Beyond the Horizon Read online

  Chiseling at the rock was a two man job, the cripple explained. One man needed to hold the spud bar in place—one hand on the shaft, the other near the flat end. The other man swung the hammer into the spud bar. The motion was repeated over and over. Chips of rock flew up amidst sparks. The racket came from all around, echoing through the corridors and amplifying off the walls.

  ‘Signal to stop?’ the cripple asked. ‘If youre holdin the bar, you place your thumb over the hammer end.’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘Remember though that we switch places every half hour. Smash my thumb and it’ll be my turn next.’

  The man nodded. They commenced working. The cripple swung the hammer into the spud bar. Vibrations shot up the man’s arms and pulsated into his head. He opened his mouth so his teeth wouldnt clap together. The cripple swung again and the rocks splintered, sending shards of stone at the side of the man’s face.

  ‘Stop,’ the man said. The cripple swung again. The joints in the man’s wrists and arms clapped together violently. His eyes seemed to shake in his head. He scrunched his eyes shut and placed his thumb over the butt end of the bar. He held his breath and waited for the next blow.

  ‘Quittin already?’ the cripple asked.

  ‘Think we could switch places?’ the man asked.

  Initially there was some opposition to the commandante’s rule of law inside the walls of the fort. Soldiers talked in the saloon of how commandante wasnt even a recognized rank in the American army.

  ‘Where’d this fella come from?’ one asked.

  ‘Heard he was here all by hisself, like a hermit,’ another said. ‘Commander let him stay round just to make him happy.’

  ‘I say if he lived out here like a nigger, we shoulda killed him same as a nigger.’

  A chorus of agreement rose up from the saloon.

  ‘Hes crazy,’ one soldier shouted.

  Another chorus more adamant than the first resounded.

  ‘Why’s he got all those villagers diggin a mineshaft here inside the fort?’

  ‘Gave em our bunkhouse too.’

  ‘Cause he done killed half the soldiers round here for breakin rules.’

  The more the soldiers drank and the more they told stories, the more enraged they became. ‘Figure we should go out and string that commandante up by the flagpole,’ one suggested. ‘Skin the sumbitch alive.’ Soldiers nodded, pretending to agree with this approach soberly. ‘Least a hundred of us left; no way he can overpower us.’

  ‘Thats right,’ a new voice said from the doorway. It was the commandante. The room became quiet. Men sat with their eyes downcast at their drinks, their hands cupped round their mugs. ‘Here I am,’ the commandante said. He held up his hands to show that he carried no implements. ‘You’—he singled out the last soldier to speak—‘could stand up right now, break that mug and use a shard to cut me right here.’ He traced his finger down his neck. ‘Major vein right there—the carotid artery—bleed to death before I could even curse at you.’ He walked amongst the tables, looking down on each man, each soldier avoiding his gaze. ‘I never did nothing without your commander’s approval,’ he said. ‘Not a tax, nor a decree. I never gave an order on my own. If I did, this world would be a different place. You could kill me, yes. But it wont make a difference.’

  ‘Our commander is doing this?’ one very drunk soldier asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Our military commander is treatin us like commoners, while the villagers live like kings.’ It was half a question and half a statement. The commandante did not answer directly.

  ‘I am in charge of civilian affairs—village dealings you might call them,’ he explained. ‘If you want to be treated as I treat my men, perhaps you should institute a change in command.’

  Four

  i

  The Indian awoke and coughed. He tried to move, but found his arms and legs to be pinned. He could see nothing—not because his eyes did not work, but because, like a billion years ago, he was buried somewhere. The smell was familiar enough; although everything becomes familiar after so many years in this world. He wiggled his fingers and found whatever his casing was to be pliable. He shifted his body and pressed his arms against the sides of his packed container. There was a splintering and finally a prolonged crack. Mulched wood scattered as the hollowed log split apart. The Indian pushed one half of the log aside and stepped out. He still wore his skeleton armor and he noticed how the bones fitted better now. His body was more filled out, muscular, younger and taller. He could not remove these bones if he desired. The flames from the crater had fused them to his skin.

