Wraiths of the Broken Land (3 page)

Nathaniel climbed over Kathleen’s long legs, gently set the soles of his bare feet upon the ground (if trod indelicately, the floorboards imitated the previous baby tenants) and leaned forward, slowly shifting his weight until he found himself standing upright. He pulled a yellow riding outfit over his union suit, picked up his shoes, took one step east, reached out his free hand, twisted the key, exited, closed the door and departed to the attic, wherein his traveling luggage was kept while he and his fiancé were lodgers in a room built for humans who possessed nothing more substantial than diapers, pacifiers and teeth the size of rice grains.

Yawning quietly, Nathaniel strode across the second floor hallway, past the master bedroom and toward the wooden ladder that led to the attic. A door opened behind the creeping gentleman, and he turned around.

From the darkened bedroom emerged Ezekiel, scratching the back of his hirsute neck (a location that seemed to offer perpetual itches) while his healthy stomach inflated between the open wings of his plaid robe. The squat man yawned a salutation.

“Good morning,” responded Nathaniel.

“It’s chilly for the summer.” Ezekiel looked over the lodger’s shoulder and said, “Going up to the attic?”

“I need to retrieve my luggage and some garments. I will be away for one week.”

The cattle rancher tilted his head sideways, possibly to allow the hand that scratched his nape some new opportunities, and inquired, “Business?”

“Indeed.”

“Kathleen’s staying on here?”

“She will remain here and tend to her duties.”

A strange narrowing happened in the middle of the bushy aggregation of brows and whiskers that was Ezekiel’s face. “Why’re you sneaking around this way?”

“I did not wish to awaken anybody.”

“We heard you two having some words last night.” The squinting clefts that shaded Ezekiel’s eyes appraised Nathaniel in a blunt and intrusive manner.

“I am not running off.” The gentleman was galled by the implication, but suppressed his indignity.

“You won’t do better than that woman.” Ezekiel lowered one scratching hand from his nape and applied another. “I’ve seen her with my kids, and I’ve seen her haggle with shopkeepers or reprimand them if they try and cheat her. She’s all there—complete and beautiful—and she even stuck by you after those winds wrecked your hotel.”

“I love Kathleen and have no intention of deserting her. I apologize for disturbing you last night, but she and I have amicably resolved our differences.”

Unconvinced, the cattle rancher wrinkled his mouth.

“You may rouse her if you would like to check the veracity of my words,” suggested Nathaniel. It was difficult for him to keep bitterness out of this remark.

“It isn’t necessary.” Ezekiel returned the original hand to the back of his neck, pulled the gaping robe over his belly, turned around and strode into his bedroom. “There’re plenty of successful fellows in Leesville who’d court her if you dawdled overlong or went serpentine.”

No reply issued from the gentleman’s pursed lips.

The bedroom door closed.

Embarrassment and anger sat hot upon Nathaniel’s face as he turned away, strode to the end of the hall, climbed the ladder, entered the attic, located a large green valise and into it packed water skins, a flask, undergarments, kerchiefs, gloves, a double-breasted royal blue three-piece suit, a long-tailed black tuxedo, two white shirts, cufflinks, Italian shoes, shoe polish, two bow ties (royal blue and black), a red cravat, a royal blue derby, a black stovepipe hat and a novel entitled
La Playa de Sangre
with which he could illustrate his fluency in Spanish.

Presently, he descended from the attic and strode across the second floor hallway. When the gentleman heard a plaintive sound emanate from the closed door of the baby’s room, he paused.

The couple had said goodbye the previous evening, and Kathleen had specifically asked Nathaniel to leave in the morning without rousing her, so that they might avoid an anxious farewell.

Standing in the hallway with his heavy valise in his left hand, the tall blonde gentleman from Michigan listened to his fiancé’s quiet sobs. The sounds shrank his insides and made his vision hazy.

And then he left.

Chapter III
The Plugfords

Brent Plugford inhaled deeply, and with the unseasonably cool morning air came the odors that filled the hotel apartment—damp underclothes, soap, moldering wood, oiled leather, iron, stale cigar smoke and cheap bourbon. The twenty-nine-year-old cowboy opened his eyes and saw Long Clay, whose tall lean body was clothed in a black shirt and matching trousers, standing at the foot of his bed like the late day shadow of a scarecrow. The silver-haired man pointed to the person who slept next to Brent. “Wake him.”

“Okay.”

Long Clay walked toward the window.

Brent sat up, stretched his stiff muscles, ran a hand through his wavy brown hair and looked to his left. Prostrated upon the bed beside him was his younger brother, Stevie Plugford, dead asleep and wearing last week’s long johns. “Stevie. You gotta get up. We’re goin’.”

The twenty-one-year-old man grunted.

“Up,” ordered Brent. “Now.” The cowboy shook his brother’s left shoulder.

Stevie swatted his brother’s hand away and pulled a blanket over his head.

