud. He fought to get his breath as his comrades demanded he share, and, finally, Tripp managed to gasp out: “I was just remembering that time Hutton and Greg White come into the bar.”

  Joe Bay and Scofield, who had both been present for the incident Hernandez was surely relating, both began to laugh as well. Eric looked from face to face, smiling in confusion, infected by the other’s laughter.

  “Hutton comes walking in and he’s pissed and he’s got something to say to all of us, right?” Tripp addressed himself mostly to Eric Bay. “And he looks and sees there’s a bunch of hookers in there, so he turns to Greg and tells him to clear the women out, right? And so White takes one step forward, takes in a breath and just goes . . .” Tripp took a breath of his own, as did Scofield.

  In unison, the outriders shouted: “Whores! Get the fuck out!”

  All five men laughed good and long. Eventually Tripp added: “And Hut says: ‘You ain’t much of a diplomat Greg, but that got it done,’ and then we was all laughing so much Boss Hutton started crackin’ up too and he never even remembered he was supposed to chew us out over something!”

  Again laughter lifted into the night, rising like the smoke and embers that swirled off the fire, just now burning past its brightest, hottest point and beginning to slowly die out.

  Tripp Hernandez swayed back and forth unsteadily, unable even to simply stand still. Between his side steps back and forth and Scofield’s blurred vision, it took over half a minute for the cigarette hanging from Tripp’s mouth to link up with the flame dancing from Scofield’s lighter.

  Finally, his smoke lit, Hernandez reached out and managed to clap his friend on the shoulder.

  “OK . . . Scofy . . . thanks fer the smoke. Good talks.”

  “Why dontcha cool your jets here a while, man? Yer more drunk n’ me an’ I can’t see straight with both eyes open.”

  Hernandez shook his head, smiling widely and turning away. “Nah ’m fine. Gotta shit n’ shower. You don’t wanna be ‘round for either of those.”

  Scofield watched Tripp leave from the doorway of his shack. He thought to call out a goodbye, but let the notion drop. Hernandez faded into the haze beyond the glow spilling from within the hut, his steps quick but his stride short and uneven. Scofield laughed under his breath and turned to enter his tidy little home. On the floor, all of his provisions and gear were neatly packed and stacked, ready to go for the ride ahead of him.

  “See, ain’t you glad you’re a retentive little prick?” Scofield said aloud. “Now all you gotta do is pass the fuck out.”

  Which he did a matter of seconds after he hit the bunk, still wearing his clothes and one of his boots.

  * * *

  When Scofield awoke, he was utterly shocked to find his hangover mild. His head ached but he knew it would soon be gone with a good dose of water. His stomach ached from hunger but he felt overall healthy and was acutely alert and even restless to start the day, despite the dull pain behind his eyes and at the base of his skull. He rose and stripped naked, then stood still for a minute or two, pressing the fingers on one hand into his closed eyelids, the fingers of the other on either side of the back of his neck.

  Then he stepped into his little bathroom and slurped water from the sink as he let the shower warm.

  The outrider was bathed and dressed, his thirst slaked, and his hunger curbed within fifteen minutes. Outside in the predawn air he found Reese on her feet. Good girl. You’re as ready as me, ain’t ya? He fed and watered the horse.

  As he made a few trips carrying the saddle, saddle bags, and feed sacks from his shack and began to prepare his horse for the ride, Scofield reflected on the night he had shared with his boys. It was first a sense of melancholy that took him when he realized he had not had such an evening in longer than he could remember, but this line of thinking was immediately replaced when it occurred to him that hell, you had a fine night just last night. Why dwell on the rest?

  He was glad the men had drawn him out last night. Out of his home and out of himself. But he was equally anxious to get back to the field. He had been away for only ninety-eight hours but in his mind it felt like forever. Scofield had no pride or sense of grandeur about him that made him feel the sunfield was unsafe when he was not present; he was simply aware that he was one of the top hands and that his place was out there and not back here.

  Still, he found himself grinning thinking about the stories the group had swapped and about the ribbing and bullshitting and all of it. It was good to spend time with good people. But the bad folks were calling.

  Even though it had been just four days off the field it had been three and a half days too long and one night well spent. As Scofield locked up his little shack and adjusted his belt and revolver to mount Reese, he looked back at the scattered buildings that made up the town. Dawn light flattened the dimensions of the scattered outrider huts and distant general shop and charge station, rendering the Outpost a blue-gray cutout against a pale beige expanse of loam. At this time in the morning the sunlight was just strong enough to overpower the glare of New Las Vegas but not yet full enough to expose the many hues of the land. For a little while each morning one could imagine a West that had faded into memory some two centuries ago. For the thousandth time, Scofield lamented his having been
born those two centuries too late.

