Air and Fire (41 page)

The Marshal stood over him, legs wide apart, as if he might open the flap of his pants and piss.

‘Pharaoh, you done fooled with the law.'

For some reason his father was grinning. The butt of a gun soon wiped that off.

‘Ain't the first time,' the Marshal said, ‘but it sure as hell is going to be the last.'

He was right about that.

They tried and sentenced his father so quickly that the sun did not even change position. Right there, among the soft colours of dawn and the birdsong and the fall's first frost. And him still kneeling in the grass, as if someone had told him he was in a church.

When the punishment had been decided on – a matter of one question, followed by a nod from the Marshal; it was the usual one – his father was hoisted to his feet. The two men ripped his collar clean off and split his shirt open on his back. Then they pushed him up against a live oak, face into the bark. Tied rope to one wrist, passed it around the trunk and tied it to the other wrist. Then they stood back.

‘Don't he just love that tree,' one said.

‘Ain't seen a woman in a while,' said another. ‘What's a man to do?'

There was a third man who was not laughing. His pale eyes raked the grass. ‘What about the boy?'

The Marshal shook his head. ‘Boy don't need no whipping. Be a lesson to him, watch his pa.'

Be a lesson all right.

The darkness had drained away. Up came the sun again. Seemed it was everywhere that he was heading. Rose gone now, all yellow gone.
Just glare. Thorns tearing at his legs. The land was trying to weigh him down with tools of its own. Tied its heat and drought to him. Tied it inside as well as out. They had no water left. He chewed viznaga pulp instead. Through glass air he saw an arrow tree. Its fruit was blindness. He would not sleep just yet. Would not sink down. Just one more mile. And when he thought that mile was done, one more. Sun on face and hoofs on stones. Mile after mile she clung to his back, murmuring her own dead language.

His head lifted suddenly. He must have fallen asleep again. They were not even moving. Just standing in the heat.

He dug his heels into the mule's flanks. She took a step. He dug his heels in once more. He no longer knew the why of it. Not the French, not the gold. Not the ghost he carried on his back. But on they went, across the barren plain, their shadow slowly overtaking them.

The sun was high when they cut his father down. But he had not been looking at his father. He could not. Instead he had been looking at the man who was sitting by the fire. Staring at the man. A tightness reaching from his stomach to his throat. A tightness that was like an ache. The man had a length of metal, not much longer than a toasting fork, and he was holding it over the flames. He watched it carefully, head tilted on one side, eyes narrowed against the smoke, turning it and turning it in the hot part of the fire, as if he were cooking some tender morsel and it had to be done just right. The two other men brought his father across the grass. His father breathing hard, as if he had been running. But his legs dragged, and the toes of his boots pointed at the ground. They took his shooting hand, told him to make a fist and raise his thumb. The Marshal stood some distance off, among the trees. He was staring out across a stretch of open country, a cigar wedged horizontal in his mouth. Smoke curled, almost slavish, past his face. He did not acknowledge it. The two men held his father by the upper arms as the rod was lifted, glowing, from the fire. A quick hot sound: one raindrop landing in a pan of fat. His father struggling, and then still.

The Marshal stared out across the open country.

Be a lesson.

His shadow lengthened on the ground. He was heading for a gap in the mountains, a gap he thought he recognised. Looked like the space between fingers and a thumb. But the plain laid out in front, of him seemed endless. Mind the only thing moving. Turning and turning in
a fire. Man on a doorstep, fat in a pan. He was seeing white hills, the Cajon Pass in February. Ice hanging from the bridle bits. Teeth chattered in your mouth as if your head were bone and nothing else. You could not get the shiver out of you. And riding north, towards Alaska. Worse. The winter plains, smooth as ironed linen. Soot-grease smeared beneath your eyes against the glare of snow. You had to paint your canvas overcoat to keep the east wind out. Seemed like a kind of heaven to him now. Mind turning in a fire. A quick hot sound. The smell of sealed meat. A ghost clung to his back, delirious. Her shoes swung from the saddlebow. He could not look. The hoofs of their four horses dwindling, his father lying in the grass. His back a mesh of red against the green. And they had written on his thumb. Letters that would bind their lives together. ‘Happy Times,' his father would always say. ‘That's what it stands for. Happy Times.' He could not look. Her laces threaded neatly through the eyeholes. Her heels shaped like sheaves of wheat. He had helped his father to his feet, laid cool dock leaves on the wounds. His father's eyes more painful than his back. Grapes without their skins. A layer gone, the nerves exposed. All the hope drained out of him. All the pain of that moment facing out.

