Read How the Stars did Fall Online
Authors: Paul F Silva
How the Stars did Fall
HOW THE STARS DID FALL
Paul F Silva
Copyright © 2015 Paul F Silva
All rights reserved.
Cover illustration by Duncan Long
Edited by Eliza Dee
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For whoever makes a shelter of reeds and hides has joined his spirit to the common destiny of creatures and he will subside back into the primal mud with scarcely a cry. But who builds in stone seeks to alter the structure of the universe and so it was with these masons however primitive their works may seem to us.
Judge Holden
Man has created gods in his own likeness and being himself mortal he has naturally supposed his creatures to be in the same sad predicament.
James Frazer
Chapter One
Daniel sat at the edge of the bar, his drink untouched, his gaze fixed ahead on nothing specific as if he could see through the shelves of liquor in front of him, through even the wall and out into the city beyond. Yerba Buena, they had once called it. Now San Francisco. He felt a fondness for the city. It had taken him in, given him a place in the world. And it was a special place. Nestled between ocean and bay, it sat on the edge of the continent, watching. A gateway to the rest of the nation, guarding its western approaches.
While Daniel thought about this, two boys approached him, their faces caked in grime. Their countenances grayed by heavy labor, and their hands darkened by soot as if they had come directly from some coal mine. Wanderers and migrants, two among a multitude, come to seek something.
As the boys stood adjacent to Daniel, mustering up the courage to speak, they took off their caps and set them against their waists, waiting for him to notice their presence. Finally he turned to them and one of the boys spoke.
“Excuse us, sir, but the bartender told us you’re with the Good Man.”
No answer.
“We have ridden many days to come here because we heard about the Good Man’s work, what he was teaching up here, and we want to be a part of it. The both of us.”
“I am no recruiter,” Daniel said.
“Could you tell us where we should go to join in the Good Man’s cause? Who we should talk to?”
“Are you miners?”
“We were. Back home.”
“Why’d you give it up?”
“We want to do more, sir, than dig up rocks for a living.”
“And who told you we need more miners running from home here in this city?”
“No one, sir. I just thought—”
Daniel stood up and took hold of his tall glass of beer. He downed it in one gulp and pulled his coat back, revealing two black revolvers sitting snug upon his belt. He stood a good foot higher than the boys, and his broad shoulders seemed to expand before them like the widening wings of some dark angelic being just now showing its true form. Then he pulled one of the revolvers out from its holster and cocked it.
“I don’t think you understand the price we’re paying to be out here with no one looking over us. No law but the one we make for ourselves, no government but the one we agree upon as freemen, and most important of all, no promise of wealth or happiness except that which each man may carve out for himself.”
“We know this.”
“And do you know they will come to make war upon us? That everywhere we are surrounded by enemies?”
“Yes.”
Daniel placed the revolver back into its holster and touched each boy upon his shoulder. He looked each of them right in the eyes and, bending down, whispered a few words into their ears. Precious information about who to talk to and what to say. The passwords and tokens of a high and ancient order. And hearing these words, the boys thanked Daniel profusely and set out from the bar, back into the city to find among the Good Man’s legions a place for themselves.
After the boys left, Daniel took two gold coins from his pocket and placed them atop the counter. Payment for his drink. Stepping outside, he mounted his horse and, turning it, he rode ahead a few paces and stopped right in front of the city dock. Two vessels lay dormant upon those waters and a third had just arrived, its captain shrewdly aligning it. Farther into the bay no more vessels could be seen. It hadn’t been that way before.
Before the Good Man took the city, the bay had held hundreds of ships at a time, most of them cargo vessels come to drop something off or pick something up. But no longer. Daniel knew this was inevitable once the Good Man had taken the city, but the physical mechanics of it eluded him. Had there been a blockade? Some edict sent out from Washington or Sacramento forbidding ships from docking in the city? He wanted to ask the captain who had just arrived what he knew about these matters, but he had no time. The Good Man had given him a mission that morning and he intended to see it out as soon as possible.
Daniel rode south until he reached the point just outside the city where the poorest residents lived, together with those migrants who had failed in their ventures and others who at one point may have had a trade but found in those outskirts a different sort of occupation. Opium. You could tell those who belonged to the latter group by the way these men and women did not even bother to erect tents to sleep in or make beds of any kind. They slept on the ground, over the dirt, and they were perpetually filthy, their faces and hands and feet wounded and the wounds would not heal. Daniel rode past many of these addicts before stopping in front of a building. Recently erected, the wooden beams of this house were smooth and dark, and right at the entrance, freshly painted above the doorway, was the word PHARMACY.
This building in particular was surrounded by these opium fiends, and Daniel, having tied his horse up, had to step over a few of these people before he could enter, their dazed faces unchanging, all care for the world having been emptied from them.
Inside, a man in a white coat stood behind a counter attending to a woman. They spoke briefly. She handed him a piece of paper and he left her for a moment, only to return bearing a thick little bottle of laudanum, which he promptly gave to her. It was at that point that the pharmacist noticed the rather large man who had just entered and a wide smile broke across his face.
“Daniel, my good friend. You’ve come! What do you make of the place? I’ve tried to keep it a good deal better organized than the old one,” the pharmacist said.
“You are right, Eli. It is better laid out. How have you been?” Daniel asked.