  Then the outrider cleared his mind, took hold of the saddle and vaulted up onto his mare’s back. Reese tossed her mane and whinnied softly, glad to be returning to the itinerant life the both of them relished. Through the cold morning air came the low whine of the day’s first commuter train arriving at the Outpost. Soon the hum of the charge station would begin and not long after that voices and neighing horses and all the rest of it would make up the din of another day. Not for Reese and Scofield, though. For them there would be nothing but the breeze and crunch of sand under hoof for days.

  The horse and rider crossed the glowline at a steady canter. Reese was a powerful, reliable horse. She seemed almost indefatigable with enough water and feed. Scofield would ride her at this clip until they were well into the field, slowing only to begin his patrol at the pillars.

  The ten mile ride to the sector where Scofield would begin his assignment usually took half an hour. But ever wary of the poor job done by others, he’d decided to make straight for the sunfield and ride to his area of patrol among the pillars. The detour would add nearly an hour to the trek. But it turned up something remarkably peculiar.

  Scofield rode along in the shade of the quantum photovoltaic arrays overhead, his mind drifting but his eyes sharp. It was still early in the morning and the wind was up, stirred by the sun’s warmth shining down through the cool air. A thousand veins of sand crisscrossed the land like miniature mountain chains as the desert took shape once again. It always amazed Scofield how such a seemingly barren place could change from hour to hour. The colors of the land traveled through a rich palate in the course of any day. The land grew from flat, dead loam into a sea of sandy waves and drifts that settled into low dunes before softening out again in the evening breeze.

  He would have missed it had Reese not changed her stride. The horse bucked under him, hopping as she would have done to avoid a prairie dog hole or snake. Scofield snapped back into the moment and looked over his shoulder to see what had spooked the horse. Hauling back on the reins (he never ignored a signal from Reese), at first the outrider saw nothing but the usual patches of light and shade. As his horse came to a full stop and he could let his vision settle, the rider’s eyes immediately locked onto something else. Some sort of cord.

  Scofield dismounted, staying Reese with a pat on the flanks, and walked back to the cord, cocking his head to one side. It was like nothing he’d ever seen in the sunfield: a thick tube, easily the circumference of his bicep, covered in a canvas sleeve almost the exact shade of the desert floor. Scofield knelt and held his forearm near the cord. The hairs on the back of his arm didn’t rise so he slipped his fingers into the sand and raised a length of the tube. It was dense and surprisingly heavy. The covering was painted cloth with a thick rubber sleeve underneath.

  He rose and gave the cord as solid a shake as he could, stumbling under its weight. Only about a fifteen foot length shook clear of the ground. Scofield hooked an arm under the cable and began to follow it toward the nearest QV pillar. After twenty yards, he found one end of the cord. It was capped with a steel disc fitted over a threaded iron pipe. After a good struggle, Scofield managed to unscrew the disc, revealing six individual cords within. Each of these cords ended in a standard four prong tap—the kind one would use in an everyday appliance.

  The outrider stood, holding the iron housing in one hand and examining the taps with the other. He’d never seen anything like it. But his first thought was that it must be legitimate; some sort of refuse left over from construction. No leech would ever use a cable like this. It would take three men to carry just the section he’d unearthed. He trailed the cable sixty yards before its other tip popped free of the soil. This end consisted of the same heavy disc and casing, but when the outrider worked the steel cap off, he found only one large tap. It was tri-pronged and bigger than anything he’d ever seen out in the field. After a minute spent crouched studying the tap, he reattached the steel disc and dropped the line back onto the desert floor.

  Scofield kneaded his neck with both palms, pressing his eyes shut tightly. After a moment, he made up his mind to disregard the strange cord. His gut told him there was nothing much he could do about it and therefore not much call to worry about it. Probably some sort of old transmission line, he reasoned. The grid had run on hard wires for years before switching to transmission beacons. It was uncommon but far from unheard of to find detritus from the older technologies strewn about the miles of open land; the engineers were thorough but certainly not perfect. And at any rate, Scofield was late to start his route. He waved Reese toward him and hitched his trousers up an inch to mount.

