Air and Fire (39 page)

No sooner had he started up into the mountains than his worries began. The mule felt uncertain under him. She had been borrowed from the company. She would be used to pack work, the same routes every day; it was possible that she had never left the town before. He cursed himself for not having asked. The trail he was taking was the most direct. There were tight bends, steep slopes, sheer drops. It called for surefootedness and a steadfast disposition. But they were only just above sea-level, and already the mule was laying its ears back and looking to escape. That could be fatal in a country where the only sideways turn was likely to be over a precipice and down five hundred feet.

He went on for as long as he dared, stopping to make camp when the track widened to form an oval. It was dark as a hand of black cards, and there would be rock-falls ahead. He would rest here until the sun came up. Stepping out of the saddle, he hunted through his knapsack for a length of rope and tied the mule's forelegs together so she could not bolt. Then he poured some water into the crown of his hat and set it on the ground in front of her. She dipped her head and drank. Stars jostled in the sky between her ears.

He built a small fire, filled the kettle. While he waited for the water to boil he ate a few mouthfuls of jerked beef and followed it with some fresh dates which the doctor's wife had pressed into his hand. Later, he unpacked his bedroll and lay down, a cup of sugared tea heating a circle on his chest. Part of him knew that there was no time to waste and wanted to panic. Part of him cursed the mule. But he had to lock that part away. It would do Suzanne little good if he was killed before he got to her – and besides, it could not be more than a couple of hours until dawn.

The mule shifted sideways, almost tripped. He calmed her with his hand. Then he threw some brushwood on the fire, enough to keep the jackals away while he was sleeping.

Wilson peered into the distance, eyes screwed against the glare. The Volcan las Tres Vírgenes rose out of a monotonous plain. There was no sign of life, human or animal. The Vizcaino Desert. A wilderness of thorns and stones. A place to try your faith.

‘She is married, you know.'

Only yesterday afternoon he had been sitting in the Hotel La Playa with Pablo and Jesús. Pablo was making entries in the ledger. His hair, slick with pomade, shone white where the light ran over it. Jesús was testing the reflexes in his left knee with a failed baguette. The bread was stale, hard as wood; the knee was not responding. From time to time a vulture dropping landed with a soft slap on the lobby floor. The two Mexicans were teasing him about Suzanne.

‘I know she's married,' Wilson said. ‘In fact, I was the one who told you.'

‘You Americans,' Jesús said.

‘I've done nothing to be ashamed of,' Wilson said.

Pablo glanced up. ‘I don't know. You Americans. No scruples.'

‘You can't talk,' Wilson said, ‘calling this place the Hotel La Playa.'

‘What's wrong with Hotel La Playa? It's a nice name.'

‘Yeah, it's a nice name,' Wilson said, ‘but where's the beach?'

Pablo returned to his ledger. A couple of figures demanded his immediate and close attention.

‘You're in the middle of the town,' Wilson said, ‘and you call it Hotel La Playa. You're not even on the waterfront.'

‘It's salesmanship,' Pablo said. ‘You wouldn't understand.'

‘Hotel La Playa?' Wilson said. ‘There isn't a beach within five miles of here.'

Another vulture dropping slapped on to the floor.

‘I must do something about a roof,' Pablo said.

Jesús shifted on his chair, anxious suddenly. ‘What if the French find out?' he said. ‘About you and the Señora?'

Wilson sighed. ‘I told you. There's nothing in it.'

‘They'll crucify him,' Pablo said, with relish. ‘Absolutely crucify him.'

The mule dipped her head and began to snap at the shoots on a mesquite tree. Wilson let her eat. He had been travelling since dawn without a break. Two hours' sleep, and only his memory for entertainment. He had decided not to think about how to find Suzanne. He would just ride to San Ignacio, zigzag-fashion, so as to cover the widest possible area. He chose not to dwell on the fact that she did not know the way. There was a point at which he had to throw his lot in with everything that could not be counted on. It was nothing new for him. This journey put him in mind of other journeys. Leaving San
Francisco on foot to look for his father had seemed no less foolhardy, no less desperate. His mother standing on the corner of Piano Street, wrapped in a shawl against the April wind. ‘Find the good-for-nothing. Bring him back.' With a country three thousand miles wide to choose from! But Constance Pharaoh knew her husband. He told lies that were remembered. He left a trail in people's heads. Out on the open road Wilson soon found women who wanted his father dead. Men who had laughed so hard, their faces were still marked with it months after.

