Beyond the Horizon (24 page)

‘Now wait a minute—'

Several of the onlookers guffawed. The stranger seemed unaffected by the outburst. ‘I'm not saying that you dont—or havent—trapped some animals and skinned them. But for the most part youre traveling, going from one place to another. Blank spaces between each location.'

The trapper gave a sullen nod, said he supposed that sounded right.

The stranger smiled, held up his glass in a toast. The trapper did not reciprocate. ‘Most people dont want to hear that their lives for the most part are empty. They identify themselves by trade, the families they rarely see, but are constantly constructing, reconstructing in their minds. A gravestone is fitting. It exists in only one place, reminding others that you at one point were somewhere.'

Two of the old men exchanged whispers and stood up together and left the table. Most of the crowd, confused by the exchange, also dissipated. Just a few remained—the stranger, the man, an old timer and the fur trapper.

The sudden loss of interest in his speech did not deter the stranger. ‘These great empty spaces, scientists will grow to love them. And because science loves them, so will all of you. The great emptiness. It can give the illusion of movement, of progress. Didnt we all come west because it was empty?' When no one responded right away, the stranger said, ‘Thats why I'm here.'

The trapper nodded. The old timer
too.

‘It is a happy foolishness, this life.'

‘You aint a man a God is ya?' the old timer asked.

‘Cant say I am, no. I'm not a man of the earth either.'

‘Just science.'

The stranger shook his head. ‘You havent been listening. Theres history to consider
too.'

The trapper said that he'd drunk his share, tipped his hat and
left.

‘What history you mean?' the man asked.

The stranger drank the last of his grog. ‘This morning when I awoke—it was the last significant moment in my story—I went to the mouth of the mineshaft.'

‘You slept in a mineshaft?'

‘It's where I woke up. But thats not important. I went to the mouth of the mine.'

‘So youre a miner then?'

‘No, I only woke up in a mine.'

‘But you had to've gone into the mine. Did you fall into the shaft an wake up after hitting your head?'

The stranger went to drink from his cup again, then remembered it was empty. He looked at the man. ‘Youre heading out into the sand desert tonight?'

The man nodded, said that was right.

‘You should be getting on then. Night comes on fast this time of year.'

The man stayed seated. But after looking at his company—now just the stranger and the old timer—he nodded again and
left.

The man walked out into the courtyard of the fort. The first lights of Aries were poking through the twilight and signaled the oncoming night. In his head, the man calculated his path, a south bearing until he came to the great swathes of sand that drifted up against the mountainside. The few coins he had left jangled in his pocket. He had nothing else. To stay alive he would walk clean through the night. When morning came he would sleep in the shadows of one of the dunes. Any respite would have to be short lived. Sleeping too long would mean another walk through the night—a full night with no water and no
food.

In a few hours' time the man reached the edge of the desert. A stream with silted water bordered the edge and he drank his fill. Then took care to soak a handkerchief and wad it into his pocket. Under the lights cast down from the heavens, the dunes looked to be cut of two shades of blue—one nearly white and vaporous, the other an indigo darker than the purpled skies.

The walk into the foothills of the dunes took longer than the man had anticipated. Darkness and the size of the dunes had deceived his vision. Gradually the sand lifted and sloped. Soon he took steps and watched the grains of sand give way under his feet so every step he took gained him little ground. He leaned into the slope and breathed heavily. The inside of his mouth became coated in dust. He stopped briefly and found a pebble, much larger than the grains of sand. He put it into his cheek to stave off thirst. Then he kept walking.

Once he reached the ridge of the dune he figured he should walk along it until he came to the first peak. From the peak he could gauge his path across the wasteland. He walked some way with considerably more ease and then the wind blew. The granules of sand pelted and prickled his exposed skin. Sand had worked its way into his boots and down into his shirt and pants. His eyes teared up as the wind kept blowing. He pulled the soggy handkerchief from his pocket and squeezed the moisture from the cloth. He had intended to use it later, but circumstances had forced him into this other spot. After unwadding the cloth, he tied it as a bandit might, with a triangle covering his mouth.

