“Do you know what entropy is, Baby?” said Matt Dillon.
Carmella turned over on her back and appeared to be studying the ceiling. “Isn’t that like when the the universe goes cold and everything ends?”
“That’s the effect of it, but not what it is. What it is is the role of the dice.”
“You mean, like a crap shoot? I don’t get your meaning, Sugar.”
“Yeah, it’s like a crap shoot. Take that pretty nose of yours. It’s made of strings of information. They all come together, and they spell Carmella’s nose. But what if whoever wrote that information, instead of using the DNA code that makes a nose, decided to role the dice. Now, you might get a nose, or you might get an ear, but the odds are very high that you would get something unrecognizable and non-functional. That’s what entropy is. It’s the randomization of information.”
“What kind of shit is going through your head, Sugar?”
“I’m thinking about the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Baby. That says information moves from a state of order to a state of disorder, a state of entropy. Like you said, ‘the universe goes cold.’ But maybe that’s wrong. Maybe it just appears that way, when in reality it is just moving from one place to another. After we left Earth, those people back home observing us, it appeared to them that we died, our bodies died, dust to dust, all that shit. But we didn’t. Our information just moved somewhere else, across the universe, or into some other dimension, or who the hell knows where we are. Do you get my drift, Baby?”
“I sure the hell don’t know where you are, Matt Dillon, but I wish you would drift back here to the real world. Damn, Sugar, it’s nearly two o’clock in the morning. I need my sleep.”
“Ah, I’m sorry Carmella. I just need to figure this shit out is all. I gotta make sense of it.”
“Why, Sugar? All you need to know is right here. It ain’t out there in that big old universe somewhere. It’s right here in bed next to you.”
Dillon closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He tried to tell himself that Carmella was right, but his mind kept returning to the stars, to the Earth of his youth, and his long-ago dreams. He tried to remember those days, but the inaccessible memories yielded up only a vague feeling of loneliness.
Carmella began to gently snore. He sat, quietly, trying not to waken her, and removed himself from bed. He located his boots and pants, and carried them into the living room, where he dressed. He strapped on his gun, then he grabbed the day pack he often took on trips up the canyon, tossed in a handful of protein bars, a couple of apples, and his old A harmonica. He filled his water bottle and put it in the pouch on the side of the bag. Outside, the crickets chirped, and the bullfrogs sang their song of the night. They were calling him.
He grabbed his wide-brimmed hat, hanging by the door. He entered into the outdoors, softly closing the screen door behind him. For a moment, the crickets and frogs fell silent. The sky was clear, and the enormous stars seemed too heavy for it to hold. The big moon, bloated like a corpse in the desert heat, lay impaled on a mountain peak; the little moon was yet to rise. Dillon wondered if this wasn’t, maybe, the land of the dead.
He took the path down to the river toward the Sheriff’s Department stables. He might follow the Pecos up as far as Big Snake, then cut cross-country, maybe head up toward Crawford’s Hole or Witches Hat. He could check out the site of that massacre up at Newton’s Spring, and be back by nightfall. Carmella would eat him alive if he missed the Indigo Blues performance this evening.
As he approached the river, the night singers resumed their music, and the musty smell of the water, and its fecund life, its willows and honeysuckle and marsh grass and rotting plant matter put him in mind of another place, somewhere, long ago. But the where and the when were lost to him now.
Hearing his approach, the horses stomped the ground and neighed. He looked for Bettie, the new little sorrel mare Roxanne had broken in this spring; she was a good, surefooted ride. He found her in the third stall, next to Big Black. He stroked her nose, and she whinnied her approval.
“You want to go for ride this evening, girl?” Dillon clipped a lead rope onto her halter and opened the gate. He tied her outside the tack room, and saddled her, talking gently and feeding her a handful of grain now and then.
He had been opposed to the horses at first. For one thing, he had never ridden a horse. It had been part of Pedro’s fucking cowboy fantasy. But in the end, he had to admit that it was practical, out here in this canyon country, with no roads and a shortage of motor vehicles. Now he wouldn’t have it any other way. There was nothing like a midnight ride on the desert chaparral, time slowed to a crawl, just a man and his horse and an endless horizon. Out there he could think about the stars and the vast distance between them. He could think about entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. He could figure out the meaning of his life.
He finished cinching the saddle and adjusting the bridle. He looped his day pack over the saddle horn and mounted. With a gentle snap of the reins, they were moving east along the river trail through town, past the sleeping workers and their families, past the bridge to Order, past city hall, into the wilderness.