  After he stopped marveling at himself, he looked up and found a tribe of Indians watching him in amazement. This log was in the middle of an encampment. Men, women and children all stood frozen, watching this man who emerged from a rotting log examine himself.

  First the Indian addressed them as friends, then he told them in their tongue how he was sent here on a quest to destroy a stranger. A billion years is a long time to stew on vengeance. The Indian smelled the air, fresh with conifer resin and light smoke. Hes here, the Indian assured them. In this time, the stranger walked amongst them. Then he asked who would join him and if they had a horse.

  It felt like a lifetime had passed when the man and the cripple rode the lift to the mouth of the mine. They were soaked through with cave dew and sweat. The man’s arms were numb from swinging the sledge and holding the spud bar. A throbbing pain swelled in his head. When they reached the top, the world was bright and the light stabbed at the man’s eyes. He placed his hand over his face and groaned.

  Once his eyes adjusted, he removed his hand. Veils of smoke hung limp in the air around the entirety of the fort. Soldiers stood at ready by the gate, sabers drawn from their sheaths. A lookout was stationed at the highest point on the scaffolding.

  ‘Places still standing,’ the cripple said. ‘Good news, I suppose.’

  ‘This a common thing?’ the man asked. ‘Injuns attackin the fort, I mean.’

  ‘Cant say it is,’ the cripple said. ‘We usually keep them farther out. To them this place is death.’

  The next shift of men, awakened not long ago, walked past them on the catwalk. The cripple grabbed one man by the sleeve and asked what was going on. ‘Hell out there, brother,’ the miner said. ‘Commandante said we’d all be safer in the tunnels—said to go as deep as we could.’ The miner kept walking.

  Once they reached the bunkhouse all of the miners were abuzz with speculation. ‘Redskin niggers finally gonna have their way with us,’ one said. ‘Done killed too many of em.’

  The cripple limped over to talk with the man, telling him stories of Indians he’d met in his time. The man climbed up to his top bunk. Warmth from whoever was sleeping there minutes before still radiated in the straw mattress. He closed his eyes and blocked out the din of the returning miners. He thought of his woman—of the boy she was sure to have birthed by now.

  He recalled the day the band of Mexicans left, taking with them the wagons and the women, the burros stuffed full with rations. They took the last of the man’s coffee and a few rodent pelts as a payment for the pregnant woman. She sat on the ground, used her fingers to comb through her hair. She hummed to herself. The man walked over and offered her some boiled roots. First she smelled the thin soup and then wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Not much a life out here,’ the man said. ‘But it can be alright sometimes. It’s quiet.’

  The woman avoided looking him in the eyes. She nodded. ‘Por favor no duela al bebé,’ she said, sliding her hand over her womb. A tear welled in her eyelashes, gained mass and trickled down her face. ‘Este bebé es mi salvavida.’

  The man, as if he understood the words of the woman, knelt and stroked her cheek with his thumb. ‘I’ll do whatever I need to do to protect that child,’ he said.

  The soldiers found the commander cowering in the village office of the commandante. They brought him back to the fort, barely sober and shackled. Rumor ha
d it the soldiers were searching for him and they intended to hang him in the courtyard. He had fled and hid in the only spot of the village he knew intimately.

  ‘Youre a son of a bitch,’ he said. He spat on the ground just shy of the commandante’s boots.

  ‘This sumbitch’ll treat us better than you,’ the lieutenant said.

  By now the soldiers—albeit fewer in number—had gathered around. The civilians were also roused and came to the opened gate of the fort to inspect the scene. Bystanders related what they thought to be the case to those who sidled up. The commandante held up his hand and a quiet settled on the crowd. He smiled at the commander. ‘This man has done nothing wrong,’ he said. ‘Hes not done anything right either.’ A few people laughed. ‘We cant kill him.’ Now the crowd stirred, the soldiers murmured to each other. ‘We will turn him out into the village and he will be treated like a stranger. Let him scavenge for food and make his life by taking from others. Here, in this fort, I am now the ranking officer.’ A few weak cheers resounded at this last sentence.

