Rupert Thomson - Air and Fire

Her voice rose out of the droning of the men. You’ve been avoiding me. You have. And though he had his reasons, all listed, catalogued, all marshalled in his head, none of them stood up in daylight, not one of them stood up. Not reasons, but excuses — and weak at that. The dream had served his own true thoughts up to him like a plate of bitter roots.

Another lesson from his father, this time on the subject of women: ‘Don’t never take up with another man’s wife.’

It was Wilson’s first time in the mountains. He was twenty-three, twenty-four. They had no money that year, not even enough to go panning for gold. Instead they headed north, took jobs logging in the redwood forests, all through the fall, all winter too. Hard work, and no strong drink allowed. Only tea with no milk, two cups enough to brown your teeth. And no women either. Hence the talk.

‘One summer I was working in the docks, unloading pineapples from Hawaii, five dollars a ton.’ His father was sitting on a split log, three other men around him. A river rushed below, swollen with melted snow from higher in the mountains. Spring in Oregon. ‘This woman came up to me. I’d seen her before, worked with her husband further up the coast. Nice-looking woman. She comes up to me and says, “How about you and me go down behind the warehouse when you get off?’” His father sighed, flung a woodchip into the river. ‘That’s the trouble right there. She wanted to spit in her husband’s eye, and that was all I’d be if I went with her.’

‘So did you?’ This came from a grinning, gap-toothed man with forearms as thick as some of the wood he felled.

‘Sure I did,’ his father said. The others roared and nodded; the chuckling was a long time dying down. ‘But I shouldn’t have,’ his father reflected. ‘That’s how come I learned.’

He took an old cigar stump out of his shirt with slow fingers, bit the blackened end off, spat it out, and stuck the rest in his mouth. He did not light it, though. He just sat there, moving his teeth around it, and watched the river run.

‘She was a green-eyed woman,’ he said at last. ‘You reach for the door to leave and suddenly there’s a knife in your ribs. There’s only one way to leave a green-eyed woman, and that’s in a coffin.’ The truth of this only struck him after the words had left his lips and he nodded, in recognition. Then he dragged a match across the sole of his boot and lit the stump.

And here Wilson was, a generation later, trying not to follow his father’s example. Way past wanting to, though. Way past. He roused himself, moved to the window again. The street had emptied but for one drunk Indian. The Indian was so drunk that he walked in the slow curves of a snake. He had the big splayed feet that the Cocopah tribe were famous for. A pig was rooting in the weeds beside a house.

What would his father have said?

Wilson sat his father before him in the room and gave him a cigar to smoke. A whole one. Then he put the question.

‘Say the woman who wants to go with you, it’s not because she wants to spit in her husband’s eye, it’s just because she’s lonely.’

His father studied him from the bed, his eyes sharp across the air between them. They were used to looking for gold, those eyes; trained to pick out the smallest fragments. Something that was practically invisible could still be worth money. His father lit his cigar. Wilson could almost smell the smoke.

‘It don’t make no difference in the end,’ his father said. ‘Sometimes the most good you can do for someone is, don’t even spare them a thought.’

‘But if she’s lonely — ’

‘Don’t make no difference.’

Wilson turned away from him.

Through the open window he heard a rush of noise rise from the main square, a thousand voices raised as one. It came out of such a stillness, so suddenly, so loudly, that it was like a change of weather in the sky, that blast of wind which always brings a storm.

Ignoring the offer of a carriage, Suzanne walked away from Montoya. Just walked away from him. Up the stone steps, along the quay and out across the waterfront. She passed a group of soldiers lounging outside the customs house. The air was filled with orange dust; the sun hung behind it, still as a fish and cut from the same clean tin. The streets were silent. It was the hour when people slept. She turned the corner into Avenida Cobre. Only then did she begin to shake. She had held herself so tense and now it was over. Her teeth chattered, both hands trembled; she might have been running a fever. She stood in the shadows, pretending to adjust a glove.

She could only remember shaking like this once before and that was when Theo had first made love to her. Such unlocking of her body after years of holding back. Such a flood of desire. All round her blood and out through the part of her that he had entered. Because he had taken her in hands that she had dreamed about. Hands that were like miracles, the way they touched her in the darkness. It was as if he already knew each curve and hollow. As if he had always known. His hands telling her what his lips could not. Not just fulfilment, but a kind of proof. Confirming her instincts of that summer evening when she stood in the doorway and watched him talking to her father. It was Théo she wanted, only Théo; nobody else would do. And it was Théo she had to think of now. Théo who must be warned, protected.

She found him in the church, his frock-coat folded on a stack of stained-glass windows, his shirt-sleeves rolled. He was deep in consultation with Monsieur Castagnet, and did not notice her.

‘Théo?’

He turned with a look of exasperation on his face.

‘I need to speak to you,’ she said.

‘Does it have to be now?’

‘Yes.’ She apologised to Monsieur Castagnet, who tactfully withdrew.

Théo walked her back towards the entrance. He told her that he had almost finished. Perhaps she should return to the house and rest a little. He would see her soon.

She shook her head. ‘It cannot wait.’

His eyes lifted to the roof. She knew what he was thinking. What new outburst of hysteria is this? What specious drama, what absurdity? He might even have been appealing to the Lord God for deliverance — except for the fact that he did not believe in Him, of course.

‘Théo,’ she said, Tm afraid.’

He sighed. ‘What are you afraid of?’

‘I think there may be an attempt on your life.’

Her words brought his jaw down sharply; he swung round. This was more than he had bargained for. ‘For heaven’s sake, Suzanne.’

‘I’m perfectly serious.’

He stood in front of her, his shoulders framed by the high, square doorway of the church. ‘All right, tell me. Who is going to make an attempt on my life?’

‘Montoya.’

Still standing there, he began to laugh.

‘Whatever else he might be,’ Théo said, ‘Montoya is a military officer with a code of honour. He also represents the Mexican Government. He is hardly likely to go around killing people.’

She was on the point of telling him about the horse when a shouting distracted her. She could see a crowd of Indians marching up Avenida Manganeso. There was a small man in a beret at the front. He was chanting the same words, over and over again, and the crowd was answering, this second voice threatening and monumental, like the shifting of a mountain.

‘There may be trouble.’ Théo called to a small mule-drawn carriage that was waiting in the shade. ‘Take the carriage and go home,’ he said. ‘Wait for me there.’

This time she obeyed him.

One thought struck her as she climbed into the carriage, and it afforded her some relief: he had been too preoccupied and then too shocked to notice that her sleeve was torn.