Gabriel's Story (9 page)

James tugged his arm. “Come on. We already done wasted half the day.”

They found Marshall Hogg leaning against a fence, half looking over the horses held inside and half talking to the small group of men around him, all cowboys or garbed as such, loose-jointed and weatherworn. Marshall had about him the same confident air he'd had on the podium. Close up, one could see that his hair was not so white as it had first appeared. He had thin, sunburned lips, a square jaw, and a nose slightly crooked in its line of descent, whether by nature's design or because of injury was unclear. He smoked a hand-rolled cigarette, which he perched on his lips so that he could gesture with his hands, talk, and laugh at the same time. His eyes touched on the boys for a second as they approached, but he looked away, hardly noticing them.

James pointed out a boy who stood near Marshall. “That's the boy that asked about work,” he said. Indeed, the boy didn't surpass James's earlier description. He was thin around the neck and shoulders and generally sickly-looking, pale enough for the dead of winter and with a nose pink and sore, as if he suffered from that season's illnesses.

“And there's the colored,” James whispered.

Again he reached up to point, but Gabriel stopped his arm. His eyes had already found the man. He stood at the edge of the group, leaning back, both elbows against the fence, one leg bent and resting on a crate of some sort. He was not a man of great stature or girth, but there was something immediately impressive about his body's hard lines. He seemed made entirely of sharp edges: the triangles cut by his limbs, his jutting cheekbones and chin, the narrow slits that were his eyes. The only thing truly rounded about him was the crown of his head, which was clean-shaven and smooth. He returned the boy's attention with his own appraising gaze, but on his face no greeting or kinship could be read.

Gabriel lowered his eyes, and the two approached the men like nervous schoolchildren. They stood waiting for some time before Marshall noticed them. “You two after something?” he asked.

James nodded that they were.

“Well?”

“We . . . Mr. Hogg, we was wondering if you might be needing some hands.” It took James a great effort to get the sentence out. Once he had done so, he exhaled a pent-up breath and seemed to relax considerably.

Marshall eyed James briefly, then studied Gabriel. “Is that right?”

Gabriel nodded that it was. He wondered if the man recognized him from the day he'd spoken with him and Solomon. If he did, he gave no sign of it.

“And what can you do?”

“We do everything,” James said. “I mean, we'll do anything you put us to.”

The white boy looked askance at the two newcomers, his eyes loath to touch on them. He seemed to be preparing some speech in his head but came out with mucus instead, which he sent in the vague direction of Gabriel and James.

Marshall shared a smile with the man next to him. “Here's two young colored boys who figure they can do everything,” he repeated for the man's benefit. “They call me Mr. Hogg, too. Polite chiggers.” He looked back at the boys. “In my years of ranching, I never have come across a hand that could do
every
thing. I've found some that can do
some
thing. A few that could do
this
thing or
that
thing. But the only ones I ever heard try to do everything ended up doing
no
thing. What do you make of that?”

James hesitated. He glanced at Gabriel. “I didn't mean it like that. What I was saying was, Gabe here knows farming, and I been working with—”

“Don't waste your breath, boy. What do they call you two?”

“James and Gabriel.”

Marshall feigned surprise at the improbability of this. “The king and the archangel! Very impressive. Well, damned if I could be luckier.” He looked at another of his companions. “They look to be two strong ones, don't they? Probably got some fight in them.” The man to whom he was speaking smiled a toothless grin and nodded complete agreement. “Tell you what, you boys follow me, all three of you. Got a test for you, if you're up for it.” He spun on his heel and started walking off, not looking back.

The boys hesitated. James mouthed some words that Gabriel couldn't make out. He shrugged in answer, and they followed the group of men who had moved off with Marshall. Only the black man remained. He didn't move till the boys did, slowly bringing up the rear.

As the group reformed within the confines of a barn, Gabriel found himself standing close to Marshall. The man raised his arm in a gesture to another, and for a moment the silver glint of a pistol flashed from inside his jacket. The boy craned to see it better but caught only the black handle of the thing, smooth and curving and engraved with some design he couldn't make out. He straightened up when he realized Marshall was watching him. The man grinned and whispered to the boy, “Don't trust a man with a fancy gun. It may be pretty, but it'll kill you just as dead as a plain shotgun.”

