The Last Western

by Thomas S. Klise

“Truman read map. Indicates we fly to Springfield. Herman has automobiles ready to take us where we go.”

  “I am sure Herman has seen to everything,” said Willie.

  Father Benjamin said, “There is the question of the day after tomorrow. We must pray and discuss this.”

  They listened for a time, then spoke to the subject.

  “It would seem to me,” said Thatcher Grayson, “that we ought to travel to the great American cities preaching the good news that people don’t have to be anything but people and also try to help the poor, sharing their lot in every way, and helping create a better sense of natural things.”

  Simple words, but Willie marveled that they had come from Thatcher Grayson.

  “Friend of Truman has written him letter,” said Joto. “This man is prisoner in jail in North Africa. He describes hopeless conditions of jail. Truman and I think substitute.”

  “The main thrust of our efforts should be to follow through on the day,” said Father Benjamin. “After all, we cannot anticipate what grace God may send into the world as a result of this sign day. Many conditions will change. We will change also.”

  “The Lord comes,” said Grayson. “The Changer.”

  Willie looked at the black, sleeping leopards that were the mountains.

  “It is possible,” said Father Benjamin in his slow manner, “that we will be changed more than most men. For which one of us can deny that in all our testifying we have sinned and sinned often in judging men rather than the patterns and the traps and the webs that snare them. We must pray and listen extraordinarily well in the next thirty-six hours that our hearts be open to forgiveness and charity and forbearance.”

  Willie did not trust himself to speak. The animal mountains will stay, he thought, hut even they are not stronger or more lasting than the love we have for each other—and it will go on, it will go on.

  “What is it that you think?” Father Benjamin asked him.

  “I guess’—I’m tired,” he faltered. “I can’t think of anything but tomorrow.”

  They turned at the sound of an engine, a motor, far away at first and then louder, and then there were the lights coming slowly through the darkness.

  “Fuel truck,” said Joto.

  The truck drew up to the plane and stopped, and Willie, leaving his friends, approached the driver, who had gotten out of the cab and was preparing to take the hose to the wing.

  Seeing Willie in the faint light of the plane’s forward cabin, the man dropped the hose and fell on his knees and said, “Tegawitha logo miri!” This was not said in the usual spiritist way, but in the manner of a man who was both angry and terrified.

  Paulo, the guard to whom Felder had previously given Willie’s letter, came up to them.

  “Get up, man, you’ve got work to do,” he said.

  The driver was still jabbering in a prone position.

  “Please,” said Willie, placing his hand on the arm of the trucker. “He is only afraid of something.”

  Then he knelt by the side of Carbon Crocker. “Do not be afraid to talk like a regular person. That is the best way for men to talk,” he said softly.

  The man began keening in a high-pitched voice.

  “Brother,” said Willie, “won’t you please stand up. I have something to tell you.”

  The man, whose real name was Christian Crocker, had been called Carbon Crocker since his boyhood, and he lived alone in the desert town of Nogo—alone except for the spirits who had come gliding down from the mountains, night after night for more than a month. He had seen the village of Nogo become a city as large as Phoenix, except that the inhabitants did not have fleshly form. At this very moment it seemed to him the air moved violently with the exhalations of a mighty vindictive multitude, and he knew, did Carbon Crocker, that the multitude had condemned him to death.

  “What’s going on?” Felder asked in the darkness.

  “The fuel man is a spirit freak,” said someone else. Even in the shadows, Willie saw that it was Patrick Henry Joyce.

  “That’s marvelous,” said Felder. He grabbed the hose himself and clambered up on the wing, shouting for assistance.

  Willie turned to Paulo. “You have the letter, Paulo.”

  Paulo gave the telegram to Willie, who sat down on the still warm sand beside Carbon Crocker.

  “Brother,” said Willie, “please look at me. I am your friend and your brother, especially now that we have made this connection. I ask you a favor. Do you see this letter? I want you to take it to the telegraph office in Phoenix and send it to the address which is written on it. Here.” Willie handed the man all the money he had in his pocket. “Take this money, please. It will be enough.”

