The sun rose and the dawn was fair and fresh. “D’ye see any?” cried Hartford, but the Aboriginals were not in sight. They had left their wake though, and that wake they followed. They went on, and they shouted, steady, they shouted, as thou goest. And steadily they went. And Hartford would rather talk of operas than hell. They were in foreign lands, on pursuits, and the day, why did it not rather swallow them up? For their drive seemed to keep them there, to keep them on. A lovely day again, were it but a new world, and made for a palace to the heavens, a better day could not exist. They arrived at the western sea, and they began to turn around, but let them have one final look around at the sea. An ancient sight, yet so young. And the bird’s were watching, out there past men’s knowing, where the stars are drowning and whales harbor their vast souls through the dark and seamless sea. And the column turned around on that plain and passed back the way they had come pursuing inversions without end upon other men’s journeys. They rode past a ruinous church wherein the wrought iron heart of it lay something in the destruction, in the wreckage, something in Jesus’ name, and who would cry out in his name no more of this, this is worse than Satan’s madness. Days chased, days broken to shambles, their very men swiped from under them, the evil shadow now gone, all good angels and winds assailing them with warnings, what more what they have? Shall they keep engaging until all are gone to the last man? Shall they then be dragged to the bottom of the sea? Shall they then be thrown down into the infernal world? The wild winds blew, they tore about them as shreds of split wagon cover lash the broken wood they’re tied to, a devastating wind that had blown to them through canyons and clouds, forests and rivers, and now it blows here fair as innocence. It’s tainted. A few drops of rain. But still there is something gracious in the wind, none have ever bettered it, it has the last and most devastating blow, even the boy is a braver thing, a nobler thing than that. The westerlies, strong and steadfast, vigorous, and they veer not. They rode into the wind’s eye. “Cherries,” Hartford said. “For but one red cherry here we die.” *** And as they rode, sun, moon, and stars. As noble assassins as any who have ever walked the earth. And the world hides not the miles of desert and of grief’s beneath the sun. And the sun hides not the ocean that is two thirds the earth and so the man who has more joy than sorrow in him that man is not true and the truest of all men was the man of sorrows Solomon and Ecclesiastes is the hammered steal of sorrow. All is vanity. All. This woeful world has not hold of it. There is wisdom that is sorrow but there is sorrow that is torment. On the next day a spear soared down from the clear blue sky and impaled a rider next to the boy. The man clutched at the spear that had gone through his heart and he opened his mouth which spouted his lifeblood. “Holy Mosses,” he said. He fell dead from the horse. Another spear came down and impaled a man through the lungs. “I have been killed,” he said, and he had. The Comanche whooped and hollered from the cliff when the shots fired at them. Their hearts blossomed and they died. Their head dresses and hair were cut away. As they were riding away the boy looked to the West and there he saw on the edge of a cliff an Indian. The Indian stood naked. He held out his arms. He stood naked and erect toward the dying sun. He held his head aloft. Then he simply walked off. And he fell from the grace of the sky. And there are birds that can dive down into the blackest canyon and fly out of them again and become pure in the sun and even if it forever flies in that canyon that canyon is in the mountains so that even in that decent it is still higher than other birds upon that plain even though they soar. And the Indian gave up what blood and bone are made of but alone can never make, what has its origin in stone and star, what will to carve the world out of the dark shape of the universe, if rain does, if wind does. And the land would never be as it once was and all the nations of the world decreed by God Himself of which the Aboriginals were a part of and not separate from would vanish always forever from the earth. They grew gaunt and lank under the right suns of those days. They were exhausted and their eyes were burned out like those of noncombatants. They had spoke of the purging of oneself of those things that lay claim to a man but this body that moved through the land counted itself fortunate with any claim at all. They rode like fugitives from a higher order, beings for whom the sun hungered. That night they had to build a fire inasmuch as men are less without it and are exile. The fire sawed in the wind. It faded and enhanced, faded and enhanced again and again beyond the curve of the earth like the blood-beat of something eviscerate upon the ground before them. And there were no alternate means by which the birds mended their paths in the darkness and could they find them they might have done so. --Blood and Lightning, Or the Clouds and the Rain By Joe Churchwell
Posted on: Sun, 21 Jul 2013 07:39:50 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015