Now he thought about it, he seemed to have spent his entire life on missions where the chances of success were so remote that he could not actually imagine it at all. And yet he had developed qualities along the way that had stood him in good stead: intuition, tenacity, patience too.
In patience wisdom can be found.
A Navajo scout had told him that, one winter in Zuñi. That man had taught him plenty. How to move from one part of yourself to another. How to listen to the part you chose and hush the rest. A bent nose and a turquoise amulet. A bottle of Taos lightning. A voice no louder than the desert wind. That was the most that he could summon of the man, and yet the lesson had never faded. Maybe because he had a picture of it. Maybe because he saw patience as a kind of ore and wisdom as the gold that it could yield. It was a good thing for him to know and to remember, seeing as how he was descended from a line of tense and brittle men.

It was late afternoon and he had ridden through the heat, twelve hours of it, when he thought he could see a white dress lying on the ground ahead of him.

He did not believe it.

It was what he wanted to see, and it was just like the land to conspire with his mind and fake it for him. It must be water, then. A puddle on the ground.

But out here?

His eyes swept tall cactus, orange rocks, the sheet glare of the sky. Returned. It was still there. A glimmer. A reflection.

It could not be her – surely. For one thing, it was too soon. For another, there was no sign of the horse.

As he drew closer, though, he saw the vultures. Then he knew for certain. They looked like smudges of black ink on the cactus spires. They looked like mistakes; they should not have been there. He dug his
heels deep into the mule's flanks and urged her forwards. The ground was almost level here. She did not complain.

In one motion he jumped down and looped the reins around the branch of an elephant tree. He swiftly gathered rocks and hurled them at the vultures. They took off as if they were made of sticks and cloth. They ambled away through the air on clumsy wings, indifferent to his anger, untouched by it.

He dropped to his knees beside her. Opening the lid of his tobacco tin, he held the shiny metal to her lips. The faintest smear of condensation formed. Now he was inches away from her he could see a weak pulse beating in her neck. He brought the water up to her mouth.

As he moistened her lips, her eyes opened. Rolled backwards, then seemed to focus. He felt that she could see him.

‘Suzanne?'

Her lips were scorched and split, dried blood in the ridges. But they had moved a fraction. He bent down close to her.

‘Who – ' Her voice cracked.

‘It's me,' he said. ‘Wilson.'

One of her hands curled in the dirt. Blood had blackened on her thumb. He had never imagined that she could be so injured.

‘You – '

‘Slowly,' he said. ‘Take it slow.'

His ear grazed her lips.

‘You came – '

His eyes drifted, blurred.

Her face turned sideways; she was looking along the top of the ground. ‘I had so much love in me,' she whispered, ‘and no one wanted it.'

He lowered his head. His tears fell among hot cinders.

Suzanne could see a woman standing at the water's edge. The woman wore nothing but a skirt of black pearls. The water washed across her feet and then withdrew. The woman smiled. A slow smile, a smile with pure pleasure in it. She knew where the power of life ended and the power of death began. She had drawn the line.

Suzanne lifted an arm to wave but her hand stayed motionless in the air beside her ear. She did not call out, not yet. She just waited, knowing it would not be long.

Slowly. Take it slow.

Life, she comes from nowhere. Behind, above, below. Some place our eyes are not looking at. Death, she walks right up to us. We see her coming. Every step, every sway of the hips. Every inch of the way. Death, she wears a black pearl skirt.

Suzanne opened her eyes. Until she opened them she had not known that they were closed. It was like having a choice. Two worlds. One on this side, one on the other. Her eyelids were the border, were the door. The sky was darkest blue in front of her. Then something landed on her face and made her blink. Not pearls, though almost as miraculous.

