Mojave (15 page)

That's when one-eyed Buster kicked me in the ribs, and I flew another ten feet.

Somebody yelled something, but all I heard was harps. Later, Jingfei said it was Peach Fuzz who was yelling something and what he was yelling was, “That ain't fair, Crutchfield. He's 'posed to kill 'im with his guns.”

My lip, the one I'd busted when Lucky tossed me over his neck, started bleeding again. My arm, the one that was purple and black from my wrist to my elbow after that same wreck, throbbed. My ribs ached. My head rang. I couldn't see nothing. Then I knowed I was jerked to my feet, and that Buster had me in a bear hug, and maybe I was screaming, but I couldn't hear nothing, not even harps no more, just Candy Crutchfield muttering something.

Later, Tan Vest told me what Crutchfield said was, “Told you, Micah Bishop, you shoulda shot Buster dead whilst you had your chance.”

I thought Buster might have given me a hernia, and that's no fun at all. Felt myself flying up in the air, then fell on some rocks and sand and cactus, and I just lay there. My eyes cleared at last, and I knowed I was about to die because my life was flashing right before my eyes like it's supposed to.

Only that flashing was stuck on just a few days ago, back in that canyon that separates Calico proper from East Calico's Chinatown. I was staring up at Paul With The Winchester, who was pointing his rifle at me, and I was focused on his one open eye.

Only, it wasn't Paul With The Winchester. It was Buster, who had picked up his Colt—no, it was my Colt—and had thumbed back the hammer, and was aiming and saying something.

Later, Candy Crutchfield told me what Buster was saying was, “I play by the rules. If I have to kill you with a gun, I'll do it. But it'll be your bullet. Not mine. Do you know how much a pack of ca'tridges cost in Calico?”

Only it wasn't Buster, yet it had to be, 'cause it wasn't Paul With The Winchester. I was staring up at his one eye that was open. Not because the other eye was closed so that Paul With The Winchester could sight down on me better. It was because Buster only had one eye.

I must be crazy,
I thought, then corrected myself.
No, I must be dead.

I was right. It wasn't Paul With The Winchester. It was Buster With My Colt, but it was happening just like it had happened with Paul With The Winchester. Because I was staring at that eye, Buster's gray eye (not the empty socket), and, just like it had happened with Paul With The Winchester, that eye just plain flat-out disappeared.

Back when I was just a button and getting my knuckles slapped on a frequent and regular basis by the Sisters of Charity, that old blind crone, Rocío, kept telling me all about dreams. She'd say how dreams was God's way of letting you know about things, why they happened, even what was going to happen. Back then, I wondered how Sister Rocío could even dream since she couldn't even see me squirming on that pew a foot from her face. After she practically broke my knuckles—on account of how I'd spoke to her, disrespectful and unrepentant—she told me that John Milton dreamed when he was blind, and that she wasn't always blind and could recall how things looked when she was a younger nun, and that God, Jesus, Mary, Saint Lucy, and even Saint Simeon could do wonderful things.

I rarely dream. Oh, I'll have them here and there—like that really terrific one about Jingfei that I had on the trail back from Calico. But that sure wasn't God communicating with me and I was damned sure what I dreamed about with Jingfei wasn't going to happen no time in the future. But dreams with real meanings? Never happened. It's 'cause God and Jesus and Mary don't really care much to communicate with a fool like me. Can't blame them none.

But that day, after getting my arse whupped by Buster . . . I dreamed. It went something like this:

 

 

First, I'm standing in a desert of dunes, the wind blowing sand like grapeshot. No trees. Nothing but sand and dunes and the cloudless sky and the torrid sun. Behind me, I hear Jingfei's voice, only sounding a different kind of foreign:

I turn, and there stands not Jingfei but some guy who is dressed in duds like them actors wore when me and Big Tim Pruett snuck into that opera house to watch some play—San Antonio, I think it was. Hell's fire, I couldn't make heads or tails out of nothing in
Henry IV, Part I,
though I must admit that I would have enjoyed drinking ale with that Falstaff fellow, even if he dressed in bed sheets and sandals. Big Tim Pruett liked that play real fine, even spoke some of the words before the actors themselves did. Me? I'd rather sing along with Captain Bang in
Our Island Home.

“Mister Milton,” I tell the guy, because I know he's John Milton despite the fact that I've never met the odd little poet that Sister Rocío admired so much, “what is going on here, sir?”