A couple hours later and the temperature had plummeted into a brutal cold. No longer could the man feel the sand whip against his legs; they had long gone numb. The cloth of the handkerchief stiffened with frost. He kept moving, knowing full well that to stop in the darkness meant resigning to death.

As the first peak came into view and he slogged one footstep after another, spillage of sand emanating with each step, the man felt a renewed sense of purpose. He closed his eyes and took a few more steps. In his mind, he thought of his woman, wondered if the baby had been a boy as the stranger said. He opened his eyes, then looked back down the slopes, out into the pan of the plateau, where Fort James lay against the shroud of night like a votive for the dead of this place. For a moment he pondered the stranger, felt as if his eyes were upon him. The man shook his head and trudged to the top of the sandy mount.

He looked out over the formless land, at the menagerie of shadow and shifting sands. The mountain pass hulked some dozen miles off, a hollow space in the ether of night.

For some time the stranger and the old timer sat quietly. Each seemed to be tending to his own thoughts. Then the stranger asked where they had been in their conversation.

‘You was answerin that man's question—the man you jus told to get up an
go.'

‘Yes.' The stranger spent a minute recollecting the course of the conversation. Then he began speaking again. ‘The return: how each time we revisit the past it becomes something else.' He sighed, then continued. ‘I went out from the mineshaft and I watched the sun cut through an old scrag. I stretched. I felt like a newborn. It was at that moment, when I looked at the ground and I noticed a bird, a common bird—nothing too grand—lay dead in the dirt. Most of the flesh was gone. Little bones, white from the sun stretched out in tiny arcs. Had it not been rotting, had it been frozen, it would have been a beautiful thing.'

‘Got yerself a strange type a beauty.'

‘I knelt next to it to get a closer look. I put my hands on the ground and lowered myself down. Tiny pieces—microscopic bits—of the bird's decaying body wafted up into my nostrils. I was that close.'

The old timer's eyes narrowed. ‘Find that type a thing interestin, do
ya?'

‘And these ants—reddish brown ones—burrowed through the bird's flesh,' the stranger said. He leaned forward as he spoke, a froth of spit gathering at the corners of his mouth. ‘One of these ants climbed to the tip of the bird's rib bone—a string of osseous matter—his antennae were moving independently, a fleck of god knows what in his pinchers.'

The barrio was abandoned now. Even the barkeep was gone. The stranger stopped waxing on about the bird. The world was quiet. Before the old timer could say anything, the stranger spoke. ‘I examined that ant and analyzed what he did, why he did it. I supposed the effects he had on the course of the universe. It was all the history anyone needs.'

‘Learned the secrets to the whole wide world from some ants?' the old timer said. ‘Sounds like injun magic to
me.'

The stranger picked up his mug and drank, wiping a dribble from his lip. ‘History is only half the equation,' he said. ‘You have to add science.' For a second time that evening he drew an arched pathway in the air before him. ‘Someday we will send men into the heavens and they will look down on us—us living like ants. They'll circle the earth at a league per second, hurtling through a cold darkness without parallel. And when those men return, they will not have lived the same life as those who stayed here. They will have actually aged slower. They will be just a little bit younger than their brethren. If I were to spend my life making these journeys—going between heaven and earth—I would live forever, knowing everything.'

The old timer's shoulders shook with stifled laughter. ‘Men living in the stars that never age. Fer a second you had me nearly believin it.' He wagged his finger at the stranger.

‘I can prove it to you,' the stranger
said.

The old timer rolled his eyes, said he would like to hear this. He leaned forward and rested his chin on his clasped hands.

The stranger's voice brokered no guile. ‘When I sat down here I added and subtracted, postulated and theorized—I did all the fool things a man of science does. Ive had time enough to think it over and I realized tonight I would meet you and tonight I would kill
you.'