  “Mr. Felder has paid the man, Holiness,” said Paulo.

  Carbon Crocker stared at the bills. Willie repeated the instructions and asked Carbon Crocker if he truly understood. Carbon Crocker nodded.

  “You are a good man,” Willie said. “Good men have nothing to fear. God bless you.”

  Carbon Crocker rolled away from Willie, then sat up on his haunches for a few seconds. Presently he scrambled into the cab of the truck and did not leave the cab during the fueling of the plane, though Felder and the other men shouted at him, demanding that he help with the work.

  Carbon Crocker knew that they were all evil spirits, jeering at him for investing all that he owned in a gasoline station on the road between Nogo and Phoenix just as the new freeway came through, closing off the road and making his station useless and vain.

  When the fueling was over, Carbon Crocker drove the truck off into the darkness. Willie watched him go, waving after him, a gesture that Carbon Crocker could not have seen. Then Willie went back to the plane, fainting away into his dream as soon as he fell into a seat.

  Coming upon him a little later, Joto and Truman tried to inject a new bottle of the liquid into his thin arm, but Willie brushed them away. He was flying out toward the black leopards, seeking a signal or message to bring back to the travelers on the ship, though he knew now there were no travelers on the ship but one, and he was the one.

  * * *

  When he reached the gas station where he lived with the rats, Carbon Crocker drank from a bottle of True West Rye and read the letter Willie had given him, and he knew that it would be a very bad letter from the spirits in the mountain.

  Carbon, he read, you think you can get away with it but you can’t. We have you completely surrounded. The only way out is you know what. We are going to build a highway over your stupid head. How do you like that? Hah-hah-hah. You Know Who.

  Carbon got out his old cowpoke Colt revolver and shot at the rats for awhile. He had spent many evenings shooting rats over the years, but then the spirits had come and given him new enemies to kill even though he knew he could not hope to kill them all and the bullets went through them anyway.

  The rats squealed as he fired away. He read the note again, holding the flashlight close to the paper.

  Carbon Stupid, he read, we forgot to tell you. Stella is with Grit Wayne up on the interstate at the new DX and you know what he is pumping and also who don’t you? What are you pumping you dumb bastard? You Know Who.

  Carbon Crocker got out his new army automatic rifle—a Goldenblade True Shooter—and went outside and fired forty shots at the spirits in less than one minute.

  It was useless trying to kill them; the bullets whizzed through them.

  He went back inside the station and fired at the rats again. He drank some more True West. Then he remembered the article he had seen in the last issue of Second Wind. It had been taken from an interview that the editor of Second Wind had had with Bishop Mae Frapple, imprisoned, according to the editor, “on trumped-up charges brought by homosexual monists in Washington.”

  Carbon Crocker found the place in the interview where the editor had asked Bishop Mae Frapple what happened to people who were not prepared to meet the coming of the Lord God.

  There ain’t no way for them to get shed
of him, said Bishop Mae Frapple. He bringeth hellfire, which is real fire. Fire burns. It burns anything. It burns even the ass of a spirit. Even the ass of a smart-ass preacher.

  The words came whispering to Carbon Crocker as if there were someone there, talking in the darkness of the gas station where the rats lay dying and squealing on the floor.

  He got all his guns—the old and new revolver, his new Goldenblade True Shooter, his shotgun, his shells, and the two kegs of dynamite he had saved over from the days he thought there was uranium in the mountains. He loaded it all in the cab of his truck. Then he fueled the tank of the truck to the brim, using both pumps.

  He got into the cab and started the engine. Driving slowly, he headed toward the dark mountains that were the home of the spirits.

  The lights of the truck picked up the liquid gray shapes that drifted before him. They were backing away in fear, he knew, and he laughed.

