Beyond the Horizon (17 page)

The caveman's arm bones provided an adequate brace for the Indian's own arm. He lashed the skeleton pieces to his own arm with braids of the caveman's hair. He moved his arm. There was still considerable pain, but the brace of bone immobilized the broken point in the bones. It was as he had speculated—the skeleton of the protohuman, hard enough to crack the stalactite, would offer him decent protection as well as support. The Indian marveled at his own ingenuity.

Given this boost in confidence, he took the stone he'd used to sever the arm of the caveman and scrape the meat off the bones, and began cutting at the other arm. He cut the hand off at the wrist and set it aside. Then he cut the arm off at each joint, filleted the muscle. Strings of tendon clung to the osseous matter and he allowed them to stay. Stripping the body of flesh exhausted him. Blood and guts spilled out across the flat rock and he was covered in a viscera of bile and brains and sludge. He pulled the innards of the chest cavity out. When the work of emptying the gizzards from the body became too involved, he rested by using a corner of the rock to slake the skin off the severed
hand.

For two days the Indian worked on the caveman's body—removing the bones, cutting muscle and tendon, twisting the skull free of the neck bone. He stopped only briefly to eat of the only food supply available. He set back to work, strapping the wet bones to his body—femur against his thigh, ribs wrapped around the trunk of his own body. He even took the skull, now void of brains, and chipped the crown away and made a helmet out of it. He laced the vertebrae together using long sinews taken from the protohuman's leg. It was a clumsy suit of armor, but it could take the load off his arthritic joints, relieve the ache in his bones soft and compacted with osteoporosis.

When he walked down from the mount, he carried only the lower jawbone of the caveman as a weapon. Other cavemen caught sight of him and hooted in displeasure. They ran hysterically through their horde pointing at the Indian as he approached. The bones clanked together disharmoniously. A rock flew up from the horde and was deflected by the ribcage of the armor.

The Indian paused and noted the suit's effectiveness. Then he flung himself, jawbone raised, into the crowd with a vengeance he'd not felt since he was a young man thousands of years from
now.

Come first light, the young man assumed the hovel to be safe. Whoever was on the horizon in the night must have passed on. He walked toward the hovel.

‘Hello,' a voice said. The young man spun around. Two men dressed in burlap sackings stood side by side. One had a stripe of a scar running the length of his neck and up into his hairline. The other used a walking stick.

‘Crept up on me,' the young man
said.

The men nodded. ‘You have eat?' the scarred one asked. He made a motion as if feeding himself from the palm of his
hand.

‘No,' the young man said. ‘No food here. Best if you an yer brother here move long.'

‘Bitte, seine Sie gnawed if, Herr,' the one with the stick pled. ‘Soldaten haven ins alles genomes, was wir hatten. Sie haben ins nackt zurueck glassen.'

‘Caint rightly help you,' the young man said. He slid his hand into his pocket, grasped at the shiv. ‘Just go on and
git.'

‘We coffee,' the scarred one said. Now he made a drinking motion, his fist acting as a
cup.

‘Verhoekere niche das einzige, was wir haben! Du machst einen Fehler,' the one with the stick cried. He slapped at his companion.

‘Womit werden wir es brauen?' the scarred one asked. He turned his attention back to the young man. ‘Please, Herr, good coffee.'

It had been some time since the young man had any coffee; since he'd smelled it. He figured the last time to be over in the bird islands, on the other side of the ocean. His father had traded a gunnysack of hogs' feet for fifteen pounds of beans. Some of the sailors boiled the beans whole, others smashed them and boiled them. The young man's father told him to take one bean at a time and suck on it; doing so would make it last longer and keep his piss from turning brown.

‘Alright,' the young man said. ‘Yeah. Lets see the coffee.' He nodded so the men knew what he meant.

‘Ja gut,' the scarred one said. ‘Good.' He reached into a sack slung across his back and pulled out a white bag, smelled it and closed his eyes. He staggered forward to hand it to the young
man.

‘Set it down,' the young man said. He pulled out the shiv and menaced the visitors. The scarred man dropped the bag and backed
away.

