Chapter 46 The man went on. All across the reaches of the land the howl of wolves relayed, and to the west the silent lightning in a broken lyre upon the earth’s dark rim. He moved across the dark sanctuary of the prairie night. He looked to the sky where the clustered stars were burning for eternity. He sat down to stare over the bone-strewn waste, and he appeared not so much dimwitted as insane. He then went on, and seemed less the pursuit of a continuance than the verification of a principle, a validation of a sequence and causality and he moved haltingly in the light, like a mechanism whose movements were monitored, so that they appear restrained by a reflective which has no inner reality. *** One night the man slept on the floor of the desert. Sirius was at the left side on the southwest horizon, and Cetus the whale shown swimming in the void, and Orion and Betelgeuse were turning far from the galactic plane. He slept shivering in the darkness of the plains, and woke to find the stars by which he’d traveled not to be found, as if his sleep had encompassed them. A boy kicked at his boot. The man sat up. The boy stood with a group of three friends. “What in the hell are you doing out here?” the boy asked him. The boy was dressed much the same. As if another orphan of time had been drawn to this selfsame place. The man stared at him. His brother at last. He made a sound with his throat. “I asked you a question,” said the boy. The man reached into his pocket and took out a dried ear and handed it to his inquisitor. “What is this?” “A ear.” “What kind?” “Human. I knew the man who took it. Knew him and rode with him and seen him killed.” “So? You can buy the whole heads in New Orleans. Sailors brings ‘em in and you can buy ‘em for five dollars all day long them heads.” The man stood. The boy watched him. The man drew his gun. The boy drew his, too. But the man was slow on the trigger. The boy’s gun blasted. “You wouldn’t have lived anyway,” he said. The man bled out, was dead. His name was William Chambers. *** The winds blew in the desert as they had blown ten thousand years ago. It was beautiful, notwithstanding being there. Beautiful, this world, despite humanity. Beauty that can at last be recognized after everyone is gone. The End
Posted on: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 02:53:57 +0000
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