Code of the West

by Aaron Latham

  The wanderer ate a cold supper of hardtack, which he washed down with a gulp from his canteen. He didn’t drink deeply because water was as scarce as plants in these sands. When he lay down to sleep, he found that the white sand made an excellent mattress. His hip and shoulder dug snug holes. He congratulated himself for having found the “softest” bed he had enjoyed since leaving the red canyon. He fell asleep almost immediately.

  But in the night, he was awakened by a terrible pain in his one remaining eye, which he rubbed and made hurt worse. Opening his eye, he found his vision blurred. He told himself that the night was dark and his eye teary; no wonder he couldn’t see clearly. In the morning, the world would come back into focus, strange though that world might be. He wanted to scratch his eye, but he knew he shouldn’t, knew he mustn’t. He wondered if he would have to tie his hands behind his back.

  The night was an unwholesome stew composed of pain and bits of sleep and dreams of pain. And the itch. The itch was as bad as the pain: the one hurt you, the other maddened you.

  The sunrise turned the dunes pink, but Goodnight could not see this wonderful tableau plainly, for his vision was still blurred. He realized now that he had been badly hurt. He wasn’t sure why or exactly how, but he could feel that the sun had burned his good eye. Now he was in real trouble. He had to get out of there. But which way? Should he continue to ride west toward Hot Springs, where Loving had been seen? Or turn back? He wanted to keep going, to cross this desert, and find what he was looking for. And yet he didn’t want to die in this desert that supported no life except pale lizards and white ghosts.

  Goodnight saddled up and headed west. If he had turned back, he knew he would have had almost a full day’s ride ahead of him before he reached familiar brown ground. He wasn’t sure his sight would hold out that long. But if he kept on going straight ahead, he would probably reach the far edge of the white sand in a day at the most. Probably less. He wasn’t sure how he knew this, but he knew, or thought he knew. If these white sands were any wider, he would have heard of them. Somebody would have reported them. They would be on the map. That is, if they were real.

  The higher the sun rose, the darker grew his world. An ominous cloud obscured the whiteness. Goodnight realized the cloud was in his eye. He tried to ride with his eye closed, to protect his vision, but every so often he couldn’t resist peeking out at the albino world. Every time he looked again, he saw less and less. By noon, his vision had been extinguished completely. The brightest place on earth had become the darkest. He was blind. He felt that he had been expecting this day ever since he had lost an eye so many years ago. And yet he still had no idea what to do.

  Goodnight tried to navigate by judging the heat of the sun, but he soon became confused and disoriented. He couldn’t tell which direction the heat was coming from. All he knew was that it was hot. Too hot. So he finally gave his horse its head. He hoped the poor animal could still see.

  Back when he could see, he had felt disoriented because the landscape looked the same in every direction. Now he was even more confused because he couldn’t tell up from down. East looked like west and heaven like earth. He found himself leaning one way, then leaning the other. He felt as if he were falling. He seemed to be tumbling through space. He was more lost than he had ever been in his life. Lost and all alone. No Revelie, no mother, no anybody . . .

  That was how she found him. Lost. Blind. Wandering in a beautiful but deadly wasteland. He saw her riding beside him on a white horse as white as that white lizard. She was as lovely as ever. He had grown older, but she had remained the same. Lucky her.

  “I need your help,” Goodnight said.

  57

  Iknow,” said the pretty ten-year-old girl. “I been here all the time. I was always ready to help you, but you never callt on me. I begun to think you never would.”

  Goodnight didn’t know what to say. A terrible pain stopped his thoughts. He could no longer think or see. His mind was as blind as his sunburned eye. He couldn’t see outside his head or inside it either. The pain seemed to start in his eye, but then it bled back into the brain itself. And it wasn’t just his brain that hurt but also his mind. His crippled thoughts wanted to shriek with pain. He wanted to say something to this young guide who had come to him, but he couldn’t think what. He was so afraid she would go away if he didn’t say the right thing.

