The Penitent Man

1

The land was dry and flat with nothing but red dirt for miles round. It was that hard pan desert dirt that bakes into a sort of crust and then cracks into perfectly symmetrical patterns like shingles. The sand, carried on the unpleasantly hot wind, piled up in drifts and found its way into everything, into his teeth which were gritty and tobacco stained, into his clothing dark with sweat, even into his water skin which was now half empty.

Despite this, he allowed himself another sip. It spilled over his cracked lips and slid down his dry canyon of a throat which was scratchy and raw. How many days had he been in this miserable place? Three, five, a week? Maybe more? Days passed with the strange fluidity of dreams, only this wasn’t a dream, was it.

His head was pounding. Dried blood caked in his hair from a wound he didn’t remember getting. But why couldn’t he remember? How did he get out here? Things, people, the past; they slipped through his fingers now like shadows. Had he gone mad from the heat? Possibly. He’d heard of that happening, but he didn’t feel mad--it was just the remembering that was a problem.

At night he would look up at the stars shining like pinpricks of light through a dark curtain, and grey snapshots of his past would drift by; His wife Mary, and their baby girl, Belle, with her bright eyes and brown curls. But these memories would disappear into the mist again. Would there come a time when they wouldn’t return at all? He wasn't sure, and this thought haunted him now as he shuffled ever onward.

He swiped an arm across his brow to clear the sweat and turned in a slow circle, surveying the land. Nothing grew out here. No scrub brush, no prickly pear, no brittle bush, not even a thin blade of desert grass to chew on.

He squinted his eyes at something peculiar ahead, something deliberately placed there. It was a ring of stones that held the charred remnants of a fire. This was the first he’d seen of someone else in this desolate place. It was a curiously exhilarating find. He poked through the ashes hoping to get a sense of this mysterious traveler, but there were only burnt ends of wood and cast off cigarette butts. Footsteps crushed into the hard pan led away from the camp. He would follow them tomorrow and perhaps they would lead him somewhere--anywhere.

With a spent ember he drew an arrow on a large stone, a directional reminder for the morning against his failing memory. The sun sat low in the west like a banked coal. It would be getting dark soon.

That night he slept a troubled sleep. He dreamt of a dim shape cresting the hillside, of an injured horse whinnying, its cries blown on the wind. There was a crack. The horse swayed for a moment, its front legs buckling before it fell down, dead.

2

‘Tom. Wake up now, Tom. Tom!’

He awoke with a start. Whose voice had that been? Mary’s? His mother’s?The sun hadn’t yet risen and the sky was still purple, like the color of a bruise. He twisted up a cigarette. These were the pleasant hours, when the sky gradually turned brilliant shades of deep red and copper.

He picked his way alongside the sparse tracks that were often erratic and hard to locate. Hunger was a constant burden; it made him irritable and lightheaded. It was a long march that day halted by only a handful of brief rests. He half walked half slept when his foot struck against something.

“Wagon wheel,” He said aloud, and the sound of his own voice startled him. He'd nearly forgotten it. He stood the wheel upright, running his fingers over its smooth arc. What was it doing here? There certainly weren’t any roads. Ruts snaked away in both directions. He considered following them, but where would they lead and would it be any better than where he was going?

He broke up all the wood he could carry. As he was leaving, a glint of silver caught his eye. With his foot he unearthed a sealed can of beans. His spirits lifted.

That night he had a fire and a hot meal. He slurped the beans from the can before they had cooled and burnt his mouth terribly. But, his belly was full and a full belly meant life.

In the morning he felt refreshed. He covered many miles by midday when he came upon a tiny shack, little more than a single room. A man with a long beard and skin the color of leather napped in a chair on the porch. His head jerked up and his eyes went wide as saucers. He brought up a rifle and squeezed off a shot. The earth near the cowboy’s feet exploded.

“Are you crazy!” Tom yelled.

“Came back again, eh?” Said the man. He stood up and squeezed off another shot. Tom heard it crackling in the air as it whizzed past his head. “I’ll kill you this time!”

The man had put two bullets alongside Tom from forty yards and there was little doubt he’d put one square into his head if he got his aim. He turned and ran. He ran until his legs gave out, collapsing in a heap. The sun beat down mercilessly. His throat was dry and his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. He’d nearly just been killed, and for what? Questions without answers swirled in his mind.

He stared off at the horizon where a distant line of jagged hills stuck up out of the earth like a red scratch against the sky. Suddenly, he felt disoriented. Then, like someone wiping the writing from a blackboard, his memory cleared.

Had he been running just now? Why? He couldn’t goddamn remember.

