Against the Day (76 page)

“Back before the beginning of all
that, when they were designing the world—”

   
“ ‘
They.
’
”

“ ‘
They.’ The idea was that water should
be everywhere, free to everybody. It was life. Then a few got greedy.” She went
on to tell Frank how the desert was made, to serve as their penance. And so to
balance it, somewhere, hidden in the uncounted miles of wasteland, would be
this one cave, dense with water forever falling. If any wanted to search for
it, why, of course they were welcome, though the odds were they’d wander
forever without finding it. Tales you heard of haunted silver and gold mines
half the time were really about this one hidden cave of rainwater, precious
beyond price, but the old desert madfolk believed they had to tell it in a kind
of code, that others would be listening, that saying anything out loud would
cause the place to grow that much more remote, dangerous to approach
. . . .

At no point in this did Frank think
he was dreaming, probably because he seldom remembered dreams, or paid
attention to them even if he did. And though this all had the alert immediacy
of daytime Mexico in its ongoing dispute with its history, it would someday be
relegated as well to the register of experiences he had been unable to find any
use for.

They
returned to the desert camp among whirling colors including magenta,
lowbrilliancy turquoise, and a peculiarly pale, wriggling violet, appearing not
only around contours but smudged and bleeding inside them as well, affording
glimpses now and then of some solitary band of figures alone on the prairie
toward sunset, the untouched depths of it windsweeping away for hundreds of
miles, of air even of this purity beginning in this last light from its own
glaciating thickness to blur the distant mountains toward a sketchwork
suggestive of other worlds, mythic cities at the horizon
. . . .

Frank knew
that El Espinero’s wife was neither
mute nor shy, having heard a number of animated conversations in, he guessed,
the Tarahumare language among the three of them, but she never spoke a word to
Frank, only looked at him with great sympathy and directness, as if there was
something so obvious he ought to be seeing, which she wanted to tell him about
but for some reason, some imperative of the spirit, could not. He was certain
beyond words that she was the invisible beating heart of whatever had brought
the family south into danger from the Mexican army, but none of them were about
to share the reason with Frank.

They reached an almost invisible
fork, and the Tarahumare party turned west, bound up into the Sierra Madre.

   
Frank
smiled at Estrella. “Hope you find the right hombre.”

“Just
as happy it wasn’t you,” she said. “You are a good man, but kind of disgusting,
with all that hair growing out of your face, and you always smell like coffee.”
When they parted, El Espinero gave him a necklace made out of skypale
translucent seeds Frank recognized as Tears of Job. “Won’t keep you safe, but
you’ll be healthier. Good for your breathing.”

   
“Oh,
by the way, that
hikuli?
got any more of that?”

El Espinero pointed, laughing, at a
cactus near Frank’s foot, and he and the women rode away laughing, for quite
some time, actually, till they were over the ridgeline and out of earshot.
Apologizing to the cactus as the
brujo
had instructed him, Frank removed
it live from its home earth and stashed it in his saddlebag. In days to come,
he would take it out for a nibble, or sometimes only to look at and wait for
instructions. But he was never to have quite the same certitude again as he had
felt flying with Estrella/Estrella over the teeming high desert or braving the
stone grimness below it.

He worked his way north among the
tall cactuses and greasewood, staying just out of sight of the railroad, until
one day he became aware that the mountains had become geometrical
impersonations of themselves, impossibly pointed and forbidding, no easier to
accept than this outofscale plain

he’d been riding through. What was there to do out here but
run and pursue? What else made sense? Stand still, under this vast of a sky?
Dry out, grow still as the brush, as a cactus, keep slowing down until entering
some mineral condition
. . . .

It came to pass that one day Frank
rode in out of some irrigated cotton fields at the edge of the Bolsón de
Mapimí, down the daylit single street of a little pueblo whose name he would
soon forget, walked into a particular cantina as if he’d been a regular for
years (adobe walls, perpetual 4:00 a.m. gloom, abiding fumes of pulque in the
room, no Budweiser Little Big Horn panoramas here, no, instead some crumbling
mural of the ancient Aztec foundation story of the eagle and the serpent, here
perversely showing the snake coiled around the eagle and just about to dispatch
it, and posed presentably among that oldtime scenery, watching the struggle, a
number of attractive señoritas with nineteenthcentury hairdos and the painter’s
idea of Aztec outfits—the walls otherwise undecorated, missing paint in
chips and scars from longago gunplay or thrown furniture), and found there
right in front of him, sitting slouched and puffyfaced and as if waiting, the
nolongerelusive Sloat Fresno, quick as that, with his pistol already somehow in
his hand, giving Frank time only to find his own and begin firing cold, no
chance to rouse up any of those family emotions, none of that—old Sloat,
who maybe never even recognized him, failing as it turned out even to get off
his shot—blown over backward, one of the chair legs breaking under his
already dead weight so he was sent into half a spin, throwing a dark slash of
blood that trailed in the air and feathered in a crescent slap, unheard in the
noise of the shots, across the ancient soiling of the
pulquería
floor.
Fin.
A prolonged and shallowbreathing stillness of burnt powder, smoke rising,
ears humming, black Mexican eyeballs seemingly bent upon the newly inducted
member of the dead, though everybody would recognize Frank if they saw him
again, in case anybody came around to ask in the proper way.

