Exit Kingdom (6 page)

Abraham?

For a moment, Moses is confused. What is it that the monk is asking? But Ignatius clarifies with a hand gesture circling his face. What he’s asking is how Abraham came to be so damaged of
physique.

Oh, Moses says, that. He got into
a tussle a few days back. The other man got him pretty good. It was out in the desert. He walked away – the other guy, I mean. I didn’t kill him or
nothin.

Ignatius nods but says nothing. Moses supposes he’s waiting because he hasn’t heard the real answer to what he was asking.

The big man shifts in the pew, and the wood creaks uncomfortably beneath his weight.

There was a town,
Moses goes on. Abraham, he got – he got too close to one of the girls. I mean, it was agreed upon. Consensual, I mean. But still and all – there was something about
him she didn’t cotton to. He must of done something – I don’t know what—

I think I understand, Ignatius says.

Moses looks at him, wondering if the man truly does understand. A man of God after all – but also one of pretty
phrases and toy silences.

He was born wrong, Moses says.

But you watch out for him.

Watch out for him, Moses repeats as though the phrase has two meanings, which it does, and he is juggling between them in his mind. I got a brother’s duty, he says at last.

And what does that duty tell you?

It tells me I’m his blooden kin and that even the worst of us has got at least one person
in the world to honour them.

Ignatius says nothing.

I try to keep him from doing things, Moses says miserably.

Ignatius again says nothing – just continues to stare piously at all that baroque gold artistry above the altar. Maybe God speaks directly to him through statues.

What I would know is this, Moses says, raising his voice suddenly so that it echoes through the empty hall.
If I’m the one man whose duty it is to honour my brother, how many others are
out there – not blood to him, mind you – whose duty it is to hold him true accountable for the things he does? How many? What would your reckon on that number be?

Moses points angrily, first at the statue of the Virgin Mary in the alcove on the right and then to the entombed statue of Saint Xavier in the alcove
on the left.

A man ain’t built like a church to hold divided loyalties. How can a man do honour to both a man and the man’s victims? You tell me that. Where is the order that would punish this
man? What about all this?

Again Moses gestures to the church – all the statues of saints and angels and martyrs looking down upon them.

I brung him here, and I lay him down before you – and
where is the arbiter to set him true or make him pay? You command tongues to hold themselves for the name of God – and now
there’s a sinner, nay two, in sore need of redemption or condemnation – either one’ll do. So redeem or condemn. I keep to my order, so why ain’t you keepin to yours?

Moses, having spilled forth this liturgy of frustration, looks again to the monk Ignatius, who sits benignant
with his head bowed and his hands folded in his lap – as though his were a
peace that becomes stronger the more you assail it.

Finally, Moses sits back in the pew and breathes deep.

I apologize, friar, he says quietly. I’m a coarse lout who sometimes talks out of turn.

Ignatius shakes his head, as though forgiveness were too bulky a thing for two such puny beings to trade between
them.

You are looking for an order, the monk says, some structure beyond your own contrivance. It may be that there is no such order.

This strikes Moses as funny, and he gives a brief, aborted chuckle.

You’re not much of a friar, friar, he says.

The laws we create for ourselves are beautiful, says the smiling Ignatius, but don’t expect the world to conform to them. You’d be lucky
to find one single other person who shares
your code. If you do find that person, cleave to him with ferocity. But otherwise . . .

Order’s a dancin megrim, eh?

Now Ignatius chuckles.

You have a poetry that makes me miss the words I so infrequently use.

That’s a kindness, friar, assuming you’re not makin fun.

Rest assured. Friars don’t make fun.

They sit in silence for
a while, listening to the crackle of the single torch left burning in the church. The shadows move long and panicked in the orange flicker, and the statues cast
phantasmagoric shadows across the frescoed walls – and the effect is of two different artforms in combat.

It’s a beautiful place you’ve got here, friar, Moses says.