  The commander tried to plead his case, but the crowd jostled him back out of the fort into the open space before the gate. They took turns beating him and urinating on him, kicking dust onto his wet body. He coughed and cried, lay curled up on the ground. They stripped him of his uniform and left him naked.

  ii

  Order fell on the fort in the most natural of fashions. The power of the commandante remained a mystery to his own men, yet they dared not to explore it. He would make a decree and the men did as they were told. The role of the soldiers was reduced to the level of hired help—cleaning the barracks, overseeing the construction of the mine, tending to the commandante’s personal needs. The gate of the fort was ordered to stay shut, only to open to those who knew of Indians’ whereabouts.

  He obsessed over the Indians. It had been years—decades even—since the Indian boy disappeared. Questions of time nagged at his mind. He wondered if the Indian would be cunning enough to figure a way back; if the boy possessed the lack of humanity necessary to survive the throes of history. He wondered if the Indian had seen all the things he saw, if he saw the world for the beautiful heap of bones and flesh and blood it was.

  Outside the walls of the fort, the village degenerated into mayhem. The commandante refused to extend his rule of law over them. They can establish a government, law and order, if they wish, he told the soldiers. At one point they had a system of government; they have chosen to give it up. Somewhere amongst them, the commander trifled, stole and begged. He took to wandering from rooftop to rooftop and marauding the newcomers to town.

  In the streets, children ran and played, scamming outsiders with gimmick trades. Vendors and buskers crowded each other, fought and argued. At the bar, women whored and the men drank. Waste filled the streets, stinking in the height of day and sinking into a low stench at night.

  Because the village had become such a place of madness, the fort itself became more self-sustaining. The men, civilian residents and soldiers alike, had their jobs working in either the mine or the day to day fort operations. Most days they only worked and slept. The miners with their twelve hour shifts were notably routine. Then, on payday, the men of the fort rejoiced.

  Fort James had its own commissary and saloon. As it was the only store within the fort’s walls, the men had to go there to buy anything. Rarely did they ever see cash; everything was bought on credit and recorded in a ledger by the saloonkeeper. He shared his book only with the commandante.

  The men sat and drank, told stories. They might dance. Since there were no women to speak of inside the fort, some of the men would drink their fill then fornicate in the jakes. Often times, the men who enjoyed sitting and drinking would recall the history of Fort James; of the commandante’s career.

  ‘Fought in the Injun wars,’ a miner might say. ‘Thats why he done got injuns on his mind. Cant stop killin em.’

  ‘This place is built on some injun burial ground,’ another said. ‘Found some nigger’s bones down in the mine—down about twenty rods.’ Jeers of disbelief rose up from the bar. ‘You could ask my partner, if he spoke American, that is.’

  The men laughed and the first miner joked that the commandante built the fort here just to piss off the niggers. There wasnt any other earthly reason for this place.

  The Indian and his pack of men roved the western lands of America. They went through areas unchartered and unnamed. They crafted crude weaponry from petrified trees and arroyo rocks. At night, when the stars spun in a kaleidoscope menagerie in the sky above, the Chief—as he had been dubbed—told stories of the world to come. He told of a time—and now was the dawn of that time—when beasts in the body of humans would massacre their tribes. The men, he told his fellow Indians, would look decent enough: their clothes were fine and cut to their bodies; their hair and teeth would be cleaner; their eyes would be vibrant shades. But underneath, these people were feral animals. Do not let them speak, he warned. Dash their brains out with a stone. Rap them in the backbone with a stick. Rip their throats out before they can cry for help.

  One of the tribesmen asked if the Chief wore the bones of a white man. The Chief shook his head, said the bones were of a common ancestor. He thought that if he killed the men who came before him, it could change the world. But it did not.