John Milton smiles and stares at me. I can't see his eyes, because he's wearing these oval-shaped spectacles with smoked glass over his blind eyes. “Pray tell, Micah,” he says at last, “is this not that which you signed on to do?”

I tell him, “I didn't sign nothing with Whip Watson.”

“But your word . . .” he says.

I say, “I've broken many, many times.”

“Not this time.” Them words didn't sound like John Milton at all. Or Jingfei. Sound just like the Word of God.

So I turn back because I hear that whip snapping in the air.

Ain't in the sand dunes no more. I'm standing on the main street in Calico, across from the Globe Chop House and Lucky Ben Wong's bathhouse of coal oil cans. The geography ain't quite right, but I don't say nothing. I'm just staring at Whip Watson.

He's standing maybe fifty yards down the street, slinging two blacksnake whips in each of his hands. And that's what they are, too, black snakes. I can see their fangs glistening in the sun, venom dropping off them, as they pop in the air. He don't say a word, just grins. I notice that he's wearing smoked oval spectacles, too.

So is Candy Crutchfield. She's right beside him, tossing her giant bone-handled knife up in the air, catching it easily, laughing.

Behind them isn't the mines or Miller's store or the carpenters working on that fancy building. Only thing I can see, and it's blocking out those brown hills, is a castle. I mean, one of them real storybook castles with spires and bell towers and round tables and knights and damsels from one of those foreign countries like Spain or Nova Scotia. A veritable palace. There's even a moat around the castle, which must be where the Calico Water Works Incorporated fills its water wagons. The drawbridge is down.

The palace is all aflame. Smoke blackens the sky.

Mr. Milton is talking again:

And I want to tell Mr. Milton to shut the hell up, but I can't take my eyes off this scene: a castle burning like Hell itself, Whip Watson whipping his twin snakes, Candy Crutchfield tossing that knife. Then here come the girls.

Maud Fenstermacher . . . Darlene Gould . . . Annie Mercer . . . Chris McGover . . . Molly Reid . . . Aibreann Halloran . . . Bonnie Little . . . and lots of girls I ain't ever met, old and young, fat and slim, pretty and plain, even a couple of red-haired twins. They're just walking down the street, every last one of them wearing a
changyi.
The snakes whip over their heads, but they don't even blink. Just walk between Whip Watson and Candy Crutchfield, and I start to step toward them, but can't move no more.

I look across the street, over the heads of Molly Reid and Bonnie Little, and I yell at Mr. Slater, and Mr. McCoy, and Mr. Applewhite, and a bunch of other guys dressed in brown suits. I yell at them, “Don't just stand there. Help them poor, poor girls.”

But they don't move, don't speak, don't lift a hand to help. Probably because they're all blind—even Peach Fuzz and Lucky Ben Wong, who are sitting on a hitching post in front of the rammed-earth adobe building of Mr. Slater's brother, the undertaker, who's licking his lips and rubbing his greedy palms together. I reckon the undertaker can see. I know everyone else, though, must be blind because all of them are wearing black wire spectacles with dark oval lenses.

I'm looking down the street again. Watching the girls cross the moat. Their embroidered silk robes commence to smoking even before they go through the palace gate, where they just erupt in flames, scream, and vanish into dust.

Maud Fenstermacher.

Darlene Gould.

Annie Mercer.

A fat, plain-looking, gray-haired grandma.

Chris McGover.

Molly Reid.

The redheaded twins.

Aibreann Halloran.

Bonnie Little.

I turn back to Whip Watson, and yell, “Whip! Stop them! Stop them!”

Whip's snarling, fanged whips snap in my face, and I fear they'll bite me, but they don't, because Whip has jerked back the black snakes, and I recollect how he can snap a horsefly off an ox's ear without touching the ear.

I hear Whip's voice:

I yell again, and then I see her, reach for her, but she just walks past me, 'cause she can't see me—as she's wearing those same spectacles—and can't hear me because, try as hard as I can, I can't say nothing, do nothing.

Jingfei is last in the line. Other girls are smoking on the bridge over the moat, turning into flames and dust at the gate.

Finally, my voice works, and I hear myself screaming, “Noooooooo!”

Jingfei is between Whip Watson and Candy Crutchfield, and Candy laughs, turns to me, and says, “You want this girl, do you, Micah?”

