by Brett Riley
Ford zigzagged on surface streets up toward Claiborne and back down to Rampart. He rode through alleys, past Troublers who paid him no mind, and swung wide of pickets fixed at intersections, keeping his head tucked behind Thess’s neck, hoping the cover and the darkness would prevent any guard from identifying him. He rode more or less parallel to Veterans Memorial Boulevard until he veered off onto West Napoleon in Metairie, several blocks ahead of the posse, which had to hunt for him in every nook and chase every sound of echoing hoofbeats to their source. Never knew I’d be so glad for the noisy streets, Ford thought more than once.
He reined up and dismounted next to a crumbling building on Transcontinental between Zenith Street and West Napoleon. Taking his rifle out of its scabbard, he leaned it against the wall. Then he removed his saddle and dumped it and the scabbard several feet away. Next, Ford stripped off his bloody clothes and tossed them on the pile.
From somewhere back the way he had come, hoofbeats, shouts, someone barking orders.
He found the building’s rear door, opened it, and stepped inside. Citizens seldom ventured into decaying places like this one unless they were part of a demolition crew. You never knew what might fall on your head. Such places worked well for caches.
Against one wall lay a pile of old rags big enough to bury a man. Ford picked his way through the debris on the floor and dug through the rags until he found the pack secreted there. He pulled open the drawstrings and took inventory by feel—a quart jar full of lamp oil, flint and steel, two pistols and ammo. He took out the jar, the flint, the steel. Then he retied the bag and stuffed it back under the rags. If he had to shoot anybody, he was already as good as dead, so why bother?
Outside, he unscrewed the jar and dumped the oil over the saddle, scabbard, and bloody clothes. Then he struck the steel against the flint until his belongings burst into flame with a whumph. The heat scorched his face, likely singed some hair. Ford rubbed his eyes.
Thess nickered. Framed against the darkness, the horse looked tall and proud. Charters’s blood had dried on Thess’s coat in rivulets, savage and unknowable tattoos from a time before language. The hunter rested his forehead on the horse’s, their respirations and heartbeats in rhythm. A single tear on his cheek, Ford kissed Thess’s nose. I’m sorry, my friend. If I had known, I would have walked.
The posse’s hoofbeats came closer. Only a block or two distant, guards cajoled each other to search harder, closer.
He wiped the tear away and stepped back. Then he cut Thess’s throat.
Ford turned and ran out of the alley, away from Thess, who had fallen to his knees on the street. The weight of the night and what he had done under its cover lay heavy on Ford’s conscience. A cry from the guards, the sounds of their horses. As he ran, Ford prayed—for Charters and her family; for old Thessalonians, who deserved so much better; for himself.
He headed toward his two-story brick house on York Street near Lafreniere Park. He avoided the streetlamps, running through yards and vacant lots and alleys, the pavement warm under his bare feet. He saw no one. When he reached home, he leaped the fence into the back yard and removed the lid from his water basin. He cupped his hands and rinsed the blood from his face, his body, his long hair. A baptism as false as his murderous soul. He bathed for a long time. Then he dunked his entire head into the barrel, the water cool on his hot skin.
His hair sopping and pendulous, he grabbed the water barrel and rocked it back and forth, straining hard until it tipped over. Pink water spilled onto his grass and dispersed, sank into the thirsty soil, glittered in the starlight.
Ford went inside. In the bathroom, he lit the lamp by his mirror and examined his exhausted and guilty face. Then he toweled off, leaving faint pink smudges on the white fabric, and turned out the lamp. In his bedroom, he collapsed on his mattress, hoping no one would come knocking, knowing someone would.
He waited and tried not to think of Charters’s face.
They came twenty minutes later. Ford let them knock three times before he threw on his trousers and answered. Five guards stood on his porch, one holding a lantern. Ford rubbed his eyes and squinted as if he had been asleep for hours.
Sorry to disturb you, the guard with the lantern said.
