Niall Williams - The Fall of Light

The smith came out in a vest and trousers.

“I need the horse,” Teige said. “I could work for you for a week.”

The smith blinked as if there were something he was just seeing. “Have you nothing you can trade?” he asked.

“Only these.” Teige held out the black suit.

The smith took the suit that was too small for him and turned it over in the half-light. “For funerals,” he said, and smiled, and Teige smiled, too.

“You have already done the work. The horse is yours,” said the smith. He told Teige to wait a moment and went back inside, where the figure of a woman moved, and then he came out with a lantern. They crossed the yard where the snow fell across the amber light and the smith held the lantern aloft while Teige unbolted the door. The horse neighed and Teige went and calmed her.

“You have no saddle,” said the smith.

“No.”

“Take the bridle.”

The smith watched while Teige brought her outside and he held the lantern and considered what tale untold underlay this scene, and of it he did not ask. Teige turned and offered him his hand.

“It is a cold night,” the smith said. “You should wait.” He indicated with his left hand the stables.

“I cannot,” Teige said. They shook hands. “Thank you.”

Then he slipped up onto the horse’s back that was already starred with scintilla of melting snowflakes. He said some words to the animal and then he turned her out of there and they went out of the lantern light and down the dark.

Teige rode out the road in a direction south of the city. Of the geography of that country he had only the vaguest semblance and even prior to that moment had not exactly considered where it was he was to start his life with Elizabeth. He had heard men speak of the west as if it were more than a compass point, as if captured in that appellation were a territory majestic and free and without parallel. But he did not know where it was, nor did he comprehend the vastness of that continent. That night as he rode he rode for distance only, to be farther away than it was possible to be. The road wound away from the coast. He went down through woodlands where the snow stopped and a small chill wind tunnelled. He passed on and met none coming or going and found in his very bones the sad familiarity of such lone travel, as if reencountering there a truth about his own condition. In the hours yet before dawn he slowed the horse and walked her and then drew her to the side of tall trees, where he bowed his head and for some short time slept.

He woke with birdsong. Light was breaking and the country thereabouts was revealed in verdant and purple colour. He rode on. South of there he came upon two boys and a man hunting cattle in the dawn. The gate to a field was open, but the cattle in their own peculiarity broke and ran past it and the boys ran after them with the man shouting. Teige turned the horse and headed the cattle off and turned them back. The drover boys joined him and they returned the cattle to the field proper. Then the man indicated the farmhouse not distant and said breakfast would be readying now.

Teige stayed there a week. The boys called him Ty. The woman of the house caught the melancholy of his demeanour and fed him double portions of eggs and meat as remedy for such sadness. He helped with the cattle and winter fencing. The days were cold and bright and the sky like a sheet of blue pulled taut over the world. When the man tried to pay him for his work, Teige would take none. The man offered him an old saddle then and said he would not be refused.

He went off south and west again and crossed the valley of a great river whose name he did not know. He saw mountains ahead and kept these to his right shoulder then. He stopped sometimes at places and worked a few days and was sometimes paid and sometimes given food. He stayed always briefly and made attachments to none. What history was his and how he had come to be there, he kept like a parchment folded inside him. As he rode the horse his mind was sometimes erased of all and he achieved in the rhythmic motion a state akin to innocence absolute. But in the evenings when he had to rest the horse and sat on a stone in the grass, he was often assailed by the memory of what he had left behind. He saw the woman’s face as he had first seen it. He returned to the old country and saw himself there in scenes as if from the life of another. He thought of his father and mother on the island and he looked at the big sky there and considered what stars he could see. He knew he should attempt a letter, but in the ruins of his dreams felt a vague uncertain shame and could not begin.

All that winter he rode south. Then when the spring came and the waters ran in clear streams everywhere, he turned the horse west and headed up through a pass in the Appalachian Mountains. By the summer of that year he had reached the Ohio River. He had thought when he reached it he must be nearly most ways across the country. The heat of the day scorched his forehead and he took to wearing a hat. The horse took lame and he had to rest her awhile on the outskirts of a town where in that season all was dust. He went and found a smith’s there and from short exchanges learned of those multitudes who considered that merely the starting point for their own sojourns west. The country was vast beyond imagining, he understood then. And from that knowledge he took solace, for destination was not what he sought and there was in endlessness a certain comfort born of the recognition that there would be no turning back.

He went due west then and came upon many wagons and riders and walkers, too, all as if under some heliocentric influence following the falling trajectory of the sun. Such were the numbers moving on the roads that it appeared as though the earth herself were flat and had been tipped on the side and all manner of men and women were then propelled to travel westward. Teige rode at times among them. All had their own tales and without exception had left their lives behind on the basis of stories they had heard of the land that lay ahead. They were a long, loose caravan of faith. Their countries were many. By the time he had crossed the Mississippi River, Teige had heard described the gold of California that some believed was plentiful yet. He had heard of similar riches at the end of the Oregon Trail and of untouched land there said to be only waiting for farming. But to none such was he drawn. He could not envision himself a farmer, could not now imagine being in a house fixed and still. He went south. His skin crisped in the sun. His forearms where he held all day the reins blistered in a line of watery moons. His horse suffered and whole days he spent then only seeking for water. He had come into Nebraska. On prairies there he saw herds of bison for the first time and paused his horse upon a crest and sat and watched over them a long time. He slept on a bedroll beneath the huge sky. In dreams he saw the face of his brother Tomas and saw him on the night he had last seen his face as he left the island and woke and wondered if he were living or dead.

For days he went nowhere at all. He rested the horse and spoke to her and brought her to water. If she died, he thought, I would too. For such was the empty vista he beheld that travellers there seemed less than sporadic and his bones would have whitened before he was found. Nonetheless this same emptiness soothed him too and there was in his silent and solitary state a kind of peace. He stayed in that country awhile. He watched the birds of prey high against the heavens like smallest flaws in the blue. He heard the prairie dogs in the night. When the ashes of love gathered in his mouth he stood and went off across the dark, sending badgers and foxes and coyotes alike in scattered retreat. He walked and sometimes howled out and sometimes stopped and bent over and wept. He felt like a disease in the blood the shame of failed love and could not explain to himself how it had happened. After a time he returned to his horse and his bedroll and lay until the dawn.