Gabriel's Story (23 page)

THE NIGHTS WERE COOL ON THE COLORADO PLATEAU. They rode across a rutted, butted, and sand-washed landscape five thousand feet above the sea. They were in a country open to sky, moving vulnerably beneath it, closer to God and more insignificant for it. The land they traveled through was thick with chaparral and creosote bushes. They stirred up pigeons and quail, which lifted into the air with raucous cries and, more often than not, flew in line with the riders. Dallas shot five of them before Marshall told him that he should think about saving his ammunition. He did for a few hours, until some jackrabbits proved too large a temptation for him. He shot three in the space of an hour.

For the first few days the girl did manage to slow their progress. She sat unresponsive in camp, had to be pulled to her feet and set in the saddle bodily. She was no longer blindfolded, and her hands were tied in front of her instead of behind her back, but she still refused to give her horse any direction. It would dawdle along at the end of its tether, following reluctantly. Every so often it would sink on its haunches and fight forward progress, once jerking Dallas, who was leading it, completely from the saddle. This happened so often on the second day, and so often at precarious moments for the lead rider—just mounting a ridge of slippery rock, just about to descend a slope—that Rollins finally deduced that the horse was acting on signals from the girl. From then on she rode James's horse and he hers. Thus they picked up the pace.

Gabriel kept his eye on James, who seemed less and less of this world. He no longer responded to comments thrown his way, no longer even met Gabriel's gaze. Instead, he stared blankly at the passing land and the creatures in it. It seemed he'd forgotten the most basic actions of life. Marshall had to shout at him to get him to move; more than twice Rollins slapped him across the back of his head in an attempt to get a response from him. Gabriel did what he could to help him along, hitching and unhitching his saddle, fetching him food at supper, and rolling out his blanket in the evening. But he could tell that the boy's being was somewhere else entirely, and he knew that he must bring him back, that James must come back and face the here-and-now if he was ever to escape it. He whispered this to his friend in their rare moments of solitude, but if the boy heard, he gave no sign. His eyes stayed wide and quivering and nervous, like those of a mouse beneath the canopy of the night sky.

Gabriel never actually saw what the men did with the girl. They'd lead her away one by one during the evening. At first they'd return cheerful and boastful, teasing Gabriel and James about not being invited to the party. Dallas couldn't help but demonstrate for the boys the way he'd “given it to her,” thrusting into the air as if to damage it. Even Caleb led the girl away occasionally. Rollins bubbled in protest at this but couldn't muster the courage to voice it and shrugged it off instead, saying she was just a brownskin anyway.

But as the days passed, the mood changed. Rollins began to return from his sessions with the girl with a strange look in his eyes, a bewilderment that he gave no voice to and that he tried to soothe with whiskey. By the third day Dallas stopped his boasting, and by the fourth he even passed up his nightly indulgence. Always the girl returned to the fire as stony-faced as before, stiff-backed, expressionless, and distant.

WHEN THE SON LOOKED DOWN UPON HIS HOME with his com
panion, his heart was light. He turned to his friend and spoke,
telling him how he would now meet his sisters and he'd see that
they were the most beautiful girls in all of the Spanish-speaking
world. There was something of the flavor of Mexico in him, and
of Spain and that country's ancient
vaquero
traditions. He wore
Chihuahua spurs and dark
pantalones
and a low-brimmed black
hat with crimson needlework decorating the band. His face was
tan and handsome and warm still from the touch of a young
woman in Santa Fe, a woman he decided he loved, although he'd
yet to tell her this.

As he descended toward the house, a strange feeling came over
him. The stillness of the place made no sense, as it was midday. He
checked his horse and angled slightly, moving around toward the
front of the house. Then he saw them. He thundered down at a gallop, calling out for his family members by name and relation. The
buzzards around his father's body took flight with cries of protest,
like avian undertakers disturbed at their rightful work. The son
was off his horse before he'd even stopped it, slipping over its shoulder and hitting the ground at a full run. He bent to his father and
just as quickly drew back from him. The man lay on his stomach,
with his cheek resting on the ground, but even so the son could see
that he had no eyes. He could see from the shredded material of his
clothing where the birds had stuck their grotesque heads into his
body.

Just then another bird plodded out of the house, stood teetering
in the doorway like a drunken glutton, and took flight. The son
was inside in four great bounds. What he saw there sent up a howl
of pain like none that either his companion or the horses had
heard before. The son's friend tried to enter the house, but the son
pushed him out, saying it was not for his eyes to see them so. He
asked him to ride back to Santa Fe. He didn't tell him why, and
the man didn't ask, because he knew already.

Through the afternoon, the son worked on the bodies of his
mother and sister. He bathed them as best he could, laid them out
upon their beds, and pulled their blankets up to their chins, as
most of the damage done to their bodies began below the neck. He
brought his father inside also, and he burned candles for them all,
praying as if he still believed in God. After that, he walked out to
the river and sank into its water on all fours. He purged himself
into the flowing current and knelt there long after in silence. In
this silence was a misery too loud to pronounce, and within that
misery was a chaos of thoughts such as a man should never have.
He wished to quiet them.

Before the sun set that evening he had found the riders' tracks.
He knew the direction they rode and their number and guessed
that they had only three days on him. He recognized the shoes of the
gelding and understood then that it was not only for the dead that
he must mourn. While he awaited his companions, he shot three
buzzards from their circular flight and set their bodies aflame,
asking God to do the same with their souls.