“Never better. The Good Man has patrols coming through here a couple times a day and it has never been safer this far south of the city.”
“That’s good to hear. And your family?”
“Golden. Marjory’s about to start an apprenticeship with a milliner up in Fairfax. Some cousin of her mother’s.”
“That’s good news. She’ll be safer up there.”
“Is it true what they say? The president is going to send the Union soldiers against the Good Man?”
“I believe it is. You ought to leave, too. Take the rest of your family.”
“Daniel, I appreciate the advice. But this is my home and my store. I’m not going anywhere no matter the horrors that may come. Would you not think less of me if I departed?”
“I think every man ought to protect his family. But death comes for us all, man, woman or child, and it is a holy act to face up to one’s own doom instead of fleeing.”
“That is what the Good Man says.”
“It is.”
“And did you come all the way to philosophize or is there something else I can help you with?”
“Yes, actually. I came to ask if you know of a man named Tuttle.”
“I know a few. Wouldn’t be a good storekeep if I didn’t. A strong last name.”
“This one is famous for the flaunting of his wealth.”
“Ah, the old man Tuttle. I’ve seen him in the city, though I don’t believe I ever sold anything to him. Wears extravagant clothes. Holds an estate of some size to the south.”
“You ever hear anything about his estate? Some detail of interest to gossips?”
“Just that he kept a cellar filled with gold bars. Supposedly gold he dug up from the ground himself some twenty years ago. That’s what I’ve heard.”
“You believe it to be true?”
“I believe it has as good a chance of being true as not. Now tell me—you fixing to rob him or what? The way you’re talking—”
“Lower your voice. I’m not fixing to do anything. The Good Man intends to court this old man Tuttle as a donor. We have need of arms and those cost a great deal.”
“Well, I’ll wish him good luck with that. You want a drink?”
“I’ll take some water.”
Daniel drank his water and said goodbye to his friend. He rode south all afternoon and into the night, passing by San Mateo, a little satellite town of San Francisco’s. It was just beyond that town, in between two hills, that Daniel and his half-brother, Faraday, had agreed to meet. Safeguarded as in an alcove, Faraday’s fire gave little outward sign of his camp and Daniel barely made it to the site before nighttime.
“Brother,” Daniel said, still mounted. Faraday sat in front of the fire, staring at the dancing flames.
“Are you alone?” Faraday asked.
Before answering, Daniel dropped from the horse and retrieved from his pack a skin of water, taking a swig. Then from the same pack he took out his pipe and, sitting down across from his half-brother, he stuffed the pipe with a pinch of tobacco, lit it, and began to smoke.
“I am,” he said.
“I said we needed help. Tuttle has people guarding his estate. Men with guns.”
“No use telling you, because you won’t believe me when I say it, but there’s no one I can trust for something like this.”
“No? Could have fooled me. Your Good Man appears to be all about loyalty to one cause or another. At least that’s the way it looks from afar.”
“This ain’t about him, though, is it? I’m not here in his stead nor to contribute to his cause.”
“That’s right. We’re here for Pa and Ma and Olivia.”
“As you say, brother.”
At that moment, Faraday pulled a folded piece of parchment from his pocket and, unfurling it, handed it to Daniel, the edges of the paper waving in the night wind. Daniel put his pipe down, setting it upright against a rock. He took a good long look at the paper. It was a map.
“I paid good coin for that,” Faraday said. “Here, let me show you.”
Faraday got up and stood next to Daniel, pointing out the spot where Tuttle kept a trove of gold bars.
“How do you know he keeps it there?”
“Man who sold me the map sold me the location of the cellar.”
“This man could be making all of this up. What if we ride out there only to find all of Tuttle’s gold was spent a long time ago and we’ve been chasing ghosts?”
“Those are risks we take. Unless you have some other, more certain idea, all we can do is go on and hope for the best.”
“This man say how much gold Tuttle’s keeping there?”
“He couldn’t say for sure because Tuttle takes from it every week. But bare minimum one hundred pounds. That’s over thirty thousand dollars if we sell it fast.”
“Goddamn.”
“Do you think it’ll be enough for Pa to pay his debts?”
“I reckon it will.”
That night they slept next to each other for the first time since they were still boys, and they spent many hours reminiscing about the old days on their father’s farm, working but also playing. They found caves in the environs of the farm, and now and again they would invite other boys to join them in these caves. There, Daniel, as the eldest, officiated various rituals of their own creation. To say they formed a brotherhood would be pushing it, but the boys had a code and they lived by it, and if one of their own broke that code, then Daniel was there to punish him. And he had done it more than once. Incidents were common. A boy got caught skinning a rabbit alive. Another sodomizing a goat with a stick. These were offenses to the code and Daniel took them seriously. The next time they met at the cave, all of the boys together would decree a punishment, a good whipping most of the time, and Daniel would carry it out.
He tried to make it seem like he did not enjoy these opportunities for sanctioned violence. But he did. To Faraday, he said he did it because it was for the offender’s good. That the punishment would right the boy’s path and that one day the boy would look back and be grateful. These were things Daniel’s father said to him after a whipping. He was only repeating them. The truth was, Daniel thought now as he looked up at the stars, he had enjoyed it. Every moment of it. If it had some positive effect on the punished, then so be it. But he had done it because he had derived pleasure from it.