“You shouldn’t’ve drunk so much bourbon,” admonished Brent. “I told you you shouldn’t.”

“Roast in Hell.”

Long Clay withdrew a black pistol, gripped it by the barrel and walked toward the bed.

To the tall narrow man, Brent said, “I’ll get him to—”

The handle of the gun impacted the lump that was Stevie’s head.

The young man shouted, pulled the blanket down and rubbed his tomato-colored ear. “Goddamn that hurt!” Stevie looked up at Long Clay’s triangular face, upon which sat cold blue eyes, a thin gray mustache and a lipless mouth, and declined to proffer any direct criticism.

The gunfighter turned away from the young man, holstered the black six-shooter that was one of two upon his waist, and walked across the room.

Seated upon the windowsill and silhouetted by the drear gray sky was John Lawrence Plugford, a huge man with fifty-six years, a wild beard and worn gray overalls. “You’re done drinkin’ until we get home.” It sounded as if the man’s throat were filled with dry autumn leaves.

“I didn’t take that much,” Stevie defended, “I only—”

“Don’t make Pa repeat himself,” said Brent. “This ain’t no sojourn.”

“I know it ain’t.”

Brent felt a terrible agony in his chest as he pondered the purpose of their journey.

A fist knocked thrice upon the door. Two shooting stars that were drawn pistols arced across Long Clay’s black shirt.

A key tickled plaintive tumblers, and the door opened. Standing in the hallway with two lamb chops in his left hand was Patch Up, a short and pudgy gray-haired negro who was clothed in a maroon suit far finer than any garment worn by the white men. He eyed the tips of Long Clay’s revolvers—one was trained upon his face and the other was pointed at his heart—and fearlessly chewed. Through a mouth full of food, the negro said, “If this is about the lamb chops, I’m willing to make a deal.”

The tall narrow gunfighter holstered his weapons and turned away.

Patch Up swallowed, entered the room and closed the door. “Good morning folks.”

“Mornin’,” replied Brent.

“Mornin’,” croaked Stevie.

The negro strode over to the window and proffered the second lamb chop to the huge patriarch. “Your favorite.”

John Lawrence Plugford shook his head and returned his gaze to the gray dawn outside the window. The wild beard that sprouted from his face and neck seemed like an explosion of outrage.

“It’s cooked all the way through,” added the negro.

The huge man remained uninterested.

“Pa,” Brent said, “you need to eat. We’ve got a big ride today.”

John Lawrence Plugford took the proffered victual, whispered, “Thanks,” and turned again to the gray window. The lamb chop sat in his thick hands like a musical instrument that he did not know how to play.

Brent stretched, set his soles upon the worn plaid carpet and walked toward the yellow dresser, upon which his washed underclothes were sprawled like flat gray men.

“Where’s that Indian?” Stevie asked Patch Up.

“You forget his name?”

“No.”

“People have names for a reason. Even niggers and Indians.”

“Where’s Deep Lake?” asked Stevie.

“It’s Deep Lakes,” Patch Up stated, “there’s an ‘s’ at the end.”

“But there’s only one of him.”

“That’s his name.”

Stevie stood from the bed and stretched. “You tryin’ to make me orn’ry?”

“You should respect what people want to be called. You want me to call you Stovie?”

“I wouldn’t. Where’s Deep Lakes?”

“Don’t know.”

Brent looked up from his damp long drawers and inquired, “He didn’t stay with you in the servants’ quarters?”

“The cooks wouldn’t bunk with an Indian,” said Patch Up. “I told them he was civilized, but they’re suspicious negroes. Deep Lakes said he’d make a camp somewhere and leave town when we do.”

Unhappy that the native had been ostracized, Brent said, “He should’ve come to me with this grievance.”

“He doesn’t want to force his company where he isn’t wanted.”

“Okay.”

Brent set damp socks that still smelled like soap into his suitcase, and nearby, Stevie began to gather his belongings.

Something thudded within the closet, and was succeeded by a dimly audible moan. Brent’s face darkened with anger.

“Goddamn that dumb idiot,” remarked Stevie.

Long Clay walked across the room and opened the closet door. Standing upright within the enclosure and wobbling minutely was a large black trunk.

The gunfighter banged the handle of his pistol upon the wood. “Keep quiet or I’ll get mean.”

The man inside the trunk was silent.

Brent glanced over at his father. John Lawrence Plugford’s vitriolic eyes seared the air. The uneaten lamb chop fell to the sawdust, and the huge man slapped his right hand to the grip of his black sawed-off shotgun.

“J.L.,” cautioned Patch Up.

Brent hastened to the window, gripped his father’s right wrist and said, “Let go of it.”

Long Clay interposed himself between John Lawrence Plugford and the trunk and extricated a flask of bourbon from his rear pocket. Light shone upon the silver vessel and glared in the wild eyes of the patriarch.

“Get calm,” said the gunfighter.