  Another tribesman asked why they lived as they did then. If history could not change the world, why did they roam the mountainsides looking for white men? The Chief sighed, said there would be a man—a stranger—who called those he encountered friends. He held up his index finger, the boned finger flexing with it, and warned that this stranger was no friend. But this animal of a human, this stranger, he could shape history.

  Still another tribesman asked how they would find this stranger. The Chief seemed to anticipate the question. He simply replied that the universe was a small place and there was plenty of time.

  The man wasnt asleep but an hour when the clamor of the other men in the bunkhouse woke him. The cripple pulled on his boots.

  ‘Niggers done attacked the village,’ he said. The men shoved past each other to exit the bunkhouse. Outside, in the courtyard, the soldiers braced the gate with wooden beams. Up along the top of the walls more soldiers kept watch on the village below. Plumes of smoke bellowed up into the air. The tips of fire lapped at the side of the fort.

  ‘Cant tell how many there are,’ the lieutenant reported to the commandante. ‘Smokes too thick to see.’

  The commandante nodded and walked to the gate. ‘Open the slot,’ he said to a sergeant. The soldier did as he was told, standing clear of the porthole. The panel slid open and an Indian’s face, teeth gritted, looked back through.

  ‘Goddamn!’ a soldier yelled. Another stepped in front of the commandante and ran his saber through the opening, through the throat of the Indian.

  With the view now clear, the commandante studied the melee. ‘Yes,’ he said to himself, nodding. He held his coat by the lapels. ‘This is what I thought it was.’

  A woman ran through the street, naked from the waist up. A rock on a rope intersected her path and crushed her skull. She collapsed dead. Another villager, the black stablehand, was maimed, but still alive. He took a knife from his boot and slashed his wrist and looked to the sky.

  ‘What’ll we do?’ the lieutenant asked.

  ‘Let the village burn.’ The commandante walked to the opposite side of the courtyard and, before entering his office, he turned around. ‘Might want to head down into the mines and dig. Probably our only hope of salvation.’

  The men from the bunkhouse heeded the commandante’s words and fled to the tunnels. In the narrow alley leading to the scaffolding, several men were trampled to death, including the cripple. A few more fell from the scaffolds. As the man passed by the wall on the highest scaffold, he could see the village below. Like the other men, he slowed to see the destruction. Indians, no more than a dozen, leapt from rooftop to rooftop, trolling the alleys. Bodies of vill
agers lay strewn in the streets, half hanging out of windows. Fires everywhere chugged black smoke into the air.

  ‘Hurry up,’ a miner called from behind. He shoved at the man and they kept walking.

  Men loaded onto the lift until it creaked under the weight of its burden. They descended rapidly. Some men, braver and dumber, slid down the cables or scaled the walls. As they descended, the men on the lift debated what they should do.

  ‘Commandante says tunnelin is gonna be the only way out,’ one said.

  ‘Dont mean anything, we’re too far down to poke our heads out elsewhere.’

  ‘Theres an old mine shaft farther down—looks to be from another mine,’ the man volunteered.

  ‘You was workin with the old fool, the man with the crooked back.’

  ‘Thats right.’

  ‘Old fool found an old shaft, eh?’

  The man said it was so. ‘Looked to be all caved in on itself,’ the man said. ‘Wasnt keen on workin on it. Figured it might bury us alive.’

  ‘God willing,’ the miner mumbled. Then said to the rest that they were going to find this other tunnel. ‘One thing for certain—we aint gonna come back out to the same place we done left.’

  iii

  Life on the plains was never easy. It never would be. Years after the man died, the Dust Bowl would torment the land. Tornados would funnel down from strange skies and assail the earth—some coasting by established farmhouses, some uprooting whatever lay in its way.

  For now though the man and the woman cohabitated in peace. He fixed her meals and fetched water. He dared not to touch her for fear that the baby inside of her might somehow become damaged. In the evenings he built small fires so he could look at her. They each spoke in their respective languages, though neither knew exactly what the other said.