Black Noon
Page 23
After a stunned silence, some of the drovers voiced their reactions that ranged from laughter to incredulity, to contempt, including Red Flannigan’s comment:
“What kind of mumbo jumbo religion is that?”
The Wise Old Man only smiled as he answered.
“There are many arcane beliefs concerning the path to eternal life. That was only one of them.”
“Not mine!” Curly smirked.
“Nor Claude’s.” The Wise Old Man intoned. “And so his excursions ensued.
“He even retracked de Leon’s Floridian expedition from the dank swamplands of Okefenokee, where grew the rare ghost orchid on trunks of cypress trees, and through the perilous territory of the unsurrendered Seminoles, to the sun burnished white water lilies of the Everglades—more disappointment for both Ponce de Leon—and Claude.
“But Claude proceeded south, deep into Mexico and the ruins of the once great civilization of the Mayans on the arid Yucatan Peninsula where its underground waters fed sink wells called cenotes. And though the wells provided plentiful water, it was not the kind of water Claude had sought—and continued to seek.
“But his travels, travails, and the years kept taking their toll.
“At last, when he had become a weary, wrinkled, old man, he became convinced—perhaps because he wanted to be convinced—that he had discovered the object of his seemingly endless search. One story goes that he came across the answer in an obscure quatrain from a little-known translation of Omar the Tentmaker’s Rubaiyat. The miracle waters of eternal life awaited discovery at a hidden oasis in the parched sands of fabled Persia.
“But the entire crew of a caravan he had hired ultimately gave up and abandoned him. Still, he went on alone. Through frozen nights and furnace days—until one of those days, with the sun directly above, an oasis shimmered not far in front of him. But was it real—or a desert chimera?
“He approached with fervent trepidation.
“And, no, it was not a mirage. He dipped both trembling palms into the clear water and splashed the refreshing liquid onto his aged face.
“Then Claude eagerly cupped his hands and drank, again and again, of what he believed to be the source of eternal youth—and waited for the result.
“But, as he waited, he grew weaker and weaker—and then, he died.”
The listeners were obviously caught short by the abrupt climax of the Wise Old Man’s account.
There was a spell of deep silence among the drovers, with only the crackle of the campfire and a vagrant whistle of wind to be heard—until Curly exclaimed.
“He what ?”
“He died.” The Wise Old Man repeated.
“What kind of an end to the story is that?” Red Flannigan asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Well,” the Wise Old Man smiled, “that’s not exactly the end of the story.”
“Then go on.” Cookie prodded. “What else could’ve happened?”
“Shortly afterwards a wayward caravan came upon his body.
“But a strange transformation had taken place.
“His gray hair had turned dark again. Wrinkles on his face, neck, and entire body had disappeared—and he looked exactly as he did at the peak of his life.”
The Wise Old Man tapped the residue from the bowl of his pipe onto the palm of his hand.
Once again a quizzical silence pervaded the camp.
This time it was Red Flannigan who first spoke.
“Well, is that the end of the story?”
“As Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat closes, ‘Tamam’ The End.”
“Then,” Flannigan pressed, “what’s the point of the story?”
“Did you ever hear of the man who drowned chasing the moon in the ocean? He was chasing an illusion.”
“But,” Flannigan persisted, “if it was an illusion, why did the wrinkles fade and his body come back to its youth?”
There was no immediate response.
It was Cookie who spoke.
“They don’t call you the Wise Old Man for nothin’—so give us the answer.”
“The answer is . . . I am not that wise.”
Once again, from a ridge, the lonesome coyote wailed, and waited, and, once again there was no answer.
Somewhere, west of the one hundredth meridian, there was another campfire . . . Or a snow-bound shack . . . A seemingly abandoned ghost town . . . An army fort squatting in a savage desert . . . A sealing schooner about to cast off for the northern coast of Japan . . . A miner’s court preparing to hang a deaf-mute . . . A range war flaring between cattle barons and squatting settlers on the grazing fields of Wyoming . . . George Armstrong Custer in the Black Hills of the Dakotas, at his last camp along the Little Big Horn . . . A near-starved Wagon Train on the Oregon Trail, already subjected to an Indian attack, and anticipating another . . . Tombstone on the twenty-fifth of October in a Fleet Street saloon near the O.K. Corral, with the Earps and Doc Holliday on one side of the room, the Clantons on the other, and the Wise Old Man in between . . . The legend of the Hanged Man, James Devlin, gunfighter not always on the right side of the law, but hanged for a crime he did not commit. Properly pronounced dead, however—Fate ? Destiny? Chance? He survives. Why was he spared? What did this Lazarus of the West do with the rest of his life—and his gun? . . . A solitary campsite as the War Between the States has recently ended, the Wise Old Man sits alone near the warmth of his fire when a stranger, well dressed, but travel worn, approaches on a lathered horse, both in need of respite—the stranger does not introduce himself, but the Wise Old Man has, more than once, seen a theatrical performance by John Wilkes Booth.
The Wise Old Man is no stranger to the hospitality, or the hostility of the West, where bone-weary sons and daughters of the frontier will chance to hear his stories, some brutal, or tender, some historic, or mystical—all tales of the American West—a time and place that can never happen again. Tales told by the Wise Old Man who might appear in the dark and disappear before first light.
not
THE END
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Copyright © 2015 Andrew J. Fenady
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-3473-4
First electronic edition: December 2015
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-3474-1
ISBN-10: 0-7860-3474-2