  “I didn’t mean to scold,” she said.

  “No, thass all right,” he stammered. “Oh, I forgot what I wanted to say.”

  “Take your time.”

  “I’m all mixed up. What’s happenin’ to me?”

  “You’re lost. You’re real lost.”

  Then the pain drove him completely out of his mind. Riding along, he dreamed, he hallucinated, whichever. He saw a great herd of white buffalo crossing the white landscape. The herd seemed to move in liquid waves across the wavy dunes. These great shaggy beasts could have been running across the sandy bottom of the ocean. The closer he came, the slower they ran, the more liquid their movements. And then they were gone and he breathed a sigh of relief. But they were soon replaced by a herd of great white elephants. As he drew closer, curious and afraid, he saw that they weren’t elephants exactly but mammoths with long curving tusks. And they were pursued by white tigers with terrible fangs.

  “Do you know who I am?” a voice called to him, but he still couldn’t see her plainly.

  Goodnight shook his head as if that would clear it. His whole universe went blank for a moment. Is death like this? Was he dead? And then the young girl on the white horse came riding back into his void. He was relieved to have found her again, but her question troubled him. He was beginning to feel afraid of her, too.

  “No,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “Don’t you know?” she asked. “Think real hard. Take your time. I got all the time in the world.”

  “I’m not good at riddles. You know that.”

  “You’re gonna have to figure this one out sooner or later. I cain’t help you there. I done all I can.”

  Goodnight knew he knew her. He just couldn’t quite call her name. It was floating around in there somewhere with all the drowned mammoths. With all his memories of what he should have done but hadn’t done. He struggled to bring up the name, to force it by effort of will to float up to him from the bottom of a deep well. He seemed to see it down there. A small golden ball. A pearl. A child’s marble.

  That was it. The marble was a part of some memory, but he couldn’t see the whole picture. How could you make your mind remember when it wouldn’t? It was like trying to see when your eye couldn’t. He didn’t know what to do, but he figured he had better say something or she might run off again.

  “Your name, it’s on the tip a my tongue,” he said.

  “It oughta be,” she said.

  “Don’t go,” he pleaded.

  “I’ll hafta,” she said. “I’ll hafta go if you cain’t remember me.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause if you don’t remember me, I just don’t exist.”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, you’ll’ve murdered me ag’in.”

  Then Goodnight knew her, of course. For there was only one person who would have the right to make such a charge. He shuddered. He knew he had known her all along, but hadn’t wanted to know that he knew. He had kept it from himself. It was an old, old conspiracy.

  “I know you,” he said in a choked voice.

  “Who am I then?” she asked.

  “You’re my sister.”

  Goodnight started to cry as if he were once again ten years old and had hurt himself badly. Tears poured from his burned, sightless eyes. Tears ran from beneath his patch and trickled down over the purple constellation. He kept expecting her to tell him not to cry. He thought she would make it better. But she didn’t. She just waited patiently until his sobbing softened to a childish blubber.

  “What’s my name?” she asked.

  He didn’t want to answer. He ha
d known the question was coming, had always known, but he was unprepared for it.

  “I dunno,” he lied.

  “You don’t know your own sister’s name?” she demanded.

  He felt terrible. Now he wished she had never come. Now he wanted to be alone in the whiteness again. Who needed a sister, anyway?

  “I know it,” he admitted. She didn’t seem to understand, or was waiting for something more. “I remember your name.”

  “Then say it,” she ordered.

  “I don’t wanta say it.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’d hurt too much.”

  “It hurts me that you don’t say it.”

  “Does it really?”

  “Yeah, it really does, and it hurts you, too.”

  “It does?”

  “Course it does. Don’t you feel how it does? Don’t you know that you’re carryin’ around a deadness inside a you?”

  “I loved you.”

  “Who’d you love? Tell me. Say it or I’ll leave you.”