Suddenly, Candy's giant knife slashes forward, and I choke and gag and moan and cry as the knife slices through poor Jingfei's neck. Her body drops into flames and dust. Down the street, the castle explodes. Lucky Ben Wong's house and the chop house and Miller's store and everything else in Calico burst into flames. Even the rammed-earth adobe houses are burning.

Candy Crutchfield holds Jingfei's head by the hair. Blood pours out the bottom.

“Here she comes, Micah!” Candy yells, and she starts slinging poor Jingfei's head, holding it by the black hair, whipping it around like Whip Watson's blacksnake snakes. She rears back and sends Jingfei's dead head right toward me.

All I can do is watch as Jingfei's dead eyes open, and her mouth opens, and she has turned into a Mojave rattlesnake, with fangs that drip venom, heading right toward my face.

Which is when I woke up.

What I mean is that I jerked straight up, sitting, only I almost doubled over immediately because of the pain that went rifling through my entire body. Lungs burned, and I knew I was screaming, then falling to my side on something soft.

My six-dollar hat.

“Tsk, tsk, that was a fantastic dream you must have been having, my good man,” a voice said.

Dream? Hell, that was a son-of-a-bitching nightmare. I preferred the kind of dream, rare that it is, the one I'd had with Jingfei a few nights back camping in the Mojave.

My eyes was shut tight, trying to seal off the pain, and while slowly the smarting lessened, it did not go away entirely. A rough hand lighted on my shoulder, and that man's voice said, “Roll over, kind sir, and permit me to examine your ribs,” and I guess I obeyed.

I cringed at the touch.

“No,” the voice said, “I stand by my earlier assessment. No ribs broken. Bruised, yes, and quite severely. But you shall live, Micah Bishop.”

Eyes still shut, I groaned. “What about my hernia?”

The man chuckled. “No hernia, either.” I heard a Lucifer spark, and moments later smelled that sweet scent of a pipe being smoked.

Still wasn't sure I could open my eyes, so I asked, “And my arm?”

The arm got lifted, and fingers pressed down on the inside of my forearm, and I groaned, damn near cried, before the arm dropped onto a bedroll.

“The arm?” the voice said. “Yes. That is one fat hematoma.”

“Buster gave you a fair thrashing,” the voice said. “But he was not his old self, God rest his soul. I thought you might have sustained some internal injuries, but you pissed in your pants, and I detected no blood.”

I groaned and sniffed over my new $3.79 woolen britches, brown with the navy stripes and most of the duck blood and feathers cleaned off.

“You shall recover is my prognosis.” The voice stopped to suck on his pipe stem. “Unless Candy kills you.”

Which is when I remembered the nightmare, the fight with Buster, his one eye disappearing the way Paul With The Winchester's had, and I recognized the voice that was speaking to me.

Sounded deep, soothing, and real fine like he was talking Shakespeare but speaking English.

My eyes opened. It was dark. I was blind. That's what the dream was telling me. No, it was night. I saw the pipe, one of them fancy, yellow-ivory bowls with a whale engraved on it. Reminded me of Moby-Dick. There was a fire going right beside me. The voice leaned over, so I could get a better look at him.

He was the spitting image of John Milton. At least, the John Milton from my dreams, only he didn't wear bedsheets and sandals.

The hair was dark gray, with a few strands of black, the mustache and beard well groomed. He wore spectacles, but those lenses wasn't smoked. In fact, one didn't have no glass at all, just an empty hole. His eyes were the most beautiful blue I'd ever seen on a man. Like the oceans I'd always heard about, dreamed about.

Black suspenders over a real fine, real white—no dirt or dust or blood anywhere—shirt with a pleated front, pearl buttons, and a paper collar, from which hung a black silk string tie that needed tying.

Couldn't see nothing else about him.

One hand held the pipe, and the right one disappeared, come up with something, and then he moved closer to me again, and held out a little pill. Well, it wasn't little.

“Take this,” he said.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It is a Tabloid, for the pain.” Which was all he had to say. I fingered the pill.

“I need something to help me swallow it,” I said.

His hand disappeared and he sat up a bit so he could pull something out of the back pocket on his pants. That something was a nickel-plated flask. “Will London gin work?” he asked.

It did.

 

 

When I woke up next time, it was still dark, and the fire was still going, and I heard some people beyond John Milton, who had shunned his sweet-smelling pipe for more gin.

I had figured that had been another dream, but, nope, he was still there, and I was still hurting, though not as bad. And not as dead.