Beyond the Horizon (22 page)

He caught himself, wrapping one arm around the rod. The metal cut into the soft skin of his armpit. His feet dangled freely for a moment. He kicked. The toes of the boot scraped against the wall and eventually caught on something to help propel him farther up. So the climbing went for the next couple hours.

The man reached the clutter of the collapsed scaffolds at the mouth of the shaft when the daylight had begun to fade. He pushed up through the boards and beams of the fallen structure, sliding a planked tress aside. At last he was free of the mine. The fort looked different than the man remembered it. He stumbled off the heap of broken frames and stood staring back at some spectators. He opened his mouth to say something, but only a hoarse whisper came out. Then he collapsed.

At first the soldiers—and the few miners who hadnt entered the mine when it collapsed—wanted a leader. Without any real consideration, they appointed the stranger, the folk hero and savior of Fort James. He resisted the private offers of leadership from the lieutenant, the subsequent offers from the sergeants. By default the men listened to each other in ranks. Only a few resisted.

Despite this return to militaristic order, the stranger remained the dominant force of reason in the fort. When he spoke—usually over drinks at the saloon—the men listened and his words became law. In rebuffing yet another offer to act as the lord over their desert manor, the stranger addressed the crowd in the saloon.

‘Why would I want to lead you?' he asked rhetorically. ‘I have no power, no responsibility to anyone except myself. It's a good life.'

‘Give you anything you want,' a drunken soldier
said.

The stranger shook his head and raised a finger. ‘Right now I can have anything I want. Empower me and then you'll scrutinize everything I do.' The drunk soldier raised his cup in a toast of agreement and began jabbering at another soldier. The stranger looked around the saloon. Men danced on the tables, lay on the floor. A couple old timers—miners who never considered fleeing the Indian attack—aggregated in the corner. One soldier in the center of the room rested his forehead on a table and vomited on the floor. Two more men stood behind the counter of the saloon skinning a jackrabbit with a dirk. ‘You all look like a bunch of goddamned prisoners anyhow,' the stranger
said.

The few men in proximity heard what the stranger said and they set down their drinks, ceased their conversation. The stranger repeated himself and more fell silent at the words. Soon all but a few men stared at the stranger.

‘Look to be a jailhouse,' he said. ‘All you wearing the same color, taking orders and staying bound to a single place.' He shook his head, remarked that it was sad. ‘Owning this world means you make up your own code and live by
it.'

‘Truest damn thing I ever heard,' a young soldier said. He patted the stranger on the shoulder and raised his cup. A murmur of agreement spread through the saloon.

‘Dont pretend to agree,' the stranger said. ‘Not while youre all dressed in the same garb. Stop being soldiers.'

The young soldier pulled his navy blue coat off, then stood on the bench and ripped the gold stripe from the side of his pants. The other men in the saloon cheered and began to disrobe. Some of the men stripped down to their skivvies. Others ripped the sleeves from their jackets and pieced out their uniforms, traded one man's kerchief for another's belt. One man dropped his pants and underwear and began masturbating. A few men hooted and watched intently until a former officer broke a bottle over his head and he fell naked and bloodied to the floor.

‘Lets burn the rags!' a man yelled. And the men with a gathered heap of clothes went out to the courtyard. The moon above was big and jaundiced as if it reflected the flames of the burning clothes. The men danced around the fire until the moon disappeared and the sun broke over the horizon.

Some men slept on the ground, despite the patches of snow and the early low-hanging bands of fog. The sun already reached its apex and began falling by the time some of the men started to
stir.

One roused and stood, his head still heavy with ache. ‘Look there,' he said to his comrade. He pointed toward the scraps of scaffold. Some pieces of wood shifted and a man emerged. However haggard these former soldiers were, they remained in fine shape compared to this newcomer. The man who emerged from the hole looked as if he might say something, but then fell to the ground unconscious.