Ford faked a yawn. What’s goin on?
Can we come in, sir? I’m afraid we’ve got some disturbing news.
The man’s accent was unidentifiable. The outlanders had brought with them a Babel of slang, inflections, and pronunciations. Listening to them made Ford’s head hurt. Still, he led the guards into his den and lit a couple of lamps. He gestured toward the furniture. They took their seats. He did not offer them water or food, though at least one looked at the carafe on the side table and licked his lips.
You’ll forgive my directness, Ford said, but it’s awful early, even for me. What can I do for you?
We need your help tracking a traitor, said the lantern-bearer.
Ford tried to look surprised. What traitor?
Recently a Troubler from Jack Hobbes’s zone confessed to meeting a higher-up in a resistance group.
Resistance group. You mean the Troublers?
No. A new one.
Ford arched his brows. Don’t sound likely. Ain’t never had that kind of problem here.
Well, you might have it now. Our contact was supposed to capture the traitor near Armstrong Park. We hung back so we wouldn’t spook them.
And your agent didn’t bring nobody in?
The guard looked embarrassed. We moved in, but by the time we arrived, our contact’s throat had been cut. She had also been shot in the back. We found the heathen’s horse in the streets just in time to watch it die. Its throat had been cut too.
Ford tensed, gritted his teeth, made fists. The gestures were pure theater, but he did not have to feign anger and grief. Troubler scum, he said. Tell me, what did this horse look like?
The lantern-bearer described Thess. Ford let his expression become more and more dismayed. Do you recognize the animal, sir?
Yes. He’s mine.
Now the guard looked surprised, as did his fellows. Sir?
I rode him this evenin. I hitched him on the street when I came in. Figured I’d ride him to work tomorrow. But when I looked outside, he was gone. I thought he just got loose and I’d find him in the mornin.
The traitor must have stolen him. That takes guts, considering you could track him to the ends of the earth, if what we’ve heard is true.
Troublers ain’t known for their brains. What else?
We think he killed your horse to slow us down. We searched the nearby alleys and found a smoldering pile of refuse. It looked like the remains of a saddle. Beyond that, the trail has run cold.
All that action, and nobody saw nothin.
That’s correct, sir.
Ford started pacing. He said nothing for a minute, perhaps two. Then he turned back to the guard. You want me to try to track him.
Yes, sir.
Fine. But if he stuck to the roads and he ain’t bleedin or somethin, I don’t know that I’ll have much to work with.
The lantern-bearer stood. The others joined him. We’d appreciate your efforts.
One more thing, said Ford. He looked at each of the guards as he spoke. If this traitor hurts any of my folks because you let him rabbit, you’ll answer to me.
The guard cleared his throat as the rest of them glanced at each other. We understand, sir. We’d also appreciate a list of anyone who might be sympathetic to Troublers.
Ford had started down the hall. Now he stopped and looked back. In my territory, you mean?
Yes, sir.
Ford stared at the man until he looked away. If I knew anybody like that, you’d have their names already. Now let me get dressed.
He returned three hours later, exhausted and heartsick. Riding on a borrowed horse beside the guard
s, Ford had explained how the High Temple staff kept a list of known Troublers and suspects, which was true, and that he had learned no new names since the list had last been revised, which was a lie. Under Royster’s definition, most Crusaders he knew would be labeled Troublers.
It hadn’t never occurred to me that lots of folks might be a little bit of both, or maybe even neither.
The outlanders had led him to the remains of his saddle and clothes. When he saw Thess’s blood all over the alley, he nearly wept again. Instead, he pretended to cast about for signs, leading the guards out of the alley, then north. Miming the body language of tracking, he took them up one street and down another, doubling back every now and then for effect, until, three miles away, he stood upright and shook his head.
What trail there was ends here, Ford said. Either this traitor got more careful, or the Troublers picked em up on horseback. All I’m gettin now is the usual wear and tear of a thoroughfare.