John Lawrence Plugford released the grip of his sawed-off shotgun, took the flask from Long Clay, spun the cap and inserted the nozzle into the thicket that surrounded his vanished mouth. He drank three draughts and summarily replaced his gaze upon the gray morning. As had often been the case for more than half a year, the huge patriarch was beyond words.

Patch Up reclaimed the fallen lamb chop, wiped sawdust from its surface and wrapped it in a piece of wax paper.

Long Clay looked at Brent and Stevie. “Drain the trunk and put it in the wagon. Now.”

Chapter IV
A Ballad for the Real People

Humberto Calles walked toward the gallows that had been erected in Nueva Vida two summers ago, over fifty years after the true people of the land had yielded precious Mexican acres to pale Texicans. The punitive structure was a visibly imposing icon of justice that regularly provided onlookers with an entertaining spectacle, especially if the hanged man struggled overlong or was accidentally decapitated by the noose.

The lone walker reached the gallows, wiped beads of sweat from his head, covered his bald scalp with a sombrero, climbed steps that were decorated with artful tiles that would surely please the eye of any aesthete condemned to death and ascended toward an empty gray heaven. Winded from his climb, the fifty-four-year-old Mexican strode across the platform to the balustrade.

From the stage of death, Humberto asked the onlookers if they would like to hear a song.

“¡Por favor!” shouted eight of the twenty-four people below. Humberto scanned the gathering to see if any town officials were in attendance (they did not want their serious structure used for non-lethal entertainments), but he did not see anybody who might trouble him.

As he adjusted the four strings stretched across the bejeweled frets of his polished blue guitarrita, the balladeer surveyed the crowd. The assemblage was comprised of unhurried people—seamstresses, farmers and old men—and so Humberto decided to perform a long and melancholic song that would appeal to their sensibilities. He squeezed a chord upon his guitarrita’s enameled neck and, with the thick nails that jutted from the fingertips of his right hand, sharply plucked the strings. Atop this steady arpeggio of musical raindrops, Humberto introduced the composition, a ballad entitled, “Beneath the Pebbles,” which was the true story of a man who had fought in the war against the pale Texicans more than fifty years ago.

Strumming a lush augmented chord, Humberto began to sing.

Black clouds rained upon a small farming village in Mexico. In an adobe that was only three seasons old, a man named Alexzander said goodbye to his wife, Gabrielle, who was pregnant with their first child. The twenty-five-year-old man deeply regretted leaving his beloved, but the war with the pale Texicans was going poorly, and he needed to see that the true people of the land retained what was rightfully theirs. Gabrielle wept. (Humberto played isolated high notes in the pizzicato style upon the thinnest string of his guitarrita.) Despite her sadness, the selfless Mexican woman did not protest her husband’s departure because she knew that he must do his duty. They kissed.

(Humberto articulated two melodies that became one harmonized line—the refrain of their love.)

Accompanied by four of his childhood friends, Alexzander departed the small town, journeyed north and joined a failing regiment that was encamped on a Tejas hacienda that had recently been seized by the Mexican army. The gringos had won two decisive battles in the surrounding region, and Alexzander’s superior, El Capitán Jesus Garcia, knew that an unorthodox gambit was needed to defeat the Texicans.

The officer’s plan was simple. Alexzander and his four childhood friends were to hide themselves in a mountain pass that was used by the enemy messengers and slaughter the letter bearers before they ever reached the Texican fort. Alexzander, an educated man literate in both Spanish and English, would alter the documents in ways that would benefit the true people of the land and return the revised missives to the messengers’ corpses for the gringos of the fort to find. The soldiers doubted that they would be able to complete their mission, but it was near the end of the war and such desperate gambits were commonplace.

(Humberto twice played a slow descending melody that was the declining spirit of Mexico.)

The day before the detachment was to leave, Alexzander received a week old missive from Gabrielle in which she informed him that she had miscarried their child. She had wrapped the tiny baby boy in a shawl, buried him in their backyard beside the pond and decorated the grave with smooth pebbles that she had retrieved from the bottom of the creek where she and Alexzander had once stood, twilit, and exchanged their first kiss.

(Humberto played the melody that was their love.)

Alexzander asked Capitán Jesus Garcia to grant him a two-day furlough. The wan soldier hoped to ride south to his village, console his grieving wife and conceive another child before he began his desperate and unlikely mission. The superior officer expected a troop of Texican messengers to come through the pass in the near future and denied Alexzander’s request.

(The balladeer violently strummed his guitarrita and then muted the strings. Below the gallows platform stood twenty-seven spectators, each imagining a personalized and idiosyncratic version of the tale he told.)

Alexzander sent a letter to his wife in which he asked her to ride north and hide herself within the abandoned barn situated at the easternmost edge of the hacienda. He knew that she would not receive the missive for at least six days.

(Humberto flourished his long fingernails and urgently hastened the song.)