He could not look.

He thought he must have missed a turning in the dark and ridden into hell. A church was burning. He could see the leap of flames inside. The walls glowed red.

He did not stop.

Windows burst as he passed by. Stained-glass lay in fragments on the street; the mule's hoofs crunched over it – saints' haloes, a disciple's agony, the Lord Himself.

The night was being held against a branding-iron; he could feel it trying to twist away, avoid the crimson tip. Men stumbled past him with blood and ashes on their faces, the corners of their eyes and mouths pulled wide. Two humorous sounds: a pop and then a twang. Something bright flew past his ear. And then a jangling, a splintering. He looked over his shoulder, saw the spire lean down.

A man ran up to him. He was brandishing something that Wilson mistook for a rifle. Only it was golden. The man was shouting.

‘Look,' he was shouting. ‘I've done it. Look.'

He smiled down at the man and nodded, then he pushed the heel of his boot into the mule's ribs. There was only one destination, and
this was not it. He could not stop now. If he stopped, he might never make it.

The ground tilted upwards. All the shouting faded.

Then a face swooped out of the air. No body, just a face. White under its black hat. Skin looped beneath the eyes. He could not remember the face's name.

‘It's a miracle. We had given up all hope.'

Hands were fumbling at his clothes. He fought to lift his head. To tell the truth.

‘She's dead,' he said. ‘I buried her.'

Another face. Another language. The words that she had murmured. French?

‘I found her. We rode to the water. Then I buried her.'

His vision cleared.

He saw the faces that surrounded him, still as moons in the black air, and awful in their stillness. Only the red light flickering across their foreheads, cheekbones, jaws. His own fingers playing some fast piece. But there was no music that he could hear, no tune.

‘She was sitting right behind me.' He reached backwards with his hand. Set her straight in the saddle. ‘She was sitting right there.'

Only the faces, hanging in the darkness.

‘You don't believe me? Look. I've got her shoes.'

Still the faces.

He began to laugh. ‘Did it rain here?'

2nd July, 189 –

My dear Monsieur Eiffel,

I scarcely know how to begin. During the past few days we have been exposed to scenes of barbarism and destruction the like of which I hope never to see again. The church is damaged beyond repair. I find it almost impossible to accept that all our good work has been undone.

Then, as if that were not catastrophe enough, Madame Valence disappeared. She was out riding when her horse, startled by gunfire, bolted into the inhospitable desert behind the town. She was missing for a full three days, and would certainly be dead by now, but for the valiant efforts of an American, who knew the country and was prepared to risk his life on her account.

There is little more to say. I am taking her away from this place. We are leaving tomorrow, on a steamer bound for Panama. If news should reach you before I do, I beg you to give it no credence. The events that have befallen us are terrible enough already, without the distortions and extravagance acquired by numerous tellings.

I trust that you will forgive the incoherence of this letter, taking into consideration the utterly dispiriting circumstances under which it was written. Only know that I remain your most humble and obedient servant, and that I have done my utmost on your behalf.

I am yours, respectfully, etc.,

Théophile Valence.

Through a light curtain of dreams Wilson heard a ship's siren. The first note short, the second longer. Then, some time later, two more notes, of equal length, but fainter. Opening his eyes he saw windows high up in a pale-yellow wall and a fan revolving slowly, like a piece of hypnotism. The air feathered down on to his face.

‘Ah. Monsieur Pharaoh.'

The doctor was standing at the foot of his bed. He was wearing a waistcoat that resembled a garden in summer: pale-gold roses planted in a field of green.