The old timer coughed. ‘Pardon?'

The stranger looked down to where his hand rested on the table. A cleaver, speckled with rust, a wooden handle, lay next to his
hand.

‘That some sort a sleight of hand there?' the old timer asked.

‘What?'

‘That cleaver there.' The old timer nodded to it. ‘Makin it appear like that.'

‘It's been there, friend,' the stranger said. ‘Been there since youve known that I was going to murder
you.'

‘You aint gonna murder
me.'

The stranger snorted a stifled laugh. The old timer looked down into the earthenware well of his cup. ‘You got no real cause to kill—to murder me.' He looked to the stranger. His eyes glassed over with the glaze of alcohol. ‘It's the grog here,' he said. ‘Worms at the head, makes the tongue loose. I—I didnt mean what I said.'

‘What you said—'

‘Yessir.' The old timer looked at the cleaver, the handle lightly touching the stranger's fingertips. ‘Dont even recall what I said exactly.' He laughed, hiccupped. The stranger joined in the laughing. The old man wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist. He threw his head back in yawping laughter, the hard lump of his adam's apple bouncing up and down. He didnt notice when the stranger stopped laughing and sat watching him carry on. Eventually he sighed an end to the rumpus. ‘Should we have another drink?' he asked.

‘No.'

‘Not much a drinker, is
ya?'

‘Prefer to be sober when I split your head open.'

Again the old timer's eyes glassed over and drifted their sights to the blade resting at the stranger's fingertips. ‘Dont even reckon what I said to set this
off.'

‘Las palabras no son importantes. El universo se acaba aquí.'

The old timer shook his
head.

‘¿Usted no habla español?' the stranger asked. ‘Et le français?'

‘Someone send you here?' the old timer asked. He pointed his finger at the stranger. ‘Send you here to murder me? You—I mean, you yourself aint got no real cause.'

‘Você tem razão. Eu sou somente o efeito.'

The old timer sat in the chair, a slow sobering realization deepening the folds in the skin of his forehead.

‘Ive always been here,' the stranger said. His hands remained flat on the tabletop, his gaze cutting into the old man. ‘So have
you.'

‘No sir,' the old timer declared. He shook his head in an exaggerated fashion. ‘Got the wrong man, you do. I's come from out Arkansas
way.'

‘Youre not listening,' the stranger chided. ‘That state, Arkansas—
Akakaze
in the Sioux tongue—with its population of fifty-five thousand souls, famous for the Little Rock Nine and the National Guard—it all just got invented.'

‘Dont think I rightly get what youre sayin,
son.'

‘Thats unfortunate,' the stranger said. ‘You been dumb and afraid your entire existence then.'

‘An youre gonna kill
me?'

‘Yes.'

‘Why?'

‘It was set in motion,' the stranger said. ‘Someday people will park their cars—their pickup trucks—right here; they'll go into the store, buying bread made two states away and freighted in. They'll buy medicines and develop photos of their last vacation. Their cars will sit idle and leak oil and power steering fluid in the exact spot where your brains are going to spill out on the floor here.'

The old man bit at his lower lip, said it sounded like nonsense to him. The stranger said the time would come and they would see. The old timer suddenly looked sleepy. ‘Jus go on and do it if you got the notion
to.'

‘It's not time yet,' the stranger
said.

‘What do you mean
it's not time yet
?'

The stranger stared at the old timer as if waiting for the right moment to come. When he blinked, the old timer flinched.

‘You really dont got to do this,' the old man
said.

The stranger chuckled.

‘You is crazy,' the old man said. ‘Shoulda figured you for a loon, dressed the way you is. Seen you cut down that injun, but I dont think you got it in you to cut down a proper folk.' The old timer stood, swayed. He looked downward at the stranger, the demure figure. The old timer took a single step, then whirled around to seize the blade.