  “Who’s got who on the goddamn run now?” he shouted. A thousand spirits flew into the air shrieking in terror.

  He saw the planes then and swung the truck away. He would catch the spirits in their camp before they had a chance to reach their planes.

  He began firing his guns, the revolvers first then the rifles, the truck swerving as he drove with one hand.

  He took out the letter the spirits had sent him, placed it on the windshield and propped it there with his shotgun. Then he pulled both triggers.

  The blast made him lose control of the truck for a moment. It zigged and zagged like a vehicle out of a movie cartoon, but he managed to hold the road. The mountains were dead ahead.

  He pushed the accelerator to the floor and leveled his automatic rifle through the rear window at the fuel tank. The truck hurtled on toward the largest and most sinister of the mountains—the main base, Carbon Crocker knew, of the spirit leaders.

  There was a trail up the mountain, an old Indian trail that Carbon Crocker knew and that he had often traveled during the days when the spirits were still his friends. He found the trail now and pushed his truck steadily upward, its gears screaming as he made his way.

  He screamed along with the truck, along with the spirits, as he climbed higher and higher, toward the great jagged stone that sat on the very peak of the mountain and that the spirits, Carbon Crocker knew, used as a mating place.

  When the lights picked out that hated stone, he made for it in triumph and hate.

  Seconds before impact, he squeezed the trigger of the rifle, setting off an explosion that came cascading down the mountainside.

  It was like a small atom bomb exploding and continuing to explode down the mountainside, sending a river of fire pouring down, down upon the spirits Carbon Crocker had seen, carrying in its tide the carbon of Carbon himself.

  Like a sudden sun, the fireburst flashed over the desert, waking the lizards and snakes who slept there and waking the creatures who slept on the planes.

  The men tumbled out of the large aircraft in a panic. The air filled with shouts, cries, curses, confused and frightened prayers, some of them in tongues, for there were spiritist guards among the men.

  Over the din, Herman Felder, hurrying from the escort plane, shouted, “Get hold of yourselves. It’s just a storm!”

  “An earthquake!” someone shouted.

  “A piece of the sun!” another man yelled.

  Felder, coming up the ramp of the plane, grabbed the man who made this observation and struck him in the face.

  “A lightning flash and you go to pieces! Are you men or rabbits?”

  “There are no clouds,” someone shouted.

  “All right,” Felder replied. “Paulo, you and two others go over and look at the fire. It’s safe. It’s already beginning to burn out. You’re not going to find anything there. But maybe it will keep these children quiet.”

  The three men set off toward the blaze.

  Joto, Truman, Benjamin and Thatcher Grayson stood at the ramp of their plane.

  “Possibly a meteor,” said Father Benjamin.

  The others were nervous.

  “Let us pray and calm ourselves,” said Benjamin.

  Willie slept through the explosion, though in his flight dream he saw something, a flash of light, in the dark hills below. He swooped down to investigate but when he got low enough to see clearly, the fire had gone out and there was only smoking, charred wreckage that might have been some sort of machine that had gone haywire. He flew up out of the darkness toward the stars.

  “What was it?” Felder said when the men returned.

  “A car or truck,” they told him.

  “Everyone go to sleep,” said Felder. “It was an accident that we can’t do anything about.”

  The men, murmuring among themselves, slowly boarded their plane.

  Felder boarded the aircraft after the others, proceeding to the private forward cabin where Patrick Henry Joyce and another man sat drinking morphinis.

  “Go over it again from the beginning,” Felder said to the second man, a man with childlike blue eyes. “And you have had your last drink till this business is ended.”

  “I have told it to you fifty times,” the baby-faced man said.

  “Tell it again,” said Felder, sitting on the edge of the seat. “Take it from the point where you meet the third man—the one coming by land.” He looked in every way like the director of a film coaching an actor for a subtle role.

  Chapter four

  By seven the next morning the sun was already hot. The men gathered in a circle between the planes and Willie stood in the center at a small table and celebrated the Supper of the Lord. Eleven priests, including Father Benjamin, concelebrated the Eucharist with him.