  Mayor Franklin Dreg hardly noticed the rivulets of sweat streaming down his neck. Here beneath the spotlights and before countless pairs of eyes he was in his element. The Boston Metropolitan Convention Center held over twelve thousand people in its auditorium at capacity and the attendance was well over half of that muster today. Dreg was not the keynote speaker at the Annual National Civic Planning Summit, but even though he had already sailed past his allotted ten minutes, the crowd was held rapt by his presence and he could feel their focus upon him. It penetrated and energized him; it empowered him.

  The handful of other mayors who had spoken before him were stodgy and sterile or nervous and mumbling, prattling on about power shortages or water issues or trade concessions—Dreg on the other hand relished the sound of his booming laugh echoing from the dozens of speakers around the large hall, and his city had plenty of power to offer . . . for a price. He paced about the stage, pointing and gesticulating at random faces he could hardly see through the garish glow of the lights.

  Dreg had already dispensed with all pleasantries about his host city and its governance and virtues and the like and was well into a shameless lauding of New Las Vegas. While he never directly took credit for the city’s extreme efficiency, his generous use of the word “we” was clearly meant in the Royal sense.

  “We love the charm and the history of cities like Boston and Charlotte and Pittsburgh,” he grinned, nodding as if to representatives of each of these places, “but in New Las Vegas, we take pride in having added that word up front. New. New! In a metropolis of some ten million citizens, in our minds, the people come first. If that means rezoning certain acres for electrical infrastructure or for a government center, we don’t worry about the cost or the effort, we worry about how the end result will help us, we the people. Now I know that our gracious hosts here in Boston have been presenting to you the benefits of heliostat and central tower projection for power production, and I certainly respect that in New England land is at a premium, but I urge you to look at my proposal for quantum photovoltaic installations offshore. Pound for pound and inch for inch, you can’t beat QV if you ask Mayor Dreg. And our municipally owned and operated production facilities are ready to churn out QV panels at a moment’s notice, it just takes some inspired thinking from a few government types.” Dreg winked, adding: “As you all know, of course, cloudy days cut heliostat production up to eighty percent more than they do with QV arrays, and as I’ve noticed today, the clouds seem to like it here in old New England.”

  Timothy Hale had, of course, written every word of Dreg’s speech. And while he careened on and off message, The Mayor was making his point: our systems work better than yours. And as the government of New Las Vegas had long ago assumed control of and consolidated its power companies into one apparatus, if he could convince any of the assembled players of this, it would be funds directly into his coffers. Never mind that appointed topic of this session was transit—Dreg was here to sell electrons. And sell them his way.

  As he rambled on well past twenty minutes, The Mayor had no idea that at just the same time his closest advisor was beginning to connect a series of dots that would render much of his rhetoric about the stability and advantages of a system run via quantum photovoltaic power arrays inaccurate.

  Timothy Hale sat some two thousand seven hundred
and fifty miles away with his head in his hands. “Not here,” he mumbled, sitting alone in The Mayor’s opulent receiving chamber. “Fucking hell . . . not here . . . please. . . .”

  It was his fourth day in the field and Scofield had been tracking the snaking path of a freshly removed tapline for over twenty minutes. The leech had been reckless, not even bothering to scuff up the trail traced in the afternoon sand. The outrider had spotted a patch of disturbed earth by a QV pillar and immediately zeroed in on footprints leading out into the desert. After a mere hundred yards the leech seemed to have grown weary of looping his power cord and had let it drag behind him. Scofield could hardly believe when he spotted a man hunched over a generator a mere two miles from the sunfield.

  The sun hung directly above and the wind was at the outrider’s back, so the leech heard and then spotted the horse and rider when he was still a good distance off. The man rose and began to sprint away before apparently realizing he was in the middle of the desert. He came to a stumbling halt. Scofield drew his rifle from the saddle bag and chambered a round. The leech seemed to be fidgeting with something in his coat so the rider slowed Reese to a trot and fired a shot near enough to the man that he’d hear it crackle through the air.

  “Raise ’em up!” Scofield shouted, further slowing Reese until he could draw an even bead on the man. He unbuttoned his black vest to more easily twist into firing position, holding the walnut stock of the rifle tight against his shoulder. Scofield’s finger rested on the trigger.

  The leech put his hands out, palms forward, but kept them closer to his body than Scofield liked. As Reese slowed to a trot—she knew the drill and needed no more commands—Scofield shook his head in disbelief.