Chapter 39 The boy fled into bareness of this once inlet sea. Into the grim desert both foreign and extinct. A vast mosaic of pavement cobbled up with tiny blocks, a thousand acres wide where the wind soared and where he fled like a Neolithic vagabond. The shadows were long in the dunes and the bones of beasts that had died there lay in a curious congress upon the sands. There was no water and further passage into the desert was marked by the carcasses of perished animals in increasing number. He hid from Hartford, looking east for the promised sun. “Perhaps,” said Hartford, “you are comfortable in this place, as you have seen it before in a dream, and knew that you would die here.” *** The oxidized desert stone lay segmented across the earth, perilous architecture, miles of silence. The air smelled of rain but no rain fell. The stars burned with a certain fixity and they drew nearer in the night until he was stumbling among the uttermost ridge of heaven. He made his way wildly down the rock trail like one at the mercy of something terrible. “A sad thing,” said Hartford. “Your companions in arms. It was required of no man to give more than he possessed nor was any man’s share compared to another’s. Every man emptied out his heart into the common and one did not and that was you. But there is the matter of property. Give me the gun.” *** The boy struck out at the barren plain, nothing but tuffs of grass, solitary and silent, past a great bolder, past a barren range of rock where there were old native spirits entombed in the stone, and he was stark against the heat lightning miles away on the plain that made a bluish day of distant desert, native and electric spirit animals that lived in some old storm, immense shadows among the revelations of lightning in the perimeter miles away old and epic. Something far in the desolate distance exploded into flames, migratory spools of burning matter on chartless routes, some unreckonable forge howling in the waste. He made his way without food or sleep and at last the land was revealed completely as it lay endless beneath the bloodied sky as it was so made daily by the sun’s ascension beyond the cusp of the earth. The land dark and smoking and apocalyptic. “Come on out,” said Hartford, “you are my friend. I favored you more than anyone.” The boy climbed down into a canyon and then lay flat on the earth and began to move fast on his abdomen across the desert stone. When he felt that it was safe he stood and began to run. He made good distance past the absolute destiny of rock and he hid in a trench. “Let me see your face,” said Hartford. “Look at me. Do not be afraid. Let me touch you. I have always loved you.” The kid inhaled, exhaled, and began to run as fast as he was able. He picked his way fast down a deeper ditch and hid behind a boulder. “Hello,” said Hartford. *** Hartford called out and explained that it was with a marvelous dexterity the shapes of what varied paths conspired here in the ultimate authority of the extant. He called out points of jurisprudence, he cited cases. He expounded upon those laws pertaining to property rights mansuete and he quoted cases attainder insofar as they were germane to the prior owners now dead. He spoke of anthropological speculations as to the propagation of the races in their dispersion and isolation through the agency of geological uniformitarianism and an assessment of racial traits with respect to climate and geographical influences.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 10:01:32 +0000
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