* * *
The well-worn trail up river to Big Snake held no surprises. A single passing ore barge drifted by on the current, no doubt guided by autopilot, as it’s tiny crew slept below deck. It was at least an hour before dawn when Dillon reached the first S in the river. Directly overhead, the two gibbous Moons provided some small quantity of light, but he was hesitant to take the green mare overland at night in this treacherous terrain. He dismounted and tied her up on a grassy slope, next to the water. Then, he unsaddled her before searching for a spot to nap.
Another mile up river, the lights of Blasón’s toll station illuminated the deep narrows on the upper S of the Big Snake. Pedro’s crew had built a barrier spanning the river, a massive gate which allowed barges through for a price. Matt Dillon had decided long ago to ignore Blasón’s blatant thievery, but he knew Miglia or Cheng would eventually demand he control the situation. He wasn’t looking forward to the confrontation.
His thoughts turned to Jolene Cheng and whatever devil’s bargain she had offered Blasón. It was only a matter of time before it blew up in their faces. Miglia was no fool. The thing was, it put Dillon in the middle. Cheng was his immediate superior, but in the end he still had to answer to Miglia.
Sharma reported to him daily, but, so far, nothing important had come over the lines, just an occasional encrypted message, usually out bound. Then, there was the mystery boy at the convent, and the equally strange young woman who came to town searching for him. She had revealed very little to Dillon, just that she was a little crazy. But he knew the pair were somehow tied up with Cheng’s comings and goings.
He finally found a soft sandy place near the river and tossed down the saddle blanket. The night was still warm, nearly 22 degrees as far as Dillon could figure. The temperature hadn’t dropped below twenty for a couple of weeks now, but it wasn’t as sweltering as a few days ago. A person could sleep in this weather.
For awhile, he played his blues harmonica, releasing its lonely cries into the empty night. When the weariness finally caught up to him, he lay down his head and closed his eyes.
* * *
When Dillon woke, the sun had risen, casting long red shadows across the desert landscape. At the river, he cupped a handful of water in his hands and splashed it on his face. Then he took another and drank deeply before saddling up Bettie and mounting her. He rode northeast, away from the river toward the big black cinder cone called Witch’s Hat. About ten kilometers north of Witch’s Hat lay Crawford’s Hole, an old impact crater. Between the two, the oasis of Newton’s Spring harbored the little mining town of Manifest Destiny.
Dillon wasn’t sure what he would find there. The travelers who reported the massacre had also buried the dead. There would not likely be much evidence left, but he felt he needed to see the scene just the same. Maybe he could find a clue about the killers—where they had come from, where they had gone. That was the crazy thing. It had been fourteen years since Law and Order had been established. Miners had been all over this country, and no one had ever seen a native village or a teepee. Only the savages fleeting silhouettes on the horizon, or the aftermath of their brutality. The few survivors had reported Indians on horseback, but no Indian bodies had ever been found. The dead, it seemed, had vanished.
It was nearly noon when Dillon skirted Witch’s Hat. In the distance he saw the green poplar trees which sustained themselves on the artesian waters of Newton’s Spring. A red-tailed hawk circled lazily in the sky, then seeing a possible meal on the ground, tucked his wings back and fell from the heavens in a swift, graceful dive. Dillon followed a shallow arroyo down the hill toward town. The sun was now becoming unbearably hot and Bettie had worked up a sweat. She would need water soon. Dillon pulled an apple out of his day pack and ate a few bites, then he gave the remainder to his horse. He stroked the length of her neck. “We’re almost there, girl. Hang on.”
Dillon could now make out a few trailers, their metallic shells reflecting the bright sunlight. A dust devil crossed the dirt road between them, stirring up some discarded cardboard and a soft drink cup, before moving off to the west. As he approached the broken down buildings, it seemed as though the town had been deserted decades ago.
Dillon located the spring bubbling from the ground, and allowed the mare to drink her fill before tethering her to graze. He wiped the sweat from beneath his hat lining, then walked toward the center of town. More trailers and ramshackle houses in need of paint; a small cafe/grocery store with a faded Coca Cola sign and a gasoline pump out front; nothing much else.
He imagined the miners, cold beer in their hands, sitting out front of the store, talking about work and telling bawdy jokes, their wives hanging the laundry out on the lines behind the trailers, kids running down the dirt road through town, kicking up dust storms. He could almost taste the dust as it swirled around him. He wondered if there might be a cold drink in some cooler, still powered by the solar array on the rooftop. He decided it would probably be sacrilegious to steal from the dead.