He laid a hand on the boy's shoulder for a moment, then walked into the center of the group, creating with his circular path a ring of sorts. He moved a few of the men back with his hands, gesturing, treating the whole thing like some solemn work. When the circle was to his liking, he beckoned Gabriel and James forward and had them stand facing each other. “Now, look into the eyes of your competition.” From the position he had put them in, it was clear to each that the other was who he referred to. “You both want a job, but there's room for only one. Question one is whether it's one of you. Question two is which one of you it might be. Figure we got one easy way to settle it—a little boxing match. First boy that bests the other walks away with a dollar. If you impress the jury here, you may walk away with a job. So have at it.” He stepped back and motioned for the boys to join in battle.

The boys stared at each other in surprise. Voices around them urged them on, encouraging and coercing at once. The boys still made no move, although James looked at Gabriel with desperation in his eyes. His hands had begun to tremble. He flexed them to steady them, clenching them into fists and then releasing them. He took a few tentative steps from side to side, trying to conjure some solution through movement.

“Boys, you're sorely disappointing me. I won't make you fight if you haven't got it in you. But I will take myself and the job of a lifetime on back to Texas, leave you here in the sorry state I found you in.”

These words brought up in James a sudden rage, which he directed at Gabriel. “I'm not going back to Pinkerd's. Let's just do what we've got to,” he said.

Gabriel didn't even lift his arms. “James, I ain't fighting you.” He'd just turned to leave when James moved forward and punched him on the shoulder, not hard, but enough to bring his attention back. Gabriel wheeled around. “What are you doing? You're gonna let—”

He cut his words as James threw another blow, this time toward his face. His head bobbed out of the way, his feet sure beneath him, sliding him almost imperceptibly away. He would have said something else, but James came at him again. Gabriel had to slip left to avoid yet another whirling fist. A change came over his face. As he looked at James, his scowl returned, his lips drew back from his teeth. When the other boy made another move toward him, Gabriel unleashed an anger quicker even than its genesis. His arm swung up on that well-oiled shoulder joint, fist tight and hard as a rock, and he spun it down toward his friend. It caught the other boy between the lip and the nose, snapping his head back. As James stumbled, Gabriel hit him several more times across the chin, then the neck, dropping one blow into his abdomen.

James pitched over but reached out with one arm and grabbed Gabriel. He drew him in, preferring to receive his blows at close range. The two boys tussled about that way for some time, a moving mass of limbs and grunts. Eventually Gabriel got a grip on James's legs and yanked them into the air. The other boy hit the ground with a force that sent spit from his mouth and churned up a cloud of dust. Gabriel lashed out twice with his heavy foot, catching James in the arms crossed over his chest, this position suddenly his only means of defense.

Gabriel paused in his attack and stood above his newfound foe, his chest thrown out in the attitude of a gladiator considering the kill. He allowed James to rise. The boy's face was bloody and distorted with emotion—anger or desperation, it was hard to say. The boys stared at each other, tired from the effort and seemingly amazed at their own behavior.

Marshall stepped between them, laughing uproariously. “That'll do, boys. Shit-fire! That's what I like to see.” He looked back at his companions. “I asked them to fight and they damn well did. As far as I'm concerned, you've both earned work. What about you, you ready to fight one of these?” He turned to the white boy at the edge of the group.

The boy nearly spat when he answered, “I ain't fighting no nigger for a job.”

“Figured you wouldn't. We won't be needing your services, then.”

“You want the niggers instead?”

“I respect a fighter, is all. I'll always give the best man the job. Ain't that right, Caleb?”

The black man stared back at him, no visible answer on his face. He scrutinized the boys with eyes that seemed to find them a sorry sight, then looked down at his own feet as if they were of equal interest.

Marshall continued undeterred. “Boys, you don't know shit about ranching, do you? Not a thing, I can see that. But if you'll work half as hard as you fight, we'll use you for something. If you want in, be back here tomorrow at sunup. We won't wait for you, so be early.” He studied them for a moment, appraising. He wiped a lock of whitish hair from his forehead, then pulled out two cigarettes from his shirt pocket and offered them to the boys. “Have a smoke on it, and remember, there's more where these came from.”

Gabriel took the cigarette, holding it out before him as if he was unsure of its purpose. The two boys walked away with the men's best wishes, but they shared none of their enthusiasm. They walked without saying a word to each other, and mumbled their goodbyes without ever asking each other's plans.