‘Nein,' the one with the walking stick cried. ‘Das ist alles, was wir haben.' The rest of what he said became lost in
sobs.

The young man edged forward, the shiv extended in front of him. He crouched and picked up the sack. Holding it to his nose, he inhaled deeply. The coffee might have been a little old, but it still had an aroma that reminded the young man of civilized places.

‘Food,' the scarred one pled again. He placed his hands over his stomach and began to cry. ‘Vor einer Woche haben wir mien Pferd des Fleisches wegen getoetet,' he said between sobs. ‘Schönes Ding. Ein weißer Hengst.'

The man with the walking stick sat down in the grass, his legs stretched out in front of him. He sat and stared at his feet. ‘Vielleicht wird er sich unserer erbarmen, wenn wir tot Sind, und uns begraben,' he muttered.

At that moment, the young man realized the error in his thinking. If he simply stole from these men who had nothing to lose, they would have no issue with returning later to kill him. They thought he was hoarding food, eating well. They must have not seen his mule by the stream and when they did there would be little to keep them from taking it. The young man pocketed his shiv. ‘Alright,' he sighed. ‘I got enough wood to build a fire, boil us up some leather straps. Give you somethin to gnaw on at least. Then you go north.' He pointed and repeated the word north.

That evening the young man took some of the reins he'd cut from the wagon and boiled them with grass and leaves. They each held a strap, sucking and chewing on it. The guests, wherever theyd come from, had not been on their own for long, and they would die soon enough. It was as the stranger would say in a couple months' time: this place is hard country.

‘Coffee?' the scarred man asked.

The young man laughed and wagged his finger. ‘Clever prick, aint you?' he asked. ‘No. No coffee for either of youse. Done traded for it an I aint sharin.'

The lame man was already asleep, the wad of leather in his cheek, a hand over his belly. Not long after, the scarred one also fell to sleep. The young man lay across the doorway of his hovel, hoping that the beggars passing one way or the other might disturb him into wakefulness. He fell to sleep, his hand gripped around the
shiv.

In his dreams, he was in a darker place than he'd ever been—a cave of some kind, a manmade cave. He was far from alone. In the shadows, men toiled away, hauling buckets of rocks and lengths of lumber in. An old man, a cripple, took him by the hand and led him ever deeper into the mineshaft. They passed oil lamps, which brightened the shaft for a minute's time. Then all went black until they came upon the next light. They traveled in this fashion—an alternating of light and dark—for a long ways. All the while the cold and damp of the mine became more pervasive.

‘We all the way down here in the bowels of the mine,' the cripple explained. ‘Dig, dig, dig. Thats what the commandante wants. Drought? Dig. Niggers on the horizon? Dig. Always digging.' The cripple took a lantern from a cross beam and when they came to an intersection of shafts they went into the darkest one. The cripple stopped briefly and held the lantern to illuminate a pile of tools on the floor.

‘Grab yerself a spud bar,' he said. The man did as he was told and hefted up the iron rod. It was a simple instrument, three feet long with a flat end and a beveled end. The cripple grabbed a sledge hammer leaned up against the wall. ‘First ones in this part of the shaft today,' the cripple said. ‘Means we get first pick where to
dig.'

He set the lantern down and wandered a short distance to where rocks and boulders cluttered the tunnel.

‘Looks to've fallen in,' the man said. ‘Caint say I want to dig there.'

‘This shaft,' the cripple said, ‘aint ours. Go through here an we're in a different place altogether.' He chuckled and his laughter echoed in the shaft. ‘Come now,' he said. ‘We have work to
do.'

It didnt take long for the commander to summon the commandante to his office. He appeared more haggard than a few days before, when the commandante last saw him. Bags were under his eyes, his hair and uniform unkempt.

‘Your men,' he began. Then he paused and uncorked a bottle, held the bottle at ready. ‘Dont know a goddamned lick of English.' He drank.

The commandante nodded. ‘It's a common thing out in the village. We got all types out there. They speak a common language though.'

‘An whats that?'

‘Barter. Money. Trading—whatever means they have to survive.'

The commander sniffed. Set the bottle down. It was mostly empty now. ‘Money,' he said to himself, then directed his gaze at the commandante. ‘And whats this bout chargin my men a
tax?'