Yet the sun was hot, the kind of hot you don’t want to be in without plenty of liquids.
Dillon turned back to the springs. While the town of Manifest Destiny was clustered here near the bubbling water, the oasis of trees and grass stretched for a kilometer in a long green line before the life-giving liquid was absorbed back into the arid desert earth. He saw, at the far end of the green swath, a rock formation jutting from the sand. The sort of place a raiding party might hide and wait.
He satiated himself and refilled his water bottle. Then he followed the trickling stream toward the outcrop. Dillon walked slowly, scouring the earth for clues. About half way down, something moved in a clump of willows, and he reached instinctively for his Colt. He froze, listening, watching for movement until he decided his imagination had conjured a phantom. But he moved more cautiously now, attempting to engage all his senses. It seemed unlikely that the band that had killed those people was still around, but you never knew who else might be; Newton’s Spring was an oasis in the desert, a precious water source for thirsty travelers.
He saw nothing on his walk that indicated the recent massacre. No misfired arrows, no dead natives. The strange outcropping, however, immediately drew his interest. From a distance, it seemed like weather-rounded sandstone. But close up, it was definitely something else.
Then it hit him —adobe. This was ruins of an adobe wall, perhaps centuries old. As he encircled it, he decided it had been some sort of dwelling. Again he found no arrows, no footprints but those of barefoot children. He stepped over the rubble of a crumbled archway. Inside the structure, he found some plastic soldiers and other evidence that the town’s children played here. He saw them holding their tiny toys, aimed at one another. “Bang, you’re dead,” they cry and fall, mortally wounded, child and toy melded into one.
A slight dizziness overcame him. Dillon wiped the sweat from his forehead and sat, unsteadily, on a low stone ledge, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, a tall, thin man was sitting across the room from him. The man wore clothes similar to Dillon’s own, denim and light cotton. He seemed vaguely familiar.
“Hello, Matt,” he said. “Welcome to my home.”
Startled, Dillon carefully rested his hand on his revolver. “Where do I know you from?”
“Perhaps we’ve met somewhere. Perhaps…” The man let his words trail off.
“How do you know my name?”
“You told me, of course. Just now.”
That was funny, Dillon didn’t remember telling him anything at all. “And you are?”
“Oh, you probably couldn’t pronounce it. It isn’t reproducible with your apparatus.” The man indicated his throat. “You can call me Ben, if you like.”
“You say this is your home, Ben? You mean Manifest Destiny?”
“No, I mean this dwelling, Matt.”
“You’re nutty as a fruitcake, man. I’ve just been all over here. There is no bedding, no fire pit. Nobody’s been living in this place. Where are your footprints, Ben?”
Ben turned his gaze to the ground, then back to Dillon, puzzlement on his face. “That is odd,” he said.
Yes, thought Dillon, extremely odd. “Do you know what happened to those people, Ben?”
“I tried my best to warn them, Matt. I enjoyed the little ones running around the house. It is so sad.”
“Who? Who killed them? Did you kill them?”
“They killed themselves, I’m afraid.”
Dillon tightened his grip on his gun. “What do you mean, man? They were massacred with hatchets and arrows.”
“Yes, I know.” Ben was looking off into the distance, now. A single tear ran down his face.
“What makes you think they killed themselves?”
“Because…” said Ben, his voice breaking, “because my family, too, killed themselves, you see. All of this around you was once part of the great forest, with green valleys and abundance everywhere. Until we became greedy and turned it into a desert. We had no choice, you see, but to kill ourselves.”
Dillon’s head reeled. Was he hallucinating? It didn’t seem like an hallucination. But what was this madman’s logic?
“How does a man produce an arrow out of thin air, Ben, and then pierce his own heart with it?”
“You should talk to the forest about that, Matt.”
He felt another wave of dizziness and reached for his water bottle. The sun had shifted slightly, its glare obscuring his vision, and he thought he could see the inside of a house behind that curtain of light, a warm, beautiful lived-in home, its furnishings rich and unearthly, and when he looked back at Ben, he saw something, something not human at all, fading in the shimmering photon waves.
He took a swig from his bottle, and, despite the heat, he shivered. He recalled a conversation from the recent past —the girl, Molly, and something she had said to him.
“The forest told me.”
©2009, Duane Poncy, all rights reserved.