GABRIEL CLIMBED OUT OF THE MITCHELLS' WAGON at their turning, a half-mile from the house. He waved goodbye and cut out across the prairie through the dusky light. The knee-high grass brushed against his legs with each step. There was an undertone of insect life in the air, the background hum and chirp that can be heard and forgotten and thought of as silence. He walked with a steady progress that soon brought him to one of the knolls from which he could see the house. It was only here that he stopped, squatted, and took out the cigarette that Marshall had given him. He rolled it in his fingers a moment, then placed it between his lips, where it sat unlit.

To eyes untainted by anger, the house on which the boy looked was no poorer a beginning than any other in the heart of the continent. It sat lonely on the plain, indeed, but its character was not one of desolation only. There was in its simple geometry a stoic perseverance. The items spread across the grass had been taken inside, and candlelight flickered in the windowpane like a heart beating, dim but warm. Plots of turned earth had grown around the house on three sides, as yet only patches of greater darkness on the plain, but signs of progress and a testament to months hard spent.

But to this the boy's eyes were blind. His thoughts were bitter. His gaze focused on the forlorn plow stuck deep in the boggy field, a sorry tool for such surgery and a fresh reminder that here too inequity ruled the land. Nothing was truly different here. All was toil and the flight from racial strife and dreams thrown about the impartial land like seeds. Where would they take root, if ever, and who would reap that harvest when the day came? He offered no answers to these questions. He asked them only as a pretext to name his one answer, to shape one word into many words, to make it clear, perhaps only to himself, that
he
would not reap this harvest and these were not
his
dreams, nor his future, that his answer had always been and could only be no.

He reached up and touched his chin, felt the bruise there beneath the pressure of his fingers. By the cold vigilance of his stare, one might have thought it was the homestead itself that had so bruised him and not the fists of his friend. He let his fingertips rise higher and massage the balls of his closed eyes. He did this for some time, pausing only to listen to the passage of some birds above him.

With that, he stood up and turned around, not daring the warmth of home and family but choosing instead this dark field in which to make his judgment. As he moved away, he wondered if it could really be this easy. Were decisions made this way, with such silence, in such solitude? He wondered, but even as he asked, he knew that there was nothing easy about this, and he felt within that silence the threat that nothing would ever be easy again, and the fear that solitude might be no more a blessing than it is a curse. He thought so, but still he walked, with hesitant steps that only gradually grew more forceful, away from the light of his home and into the evening's willing embrace.

Part 2

THE CARAVAN MOVED OUT BEFORE NINE. THE BOYS RODE in the cargo wagon, atop crates and satchels of various sizes and descriptions, behind a train of four hitched oxen. Crownsville faded behind them, diminishing in stature and breadth with the passing miles till it was little more than an island mirage in a great, grassy ocean. Eventually even that phantom melted into the sea and was forgotten. James looked back often, a smile across his face that grew with the distance behind them. Gabriel also cast glances back to the north, but his eyes searched the receding horizon as if he feared pursuit. Part of him urged the oxen forward with greater speed, while another part cried out for him to jump ship, run home, and erase this digression before it became a full-blown sin.

James asked Gabriel if this wasn't something, and Gabriel nodded his somber agreement without meeting the boy's eyes. He'd spoken few words to him all morning, afraid that something had changed between them but unable to name it truly. The previous evening's fight had left a sharp taste of betrayal on each bruised portion of his body. He thought that he should still be angry, that James had proved himself a fickle friend. And yet he was not angry, and somehow he felt that it had only drawn them closer.

It was a small company, eight persons including the boys. Marshall led them, riding his horse nearly twice the distance traveled in a day with his constant trips from the front to the rear of the caravan, asking questions, posing observations, and finding things to laugh at. He wore the simple, functional garb of his trade: a thick, sun-bleached cotton shirt, leather chaps, a blue bandanna around his neck, and a Stetson tilted back on the crown of his head so that it framed his face rather than shaded it. He was all fun except when giving orders. Then he spoke in a quiet voice that broached no humor and allowed no questions.

A man named Bill sat just in front of the boys, driving the wagon. He was as slow and strong as the oxen he tended, with features equally wide and bovine. He rarely used his whip, but when he did he threw his whole body into it and snapped it just above the animals' backs, seemingly never touching them but filling the air so full of commotion that they were prompted onward. Early that morning he had overseen the loading, at which the boys had helped, watching them with mistrustful eyes, unsure of their character or motives and fearing some deception.

