Neal Barrett - Through Darkest America

“Isn’t anyone going to do that,” the boy said. There was no feeling at all in his voice. “It’s down in the old Keys and you don’t get close unless you belong. It’s a lie, the whole damn thing, and they can’t take a chance on anyone finding out.”

The boy looked away from Howie, north, or nowhere at all. He seemed to be somewhere else. Howie thought he was simply turning away, like he did when he didn’t want to talk.

“Look,” the boy said finally, “Earl said it was up to me, but that I probably hadn’t ought to say anything at all. Only I got to do it. Maybe it ain’t right, but I got to do it. See, the thing is, I knew her. They don’t always cut your tongue right, and she could talk as good as me. She talked a lot about you. I knew who you was right off when you said your name. I tried to act like I didn’t but I did. You was the…

”Huuuuuuh…!”

Something tore at Howie’s heart. Food came up and he couldn’t stop it. “You’re talkin’ crazy stuff,” he said harshly, his voice as thick as the boy’s. “D’wanta… hear g’damn crazy stuff!”

“Listen, I’m sorry.” The boy’s eyesseemed to plead with Howie. “I wanted someone to know. You see that? I wanted someone to know what they do. That’s all it was…”

Howie cried out with all the anguish and loneliness that was in him, and knew it was a cry caught up inside him that no one else could hear. The sun rose out of the desert and he was lost in its terrible light. He wondered why there was no hurt at all. If he could make it hurt bad, someone would take it all back and do it over. But there was nothing in him now. It had been there once and it was gone. He couldn’t make it happen anymore…

“You all right?” Earl touched him gently. “You want a little water or something?”

Howie shook him off.

“I can get you some water if you like.”

“I got to go,” Howie said. “I’m… obliged for your help and all I can’t stay here no more.” The desert was a blur. He looked at Earl and didn’t see him. The others were there somewhere in the sun, the boy who talked and the rest.

He started walking. Just walking away. He saw Carolee as he always saw her—a small flash of laughter in a bright flower dress on the boat down to Bluevale, a comic miniature of her mother. He held on to that picture as long as he could. When it turned to something else, he shut that corner of his mind and never looked at it again.

“There ain’t nothin’ up that way you can do,” Earl called after him. “You know there ain’t, boy.”

“I got to go see if that’s so,” Howie said.

He wondered if he’d said it aloud or just thought it.

For some time after Mexico, Howie walked north and east, finally running flat out of land and coming up against the sea. He marveled at the great blue expanse that seemed to stretch out forever to the sky. Ma had shown him a picture in a book one time, an ocean and a boy in a boat. The water in the picture looked flat and painted on; it didn’t look a thing like this.

The beach was thick with tiny creatures that scuttled along the sand; they were easy to catch and good to eat. Storms came in off the water now and then, and he had enough to drink.

He followed the coast for some time. It seemed to go on forever. He tried to draw a map in his head, and decided the big stretch of water was the Gulf…

The men came at him just before first light, making little noise, working up to him on the ground. He could smell their sweat and knew they weren’t afraid. Howie figured they’d done this once or twice before. They came in together, the second man holding a knife, just behind the first. They stopped to listen for a while, then the first man crawled up and grabbed out at Howie’s arms to hold him down. Howie rolled to one side and came up in a crouch; the man with the knife looked surprised because Howie wasn’t there and then he was. Howie thrust his own blade in belly-deep, sliced up quickly to the breast and jerked free, all in a move too fast to see.

The other man cried out in fright, crabbed away, leaving his friend behind…

Moving further north, he saw a little game, snicks and two rabuts. By late afternoon he smelled stock. The odor sent a sharp wave of nausea through his belly. Pictures appeared in his head, things he didn’t want to see. When the pens came into sight, he picked up his pace as quickly as he could. The stink was overpowering. The pens were set up in a clearing, on the bank of a sandy river that likely ran down to the sea. With a river close by you could dump all the waste from the stock and the organs nobody liked to eat.

As ever, there was a slow, constant motion in the pens, stock shuffling aimlessly about. He passed the breeding sheds, keeping his attention straight ahead, trying to ignore the growing knot that cramped his gut. He walked by a high board fence, past gateways and ramps, and came right on the mares. Howie stopped, too shaken to turn away. Sweat cold as ice stung his face. They were young, no more than fourteen, each one gravid and heavy-breasted, nearly ready to foal. One looked up, a mare with matted yellow hair, looked right at him with dull, incurious eyes, grunted in her throat and clutched her breasts. Bile rose up in Howie’s throat and he turned away and retched…

When the man came around, Howie jabbed him in once in the ribs. The man’s eyes went wide; a frightened cry was muffled in the gag.

Howie leaned in close. “You’re Anson Slade.” It wasn’t a question at all.

Slade nodded emphatically.

“I’m taking off this gag,” Howie said. “You want to yell, why that’s up to you. I ain’t against bringing blood.”

Howie stripped the gag away. Slade drew in a breath.

“Who the—hell are you?” Slade said angrily. “Damn it, I’ll have your—“

Howie touched Slade’s cheek with his knife. Slade went silent at once.

“What happened at Silver Island?” Howie said. “I want to know about that. I don’t want to hear nothing else.”

Slade looked surprised. “Everybody knows about that.”

“Well, you pretend I ain’t heard.”

Slade let out a breath. “Them Rebels landed guerrillas somehow. It all happened real fast. They killed all the younguns they could catch, and took off in the ‘glades. That’s all I know—“

Howie grabbed him by the shirt, slammed him hard against the floor.

“You listen, and listen hard. There isn’t any Rebels down there. The gov’ment itself done the killing. Mister, I know what Silver Island was for, and I know what you was doin’ down there. One of those girls was my sister. Her name was Carolee. You think about her. Carolee Ryder. You just keep thinking on her.”

Howie picked up Slade, carried him over his shoulder and lead him outside into the deep stands of oak. Even with the gag thrust deeply into Anson Slade’s mouth, Howie could hear him screaming inside all the way into the woods…

“There it is,” Captain Finley said. “Bout four miles off the starboard bow. New Los Angeles and port.”

Howie stood by the railing, watching the sea. Late on the afternoon before, Finley had pointed far to starboard at the hundreds of small islands off the shore. The gray points of land looked peculiar; most were no more than stubs, ragged mounds of stone that seldom rose more than twenty feet above the sea.

“Don’t appear real natural, do they?” the Captain had said. “That’s because they aren’t. What you’re looking at now is Old Los Angeles town. There’s a whole city there on the bottom. Right about there is where the shore used to be.” He waved his hand vaguely to the right.

“The war did that?” Howie couldn’t imagine such devastation, or what might have caused it.