The afternoon slid towards evening. At the bottom of a dry gully he came upon the hollowed carcass of a horse being picked over by buzzards. In its head an eye like polished glass stared blindly. A wagon had gone over the crag and lay busted on its side, its wheels slowly spinning in the breeze with a sharp chirping sound. Planks of wood littered the steep slope. Some flower print cloth stuck up from a sand drift. He knelt down and lifted it, revealing a slender leg decomposing badly from the heat. The stench hit him and he staggered backwards, retching. Nearby was a tiny cotton shirt fitted for a baby, and from it bulged a crooked arm, swollen and black. He scrambled up the far side of the embankment when his stomach summersaulted and a strange inclination stole over him—could he perhaps cut some meat from that body? His mouth squirted saliva and his tongue flicked over his dry lips like a snake. He took a step towards it but the smell drove him back.

That night he dreamt of the pale woman in that flowered dress, of a wagon pitching heavily over the escarpment, and a hunk of meat sizzling fragrantly over a fire.

3

Without knowing, he’d looped himself in a great wide circle and with each step his predicament became more grim. It had been two days since he’d left the wreckage of the wagon, but he had no memory of it now. The water skin was all but empty. Beset with hunger and a slakeless thirst, he stumbled about like a man fresh from sea that hadn’t regained his land legs yet. Ahead was a shimmering mirage. Dark silhouettes swirled about him in feverish hallucinations. He swatted at the air in a useless bid to drive them away.

His pistol again crept into his mouth, but again his courage faltered. He fell upon his knees praying the sobbing prayers of the penitent man, begging for help, for mercy, for a sign.

No sooner had he asked than he found it! An arrow drawn upon a stone pointing away north towards a set of scattered tracks. He took this as a sign that his time of suffering was ending. At last he’d found a way out. Where there were tracks there were people, and where there were people there was food. He began to cry and the tears cleared a clean path down his dirty cheek.

It was twilight when he came upon the little shack lit by the steady glow of a lantern. He gave a jubilant cry and ran towards it. As he raised his hand to knock, the door suddenly the exploded and something tore through his side with a searing pain. He staggered backwards falling onto the dirt.

The splintered door swung open and a man came out, gun at his hip. But he hadn’t expected Tom to be off of the porch and this miscalculation proved costly.

Tom’s hand flicked to his pistol and squeezed off a wild shot. The man doubled over, and fell inside with a crash.

Tom stood up and staggered cautiously into the doorway.

The man was propped up on his elbow hurriedly tearing a page from a small black notebook. He stuffed it into his mouth, struggled to swallow, and then spat out a gob of blood.

“You ain’t gonna find it now. No sir!” He said. Blood leaked from hole in his belly.

“Find what?” Asked Tom, breathless, fingering his wound. “What’d you haul off and shoot me for?”

“You come back for the money, I knowed it!”

“Money?" Cried Tom, " I just come for food, I’m starving!”

He gave Tom a long earnest look and began to understand. “Desert’s took hold of you, ain’t it? Don’t you remember—?”

“—No,” Tom shook his head, “I can’t remember nothing. Bits and pieces sometimes. Was them your footsteps I’s tracking?” Tom asked.

“Tracking?” Said the man. “You tracking footsteps? Out there!” He howled with laughter.

Tom’s lips moved wordlessly.

“You got the desert amnesia, boy.” He said, “You’re tracking yourself! Ain’t no one out here but us.” He lowered his voice, “And those dead folks of your’n.” He hadn’t meant for that to be heard.

But Tom heard it. And it triggered something.

The gears in his brain slid into place and a flood of memory rushed in. The robbery, the escape off the roads across the desert, the accident, they hadn’t seen the gully before going into it, Mary and Belle dead in the dirt, he’d hit his head and woke up to a gunshot, the horse toppled over, and a figure disappeared behind the ridge. The money--'You come back for the money...'

He fixed a steely look on the old man.

“Where’s is it?” Tom said, “You stole it,”

“You stole it! I just happened to find it. But after you come sniffing around I buried it--all twenty thousand.” He patted his belly and gave a choking laugh, “Map’s right h—here—cowboy.”

There was a sickening rattle. He hitched in a breath, let it out, tried for another and just quit. Tom stared a long time into his dead eyes and the world seemed to tighten around him. His reckless gamble had cost him everything—his wife, his baby. Nothing was left now but anguish and pain and emptiness, and these combined into a sort of albatross that hung heavily around his neck.

He knew now what must be done; it was the only way to ease his suffering. He kicked over the kerosene lamp and quickly stepped away. The little shack was soon engulfed in a raging fire.

He walked off into the darkness and just kept walking and walking. A fog drifted into his brain and he welcomed it like an old friend. Slowly, steadily it wiped his memory away, wiped the pain away.

He looked up at the moon and grinned.

What was he doing out here? He just couldn’t remember.