‘It is I. Dr Bardou.'

Wilson smiled faintly. ‘Who else would wear such a waistcoat?'

‘Why, Monsieur Pharaoh,' the doctor said, laughing, ‘you are certainly making an excellent recovery. Nobody would ever guess how close you came to death.'

But Wilson's eyes were still absorbed by the pale roses. ‘I thought they'd all been stolen.'

‘All except this one.' The doctor fingered the brocade. It glinted in the hushed light of the ward.

‘Do you know who did it?'

‘I do now.'

It transpired that Wilson had timed his departure well. For the following three days it had been – and here the doctor paused, one of his hands climbing past his ear as he tried to conjure the right word from the air; then he snatched, his hand closing in a triumphant fist, as if the word were a fly and he had caught it – it had been
pandemonium.
Three days of looting and burning in El Pueblo, three days of murder and mutilation. Most of the Indians' rage had been directed against Mexican targets – the military garrison, the customs house – but still the French had feared for their lives. No women had been allowed to venture forth alone. Monsieur de Romblay had issued firearms to all the men.

‘Sounds like I was safer out there,' and Wilson gestured towards the window, ‘in the desert.'

The doctor smiled.

Only with the arrival of a detachment of
rurales
from Guaymas, he said, did the unrest finally come to an end. The men had sailed through a storm (El Cordonazo could always be relied upon to strike when it was least convenient). Their faces had the awful, yielding pallor of bread that had been soaked in milk; their uniforms, usually so dashing, so appealing to the ladies, were elaborately embroidered with vomit. Still, less than an hour after disembarking, they were marching through the streets of El Pueblo in a show of force, some mounted, and armed with sabres, some on foot with muskets. That same night, the 29th of June, the Indian rebels swarmed east along Avenida Manganeso. They were forcing air between their teeth, making a sound that was like a flight of locusts or a viper's hiss. In their fists they wielded bows and arrows, broken bottles, the legs of chairs. Their bodies glittered strangely as they advanced towards the waterfront, glittered and glowed. The Mexicans had been expecting a motley band of savages. They began to mutter among themselves. One of them was heard to wail, ‘They're wearing armour.'

‘Your waistcoats,' Wilson said.

The doctor nodded grimly. ‘They thought that wearing my waistcoats would keep them safe from harm. They thought that was where my powers came from.'

‘And it almost worked – '

‘Almost.'

There had been a moment when a number of the
rurales
turned away as if to flee. Then one young soldier kneeled quickly, fired. One of the glittering Indians crumpled. Reassured, the Mexicans let fly with a volley of musket-shot and fourteen Indians dropped to the ground at once. The rebellion was crushed in a matter of hours. The Indians who survived the battle were treated with a brutality for which the
rurales
were notorious. Some were thrown into railway trucks and transported to a canyon five miles north of town where they were shot. Others were only marginally more fortunate: they were shipped to the mainland, destined for labour gangs in the Yucatan jungle.

It seemed to Wilson that he must have ridden into the aftermath. He could quite clearly remember the screaming and the blood, sabres slicing through the smoke, church windows strewn on the ground like jewels.

And the ghost of his love still murmuring against his back.

‘Suzanne – ' Suddenly he did not know what to say.

‘Yes?'

‘I found her, then – ' He paused. He would have to lie. ‘Then – then I don't know.'

‘You brought her back. She was tied to you, with a piece of rope.'

‘I brought her back?' Wilson gaped at the doctor. It did not seem possible. His memory curled, folding inwards on itself – one long wave breaking, back into the past.

‘It was a miracle,' the doctor said. ‘Not just that you found her, but that she was still alive.'

‘But – ' Wilson could see his shovel and his rifle upright in her arms. He could hear the water chatter as she sank. ‘I thought she died – I thought I buried her – '

‘You were delirious, Monsieur. Heatstroke, dehydration – '

‘And now?'

‘Now what?'

‘Where is she now?'

The doctor opened his hands; he might have been releasing captive butterflies. ‘She's gone.'