Far Bright Star (14 page)

“Put your ear here and listen,” he said, leaning down to where Wheeler lay paralyzed by his pain.

The man moaned and gurgled for the blood in his throat, from the breakage his face and jaw had sustained. His eyes were pinched shut from the rack of pain that his face had become, but he gestured. He waved a hand in the air, as if he was reaching for something he could not see.

“You remember me,” he said to Wheeler. “Don’t you ever forget me.”

Then he walked away and the men came onto the dusty street, into the moonlight to watch him go, complete in their arrogance and their stupidity and their renewed respect for him.

He chastised himself for losing his temper but not very much. He knew he could not reason with this man and that men like him had to be shamed and that’s what he did. He knew he had abased himself in confronting the man the way he did, but he also knew he had no other choice if he was ever to return.

He touched at the package he carried in his pocket. There was little point in opening it. He already knew what was inside.

23

W
HITE GULLS SCULLED
the air the morning of his leaving. He packed coffee, corned beef, two bread, sugar, condensed milk, gasoline. He carried in his breast pocket a pair of blue-tinted sunglasses.

The chaplain had placed a Bible on the backseat. He savored the thought of throwing it out the window.

Early that first day he’d passed through a long caravan of mule wagons loaded with baled hay and bales of straw and then he was alone on the long dusty road and then coming against him was a continuous stream of supplies and men.

There was no heater in the car, but he had a blanket and a quart of whisky and after a swig he’d bite off a chaw from a plug of tobacco he carried and this kept him awake. He continued on by starlight so determined to leave the godforsaken country of recent events. His thoughts in these hours, a constant threat to his sanity, he controlled, but admitted he’d been scared of dying and he’d never been scared in his life. Then he told himself: It weren’t nothing to me. And repeated: It weren’t nothing.

He crossed the international line at Columbus, where massed was a vast depot of men and horses, artillery and armored vehicles and he pushed on from there.

The roads were local affairs connecting one town to the next, or the road was the wide beaten path that paralleled train tracks. By now he’d come to like sitting in the soft front seat and watching the road slide by. Remarkable to him was the number of people who’d poured into the country since the last time he traveled it. They raised grain crops, herefords, and shorthorns. They’d built houses, barns, and silos. They were a busy and striving people making something where there was nothing and the nothing was disappearing.

One night he slept in a cemetery, having jounced through the swung-open wrought-iron gates in the pitch of night and thinking he found a park of sorts or the estate of a great man. Another night he parked the automobile in an open field on the edge of a town. When he awoke men and boys were gathering in the field to play baseball. They were staring into the automobile at him sleeping as if he’d arrived from the coming time.

When he awoke they told him he was in Texas and this he did not know. They asked him to call balls and strikes and later the women came with lemonade, fried chicken, and hot dumplings made of cabbage and pork and they ate beneath a shading pavilion. He determined them a community of Germans of an old religion. The men wore boiled white shirts, black trousers with black suspenders and broad brimmed black felt hats. The boys dressed similarly and the women and girls were equally plain in the cotton dresses they wore. They were pleasant company. After the first questions they were content to not ask anymore and seemed grateful for his presence.

He came into the grass country: grama, curly mesquite, bluestem waist high. There was an abundance of quail and prairie chickens, sawing grasshoppers, indolent and treacherous hornets, and on occasion he spotted an antelope.

The light over the prairie was thick and opaque with carried liquid. Dry lightning silently forked in the blue covering darkness. The prairie was being uprooted and turned into a sea of wheat and one night he watched the horizon burn blood red, a wheeling fire on the prairie, and then it disappeared.

There were moments when he had the feeling there was another beside him. Another who walked with him and rode with him and sat with him in the automobile, an invisible who held a visible presence in his mind. There were moments when he was sure he saw this other, but on this night there were no ghosts of dead men, no shadowy presences, no fears, no haunts.

