Beyond the Horizon (2 page)

The man nodded as if he knew what he had just been
told.

As it was told to him, the stranger found the hillside one mile north of the hovel. It would take a fair amount of excavating to cut into the leeward side of the slope enough to create a livable space. He stood at the base of the elevation, grass knee deep, and envisioned his future home: two rooms, he postulated—an outer and an inner room. Be good to keep out the winter. The outer room would serve as a porched area. Some of the beams from the wagon could fashion the uprights. He could build up the walls with some of the dirt from the hillside.

The inner room would hug up against the cut bank of the hill. He'd fell a few of the saplings from the creekside to reinforce the dirt, be nice to have something to aid the lithe trees with the reinforcement. He figured this to be the space where he would sleep. Be a good place for it—dark and quiet, secure against the earth.

If he dug down far enough he could get below the frost line, have a place to store meat in the summer months, place to store liquids in the winter. He would make it a secret though. The opening for the cellar would be hidden in the inner room, perhaps where he slept. A large flat rock from the creek might make a sufficient cover for an aperture.

He climbed to the top of the hill and surveyed the lay of the land, saw it go out a hundred miles in each direction. So long as he dug in the proper direction, at the correct angles, he would progress faster than the man. Doing the geometry of the situation proved easy. But he knew too that men's actions are wily and there would yet be an equation to solve the dilemma of what so many would term the human condition. Once he came out on the other side of the tunnel, there'd be no returning; time would only telescope toward cataclysm.

‘Could be crazy,' the man said to the woman. She listened rapturously as if she understood the words being spoken.

‘El hombre es peligroso. Es un hombre malo,' she said. As she spoke, she grabbed the man by the forearm.

‘I know it,' the man said, though he had little idea of what the woman actually pled of him. ‘Sent him to scout out the hill a mile away from here. Figured we shouldnt send him away all together. Not like hes actually dangerous. Little unhinged, maybe.'

He rested his hand on her belly, the belly button sticking out like a nose. ‘Says he can help birth the baby.'

The woman's eyes widened and she leaned in close to the man, gripping his arm ever tighter. ‘No quiero que esté cerca del bebé.'

The man used his free hand to loosen her grip. He rubbed her womb. ‘You neednt get worked up,' he said. ‘You'll catch a hysteria.'

Some nights the stranger still ate with the man and the woman. Other nights, most nights now, he dined by himself, eating solitary in places unknown. When he did arrive for mealtime, he brought small game with him—some bird, a rabbit, stray rodents he dried into sinewy strips.

The woman cared not for the conversation when the stranger visited. She ate quickly, refusing his contributions to the meal. Then, with an uttered pardon, she excused herself. The men repeated the word hysteria lowly and they silently and secretly studied her. Once she exited the hovel, they spoke freely.

‘How she seem to you?' the stranger asked.

‘Fine most of the time,' the man said. ‘She gets real strange when you come round.'

‘Hysteria can make people suspicious of outsiders; it heightens the part of the mind where superstition is formed. Women can see things that arent there.'

The man shook his head. ‘Hard to think of her like that—like shes goin crazy.'

‘That baby inside of her,' the stranger said. ‘Hes got a mind too. Having two minds in one body creates chaos. If shes hearing voices, could well be the baby's voice.'

‘Dont really make sense,' the man
said.

‘If it made sense, we wouldnt call it crazy.' The stranger smiled as if he had just told a joke. The man mulled on a string of meat, his eyes focusing on something distant. After a minute he asked if the stranger's home was coming along all right.

‘Best I can get it,' the stranger said. ‘Be better if I could get some of this oilcloth you got yourself here.' He stretched out his arm and ran his fingertips down the tented wall. ‘Real tough material, it is. Be good for bracing the dirt wall.'

‘If you want some, I got some extra,' the man
said.

The stranger didnt seem particularly surprised by the offer, even in this spartan place. He sat cross-legged, arms resting on his knees. He craned his head all around, examining the way the cloth draped and wrapped over the ragged frame of the hovel. ‘I'd take some cloth, if you could spare
it.'

The man crawled over to a chest that served as a table and cleared the top of it. He opened it up and shuffled some of the contents about and pulled out a folded square of cloth.

As he held it, the stranger noted the seams along the edges, how thick the fabric felt, how it textured closer to canvas.

‘It's a sail,' the man said. ‘An old boat sail.'

This sparked some amusement on the stranger's face. ‘Strange place for a boat sail to end
up.'

The man nodded, said it was his father's doing and went outside in search of his woman.

The stranger's abode progressed surprisingly quickly. In a matter of weeks he dug out what he said would be the porch and most of the inner room. He began reinforcing the walls with branches and saplings when the man came to visit.

‘Comin along real well,' he
said.

The stranger draped the oilcloth over the exposed dirt and braced it with the poles. ‘Should be a real fine piece once I'm done here.'

The man nodded in agreement. He dismounted the mule and pretended to show a detailed interest in what the stranger was building.

‘Had a question about that registerin business,' he
said.

The stranger unfurled a length of cord and laced it between the poles to hold the cloth flat. His lithe fingers worked quickly, tying knots. ‘What about
it?'

The man looked out beyond the homestead, out beyond where the sky and earth met. He squinted. ‘You said I'd have to go to the territory seat, to register her an the baby.'

In his throat the stranger made a grunting noise. He asked what about it again.

‘Caint say I ever heard that bein done,' the man
said.

‘It's a census year.' The stranger said it real flat like the answer should be explanation enough. Then, as the man opened his mouth to ask for clarification, the stranger continued. ‘You said your woman was a wayward—her people left her here. Something tells me that shes not part of this country. And something tells me that baby—the one you have nothing to do with creating—hes gonna be dirty skinned
too.'

