Говард Уолдроп - Them Bones

I wiped more dirt into my eyes, trying to clear them. I jerked another log away.

The mound was less than a meter high around me, only the start of one.

When I could see, I saw that the walls of the stockade were charred and black to the east. There were only five or ten houses left where once there had been fifty. Smoke hung over the village. Warriors stood on the walls, heavily armed.

There were twenty or thirty people standing ten meters away, some with their mouths open, looking at me.

I scraped both my legs on the log bark, reached back in and pulled out the club and my javelin. I had to move broken pots and pipes around to do it.

My stomach was an empty pit. One of the men had a ripe may-pop in his hand.

‘Food,’ I said, my voice as caked with dirt as I was.

He handed the may-pop to me. I swallowed it in two bites. A boy handed me some plums. I ate them, seeds and all. I drank from someone’s waterskin.

Sun Man hurried up with two or three of his close followers, all armed.

‘How long have I been in there?’ I asked.

He studied me a moment. ‘Three days,’ he said. He reached out and touched me. ‘It’s good to have you back,’ he said.

Two of the Buzzard Cult guys, all tattoos in the morning light, stood halfway across the plaza from us. They pointed at me, let out whoops, ran back toward the huts to the north.

The village was half gone with fire, torn buildings, overturned goods. In front of the temple mound, bodies were laid out in neat rows, three of them. Two men were cutting up house logs nearby. Others were pulling arrows and spears out of the ground and houses where they had stuck.

‘What happened?’ I asked the people. Someone handed me dried fish.

‘We were burying you,’ said Sun Man. ‘Many were still feeling the effects of the Black Drink. The Huastecas attacked us at evening. We have been fighting them for two days. They have gone now. They killed many, took many prisoners. They got inside the walls twice.’

‘They just attacked, with no warning?’

‘None at all. Their honor is gone. Their god has driven them crazy.’

Sunflower was running across the plaza, her arms out to me, crying. She ran into me. I grabbed her and she kissed me. Sun Man looked away.

‘Took was captured,’ she said. ‘They have taken him away. I thought I had lost both of you.’ She buried her head. ‘I just heard you had come back to life.’

I was weak and had a moment of vertigo. I needed a lot more food, water, a bath.

‘How long have they been gone?’

‘The last of them left before dawn. They probably left with the prisoners last night. There was not much we could do to stop them,’ said Sun Man. He looked very tired and old. Half his village was dead or taken prisoner.

‘Is my horse still alive?’

‘The Big Dog? Yes.’

‘Could you have someone get me food? I’ll be at the temple in a few minutes.’

I led Sunflower toward the hut. It was still standing, though the thatching was burned. Over at the north end of the village the Buzzard Cult people were starting one of their dances.

‘They sound happy,’ I said. I went to my skins, reached under them and took out my waterproof bag. I pulled out the carbine, put it together, loaded up all my extra magazines and put the bandoliers together.

‘You’re going after them?’ asked Sunflower.

‘Yes.’

‘Then I’m going to lose you both again,’ she said.

‘I hope not. I’ll bring him back. I’ll bring them all back.’

‘No, you can’t,’ she said. ‘You are one man. There are more of them than there ever will be of us.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ I said. I picked up my gear.

I hugged her to my dirty body. She kissed me. ‘I’ll bring him back. Stay here. Take care of everybody.’

I went back past the plaza and out to the River. I put my things down, jumped in, washed the dirt and grit of the tomb off me.

Several dozen people were watching me as I came back in the gate with my fatigues on. I went over to the pen and saddled my horse and brought him around to the front of the temple mound.

I passed the rows of bodies. Curly and Larry were there, their tattoos as bright in death as they had been in life. Larry’s head was turned wrong. Curly had two or three holes in him.

Dreaming Killer lay not too far away.

I handed the reins to one of the priests. He didn’t like it, but he held them. The horse was nervous.

‘What about Moe?’ I asked Sun Man, using his real name.

‘Captured. I think he was knocked out when they got him. They wanted a lot of prisoners.’ A woman came up and handed me enough food for four days.

‘It is four days’ hard march due west,’ said Sun Man. ‘It is a big city. They will kill you before you can get to the gates.’

I turned and went up the stairs toward the temple, which had been rebuilt after the fire during the storm last fall. A priest made to stop me. Sun Man held up his hand. He waved to the priests at the top. They stepped aside.

As I walked up I heard the sounds of axes chopping the logs for tombs. People scraped dirt loose from the far edge of the plaza, preparatory to the funeral rites and the start of a new mound. The village around me which had once been beautiful in its way was now charred and half in waste.

I went into the darkness of the temple. I went into the inner sanctum. I picked up the Woodpecker God costume from its box and stuffed it into my pack. Then I put the headpiece with its bright scalp and gleaming bill under my arm.

I came back out to the top of the platform. The air was blue, the sun bright to the east. It was a beautiful morning up above.

Someone yelled when they saw what I had. The high priest dropped to the ground like a stone and lay still. The priests on the temple steps didn’t move.

I went down the steps to my horse.

I swung up into the saddle and tied the pack to the saddle horn.

The people all bowed except for Sun Man.

I turned the horse and rode out across the plaza, and out the west gate. It slammed shut behind us.

I put our shadow in front of us.

The motorcycles and the gleaming white cars pulled up onto the bluff. There was a break between storms. The waters of the bayou lapped against the coffer dam and its sandbags, eating at it.

Men in black suits with bulges under their arms jumped off the cars, eyed people with lizardlike gazes, moved some of the crowd back.

Perch and Kincaid went to the middle car of the five. A man in a white suit and hat lounged in the back of the car. He sat up on the folded convertible top, looking at the tents, the dam, the mounds, the bayou.

Bessie watched from her tent. She was tired; she wanted to sleep for weeks. She saw Kincaid and Perch point to the bayou waters, the mounds, the dam. They indicated the workers filling the sandbags, the mired tractor, the tarps and tents over the mounds.

Then they talked like she had never seen them do before; their hands shaped mounds, crowns, royalty, lost heritages, millennia, mysteries. They talked for ten full minutes.

Bessie came from her tent and walked to the knot of men. One of the bodyguards nodded to her. She walked up within a few feet of Kincaid as he finished his plea.

The man in the white suit pulled a long cigar from his left coat pocket, pulled off the cellophane but left the band on. He snipped off the end of the cigar with a penknife the size of a fingernail. He looked down at the mound, over at the bayou.

He lit the cigar.

‘Bodeaux?’ he said around it.

‘Yo, Kingfish!’

‘Call the highway department. Give these people what they want.’

‘Yes, Kingfish.’

Then the man in the white suit winked at Bessie. She blushed.