The guards looked at each other, probably wondering what clues he had followed this far but, after the warning back in his living room, they were too nervous to ask.
You’ll keep watch and report any suspicious activity? the lantern bearer asked.
Don’t ask me another question like that. Makes me think you don’t trust me.
The guard mumbled an apology. The group saluted. Ford turned the unfamiliar mount toward home in the early morning light as the city came to life.
I’m so sorry, Thess.
Now, back in his house, Ford removed his boots. Then he walked to the den and collapsed on the couch, where he slept for three hours. When he awoke, he sat for ten minutes and thought about how he had killed someone, had run from the Crusade, had lied to its representatives, had misled them, had misused his gifts and the power of his office. Yet no nightmares had troubled his sleep.
I reckon that’s my answer. I just hope it came from You, Father God.
At noon, Ford stopped by Audubon Park’s fields of corn and beans and peas and wheat. Stalks and plants reached for the sun like supplicants. Beyond the crops, stands of trees sheltered deer, raccoon, nutria, squirrel, sometimes even alligators that wandered from their watery haunts. Ford spent more time in this park than anywhere else, but he had hardly seen it since Royster’s arrival. Today, several of his subordinates had spread blankets on the ground and were eating their lunches. No one looked happy. Few talked. Ford moved among them, waving them off before they could rise and salute. Someone handed him a plate of grilled beef, shrimp, and peppers and onions sautéed in beef fat, served over white rice. If he had shown up on a different day or time, he might have gotten a po’ boy or a steaming bowl of gumbo or jambalaya. His cooks were the best in the world. Today, though, he barely registered the taste.
Quintus Vacla, the foreman, had not appeared. Odd. Vacla had spent every day of his working life plowing or reaping or picking a field, stowing food in barns, trapping prey in the woods. He had never taken a sick day. His sinewy limbs and solid torso seemed crafted for outdoor work in all weathers. He had trailed behind the plow horse despite a high fever, had checked his traps while a hurricane’s outer edge kissed the city. His absence gave the place a truncated look, an arm with no hand.
Carol Mellichamp passed by and saluted. Ford grabbed her sleeve. You seen Quintus today?
Her brow furrowed. No. I figured he finally took sick. Should I worry?
I hope not.
No one else had seen Vacla either.
Altogether, Ford’s hunter/gatherers constituted perhaps a fifth of New Orleans’s population. They fed the city, guarded the crops from scavengers and Troublers, and controlled the local animal populations. As the park’s foreman, Vacla’s responsibilities were enormous. He would not abandon them.
A seed of dread took root in Ford’s belly.
He ran to Rachel, the black mare with gray socks. He unhitched her, mounted up, and spurred her out of the park, riding hard for Vacla’s house.
The yard was a tiny patch of green fronting an unpainted wooden house. Vacla had planted tulips and gardenias and honeysuckle bushes and verbena. Green vines wound about crude rusted metal columns holding up the porch overhang. A few years back, Vacla had moved in with his bride, a woman whose name Ford could no longer remember. Vacla never spoke of her. She died of fever a year into the marriage, taking with her the unborn child that would have been their first. Vacla never remarried or showed any inclination to start another family. He lived for his memories and his crops.
The front door was wide open. Someone had broken the latch. The dusty boot print near the knob told the story.
That seed of dread began to bloom. Ford drew one of his six-guns, cocked it, and went inside.
A chair and side table lay splintered on the wood floor. Broken lamps had spilled their oil everywhere. If someone had come along and tossed a lit match through the door, the whole place would have burned down in minutes. Ford followed the destruction—kitchen implements scattered, the bathroom basin crushed to powder—until he reached Vacla’s bedroom, where he found bedclothes tossed about and blood spattered on the far wall, near the door leading to thirty square feet of back yard. Quintus keeps his rain barrel back there, a storage shed full of tools, a little grill. Ford opened the door and went outside. The grass had been trampled, the grill overturned, half-burnt wood chips and ashes scattered from its mouth. A blood trail led around the house and onto the street. Ford dragged Rachel away from Vacla’s foliage, mounted up, and followed the blood, even though he knew where it was heading.