Rain.

Beads of it dropping all over her skin, her dress, the ground. Some necklace had broken up above. And the sky still darkest blue, and not a cloud in it.

The woman turned her face and smiled in recognition. A smile that said, One of our own. Turned and walked towards her, wrists knocking against her hips, hips swaying lazily. That smile. A skirt that swayed and clicked. The power of life.

Her feet left no prints on the sand.

She was thirteen and running in the long grass. The woods outside the town. That green smell of rain on leaves, rain on the trunks of trees. That hard sound, as if the rain were solid – not water falling from the
sky, but coins or buttons. God's purse, God's sewing basket. Her friend ran beside her, and everything bad had been undone. All life handed back, all the simple joys released. The rain poured off her arms and legs, and she looked down at herself, among green leaves, among black trunks of trees. She looked as if she had been polished. She looked like something valuable. To be treasured. Something that would last for ever.

Drink it up. All up. It will keep you strong.

A man kneeling beside her. She knew him. He lifted his hat to her and wiped his hand on his trousers before he greeted her. He had come to take her to the cool green waters. She smiled behind her lips. It could not be far now. They were almost there.

Everything settling, everything arranged. All movements gradually diminishing. Even the rain seemed to be touching her more gently now, like the light from distant stars.

Her husband, whom she would always love.

She wanted to say something about happiness, such happiness as she had known. Her lips moved, came as close to words as they could. Which was not even close. The air stood still in her throat. Her tongue not even there.

She blessed him in his absence. She blessed him. He had never been anything less than kind.

So. Are you happy now?

The sky was darkest blue in front of her. The black pearls sown and scattered on the land. This knowledge had been revealed to her. A knowledge that would grow in her. The knowledge of her power.

The woman walked towards her, hips shifting lazily. Somebody who wanted her.

One of our own.

The first rain in months. In years. And out of a clear heaven too. Wilson tipped his head back, felt it beat against his forehead, eyelids, teeth.

He had heard that this could happen. A
chubasco,
they called it. Canyons became rivers. Coyotes drowned; whole settlements were swept away. And afterwards a spring would come. A spring that was momentary, improvised. The barren landscape bristled with shoots and blossoms. The desert would turn green. That was what they said. He had listened but he had never known quite what to believe. Maybe it was no more than a traveller's tale, the kind of lie his father used to tell.

But here it was, all round him. And not just drizzle either. Sheets of it between him and everything. Loud bucketfuls tumbling out of the sky. The mule had tipped her head to one side and she was snapping at the rain with her chipped teeth, the way a cat snaps at a blade of grass.

And then it stopped. As suddenly as it had started. The sky still clear above, the sky still blue. Before he had time to fill his canisters. Before he could even take his hat off and turn it upside-down. He listened to the land settling into its new shape. Creaking as the water ran over it and into it. It was already vanishing. Soon there would be no evidence that it had rained at all, and he would be another traveller with a tall tale.

He looked at Suzanne. Her face streaked with dust that had turned to mud, her blonde ringlets matted.

She was whispering something. He had to bend down, put his ear close to her mouth.

‘Water – '

‘You want some water?'

She shook her head. ‘Green – '

‘Green? Green what?' He bent still closer. His ear grazed her lips.

She tried to swallow. ‘Green water – ' Her chin lifted. ‘Ka – ' She
could not say it. All those syllables. Then her voice found its way clear. ‘You promised.'

He washed her face and neck with torn-off pieces of her own damp dress, then he threaded his hands beneath her body and carried her over to the mule. As he heaved her up into the saddle, her head fell back against his sleeve. He tried to coax a little water through her lips, but her throat was too swollen. It just spilled out again.

He climbed into the saddle in front of her. The mule staggered. He fitted his hand against the muscle of the mule's shoulder. Spoke a few words into her ear. When she had found her balance, he lashed Suzanne to his back with a length of rope that circled them three times. Then he placed her arms around his waist. He had to keep her from slipping sideways, falling to the ground.