Overhead was the quiet gathering and dispersing of clouds. There was the star-bright sky, so clear this night, he could see stars behind stars. He wondered on the dead eyes of his fallen men. He could not shake the proximity of recent blunt death. It was as close as his mind. He waved at the air in front of his face, a gesture he habited to shoo away such thoughts.

Sometimes the road bore off in a direction that was not his and other places the road petered out, but rather than turn around and retrace himself he drove overland on the hardened prairie, north by northeast, until he picked up another road that suited the direction of his intention.

Soon it would be autumn. He thought autumn light old light and come from far away. It was light that was bright and sorrowful and dense and galvanic. It lacquered the world with its brilliance and increased by day, and when the sun set down it left you tired, cold and wanting. He would be home by then. He’d sit on the porch and feel himself not moving.

As he rolled along he wondered who lived and who was dead. Would he find an old rocking man and a fallen-in cabin? He questioned his father’s ability to die. He doubted him capable of dying, and if he wasn’t, this would be his only incapacity.

Slowly, but surely, time was curing his memory.

He started again before daylight, leaving Oklahoma and crossing into Kansas. The road was hard packed and white in the sun. At first he was not tired, but after a few hours he was more tired than if he’d been driving all day. The road was deeply rutted and so the going was very slow. All that day a hot wind blew across his face and stole his breath and dried his mouth. It was no cloying wind that teased and sickened the stomach but a strong hot wind that lifted the dust, scored the earth, and emptied the lungs. But now there was no wind.

He stopped and walked away from the automobile and onto the land to piss. The absence of sound, of the thrumming engine, was overwhelming. He carried on his person the .45, his tobacco, a spoon. To stand without moving made him weak. His business finished, he walked on, his stiff boots, meant for riding and not walking, galled his feet. As he walked he raised clouds of grasshoppers clacking and sizzling in the air about his trouser legs.

He lit his cigarette, naturally cupping the match to hide the flame, and then smoked it, shielding the ember. These days on the road, cooking over an open fire had been the most peaceful he’d experienced. Then a loneliness like a mist came over him. He felt it in his arms and legs, a vulnerability in his chest. He was alone out here and unmoored on this vast sea of grassland. He missed his brother.

Black storm clouds were massing in the north the whole of that day and the sky was hardened. He could not remember the last time he was rained on. Let the weather be foul. It didn’t matter to him. He returned to the automobile, let out the clutch, and rammed the car along a stretch of black deeply rutted soil. He drove on until he dozed at the wheel and then he pulled off and let his head go back against the seat. Inside, he was wearied on the verge of collapse. He righted himself and continued on.

The storm moved east, and a sozzling rain was still falling when he entered the wet band the storm left behind. The wheels of the Dodge slithered in the mud, and then there was a lull in the rain and the day turned hot and steamy. The deep ruts were left awash and they captured the wheels and guided the automobile. The automobile ruddered in the throws of the wet channels and began to cough and sputter and lose power. He pushed on, the steering wheel snapping right and left and the one time he let it go so as to not break a wrist.

Then the automobile spun and the engine wound and then stopped as if held by a sudden hand. The wheels were stogged deep in clayey mud. He’d bogged himself down right to the axle and would need a team of horses to haul out.

Over the next rise he hailed a wheat farmer working a field and found out a town was not so far. There was an auto mechanic there in case he needed one and so arranged for the farmer to tow the automobile out of the bog when his day was done. He himself would continue on afoot.

Before long the road turned smoldering hot. He came to men in striped trousers, their bodies stripped to the waist. They were chained at the ankles and in cadence shuffled forward and let down their slingblades to cut back the grassy ditches. Two men stood quietly harnessed to a scoop shovel being loaded. They were guarded by men on horseback, Winchesters perched upright on their thighs. He’d one time known a trooper from Mississippi, a former trustee who’d been pardoned for shooting a runner. He remembered him a crack shot on horseback.

He decided he’d wait for the wheat farmer. He turned around and went back to the stogged automobile, the water already cooked from the ruts.