The trail, a scattering of droplets at three- or four-foot intervals, ended a few miles later on Airline Highway, which merged nearby with the Pontchartrain Expressway and headed southeast. Hell and damnation. I knew it. They took him across the river, probably to that interrogation center. Ford had asked Gordy Boudreaux about the place once, and Boudreaux had only stared at him for a moment and walked away. Ford had never been sure what that meant. Boudreaux had always been the most softhearted among them. He ate mostly vegetables, accepting a steak or a chop or a fish only once or twice a week. He scooted spiders outdoors instead of stepping on them and left food for strays on his walk. His job as a deputy lord might have seemed like a contradiction if it had not been for his faith in the righteousness of their cause, the belief that the Troublers threatened God’s plan and that, if no other recourse existed, their deaths were just. But in these troubled times, a man like Boudreaux might have seen, perhaps even done, something that rattled him beyond repair.
Ford took the expressway, passing the great ruined dome of the ancients and noting places where the road needed repairs, if they should live so long. Reaching the base and getting Vacla out alive seemed impossible. He could not ride in with a better-armed force like he had always done with Troublers. For all he knew, the outlanders would shoot him on sight, if he even managed to cross the river in the first place.
Starving, stinking prisoners clustered everywhere, so many that, in places, Rachel could barely pass. The bridge loomed in the distance. The sun still sailed high and would for a few more hours. Its rays sparkled on the great river’s eddies and backlit the buildings across the water.
Will it make any difference if I wait till dark?
If he tried, he would need a place to lay low, but nothing nearby seemed promising. People occupied the houses. Most of the other buildings had been converted to food storage, bunkhouses for river workers, warehouses full of fishing equipment. Those unrestored since the old times and those flattened by hurricanes provided no cover.
There’s that place a few streets back, where we store some of our old documents. It’s been repaired just enough to keep it standin. It’s isolated enough so I should be able to sneak in and out easy, and I can’t see any reason they’d be watchin it. Our old crop statistics shouldn’t matter to Royster.
Twenty yards away, a group of guards noticed him. One saluted. Ford returne
d it. Then he turned Rachel and headed toward the archive. More light bled out of the day, leaching color and texture from the world. The houses, painted white or not at all, began to lose their sharp edges. The grass, nearly midcalf high in the neighborhoods awaiting their next landscaping day, metamorphosed from bright green to a kind of purple that would soon give way to grayish black. Dogs barked at him from behind fences. Children ran to the street and waved. He kept watch on his six, looking for a tail, but saw nothing. A handful of citizens passed on their way to or from work, but because the prisoners had not reached the area yet, no guards.
If anybody questions me about what I was doin here, I need to have a story ready. The archive looked even more isolated and forlorn than he remembered—the paint worn away, the paved walk disintegrating, the foliage overgrown. He looked about one last time, saw no one, and tried the door. It was old and warped and crumbling, a body whose soul had departed long ago. The knob nearly pulled free from the wood.
We should move our documents or repair this place. It’s a fire waitin on a spark.
Ford walked Rachel around the structure and hitched her to a ragged sawtooth oak that had seen one too many storms. Hopefully she don’t just rip it outta the ground and drag it down the road without me. Perhaps, as the sun set, the shade and the building would hide her long enough. He patted her head and then circled the building again.
Inside, it smelled of dust and animal. Even the air felt dirty. It was dim, but Ford’s eyes adjusted quickly.
A human shape sat on a crate ten feet away. It was small and strapped, sidearms tight against its hips. On the ground in front of it, a lumpy shape moved about.
When I seen you followin that trail, said Willa McClure, I figured you’d come here sooner or later.
The shape at her feet moved toward Ford and coalesced into Bandit the dog. Ford held out his hand. Bandit licked it and sat, scratching the back of his head.