  Goodnight was crying again. He was ashamed of himself. He was glad he was lost in the desert and nobody could see him. Then he remembered that somebody could see him. He felt his whole world was about to explode. He had not said the name for so long, and not saying it had worked, not saying it had kept him from going insane. Now if he said it, who knew what screaming tigers he was bound to unleash? Why couldn’t the buried stay buried?

  “You’re feelin’ sorry for yourself,” she said.

  “I reckon so,” he admitted.

  “How ’bout feelin’ sorry for me and what I suffered. I don’t mean to be self-centered, but I suffered, too.”

  “I know. I’m bein’ selfish.”

  “Why’s it so hard? I don’t unnerstand. Why’s it so hard to say my name.”

  Goodnight took a moment to collect his thoughts.

  “I reckon it’s ’cause if I just call you ‘my sister,’ then I’m a pointin’ atme and whatI lost. See?My sister,my loss. Almost like you was some kinda possession I lost. I can almost stand that kinda loss. But if’n I call you by your name, then it won’t be about me no more. It’ll be about you. The real you. The one and only you. Notmy anything. Your everything. Lost. Gone. Forever. Sure ’nough. All real. A real you dead. And all you mighta been. Dead. The life you coulda had. Been a mom. Had kids a your own. Done whatever. Who knows? It’s the name that makes it real. Really you. Not just my sister but—but—but— No, I still cain’t say it. Cain’t say your name.”

  “You gotta.”

  “I cain’t. I just cain’t. Don’t you unnerstand?”

  “Course I unnerstand,” she said in that way she had, “I’m your sister. I come to help. ’Cause, Jimmy, I’m lost, lost forever, but you’re lost, too. And you’ll go on bein’ lost till you say my name. For you it’s a magic name. You gotta say my name if’n you’re ever gonna find your way ag’in. You hear me?”

  He couldn’t. He mustn’t. He didn’t have the courage.

  “I love you, Becky,” he sobbed.

  “I love you too, Jimmy,” she said.

  58

  Goodnight fell from his horse, fell through the void, really falling now, seemingly falling right out of this world, until he hit the ground. The sand was so hot it burned his hands. And his sister’s name—let loose in his head after all these years—seared his brain. He rolled over and over, like a man on fire trying to put out the flames, but they burned hotter than ever. He finally came to a stop lying on his back staring up sightlessly at the sun. Then he saw Becky standing over him.

  “I told you it’d hurt,” he said, sounding like a kid, “and it did hurt. Real bad. You knowed it was gonna hurt me, and you made me do it anyhow.”

  Then Goodnight remembered the time Becky had dug a hole in the ground and then covered it over with slender branches to make a bear trap. When no bear happened along, she decided to go looking for one. And she chose her brother Jimmy.

  “It’s just like that time you run me over your bear trap,” he complained. “You kept a callin’ me and callin’ me. And then I finally come a runnin’ and busted my leg. You hurt me on purpose. And you’re doin’ it ag’in.”

  “I know it hurts,” she said. “I wisht it didn’t have to hurt, but it does. There just ain’t no other way.”

  “Why, Becky?” he asked and shuddered. The name still hurt. “Why cain’t I just pretend you’re off on a visit somewheres and not dead and gone?”

  “’Cause it’s lyin’.”

  “You oughta know. You told some.”

  “Mebbe I did back then. But lately you been the one tellin’ lies. And you been tellin’ them to yourself. You been sayin’, ‘She’s just off gallivantin’.’ Or, ‘I never had no sister.’ Or whatever. And lyin’ to yourself, that’s real hard work. You cain’t never rest. You always gotta be on guard. It’s like draggin’ a plow. It’ll wear a body out.”

  Goodnight felt something strange happening to him. She was messing with him somehow. Then he realized she was kissing his eyes, first the patch and then the burned eye. He thought maybe her kisses would heal his sight, but they didn’t, or at least not in the way he expected. He felt that he had never loved Becky more than at this moment. Which made him miss her more than ever. Which made the pain worse than ever.

