Hernán Díaz - In the Distance

“Did we leave?” he barely managed to ask.

“I am sorry,” responded Håkan.

Lorimer shut his eyes and, after gathering some strength, opened them and tried to smile. Håkan gave him water to drink from a soaked-up rag. His friend nodded with gratitude and slipped back into sleep.

During one of his occasional spells of consciousness, Lorimer was able to give Håkan some basic instructions regarding his own cure. He urged him to give him water at all times and even force it into him when unconscious. Under his direction, Håkan prepared an unguent with vinegar, agave, desiccated Spanish flies, and lavender oil, and applied it to his blisters and pustules. He also asked him to add some salt and a few drops of a particular tonic to his honey water. Should he get delirious and restless, Håkan was to give him three drops of a tincture containing opium and other sedatives—under no circumstances should Lorimer get agitated and sweat.

As veins of red dust started to run across the white ground, Håkan found walking increasingly difficult. He had outgrown the shoes he had taken from Clangston, and the pain was crippling. With one of Lorimer’s scalpels, he cut off the toe caps. His toes, dissociated from the rest of his feet, stuck out and protruded over the soles like blind albino worms. Gradually, the salt flats were reduced to crystal ripples on the dirt. Some scorched bushes started dotting the skyline. The abstract territory became a landscape once again. The first sage grouse they spotted seemed to Håkan as fabulous as a flying toy.

Although still weak, under his own treatment administered by Håkan, Lorimer’s moments of awareness became more frequent, until he fully regained consciousness. Håkan’s first concern was Lorimer’s animals. He wanted to tell his friend he had been unable to protect them before Lorimer noticed that they were all gone. Stammering and held back by fear, Håkan told the naturalist what had happened. Lorimer laughed feebly through his nostrils.

“Eaten. Good. Good.” He laughed again. “A much more dignified end than the fate they would have met with me.”

Lorimer conferred with the tracker, who, together with the other men, asked to be relieved of his obligations after delivering him safely to Fort Squibb, a week or two north and slightly east of there. This stronghold had become a thriving trading post for trappers and emigrants, and there Lorimer would find rest, supplies, fresh horses, and maybe even a whole new party, should he want one. They shook hands on it.

Slowly, the plains regained their brown, red, and purple features. Håkan would not have been surprised if suddenly they had found themselves by James Brennan’s gold mine or back in Clangston. Little by little, Lorimer started venturing out of the wagon and eventually got back on his horse for part of the day. After one of those rides, Håkan helped him dismount, and they ended up standing face-to-face. The naturalist looked at his friend, bewildered.

“Have you outgrown me?” he asked. “Could you possibly have grown taller than I over the last few weeks? Come here.”

He measured Håkan, shaking his head in disbelief.

“How old are you again?”

“I don’t know.”

“Roughly.”

“I don’t know.”

Lorimer proceeded to write down the dimensions of his skull, the extension of his spine, and the length and girth of his limbs, while shaking his head. After his disappointment in Saladillo and his illness, Lorimer’s disposition to be astonished and delighted at every turn had become somewhat dulled, and he no longer rose with an impassioned tone to the highest flights of eloquence. But some of his former fervor resurfaced as he looked up at his young friend. After studying his notes and making a few calculations, he told Håkan he had never seen or even read anything like it. Håkan’s growth rate was without precedent. He reminded Håkan that life is a struggle against the downward pull of gravity—life is an ascending force that moves every plant and beast away from the dirt (and the same can be said about a creature’s moral evolution, by which it moves away from its primordial instincts toward a higher awareness). Every worm, crawling out of the opaque puddle of nonexistence and up the millennial coil of mutations, is an upright, cognizant species in the making. Was Håkan, reaching up beyond the rest of us, an example of what humans might become?

The convoy traveled on over the uneventful plains. After having nursed Lorimer and handled his tonics, Håkan could now detect a faint medicinal scent in the verdigris sagebrush. Otherwise, the desert, as unchanging as ever, seemed to defy the very idea that they once had left it. Lorimer spent most of the day writing, often leaning his notebook against the pommel of his saddle. The tracker and the rest of the men escorted him with cold formality, from afar.

One afternoon, they sighted a plume of smoke sketched on the sky. Two men, most likely moved by boredom rather than by bravery, volunteered to ride ahead and make a reconnaissance. Those who stayed behind inspected their powder horns and loaded their rifles. Nobody spoke, but it was apparent—from the way they fondled their guns, stirred in their saddles, and wore the arrogant look of untested courage—that they longed for some sort of confrontation. When the two scouts, who had left galloping, returned at a leisurely trot, the tracker and his men did not hide their disappointment.

“Just Indians,” one of the scouts said and had some water.

“Dying,” the other one added, reaching for his companion’s canteen.

Håkan understood that the Indians had some hides and old horses they could easily take and trade at Fort Squibb. The rest of the men approved. A kind of worried severity took over Lorimer’s face, and though he never said a word, he plainly disagreed with the party’s intentions. The naturalist made sure to ride at the front of the convoy and seemed eager to be the first to reach the Indians. As they approached the camp, they found that the few lodges that had withstood the flames had been burned down to black bones. Hanging from these shapeless structures and a few broken poles stuck in the dirt, torn skins, hides, and patches of leather sagged in the breezeless air. Not a soul in sight. Strewn amid the ruins, chunks of dried meat, gourds, painted hides, tools of different sorts, and other objects broken beyond recognition. Some sickly ponies stared at the ground. A few dogs, ears angular with attention, looked at the strangers. The fire that had almost entirely consumed the largest tent and the shelters around it was dying under the weight of its own smoke. That bubbling black stream covered the back half of the camp and then rose in a concave wave whose crest dissolved into the sky. The dogs came out to meet the riders, some growling, others with welcoming yelps, most with cool curiosity.

“They were here,” said one of the scouts, puzzled.

The tracker and the others stopped at the edge of the decimated camp and readied their weapons while pointlessly scanning for hideouts in the naked wasteland. Lorimer rode into the smoke. Håkan followed him. They covered their faces with their shirts as the smoke got thicker. The sun was reduced to a prickly twilight. In a whisper, Lorimer told his friend to stop and held up his hand for silence. They were wrapped and rewrapped by a thick, grainy whirlpool. They could have almost grabbed fistfuls of ashes from the air. The world ended right after their horses’ ears. They dismounted, and Håkan followed the naturalist into the heart of the smoke cloud. Muffled coughs came from below. They both stared at the ground, but their feet were hardly visible. Lorimer stopped, bent over, and picked up a bundle. It was a small child, its face completely wrapped in a damp cloth, like a little mummy. Håkan squatted and discovered that the smoke hovered a foot or two above ground. Lying in the dirt, almost crushed by this low black ceiling, there were over a dozen bodies. The smoke seemed to rest on their backs. All faces were covered in rags. A hand feebly clutched Håkan’s ankle, giving him a jolt.