It was built by the Papago in the eighteenth century under the
direction of a man named Juan Bautista Velderrain.

Moses nods.

There’s been a lot of history between then and now, Moses says. The memory of a man’s name – what does it get you?

Not much, I suppose. Just a thing to collect. Like stamps or currency – things whose values used to be accepted as common. Still, not all the magics of the past have gone away. There are
still some in the
desert. Still some even here at the mission.

Like what magics?

Ignatius breathes in deep and narrows his eyes as though looking past the very walls of the structure.

Interesting thing about the Papago, he says. Apparently their customs lacked much of the pageantry of other tribes’. Their dances were shuffling barefoot on the earth. Their music was
drumming on overturned baskets –
which makes almost no noise. Everything they did was aimed downward, as though life were something that came from above and were meant to be spilled into the
earth. Now everything’s backwards. You plant life in the earth – call it death if you like – but it gets spit back up. Maybe we’ve fed the earth too much. Maybe it’s
lost a taste for us.

Maybe, Moses says. He’s thinking about the
sound of dry palms pounding on overturned baskets in the middle of the desert. Dry, skeletal rattle, man shaking his bones.

I have a job for you, Ignatius says, if you could find terms on which to take it.

What’s the job?

Tomorrow we’ll talk. I want to show you something. But tomorrow.

Talk, Moses says to the caravaners. All we’ve got is talk.

He pauses in his
story as if to show how great a vacuum is left in the world by the absence of speech. He gazes into the bonfire, and the others gaze with him. It is late, and the sky
overhead is lightless, the stars hidden behind the blinding screen of smoke from the fire.

Talk, Moses says again. There ain’t nothin good or bad in the universe that can’t be turned the other way by talkin it around. The world,
it’s all palaver. You might think
different – I did too, then. But break bone and tear flesh, those are just actions that a man might do, just ways of killing time between the questions we ask ourselves in the dark. Me,
I’ve built and broken in equal share – and the earth ain’t any more or any less, on the balance, as a result of my doings. But you could just sit still like we’re all doin
right here and talk your way the entire journey from heaven to hell and whatever purgatory’s between.

He pauses again. No one speaks. Miles are travelled, perhaps, in their minds.

I’ve wielded thousands of weapons in my half-century of livin, Moses continues. Everything from rifle to tree branch. And I’m tellin you there’s no artillery more powerful
than words. Those spoken and those
un – it makes no difference.

The mute who travels with him, the one he calls Maury, suddenly howls up at the sky, an extended, inchoate keen like that of a coyote – representing not hunger nor loneliness nor
anything else but some arcane and inscrutable desire cried to the unanswering heavens. One-eyed Moses turns to look at his companion with brief but solicitous care. But the mute hushes
again and
begins to play with his fingers quietly.

Words, Moses goes on, spoken or un, comprehensible or in, it makes no difference. I used to be one kind of man, and then I became another. And then another. And still another after that.
Moses Todd, the painted man. Maybe all of us are painted, all of us circus clowns – and the act moves from ring to ring. I used to be one kind of man,
and then I spoke to a monk and I became
someone else. And then there was a girl, and the two of us talked, and I became someone else.

He goes silent for a moment, his eyes lost in contemplation of his own past, but then he shakes himself back into the present.

But no, that’s something else – the girl, I mean – that’s a different story. See, words are dangerous for how they proliferate.
The plague of the dead ain’t
nothin to the plague of language, for it works insidious at your memory and your perception of all things. This story – the one I’m speaking to you right now – it’s about
holy things. But the tellin of what’s holy and what’s not – well, that’s a beautiful magic of parlance, ain’t it?

He pauses again, lowering a stick into the fire until it catches and then
bringing the flaming end up to his cigar. He puffs three times to bring the weed alight, lets the smoke spill out
between his lips and over his beard, and then continues his story.