That evening the western sky was heart red. The farmer broke him out and directed him to a place where a thin stream ran through the land and told him he could camp there for the night. He pulled off the road and bumped onto the field. He drove the Dodge across where had stood the heavy crops of grain. He came off the dry flat land and entered a band of cottonwoods that densified until there were only trees and he was passing through chains of last light and shadow and arrived at a barbed-wire fence and a place where the creek pooled flat and brown. Hung on the fence was a killed snake belly side up. An appeal for rain recently answered.

Down by the creek he found a stone fire ring and an iron grate hanging from a tree. There were steel rods to make a spit and kindling and firewood beneath a ragged tarp. At the creek bank he discovered arrowheads that’d been washed to the light. Flash floods were as dangerous as prairie fires and twisters. Still, he wanted to be near the pooling water and kicked up dry cow manure for his fire.

After so many months in the desert the grasses and flowers were an experience for him. Like a sleepwalker, he continued on. His boots wetted with the rising dew as he crossed the field. Even in this dry land, the air was dense with moisture and filled his lungs to capacity.

He sprawled in the silky grass beneath the spangle of stars. He gathered bunches in his fingers. The grass gave off no scent, but pulled from the earth came a sweetness. He found the far bright star. These small things, he thought, and for a time the tight band was wrested from across his chest and the sound of the purling creek entered his mind.

He wished for more rain. He wished for it to come down from the sky and wash across his face. He returned to the fire ring and started a fire and laid the grate across the heating stones. He fed the fire and sulfur teals of flame swam like water beneath the iron skillet when he set it on the grate. The skim of grease was heating and when it began to pop he’d fry his potatoes and when they were done he’d scrape them to one side and crack his eggs.

24

H
E’D FINISHED OFF
his eggs and potatoes and was spit roasting a chicken when he heard a human sound. Beyond the glow of the small fire the night was blued and the grasses tipped in silver. Someone was approaching in the darkness, their trousers making a wisping sound as they waded through the grass. He touched at the .45 he carried in the shoulder rig.

“Halloo,” came a long call from the darkness. It was the wheat farmer coming through the moon’s light.

“Come on in,” he said.

“I called out because I didn’t want to get shot,” the farmer said with humor. He wore a blue short-sleeved shirt, blue overalls, and a blue bandanna loosely knotted at his neck. He carried a walking stick he swept before him.

“Probably not a bad idea,” he said.

“She sent me to bring you this pie.”

“Please thank her for me,” he said, accepting the pie tin into his hands.

“Why yes, of course,” the farmer said, becoming at ease and then he said, “Is that a government automobile?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Where are you driving it to?”

“Driving east.”

“You look about used up,” the farmer said.

“I been eatin’ dry bread, if you know what I mean.”

“Where you coming from?’

“Down Mexico.”

“You don’t say. What’s it like down there?” He spoke as if Mexico were an invisible star.

“All’s that land does is hold the earth together.”

From the darkness came the spearing cry of a prey bird. The farmer noted the cry for how unlucky the creature and adjusted his seat closer to the fire where he poked at it with his walking stick.

It was strange to sit with this man. That this man should have a life, that he should have a family and his mouth would move, his hands gesture. At first he wasn’t sure of the man because he did not know him, but he was harmless enough.

“It’s a fine night,” the farmer said.

“Yes, it is,” he said, looking up and finding the star of his destination.

“I just wish it wasn’t so dark.”

“What is it you want to see?” he asked, but the farmer didn’t say anything. He walked his stick about the edge of fire.

Then he said, “Which rumor do you believe? That Villa was paid to attack Columbus by the Germans?”

“I don’t have anything to tell about that.”

“How about the war overseas? Are we going to get in?”

“You’ll have to ask the War Department,” Napoleon said.

“I thought you might know and that’s why you are here.”

“Why am I here?”

“To set up a recruitment. To get ready. She thought that.”

“Who?”

“My wife. We’ve got two boys. One of them is old enough.”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“How long have you been on the road?”

“Not long long.”

“There’s a town that way,” the farmer said, and pointed with his stick, its embered tip aiming the way.