Before he woke the man dreamt of his woman again. He dreamt that he walked a path of tiled stones back to the hovel. For miles out to each side, great sleek-looking structures sat on parcels of green land. The windows of each home had glass and walls of brick. They all had doors with locks. It was a strange place. Out in the distance he could see his woman. She was in the middle of a wide path. The path was made of billions of stones pressed together and coated in tar. Markings like Indian war paint decorated the path. As he came closer to the hovel and his woman, he noticed it was located in intersection with another pathway. Above the misshapen tent and frame a yellow light suspended from wire blinked on and off. The woman went about cleaning the hovel.

The man kept walking on the sidewalks, his gait building to a steady trot. On the adjacent running road he spied a vehicle of sorts barreling down it. Exhaust streamed out of a stack in the
top.

‘Es mi único amor en esta vida,' he shouted, though his waking self would never know what these words meant.

The woman appeared to be deaf to his shouting and the truck plowed over the hovel with her inside.

The man started awake.

‘Thought you'd never come to,' a voice
said.

The man blinked rapidly until his vision cleared and he saw a face staring down on
him.

‘Tended to the horses, when we still had some. Castrated a few. That makes me the closest thing to a doctor round here,' he
said.

‘I'm at Fort James,' the man
said.

‘Fraid so,' the doctor said. He changed a compress on the man's head. ‘Been watchin you for a day now. Bossman wanted me to tend to ya. Said it was a goddamned miracle you survived like you
did.'

‘The injuns,' the man
said.

‘Theyre all dead,' the doctor said, said it was thanks to the bossman. ‘Mean sumbitch he is, smart
too.'

‘The commandante?'

The doctor snickered. ‘Commandantes been dead now,' he said. ‘This bossman is someone else entirely… Miracle you made it like you
did.'

‘Whos in charge then?' the man asked.

‘No one,' the doctor said. ‘Aint no one in charge. Bossman refuses to be the boss.'

In two days' time the man sallied forth from the doctor's quarters. He went out into the courtyard of the fort and looked around. His breath was a vapor cloud. Piles of wetted snow huddled in shadowed places. Where the wall had fallen, snow dappled the rubble. What was once the village looked to be the ruins of a long forgotten civilization. The doctor had followed him outside.

‘Got your strength back?'

‘Yessir.'

‘Good. Hate to say it, but I aint a goodwill worker. Used to getting paid.'

The man dragged the toe of his boot through the dirt. ‘I owe ya then?'

But the doctor replied with a no sir, said the bossman ordered him to do it. ‘Besides you dont got money on ya. I checked your pockets when I took ya
in.'

The man understood. Nothing in this world is free. In this case the cost was a horse doctor searching his pockets. ‘How long was I out?' the man asked.

‘Been sleepin now for a day, day an a half. On an
off.'

‘No.' The man shook his head once. ‘The snow, the cold. How long was I down in the cave?'

‘You probably know better than anyone else. When you go in there?'

The man let a sustained pause in the conversation take place to see if the doctor was funning him or if he really was a dunce. Finally he said it was when the mine collapsed; he'd been trapped when the injuns attacked.

‘Fine then,' the doctor said. ‘If you is a looter, jus say so. Dont give me some made up story.'

‘I went down on the lift, went to where—'

The doctor walked
away.

As the sun rose up farther, the earth warmed. Shadows not shaped as they had been before betrayed the snows that hid. In some spots the snow melted away altogether. Perhaps he had not been down in the mines that long, the man thought. Cold snaps happen. He came around the corner of a building and found a group of men sleeping on the ground. A few of them groused and stirred in the early morning sunlight. One such sleeper's eyelids barely opened. ‘Whatre you lookin for?' he asked.

‘Wantin to know whos in charge here,' the man
said.

‘No
one.'

‘Got to be someone. What about the census?'

The sleeper grunted and rolled over. The man walked on and came to the bunkhouse. A skinny fellow lay on the stairs leading up to the entrance, his head pillowed on his folded
arms.

‘Cuse me,' the man said. He tossled the skinny fellow by the shoulder. The body slumped over and the shirt opened. An entire side of the fellow was black and shiny, bruised from neck to waist. The man put his hand on the man's sternum and he felt nothing in the way of life. He stepped over the body and into the bunkhouse.