The brothers sleep in a crib of the horse stables on mounds of dry hay. It looks as though there have not been any horses in the stable for many years. Instead, much of the
space is taken with
the storage of provisions – barrels of water in anticipation of the dry months, jars of food in anticipation of famine.

They were offered beds in one of the bunkhouses, but Moses declined for the both of them. They have slept in worse than a stable crib, and there is a sour pleasure in sleeping as beasts among
these good and righteous people. Moses bites down upon the selfsubjugation, as
you would upon a rotten tooth to feel the flare of pious pain.

In the morning when Moses wakes, coughing the dust from his lungs and picking dry hay from his beard, he discovers that his brother Abraham is gone from the crib. He rushes from the stable and
through the courtyard where the faces of the acolytes question him without words. Ignoring their expressions, he continues the search
for his brother near the picnic tables, by the kitchen house,
in the vegetable garden.

He eventually discovers Abraham in the church itself. He holds in his hands a fragment of cloth that has painted on it in watercolours a house and a sunset and a smiling girl. The girl herself
stands next to him and beams up happily at his admiration.

This is quite a picture now, he says to her,
holding it out away from him in an exaggerated performance of appreciation. You got a deft touch with the brush. I’ll tell you something, this
is about as pretty a picture as I’ve seen in years. They should hang this up in a museum somewhere. You know what a museum is?

The girl shakes her head no.

It’s a place where they put all the greatest paintings in the world. And this one here
could hold its own against any of those.

He hands it back to her with great delicacy.

You best hold tight to that, he says. Keep it safe. It’s so pretty, someone’s gonna want to steal that away from you.

The girl takes the watercolour back and scurries away.

Behind Moses the monk Ignatius appears. He has been observing the interaction as well.

Your brother doesn’t seem like
the man you make him out to be, Ignatius says quietly.

You missed the point, friar, the lesson he was teachin that girl. It was to watch out because pretty things get plucked.

Then Abraham notices the two standing in the wide doorway of the church.

Mornin, he says. Moses can see him bristling under his brother’s suspicious gaze.

Good morning, Ignatius says. I trust you both slept
well. I hope you’ll reconsider your arrangements for tonight and take one of the bunkhouses. We have plenty of room.

I think we may be movin along today, friar, says Moses. You been very kind, and we don’t want to take undue advantage of your hospitality.

Leaving so soon? Ignatius says. All the more reason to show you what I need to show you and make you my proposition. You have weapons,
I take it?

So Ignatius instructs them to get a couple guns from their car and to meet him at the front gate of the compound.

What do you suppose the holy man has in mind for us? Abraham asks Moses as they dig through the satchels of weapons in the trunk of the car. You think it’s a trap?

It ain’t a trap, Moses says.

Then what?

Moses shrugs.

We’ll know when we know. It ain’t
these people who are a danger to
us
.

What’s that mean?

But Moses doesn’t respond. He hands his brother a rifle and takes a pistol for himself and walks to the front gate of the mission, hearing Abraham slam the car trunk closed and follow
behind him.

At the gate, they find the monk Ignatius waiting for them – and next to him the young woman in white robes that Moses noticed at dinner
the night before. She has long red hair brushed
straight out over the back of the robes, and there’s a quality to her expression that Moses can’t make sense of – as though there were springs in the corners of her mouth that
naturally want to draw her face into a sneer were it not for the constant exhausting effort to keep it serene. He estimates her age to be just over two decades – though
a pair of decades rich
with hazard and life.

Ignatius gestures for them all to follow him out the front gate – and once outside he glances around nervously, but there are no slugs to be seen. In the distance, there are desiccated,
sand-blown corpses like features of the desert – and some of them might rouse themselves to action if you were to come near them – but the place is too barren
for much life, even the
life of the dead.

As they walk around the perimeter of the mission, Ignatius introduces the woman.

Abraham and Moses, I am honoured to introduce you to the canoness, the Vestal Amata.

The which now? Abraham says.

Pleased to meet you, Moses says.