Thirteen Stories

Farther Californias

When I sit in the morning I see across my desk the snow on the desert’s face, it softens the action of Silver’s crutch as he advances, I do not notice the fire until it is reflected in his eyes and the first sound that reaches me is the only sound over his breath, he has limped down the sierra the length of the Sea of Cortez with one word between his teeth: GOLD.

*

Before every hidden airstrip a gaucho pulling on a cigarette . . . behind it, a Cessna below the grains of the high grass.

*

They were a hundred miles down the road to Cíbola when Walsh insisted the party consult the map. I did not know we had brought a map, the road had not changed in centuries and the way was plainly marked. To the left, to the west, descended the steep barrancas, we could not see the bottom . . . to the east gradually ascended the unanimous plateau. For hours we had navigated by moonlight and necessity, when the moon waned to nothing we would bivouac in a canyon until the first crescent shard had reappeared, clouds were not considered likely and in fact along the whole route we had met with no surprises, the fog remained contained below the escarpment’s lip as we unfurled our heavy blankets under the creosote each morning. I saw the waning gibbous reflected in both lenses of Walsh’s dark familiar frames, I could not meet his eyes straight on. With a cavalier gesture he had tossed back over his shoulder the old Kalashnikov on its strap, at the rear the thin Missourian stood still with his gun at the ready, he pointed it into the thicket from which we emerged moments before, he had not proven over the week to be worth much as a scout but on the road he was not needed, the path could not be clearer. From a deep pocket inside his coat Walsh withdrew the creased sheet he claimed was our map of the zone, he unfolded it and pulled it flat from either end, I stood so close beside him that our sleeves were almost touching but in the stark fairy circles, the pointillist swathes between them, I could decipher no information and nothing could be learned from the pale undulating lines . . . I heard the Missourian turn and saw the barrel of his gun point into the thicket ahead of us, the leaves began to shake.

*

The woman on the phone in front of the ligustrina looks into the grass before I can look into the street, the rest of the way home I notice every woman’s fast eyes, up then into the grass.

*

He is not Robinson Crusoe, he does not appear in iterations, every great pirate is a part shadow of Silver. He does not compete with Robert Maitland and does not need to be justified in terms of possibility, there is no retelling and he is not a theme. He is not a situation.

*

The snow brought out her beauty, it revealed her pale makeup was not entirely white. He reached toward the fur muff that covered her left ear and she quickly stepped away, the snow muffled her boots. She told him that he would prefer the blonde, he denied it. They did not notice the men along the ridge below white blankets, they did not hear the signal for the five dark figures to rise out of a drift.

*

In the light of the next bonfire he discerned the unmistakable silhouette of the field linguist, he knew his long coat, he knew the dark outline of the microphone before the flames could be no other than his quarry’s. He backed away into the shadows before he tipped the remaining broth from his bowl onto the asphalt, he started in his direction. It was several nights now he had been dreaming of the researcher and the apparatus that before had filled him with repulsion now exerted an attraction he did not understand. The linguist turned to face him before he stepped out of the dark, he quietly lowered his microphone and removed the bulky headset, he reached with his free hand into the night and said to him in a voice he could not place, Welcome aboard.
Both men inhaled sharply, they listened to the fire and the muffled chatter around it.
They are reversing, they believe, the field linguist said, former accidents. Por supuesto creen que por esta manera se acercan a la verdad, resuelven the structural inadequacies of the many competing images of the truth. Su propuesta es volver a las propias foundations and the risk naturally is the abolition of intelligible speech. The payoff in their theory is a perfect understanding, accessible to all, but whether the truth’s universalization entails progress will remain, para nosotros, an open question.

*

The tail was visible in the rearview mirror as both cars crested a hump but the sunlight on the windshield obscured the other driver’s face . . . lazily she drew her knees up against her chest, she allowed her cheek to fall across his shoulder, he felt the wheel begin to turn beneath his fingers.

*

Despite their heavy equipment they advanced across the road with so little noise that the first sign of their arrival, through the great open doorway, was the play of light on the spears. They may have been assisted by the steady traffic. The head docent rushed to meet them as they advanced up the steps, she was still smoothing her coat when they narrowed their formation for the final push into the hall, the other docents gathered by the columns on either side, they murmured and watched the newcomers but their faces did not betray any sign of curiosity, they only refused to leave. In the first rank a hoplite’s shield shook visibly as he demanded that the woman point them to the marbles, she promised she would comply, however first they would need to speak to HIM, she told them as she gestured toward the gallery. The hoplites in the lower ranks strained and some stood on their toes to see who it was they were to seduce or overcome. . . but the Missourian, in the third rank, had seen him as soon as he entered, by the door to the former reading room he recognized the poise, the shallow eyes, Silver’s traitorous curls. Already he had lowered the shaft of his spear to the cool granite, he alone understood all was already lost.

*

The pioneer, approaching the big cat pressed against the rock, realized too quickly that the tears of the puma were his own. He could no more sheath his knife than the puma could spring for his neck.

*

Every gaucho pulling on a cigarette beside an empty level field is camouflage or advertisement for another hidden airstrip. He will sit and watch the road. When a drone takes off his only motion is to cup his free hand around the flame, he hides it from the dust wafted up in the pampero, when a Cessna lands and the pilot counts him the money he is the one who takes it by the wing, he leads it into the high grass. He sleeps as often in his chair as in the tent and his hat protects his face from the early summer rains. In the hour before dawn he is always awake, he stoops low as he walks the airstrip and weighs each pebble in his palm before he casts it, listlessly, into the shallow culvert.

*

Even the train felt slower, duller, it rocked as though it too were suffering from a chest cold.

*

Under the new moon only his cigarette offered any light, the glow of the city out of the north precluded total darkness but also obscured the stars. If I strained I might identify what I believed was Orion’s Belt but for evidence all I had was a memory tinged by indifference, we huddled under the rocks on the slope behind the beach. Walsh was sitting close enough to whisper to me, our knees were almost touching. When he murmured to himself I could not tease his voice from the soft action of the waves against the shore . . . only when he raised the cigarette and showed the motion of his lips, the pale scar from the bridge of his nose to the turn in his left jaw, did I recognize he was speaking though not to me. At times I believed I picked out a phrase, any word could as easily have been a weak projection from a breaker on the point. The sand at the bottom of my shoes put pressure on my arches indistinguishable from water, if they were no longer dry I could not tell the difference but even now the night is clear, the fog remains to sea. Walsh drops his cigarette and crushes it under the heel of a leather Oxford, it vanishes into the sand. I cannot see his lips but it can only be his voice and now it speaks to me, Are you in?
I ask him to tell me where.
To Cíbola, says the familiar voice . . . several faint silhouettes rise from the iceplant above, they are slow, they make no noise, here and there a rifle reflects a light that has no source.

∩

Chapman Caddell is a writer in London.