Another man, Jack, rode with his Stetson low on his head. His nose protruded from underneath the brim as if it were his main feature and the organ through which he sensed the world. His eyes were little more than a notion, hidden in a shadow beneath the brim. He never spoke without first spitting a flume of liquid tobacco. This he achieved with a projectile agility that not only impressed Gabriel but would have impressed even the most hardened aficionado of that activity.

Less appealing still, in Gabriel's eyes, was Rollins, a surly sort with a long torso and short legs. His arms stretched out as if he were an ape astride a horse, and he seemed always ready to explode in some display of anger and status. He looked at Gabriel and James with a certain amount of scorn, which he made clear by riding up next to them and lecturing Bill on the mating proclivities he'd observed in other young colored men, wondering aloud if these two had the same affection for dogs and whores.

Fortunately, there was another man in the group with a more pleasant disposition, a young Scot named Dunlop. He was in his early twenties, thinly built and long-legged. He enjoyed smiling, and when he did so the freckles on his nose danced and wiggled. In his voice was the ring of his homeland, a cadence that Gabriel found poetic. From his handling of horses and his stature in the saddle, however, it seemed he belonged to this country as much as anybody could. It was his job to loose-herd the three riderless horses they had with them, the only ones not sold at auction. He did this with a skill that almost seemed a sixth sense, at times pushing the horses out before him and letting them kick up to a trot, at other times bringing them in so close to the wagon that Gabriel could have reached out and touched them.

But the man who caused Gabriel the greatest concern was the one he saw the least of, the black man, Caleb. He led the way, darker and more silent than ever, on a large painted stallion that had some wildness in it still. It seemed he preferred his own company to that of any other and tolerated the rest only from the solitude of the lead position. Watching him on his horse, Gabriel thought him some dark figure of the apocalypse. It was unclear which of those demons he might incarnate, but when he glanced back at the caravan, Gabriel saw in his gloomy countenance an utter and indescribable loathing for the world and all its creatures. Gabriel had never seen such a face before, black or white, and he couldn't help but hope that his perceptions were wrong. He knew instinctively that no man should be so twisted, and he knew further that no man could remain so for long without enacting some drama upon the world.

THE FIRST EVENING, THEY CAMPED ON THE PRAIRIE several miles from any settlement, beside a lonely creek that moved through the land lost and forlorn, switching this way and that in search of something it seemed destined never to find. They hobbled the horses and let them feed and built up a fire of brush and of what wood they could find along the creek. Above the fire they suspended a blackened kettle and threw into it the makings of soup—chunks of smoked meat, lard, and potatoes. With the utmost concentration, Bill added some herbs that he had bought in Crownsville, sure that they would flavor it nicely.

Rollins was kind enough to serve the boys their first wooden bowls, full to the brim, steaming and pooled with oil. He stood before them, ladle still in hand, urging them to eat. As the first spoonful passed his lips, Gabriel sensed the heat of it, but he didn't pause quickly enough. The hot oil bit into his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He flinched, clamped his lips around the spoon, and closed his eyes as a wave of pain flooded his senses. When he looked up again, the first thing he saw was Rollins's face close to his, smug and smiling with feigned interest and innocence. “So, what's the verdict?”

Gabriel was trying to figure out how to answer when James cut him short. The other boy gasped and spewed his food onto the fire. “Goddamn!” He rose to his feet and danced back a few steps, as if he'd felt the heat primarily in the seat of his pants and the soles of his feet. “I near burned my mouth. That's hotter'n Satan's piss in a frying pan!”

This put Rollins into hysterics. He laughed and joked and imitated James and Gabriel with his dull features, using gestures that annoyed Gabriel with their inaccuracy. None of the other men seemed equally amused. “I'll grant you the boy's got a way with words,” Marshall said, “but sit yourself, Rollins. Sometimes you act like a damn five-year-old.”

Gabriel ate on very carefully after that, staring down at the soup mistrustfully. He blew on it till all semblance of heat was long gone, then tried to slip the food past his tender mouth and straight down into him. No sign or flavor of those herbs could be found, and Gabriel wondered if his enflamed tongue had lost the power to taste. He said nothing, but he couldn't help giving Rollins an occasional angry look.

The men drank coffee and talked and watched the air ripple up from the fire and rise into the milky sky. Jack remembered the hospitality he'd enjoyed in a certain young woman's arms back in Crownsville. He spoke fondly of her, bucktoothed and ignorant though she was. Marshall asked what qualified Jack to call somebody ignorant. Jack answered that the girl was fresh out from Rhode Island, still spoke with that country's nasal tones, and had herself a whole set of ideas on the future of this nation and the role of women in it. Rollins said that he'd no use for buckteeth himself but that a big rump did it for him, that or a schoolgirl just budding or a little Mexican
chica
he could horse-mount and beat up a bit. Jack shook his head and tossed his coffee on the fire and said Rollins was a sick son of a bitch right enough.

