The Zona (7 page)

Terence took up the palm fronds and sprinted a few more yards.  This was not the first time he wished for his body to be young again.  As a younger man he could have run through the night and into the next day.  He was too old and too tired and his back pain was only dampened by the distraction of the pain in his knees.  Terence had been a strong man in his youth.  He’d been a strong man in his life as a Preacher.  He’d killed in the name of God, ended life at the word and command of the Church.  He’d played a role at the razing and utter decimation of Las Vegas.  He’d seen bodies staked and crucified to the luminous glow of neon lights.

Terence shook the image from his head and peered across the dunes.  In the near distance, candlelight flickered in a cabin window.  By the smell, Terence guessed it was the ranch house of a javelina farm.  He took up the palm sled and dragged it a few more steps.  Terence let go of the palm fronds and caught his breath.  He pulled the cross from Lead’s pocket, having left his own in Cibola days past.

“Don’t go anywhere, Preacher.”  He said to Lead’s unconscious body.  

Pious Doland read by candlelight every night.  Daylight hours provided no time for the enjoyment of books.  The sun was for dealing with butcher merchants in Havasu, or tending his javelinas, or hunting woyote dens, or any of the other myriad tasks God burden men of farms and ranches with.  Besides, reading books in the visible light of day might get people talking about Pious, questioning what it was that consumed his interest so.

Every night, Pious Doland lit a candle and read the old book he kept hidden under his bed. The cover was missing, but Pious knew they were plays by an English heathen named Shakespeare.  He could tell the man was a heathen because some of his plays involved Jews or satyrs, but Pious didn’t care.  The words were magical.  They flowed with a rhythm that calmed his mind.

There was a knock on his door.  Pious blew out his candle and flung the book under his bed.  There was another knock, louder this time.  Pious ran up to the door with his hunting ax in hand.

“Speak,” he called through the door.

“I come here on behalf of our Lord and Savior seeking sustenance and sanctuary” a man said.

Fear gripped Pious.  That was the call of a Preacher.  He eyed his living room for visible contraband.  He didn’t see any, but he had no time to really search, to keep a Preacher waiting was to cast suspicion on yourself.  Pious opened the door.

Terence stepped back and held up Lead’s cross to the farmer at the door.  Terence judged the man before him.  The farmer was not yet out of his twenties but his body was hunched and creased in a way customary of desert living.  The farmer held a wood ax in front of himself like a walking staff.

“I come seeking sustenance and sanctuary,” Terence said.

The farm looked him over and nodded.  “You’re welcome to my sustenance and sanctuary, Preacher.  Be at peace in my homestead.”  Pious propped his ax against a wall.  “Let me get you food and water.”

“Hold on, good sir,” Terence said.  “I have a man in my binding.  I need to bring him in.”  Terence ran back into the night.

Pious watched the Preacher’s shadowed form in moonlight pick up another man and carry him back.  Terence had tied Lead’s wrists together with what remained of his leather cord to help the illusion of imprisonment.  He was not proud of his dishonesty to the farmer or any dishonesty from which he was the source, but between deception and death, Terence counted deception as the lesser.  Terence returned to the cabin with his false captive.

“This man is to be left alone.  I will soon return.  Please have food and water ready,” Terence said.  He propped Lead’s unconscious body against a wall and tied his ankles together with braided palm fronds.

“This man is powerful sick, and as you can see, his appendages are bound.  I want your word that in my absence you will not harm him.  There will be no need to harm him.”

“You have my word, Preacher,” Pious said.

“The Lord thanks you,” Terence replied.  He smiled as the old words left his mouth.  For a moment he missed the pomp and authority of being a legitimate Preacher.

Terence left the farmer’s home and took up his palm frond sled.  The trail of this rig was unmistakably easy picking for well-trained Crusaders.  The drizzle of rain ended too promptly, the winds were too weak, nothing in nature favored the cover of his ingress.  Terence dragged the fronds behind him and ran towards the distant hills.  

Lead woke from fever dreams and found himself on a dry floor wrapped in a woolen blanket.  A man with an ax hefted in both hands stood over him.  The man stared with eyes like cracked river pebbles, misshapen and red.

“I recommend you not move, stranger,” the man warned.

Lead let out a strangled cough.  He struggled against the rawhide and palm cords, but found no strength.  His body ached and radiated fevered heat.

“Assist,” Lead whispered.

“No, Goodman,” Pious spit and wiped his mouth.  “We’re just gonna wait here for the old Preacher.  You need to sit still.”  

Pious was anxious about the book under his bed.  Was it hidden?  Was it visible?  What if the Preacher came back and discovered it?  In his mind he swore to God that if his heresy escaped detection he would bury the book in the desert sand.  He would leave all things unsavory and walk a path righteous with the Lord.

“I’m here on behalf of our Lord and Savior.” Lead whispered and turned back to the darkness.

Terence abandoned his sled in a hillside crevice.  He split a palm frond and swept his footsteps.  He felt ridiculous using the old trick, but now was not a time for innovative thought.  The Crusader’s presence was imminent and the night’s obfuscation was closing.  Old tricks traded for time and time traded for rest and nourishment and the hope of an actual escape.

Terence swept the path.    

Pious lit a mesquite fire in his big-bellied stove and considered his problems.  Would the wounded man need food?  What about the Preacher?  If Pious gave from his feedbox, would he have sufficient meat for trade?  Was the old Preacher really a harrier; a thief in disguise?  This was not the first time Pious wondered if the old man wasn’t some sort of road agent.  He banished the thought from his mind.  Any road agent falsely using the crucifix was hunted and eliminated with all the prejudice and might of the Lord and Church.  It was one of the few laws everyone knew aside from the Commandments.  Pious once saw a false Preacher sentenced near Quartzite Parish.  The parishioners hung the scallywag from a Joshua tree and let the sun and buzzards carry out the sentence of execution.  No rope or blanket, just three days of screaming and rocking and looking to unforgiving eyes, for the parishioners watched in shifts and none gave aid.  The scene had left an impression on Pious.

The farmer took three javelina steaks from his salt box.  The steaks were bundled in plastic bags of the type floating throughout the desert, accompanying tumble weeds in travels blind and chaotic.  He placed the steaks in a battered stainless skillet and set them to sizzle on the stove’s hot plate.  Pious retrieved a water pitcher from his pantry.

The prisoner had not moved.  The smell of fried pork filled the cabin.  

Terence entered Pious’ home without knocking.  His right hand clutched his four-barrel pistol behind his back.  Pious was startled and sloshed water on the cabin floor.

“If you don’t mind the inquiry, sir, where were you?”  Pious asked.

The farmer set the pitcher down and gripped the frying pan with a false casualness, as if checking the meat required Pious to handle the metal and keep a sightline with Terence.  His body tensed in a way both visible and animal.  The old Preacher realized the threat and responded in kind.  The click of the pistol hammer echoed off the close cabin walls.  It was an unmistakable sound and issued a threat more credible than any words Terence could muster.

“Men are trailing me and mine.  They would take our lives, opportunity given.  I set a false trail.”

Terence and Pious spent a moment of stretched time staring at each other, regarding small and dangerous motions.  Pious gripped the skillet.  Terence gripped the pistol.  Pious twisted his face into a disingenuous smile and released the panhandle.   

“Please sit and eat,” Pious said.