‘Dont see what thats rightly got to do with anything.'

‘There'll be a census marshal coming around. They find out youre housing a couple non-citizens and they'll take them away.'

The man appeared to be physically knocked off-balance and he staggered about for a second. ‘They caint do that,' he protested.

Stranger nodded in agreement. ‘They cant if you register them out at the territory office.'

‘Whereabouts that?'

For a moment the stranger closed his eyes and appeared to be visualizing a place of myth, constructing it in his mind. Then he opened his eyes. ‘A ways from here, place I never been before.'

‘How
far?'

‘You know,' the stranger said, ‘you could not register your family. You could hide them whenever a passer-through came near.'

‘Office is far away then.'

‘It is,
yes.'

‘Whereabouts?'

‘Farther west, out Colorado way, place called Fort James.'

‘You be able to get me direction of some kind?'

‘Yes,' the stranger said. ‘But you should be warned: this might be hard country here, but out that way, thats no country at
all.'

The next night provided more of the same—the man insisting on legitimizing his woman and the baby, the stranger reluctant to provide details.

‘I can find Fort James just fine,' the man
said.

The stranger grunted as he used a piece of driftwood to brace the porch roof. ‘It's a ways from here,' he
said.

‘Need a headin, a direction—thats
all.'

‘You sound confident. Did you used to be a scout in the army?'

The man squinted, folded his arms. He did a rare thing and considered his words before he spoke them. ‘Got some maps,' he said. ‘Know how to guide myself usin the stars.'

The stranger quit working and devoted his attention to the conversation at hand. ‘You know celestial navigation?'

‘No,' the man said. ‘Just know how to follow the stars to get where I needs to
go.'

The stranger snorted. He threw his head back to look into the sky above. Evening swirled the tongues of red cirrus clouds into the mellowed lighter shades of aged day. A ghost moon, nearly full, waned into existence. There were no stars yet. It wouldnt be long. The stranger looked at the man. ‘You'll have to travel in the night then,' he
said.

‘I know
it.'

‘Some people say the country is more dangerous at night.'

‘They say that. I figure it's about the same, just darker.'

The stranger chuckled to himself. He went back to constructing his porch space. After a moment he quit again.

‘Wheres a man like your kind learn to travel by the stars?' he asked.

The man seemed to anticipate the question and his delay in answering seemed to be a predetermined measure for effect. ‘Father was a sailor,' he
said.

The stranger nodded. ‘Thats where you got the sails from, the oilcloth.'

‘Took them when I left.'

‘Took the maps
too.'

‘Thats right. Took whatever I could fit into a wagon, said I was gonna sail the ocean on the other side of the country.'

This truth pleased the stranger and he smiled. ‘Instead you end up in this place—place like the Sargasso.'

The man's eyes sharpened. His lips drew tight and constricted until they were white.

‘Say something wrong, friend?' the stranger asked.

The man shook his head slowly, not taking his eyes from the stranger, who smiled at him like a fool. ‘Just never heard another man talk bout the Sargasso, no one this far inland anyhow.'

‘I'm well traveled,' the stranger said. ‘Now we'll need to plan for your leaving. It wont be easy on your woman.'

The man did as the stranger told him to do. He prepared his woman a drink of boiled leaves and squeezings of wild chives. It would help calm her hysteria, the stranger had said. It would also cause in her a deep sleep.

Only after she fell into slumber did the man leave, kissing her once on the cheek and again on her swollen stomach. He took the saddlebag he filled with meal and maps, the shiv he'd fashioned from a
bolt.

‘You must leave in the night,' the stranger had instructed him. ‘The worry—the anticipation of your leaving—could cause the hysteria to grow.'

‘An what'll you do then?' the man had asked.

They had sat in the nearly completed interior room of the stranger's abode to discuss the matter as the woman only appeared more and more uneased in the presence of the stranger.

‘I'll bring her here,' the stranger said. ‘This is a discreet place, a safe place for her to give birth.'

‘An youve birthed some babies in your time?'

‘I have.'

The man looked about the shelter. Secretly he was impressed with the stranger, how fast the place took shape. He'd asked how someone goes about making a home so fast once and the stranger simply said such things were a matter of
time.

‘You marked out how to go to Fort James?'

The man nodded. ‘Gonna wear my mule down tryin to get there an back so quick though.'

The stranger smiled the same awkward smile he rarely let happen. ‘You'll be back before you know it. You'll have your woman right with the government. Son'll be legal
too.'

‘You think it'll be a
boy?'

‘I have a sense about these things,' the stranger
said.

The man kissed his woman's stomach once more and stole off out the door. He nearly ran into the stranger as he slung the flap door open. In the moonlight both men appeared with shallow features and muted shades.

‘Thought you'd be around tomorrow,' the man
said.

‘Best if I'm here to explain everything in the morn,' the stranger said. He patted the man's shoulder. His hand felt warm, soft. ‘Better if you go
now.'

And with that the man left on his mule. He looked over his shoulder once he made some distance, but saw nothing behind him. He looked up into the cosmos, saw Virgo sprawled out, Spica glowing the brightest.

The woman started awake at the touch of foreign hands around her womb. When she saw who the hands belonged to she scuttled back on her bedding.

‘Eres satanás.'

The stranger smiled. ‘Me confundes con otra persona. He venido aquí para salvarle.'

‘No,' the woman said and she pulled her skirt down in an attempt to keep the stranger away from her unborn. He approached still. Outside some birds shrieked. Sun came glowing through the canvas roof of the structure. She cried out for her
man.

‘Él tiene un objetivo para los tontos.'

The woman shook her head and cried silently. She wrapped her arms around her stomach. Inside the baby kicked.