Frank, whose thoughts had immediately
turned to the possibility of Deuce Kindred close by and sighting him in, called
out louder than necessary to nobody in particular, as if trying to see how
jumpy folks might be,
“
¿Y el otro?
”

   
“
Él
se fue, jefe.
”
A
local elder, holding a clay
jarrito,
starting the day early.

   
“
¿Y
cuándo vuelva?
”

   
More
of a facial shrug than a smile.
“
Nunca me dijo nada, mi jefe.
”

And no telling these days really who
that
otro
might be, Deuce or whoever. As this did nothing to settle
Frank’s nerves, he remained in a state of coiled attention, reluctant to buy
himself a drink or even to stash the damn pistol, which now seemed wired to his
palm. From up and down the street, saloon bums were appearing, and discussing
with onlookers what to do about

Sloat’s remains, several parties having already shown
interest in the contents of his pockets, though Frank, it was understood, got
first pickings.

   
“
Si el caballero quisiera algún recuerdo
. . .”

Yeahp, if he wanted a souvenir of
this—
pistoleros
of the region being known to take body parts,
scalps, ears, penises sometimes, to advert to through the golden years of their
retirement, bring out, inspect, show off.

   
Ah,
shit.

This had been so quick, even, you
could say, easy. You could. He would soon begin to understand how it all might
turn, was already, well before he had the godforsaken little town at his back,
turning, to regret.

n New York for a few weeks of groundleave, the boys had set
up camp in Central Park. From time to time, messages arrived from Hierarchy via
the usual pigeons and spiritualists, rocks through windows, blindfolded
couriers reciting from memory, undersea cable, overland telegraph wire, lately
the syntonic wireless, and signed, when at all, only with a carefully cryptic
number—that being as nigh as any of them had ever approached, or ever
would, to whatever pyramid of offices might be towering in the mists above.
With an obvious lack of desire to meet the boys in person, their employers
remained unknown to them, and contracts which they didn’t even get to sign were
simply distributed, unannounced and often it seemed blindly, from on high.
“Well we are their proletariat, ain’t we,” snarled Darby, “the fools that do
their ‘dirty work’ for next to nothing? and if they’re too good for our
work,
then they’re sure’s ‘heck’ too good for us.”

One midnight, with the usual absence
of ceremony, a streetArab in a stiff hat and a variety of tattoos appeared and
with an ingratiating leer handed over a greasestained envelope. “Here you go,
my good lad,” Lindsay dropping a silver coin into the messenger’s hand.

“ ’Ey! Whut’s ’is? some koindt of a
sailboat
pitchuhv on it! whuh country’s dis from, I eeask yiz?”

“Allow me to read it for you. It says,
‘Columbian Exposition Chicago 1893.’ And here, upon the obverse, you will be
reassured to find, ‘Columbian
HalfDollar.’
In fact they first sold for a
dollar apiece.”

“So yiz paid double f’ sumt’in’s only
good in Chicago ten yeeuhz ago. Swell. All I need’s d’ toime machine, I’m in
business, ain’t I?” The urchin, flipping the coin dexterously from hand to
hand, shrugged and prepared to take his leave.

His remark, however, had produced an
allbutparalyzed silence among the Chums, quite out of proportion to what had
seemed only an ungrateful quip, for reasons none of them, if pressed, could
have articulated. He was halfway across a nearby ornamental bridge before Chick
Counterfly recovered enough to call out. “I say, hold up a moment!”

   
“Tings
to do,” the youth replied. “Make it snappy.”

   
“You
said ‘time machine.’ What did you mean by that?”

   
“Nuttin.”
But his feet told a different story.

   
“We
must talk about this further. Where can we find you?”

“Evvrands
to vrun vroight now. So I’ll be back.” Before Chick could protest, the
impertinent nuncio had vanished into the sylvan surroundings.

“He was
passing a remark,
believe
me, I know a remark when I hear one,” glowered Darby Suckling, later during the
plenary meeting that followed Evening Quarters. The contentious lad, having
recently become Ship’s Legal Officer, was eager these days to explore, and when
possible to abuse, his prerogatives. “We should find a judge, get a writ, and
make the kid spill everything he knows.”

“More likely,” guessed Lindsay, “Mr.
H. G. Wells’s speculative jeu d’esprit on the subject has been adulterated to
profitable effect by the ‘dime novels’ of which our visitor, assuming he reads,
is no doubt an habitué.”

“Yet this,” Randolph gesturing with
the single sheet the youth had delivered, “was signed by the Chums of Chance
Upper Command. About whom, in fact, there have persisted for years rumors of a
highly secretive programme, related in some way to timetravel. This fellow may,
for all we know, be a steady but perhaps not altogether, for his part,
contented employee of theirs, and his curious remark thus some coded invitation
to pursue the topic with him.”

“If his preference in beverages
proves as inexpensive as his reading habits,” reckoned Lindsay, who was Unit
Treasurer, “there might be enough in our purchaseofinformation fund for one
small glass of beer.”

“Eehhnnyyhh, just draw another
voucher on th’ National Imprest,” airily sneered Darby. “The Big Boys’ll
rubberstamp it as usual, and maybe help us find out what they don’t want us to know.”
He would recall these words in days to come with a certain bitterness, the
little band by then having embarked on a journey of fateful discovery which
each in his own way would come to wish he had not set out upon.