  “What do I do now?” he said. “You said you’d help me.”

  “I am helpin’ you,” she said.

  “I know you mean to be helpin’ me, but you’re just makin’ it worse.”

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “It’s the only way. You gotta remember me. You gotta live with my death. I know it’s hard, but it’s harder t’other way.”

  He lay in the sand and tried to be absolutely still. He tried to imagine that he was lying not just on the earth but in the earth. He wanted to know how it would feel to be a corpse—to be her.

  “Becky,” he said.

  “What?” she answered.

  “Nothin’. I was just practicin’ sayin’ your name.”

  “Good.”

  “Becky, Becky, Becky.”

  “That’s right. Gits easier, don’t it?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “It will.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  Goodnight lay on his back, staring up at the sky, not seeing a thing, asking himself whether he was getting saner or going completely insane. He wondered if he was finally finding his way or lost forever. He couldn’t tell whether he had already discovered what he was looking for or was further from discovering it than ever.

  “Say my name,” Becky said, “and I’ll always be with you.”

  “Becky,” he said again. “Becky . . . Becky . . . Becky . . .”

  Goodnight knew he was raving, but he didn’t try to stop. He just kept on saying her name over and over again. He was afraid that if he stopped she would go away. So he didn’t stop.

  “Becky . . . Becky . . . Becky . . . Becky . . .”

  She was right. Her name was a magic name. It rolled away the stone from the mouth of the tomb where all his forbidden memories were buried. Now all those memories came screaming out of the dark. He wanted to roll the stone back into place—wanted it desperately—but he couldn’t deny his sister once again.

  59

  Goodnight lay on his back staring up at a ceiling that he couldn’t see. He wasn’t absolutely sure that he had a roof over his head, but he figured he probably did since he had a feather mattress under his back. His sister had tended him for days as he lay on this sickbed. He said her name often. “Becky, Becky . . .” Then she would come and lay a cool cloth on his forehead or hold his hand.

  “Hello,” she said. “How you doin’ this mornin’?”

  “Fair to middlin’,” Goodnight said.

  “That’s good,” she said. “The doctor’s here. He’s gonna take off your bandages. Take a look at that there eye. Mebbe things’ll start lookin’ up then.”

 
“No,” said the blind man, suddenly frightened. “Don’t.”

  He was afraid he would lose her if he could see again. It wasn’t that he wanted to be sightless for the rest of his life. But this morning he wasn’t ready for—wasn’t prepared for—the visible world. Maybe tomorrow.

  “It’s time,” she said. “The doctor needs to see how your eyes’s doin’.”

  “No,” he protested.

  “You’ll feel better when you can see ag’in. Your mind’ll rest easier.”

  Goodnight felt the bed shift beneath him as somebody sat down beside him. The body smelled of medicines. Goodnight rolled away from him.

  “Becky,” he said, “make him stop.”

  “Calm down,” she said, bending over him. He recognized her familiar scent. “Nobody’s gonna hurt you.”

  “That’s what you said before,” he said. “But it hurt. It hurt real bad.”

  “What hurt?” she asked.

  “Sayin’ your name,” he said, a little embarrassed.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “But this’ll be differ’nt. Hold my hand.”

  Becky touched his hand. Goodnight let her take it. Then he gripped hard and she gripped hard back. Her hand was strong.

  “You ready now?” she asked.

  “I dunno,” he said.

  “That’s better.”

  Goodnight smelled medicine descending upon his face. Then medical hands touched his cheek. Foul-smelling fingers tugged at the bandage over his burned right eye. He rocked his head from side to side, making the doctor’s job harder, but he didn’t actually fight the medicine man.

  “All right, close your eye,” said the doctor, who sounded like a transplanted Yankee. “Keep it closed until I tell you to open it.”

  Goodnight felt the bandage being lifted away. He already missed it. He wanted it back. But it was gone. It was another loss in a long line of losses. He felt the air blowing against his bare face.