IN FOUR DAYS THEY COVERED ALMOST TWO HUNDRED MILES and saw no other human beings. On the afternoon of the fifth day they bisected a wide expanse of open mesa, the soil clothed almost uniformly with short fat shrubs, small plants abloom with pale white flowers. That evening they stopped early and set the horses to graze. Rollins blindfolded the girl again, and the men slipped naked into the creek near camp and washed the filth off their bodies. Gabriel had to be instructed to do so by Marshall, but once in the chilly, forgiving water, he felt some of the tension within him slip away. He imagined the water could wash him clean, could not just soothe his skin but enter into him and ease away the stains, the pain, the guilt that wrapped around his heart and slowed its beating. He closed his eyes and tried to quiet his thoughts.

When he opened his eyes the sun was setting. From where he sat, in a small bowl of water, it seemed to be dropping directly into the pool with him. He wondered if this was what the sunset looked like in California, wondered if he'd ever see that place, or see his family again, or ever again feel that his life was in his own hands.

As if in answer to some of these questions, Marshall came into view. He spotted Gabriel and walked toward him, barechested and seeming larger than usual. He carried a metal canteen in one hand. The skin of his chest was thin and opaque, pink and, despite the girth of his torso and the muscles clearly outlined there, somehow fragile. Gabriel realized he'd never seen the man shirtless, and something about it struck him as obscene. He turned his gaze down to the dark water in which he sat.

Marshall sat down at the edge of the pool. He slipped one bare foot into the water. Dirt and debris floated away from it. He fingered the canteen, then lifted it absently to his mouth and took several large gulps. The wince that ran across his face and the way it eased into a sort of relaxed pleasure indicated to the boy that the canteen was full of whiskey. Marshall wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and sat contemplating the reflection of the sky in the water's surface.

“You think killing's wrong, don't you? That's what's got you acting so damn high and mighty. You gonna tell me you never thought of killing someone yourself?” Gabriel didn't answer, but the man didn't seem to expect him to. “What if somebody raped your mother? What if some lanky, no-toothed son-of-a-bitch Confederate tied you to a pole and made you watch while he did it to her? Had her get on her knees like a dog.” Marshall paused and allowed the boy to form the image. He met the boy's eyes this time and waited for an answer. “Wouldn't you track the bastard down and put a bullet through him?”

“I might—”

“You might?” He offered the boy a drink. Gabriel started to refuse, but his hand seemed to rise from the water of its own accord and grasp the metal canteen. “Shit, I know you better'n that. You wouldn't even need a gun. You'd beat the living shit out of him with your bare hands. You got an anger in you just like all your race. Rightly so. All it takes is enough anger. Put the right person through the right ordeal, and they'll kill faster than they can think.”

Gabriel took a drink. He surprised himself, not actually knowing he was going to do so until he felt the thick liquid sliding down his throat.

Marshall looked up at a thin line of birds passing above them, then continued. “Yeah, I reckon anybody's been born out of a woman can understand that. But if you're gonna say that killing somebody is wrong, then it's got to always be wrong. It don't get right just cause they deserve it, does it? And it don't get wrong just cause they don't deserve it. You following me?” The man motioned for the whiskey and took another swallow. “Shit. You ain't following me. I ain't even following myself. That's a problem I developed lately. When I was your age, I used to have notions that made some sense, but then I grew up, and I saw more than my share of things, and then sense got plain thrown out the window, along with God and all his lick-spittle little angels. I'll tell you something. Listen here. We'll see if I can't add a little more clarifying confusion to your thoughts.” He motioned Gabriel closer and told him a tale he said was of his youth, a thing he'd seen with his own eyes and knew to be truer than most things he'd seen since.

While a boy, he'd worked on a ranch outside Austin owned by a man named Clemmins. This Clemmins was a strange man in Marshall's eyes, was then and always would be. He had an avowed faith in Christianity, something that he pressed on his men, so losing many of them to less religious operations. One spring a traveling preacher came through, calling himself a missionary and intent on continuing the work the Spaniards had begun with the natives to the south. He stayed a fortnight, drank with Clemmins, and talked of religion and God and the destiny of mankind. When he left, he was full of zeal; two months later he was dead, scalped and robbed of everything on him.

When Clemmins heard this news, he went into a murderous fury. He hunted the lands of the murder with his men, never tiring, hungry to avenge the man of God. It so happened that he and Marshall were out alone one afternoon when they came upon the camp of a stray Indian, burning a low fire that let off almost no smoke. There was perhaps nothing unusual about this, but to Clemmins it was a hint of guilt. The two rode in. The Indian jumped up and started to run, stopped and came back and began talking to them in Spanish. Clemmins leveled his shotgun at the man and asked him if he knew the padre who had been killed. The man took a moment to answer, and in this hesitation Clemmins saw guilt. He drove the man to his knees, then had him lie spread-eagled on the ground, and before long he had him tied and bound to a tree. “Bit like you were back at McKutcheon's,” Marshall added. He nudged Gabriel playfully on the shoulder.

Gabriel looked away and caught sight of Dunlop, who had just climbed up from the hollow in which he'd bathed, hands still tied behind his back. He met the boy's gaze from a distance of a hundred yards, then walked on to camp. Gabriel lost the thread of Marshall's story for a moment, but when he picked it up again, it had turned worse than he could have imagined.

“He made a slit about four inches long in the red's belly. Cut right through to the insides.” Marshall demonstrated where on his own body, then went on to tell how Clemmins reached in and probed the man's insides with his fingers, watching his face the whole time, poking him, watching the pain writhe across his features in spasms, his living hand within the man's living body. He asked him did he remember it now, was it coming back to him, was he a filthy red murderer and was he regretting it now? That hand found what it was looking for, paused for a moment; then, with one tremendous effort, he yanked from the man's body a loop of his small intestine. He got a bit of the stuff out into the open air, with the Indian screaming and convulsing and watching Clemmins tug his life out of him. Clemmins stopped when a good portion of the man's insides had been pulled through the incision. He stepped back, pleased by his actions, looking from the Indian to Marshall with a grin of pure joy. But he was not finished yet.