Dunlop turned the conversation to other matters. He spoke of the natives and wondered if they'd have troubles passing through the Indian territory. This brought nervous looks from both Gabriel and James. James asked just where was it they were heading, anyway? Laughter all around.

“What kind of fool signed up for a hitch without asking where he was going first?” Rollins asked.

James tried to answer, but his words dribbled away unintelligibly. This brought more laughter.

Dunlop finally enlightened them. “Texas. The New Cornwall Ranch, just the other side of the Red River. We'll be there in three weeks or so. Assuming no troubles.” He smiled at the two boys, a crooked smile with a touch of irony in it. “Is that . . . is that what you thought you were getting into?”

James and Gabriel exchanged glances, each looking to the other as if unsure of what he'd expected. It was James who answered. “Yeah, I reckon. We been meaning to get into the cowboy line.”

“Well, boys, cheer up, then,” Marshall said. “You'll be in it soon enough, soon enough.” He glanced around at the other men. “In it up to your ears, I reckon.”

IN THE FIRST WEEK FOLLOWING THE BOY'S DISAPPEARANCE,
his family scoured the countryside for him. The boy's stepfather
and adopted uncle rode out each day in different directions, leaving the chores of home to the mother and the remaining son. They
searched the streets of Crownsville and learned quickly that another boy had disappeared also and had inspired great wrath in
his former employer. They asked questions of passersby, of persons
both white and black, young and old. Yet they found no answers
and had to report as much each evening to the boy's mother, who
took the news silently.

They widened the search, riding east through Solomon and
Junction City and as far as Topeka, and west through Brookville
and Ellsworth. The uncle stayed out the longest, returning home
via sweeping arcs to Waterville in the north, or south as far as
Newton, asking his questions of homesteaders and shopkeepers,
cowboys and sheepherders, sometimes passing the night with
strangers, once sleeping alone on the open prairie. He knew the boy
lived somewhere on this globe and thought that through silence and
solitude he could divine where. He listened and searched his past
conversations with the boy for signs and hints, but still he returned
with no news.

At home, the younger son struggled to recreate himself in his
brother's absence. He bowed his head and watched the men ride off
and then went to work. He tried each day to do more and be better
than the day before. If he resented his brother's departure and the
work it cast on him, he never voiced it. He tended the fields as best
he could on his own, mending the things that broke and caring for
the horse and mule in the evenings. At night, his body ached and
stretched and contorted. He awoke in the mornings as if he'd slept
a month instead of a night and had grown accordingly. And
through it all he sought to comfort his mother. He told her that his
brother would return. Of course he would. He was a hothead. He
was anxious and angry and a dang fool sometimes, but he would
return. He's just got to see things for himself for a little. You know
how he is.

When the boy spoke like this, the woman would pull him in
with a one-armed embrace, hugging him to her bosom as if she
would place his words that much closer to her heart. She told him
she believed the same and hoped the same, but she didn't say the
things that troubled her on the inside—the fear, in its overwhelming girth, of the forces at play in the world. It was a world unfit
for warriors and kings, a world that toppled nations and enslaved
whole races of people, a world one could get lost in and perish in
without so much as a passing glance from God. She hoped and
prayed for the boy's return, but she feared that the world was too
big a thing for this son, too unkind to the young and the old alike,
too indifferent to the follies of youth and the bonds of love.

OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS THEY MOVED SOUTHWEST. The land grew flatter and more arid, the farmers poorer and more desperate. Their homes were often little more than dugouts in rises of earth, covered over with what wood or sod or bracken they had scoured from the plains. Dry dirt caked their features like artificial suntans. And yet their faces said that they were still proud and free and American, and they were most often white. Better off than most, in their estimation.

How they could scratch a living out of ground meant only for the hardiest of grasses was a mystery, on a plain that was windswept and dry and lonelier still because of the sight of homesteads separated by miles of nothing but distance. Had they not heard of the plague of locusts that descend from the skies and ravish the land? Had they not heard of the fires of late summer, which appear and disappear with the whims of the wind and lightning and take with them homes and cattle and lives? Where were the hopes and dreams in a place like this?