It was easy to tell there was something on the farmer’s mind. The farmer told him not to wait on his account and to go ahead eat his chicken. Then he spoke again.

“She apologizes. We have the two sons and she doesn’t want them getting any ideas.”

“I understand.”

“When do you think we’ll get in?”

“Hard to say,” Napoleon said.

“I wish I could see the point of it, but I cannot,” the farmer said. Then he told how the war overseas had been very good to him, what with wheat a dollar and seventy-five cents a bushel. His face was no longer an exhausted face, but just the tired face of a man after a long day’s work that was ended until tomorrow.

“Tomorrow will be better than today,” the farmer sighed.

“We believe that, don’t we. The future will be better than the past.”

“Yes, I think we do.”

“Why do we believe it?” Napoleon wondered aloud.

“I don’t exactly know,” the farmer said.

“I don’t either,” he said, and tossed more of the dried cow manure into the fire.

“They say the rain follows the plow, but I don’t believe it. As good as it looks, it doesn’t look good.”

“Kind of late for not believing,” he said, and with his knife he pried a leg from the chicken. Fat sizzled into the fire. He offered it to the farmer who took it and then he pried away the other leg for himself.

“In this land these people are all good republicans,” the farmer said.

“I suppose they are.”

“I wouldn’t live in any other land.”

He finished off the leg he was eating and the farmer finished his and they threw the bones in the fire. The farmer smacked his lips and thanked him. He then drew a pipe and packed the bowl with tobacco he carried in a leather pouch. The pouch was strung to a brass safety pin fastened at the breast pocket of his blue cotton shirt. He struck a match off the seat of his pants.

“There was a killing recently,” the farmer said, reaching out with the match that he might light his cigarette. “It has people on edge.”

“Who was kilt?”

“Two little girls,” the farmer said, and told how a week ago two white sisters ages sixteen and twelve had gone together to pick berries three miles north from town. The family dog returned home alone.

“You have killed men?” the farmer asked.

“I have killed men,” he said.

“In war.”

“In the trade of war.”

“Does that weigh on your mind?”

“My conscience?”

“Your conscience.”

“No,” Napoleon said.

“Mexico?”

“Mexico, yes.”

“According to the physician’s report, the girls had been outraged, meaning raped.”

“I know what it means,” Napoleon said.

“They caught the fella did it. They lynched him from the bridge crossing.”

“Is that how they do people around here?”

“I believe so. Is it different where you come from?”

“No. Not much I suppose.”

“People around here don’t wonder what their lives are to be. If they do, they don’t share their thoughts with anyone.”

“You think they got the right man?”

To this question the farmer shrugged and it was clear to see his mind attach to a memory he felt as sharp as thorns.

From his pocket he took out the package given him by the girl in Mexico. He held the package in his lap and with his folding knife he slit the string that tied the package. He carefully unfolded the paper, wrap by wrap. It was a swedge-tipped knife with deeply cut finger choils. It had a white jigged-bone handle and nickel silver bolsters and was stained with blackness.

“What’cha got there?” the farmer asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just a knife.”

“We lost a little girl a while back,” the farmer said. “They say if you wear out two pairs of shoes in this country you never leave. They didn’t say anything about losing children.”

“I am sorry for your loss,” he said, and thought how there was history in all men’s lives. He had his own and this was this man’s, the loss of the little girl child. He pinched the ember from his cigarette and booted it out. Then he stripped the tobacco from the stub back into his pouch.

“It’s good pie,” the farmer said. “She makes a good pie.”

“I look forward to it.”

“Do you have anyone? A wife or the like?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“When are you coming back this way?”

“I don’t know that I ever will.”

“Well, when you do I’ll still be here.”

“Give these to your boys,” he said, and handed over the arrowheads he fished from his pocket.

“They’re all gone now. The buffalo and the Indians.”

“I was around here when they wasn’t.” He pinched off a nostril and blew his nose into the dirt. Then he pinched off the other one and did it again.

“It was a long long time ago.”