  His voice, as he read the Gospel, was the voice of a very old man. He had prepared a short homily in the first hour of dawn while he was still half in his dream and half in the world. He could not remember now what the homily had been about, and he felt weak and faint standing in the sun.

  The inner voice spoke to him. It is the eve of L-Day. Tell them to prepare.

  “It is the eve of L-Day,” said Willie. “We must try to prepare our hearts for it.”

  He peered out into the light. The faces of the men were hard to see. Somehow they looked not like men but statues.

  Tell them you forgive and ask to be forgiven.

  “I forgive any of you who have wronged me,” Willie said.

  Or will wrong you.

  He saw Herman Felder not twenty feet away, a strip of film in the blazing sun.

  “I forgive those of you who will wrong me.”

  When he said those words, the statues became men; he felt his senses return to normal.

  He saw the men and the blank desert and the mountains in the distance and he felt the nearness of the unequivocal stranger.

  Nausea. Loathing.

  Then as he looked at the men, a reckless passion took possession of him.

  Lifting his arms to the sky, he said in a loud voice, “I tell you the truth—I know that one of you will betray me tonight. Tonight—in Illinois—one of you will try to stop me!”

  An immense silence settled over the circle of men. Then whispering, more whispering, movement.

  A man behind Willie shouted, “We are your protectors!”

  “You cannot think such a thing,” said one of the celebrants of the Mass. It was Taroni, a portrait of dread.

  Willie, stretching out his right hand, said in a still louder voice, “I am not dreaming—or perhaps I am dreaming instead of thinking. But what I know, I know. There is a man among you who has a grand design—a plan greater and grander than L-Day. That man is here among you and he is against me!”

  The men moved, their dark silken suits rippling in the sun and forming a reptile around the place where Willie and his concelebrants stood.

  The men stirred, waving their arms.

  The air rang with unintelligible cries and protests.

  Thatcher Grayson and Father Benjamin approached Willie.

  “
You are ill, son!” Grayson cried. “You can’t mean these things!”

  The old red-rimmed eyes of Benjamin burned into Willie’s.

  “You know it to be the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you not speak earlier?”

  Willie, seized again by that unexpected passion, called out to the men once more.

  “But I tell you this. No plan will succeed that begins with death and killing. What begins with death and killing will itself be killed. And those who wish to create new arrangements by killing men are enlisted in the class of death and are sitting at the feet of the headmaster!”

  The men became statues again—except one, Herman Felder, who had turned about quickly and walked back to the plane.

  The men, murmuring among themselves, began to tell one another that the pope had become disarranged because of his long fast. But a few were stricken with fear; they had felt death move across the white sand and begin stalking about the aircraft.

  Father Benjamin, embracing Willie, said, “Go on with the holy meal.”

  Willie, looking over Father Benjamin’s shoulders, strained to see the men; he had not seen Felder leave the crowd.

  “Please,” said Benjamin.

  Willie went on with the Mass.

  At the Kiss of Peace, he went into the midst of the men. Coming up to Patrick Henry Joyce, he held out his arms.

  “The peace of Christ be with you, Brother Patrick,” he said.

  Brother Patrick stood very still, letting Willie’s arms enfold him. He said nothing. Willie embraced the other men of the group, looking for one man in particular. When he came to a very young man trembling with fear he said, “Where is Brothet Herman Felder?”

  “On board, Holiness,” the young man whimpered. Then with a loud cry, “The end is coming!”

  Willie said, “But not for you, young man. Calm yourself and have courage.” Then he went to the plane, up the ramp, through the long funnel of the fuselage.

  Felder, drink in hand, was in the forward cabin; he froze at the sight of Willie.

  “The peace of Christ, Herman,” said Willie, reaching for Felder’s shoulders.

  “Don’t,” Felder said, sucking in his breath.