The fire in the pan at the other end of the house had gone out. It smelled musty in here now. Surprisingly only a few of the bunks were filled. He could see his bunk, saw someone sleeping there, laying on his back like he fell to sleep studying the stars.

‘Anyone here wake yet?' the man asked.

‘Wasnt til you open yer yawp.'

In the dark another added he would close up the man's mouth with a couple timber nails—put them right through his
lips.

‘Just late in the morn,' the man said. ‘Figured I might find someone—'

‘Found some men who'll cut the voicebox right outta yer throat if you keep it
up.'

The man backed out of the bunkhouse, nearly tripping over the limp body of the skinny fellow. He went back around to the courtyard. A few men had finally risen, milled about. Then the man walked to the office.

The stranger lay in the bunk. In his mind he repeated what the man had asked: Is anyone here wake yet? He slowed the words down, broke them apart and listened to how the man's voice wavered when he spoke. In his mind he could see the events leading up to the question—the man talking to the sleeper, finding the skinny fellow. The stranger then could see how the skinny fellow died too; he could see his childhood, conception and birth.

The man had backed out of the bunkhouse. The stranger thought of those footsteps, tentative and small. He plotted them as men would plot points on a map and figured a course. As the man walked back across the courtyard, the stranger saw what he
did.

He could see what the man saw at this moment. The office was as the man had last seen it, only dark now without the wall sconces lit. Again the man called out in a child's voice, asked if anyone was here. When no reply came, he went into the office. It looked as if the commandante was still here, maintaining this place. The man went to the desk and examined the papers scattered thereabout. Circling around the desk, he tried the doors to the bookcase. They were locked. He looked through the glass at the spines of the books. Then he saw it—the census book. If he could just write his name—any name in there. He rattled the knobs of the bookcase doors and sighed.

He searched through the drawers of the desk and under the desk, but found no keys. The man took a stack of papers from the desk and held them flat to the glass of the bookcase, then punched it. The glass pane popped and broke. Carefully, the man pulled out the remaining shards. He tried to reach in and pull out the giant book, but found that breaking one pane would not suffice.

When the stranger witnessed, through the man's eyes, his struggle to obtain the book, he sat up in the bunk. This must not happen. Since he slept in his clothes, he neednt dress and he stalked out of the bunkhouse, trooping over the body of the skinny fellow. At first he walked briskly, then he flat out ran. He threw open the door of the office and made his way inside.

The man was already gone. Shards of glass lay on the floor. The giant book lay open on the desk, the hollowed pages exposed. He noticed droplets of water soaked into some of the papers. He touched the spots and closed his eyes, trying to extrapolate the events from the evidence. But there was nothing he could see; this book had opened up too many possibilities. Then he noticed something shiny—a copper disc on the floor. He picked it up, examined the coin in the low light. On one side there was a profile of a man who was not yet president, just a fellow building log cabins. The reverse side had two shafts of wheat, the words one penny inscribed between
them.

After the man opened the book and found the pages hollowed out, he stood, much like the stranger had: hands on the table leaning over the void of text. For all the man in his limited wisdom knew, this was the only record he could have of his existence. He thought momentarily of his woman, of the baby she must have birthed by now. He grabbed the book by the cover and flung it shut. As he did so, a couple objects flew out. A spittle of water dotted the
desk.

His curiosity was roused and he located the objects that seemed to just materialize from the book. They were coins. He gathered them in his hand hurriedly. They were cold and wet, smelled of chlorine and fluoride. Men would kill for money. He put them into his pocket and ran from the office with his new-found fortune.

By now many of the fort's inhabitants were up and moving. They acknowledged each other with nods and grunts. The man walked with his hands stuffed deep in his pockets to keep the coins from clinking together. Without a task being assigned to him, the man did not know what to do with himself. Most of the other men also seemed to have this problem. They gathered in groups and talked. One fellow upon awakening swore, stood up and urinated on his still slumbering companion. Those who were already awake howled with laughter. The incident of course turned into a fistfight that ceased only when both parties were properly bloodied.

The man continued on, walking behind a building. Finding a private place was proving difficult. Everything here—including the jakes—was communal. Without boundaries each man kept an eye on the other.