The commandante feigned a moment's worth of confusion. ‘Thought we had agreed to treat your soldiers like my villagers. Remember, they were being charged an exorbitant—'

‘I recall,' the commander interrupted. ‘What I dont rightly remember is you addin a
tax.'

‘It's what the villagers
pay.'

Leaning forward on the desk, the commander asked what happened to the villagers who welched on the
tax.

‘It's a loss in revenue,' the commandante explained calmly. ‘As the officer of the village, I have to collect on the loss. I send the people to the Arab. He takes what he thinks is fair.'

The commander slugged back the last of the bottle's contents. ‘Explain that part,' he said. ‘About the Arab. Tell me why he cut the heart out of one of my men for failing to pay a tax he didnt know existed.'

‘That soldier was a half breed. Part Mexicano. A Mexican dried heart on a chain is said to be good luck.'

For a time, the two men sat quietly—the commander staring at the floor, his eyes bloodshot, beads of sweat rolling down the back of his neck, dark spots under his arms. The commandante watched. Often times, and usually at death, people speak of plans. They saw whatever happened, no matter how heinous, that it was part of some otherworldly schema. The commandante could have lied, said it was part of some plan. The truth was worse though—this was simply the way of the world.

‘Probably could have saved your man if you spoke either language,' the commandante
said.

‘You speak the Arab's language,' the commander said. ‘And it aint savin
him.'

‘Hows that?'

The commander smiled. ‘Soon as you stepped in here my men—the ones who speak English—cut that Arabian nigger to pieces.'

The commandante was not surprised. He raised his eyebrows and sighed. ‘I didnt come in here looking to start a war,' he said. ‘I think it might be best to say we reached a balance.'

‘You plannin on lifting the taxes on my
men?'

‘No,' the commandante said. Then he asked how the commander planned to talk to his civilian workers.

‘Maybe I should talk with them through money,' he said. ‘It is their common language.'

The commandante feigned amusement. ‘Very good,' he said. ‘But if you wanted to sidestep the payment part, I could speak to them.'

‘Know ever tongue of ever man in the village, do
ya?'

‘Yes.'

As he opened the side drawer of the desk, the commander did not take his eyes off the commandante. He pulled out another small glass flask. This one only had a couple fingers of liquid in the bottom. A drag of backwash hung suspended in the alcohol. He waited a good long time, studying the commandante. He swigged down the alcohol.

‘Alright,' he said. ‘Suppose your jurisdiction will expand since youre interpreting for my troops.'

‘It would make sense.'

Under his breath, the commander cussed.

The commandante interrupted. ‘Place like this cant have two minds—cant be two things,' he said. ‘Let me give out the orders over all of the fort and I'll make certain theyre your commands.' He placed a hand over his heart. ‘Be your words spoken through
me.'

Conversation had worn on the commander, he slumped forward in the chair as if fending off sleep. From around his neck, he pulled at a lanyard. There was a key on it. He unlocked another desk drawer, took out a box and used another key to unlock it. He pulled out the pistol. ‘Know what this is, dont you?' He pointed it at the commandante.

‘I
do.'

‘Got this from a general at the fort before we were sent out,' he said. ‘Only one in the whole company with a gun. Armys going to issuin a gun to each soldier. We were told to pick up rifles at a place up north, a big fort with plenty a rations.'

The commandante shifted in his seat. ‘Suppose you have one gun,' he said. He made a gesture like he held an insect between his thumb and forefinger. ‘You take it out of the box, it's the same as firing a bullet. Everything happens so fast you cant possibly chase it down, cant put a bullet back in the chamber.'

‘Aint gonna want to take my bullets back,' the commander said. He put the gun back in the box, the box back in the drawer. ‘Just remember when youre speakin for me, who has got the power.'

Anything that resembled a human, the Indian laid waste to. He found families huddled in caves and set a fire at the mouth. If they ran through the flames and smoke, he cut them down with the sharpened jawbone. From a mountain ledge he watched nomads pass by; then he dropped rocks on them, watched their bodies buckle and
fall.