Gardens of the Desert

By Samuel Duffy

After dedicating his 20's to raising his two brothers and keeping to himself on the ancestral homestead, Cord Alastair fears he might have lost something else: a chance at a family of his own. When a Draft is called, Cord must decide whether to hold the family together, or let his brothers stand on their own as each pursues his own convictions.

From out-of-the-way Oklahoma farmland to foreign fields, the Alastair brothers deal with alienation from each other and their Southern culture as each learns to walk his own line between familial duty and social obligation, while ultimately defining themselves as individuals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Samuel Duffy
• Release date: May 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9780988817210

Samuel Duffy

Samuel Duffy was born and raised on the prairie of Oklahoma. He currently lives in the midst of the pine and hardwood forests of the river-broken Kiamichi Mountains.

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Gardens of the Desert

By Samuel Duffy

Copyright 2013 Samuel Duffy

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Prologue: Desertification

Poem 1: Paradise

Chapter 1: Barren Wilderness

Chapter 2: Nomads

Chapter 3: Nomadic Inheritance

Poem 2: The Death Toll

Chapter 4: Migratory Dunes

Chapter 5: Shelter

Chapter 6: Shamal

Poem 3: Inherited Debt

Chapter 7: Survivalists

Chapter 8: The Great Engine of Civilization

Chapter 9: Daemon

Poem 4: Erin

Chapter 10: Oasis

Chapter 11: Tree Yucca

Chapter 12: Sandstorms

Poem 5: Ode to Man

Chapter 13: Mirage

Chapter 14: Curse of the Jinn

Poem 6: Unborn

Epilogue: Constellations

About the Author

Other Books by Author

Desertification

His kneeless jeans rubbing the threadbare seat of his ’76 International Scout, Henry Alastair stuck his worn leather boots into the red mud, only vaguely aware of the cold, stoney drops collected on Night’s hem and passing through the dark void to pelt his grey-stubbled leathery cheeks. Henry stepped off the thirty paces from the meter pole to the front door of The Waterin’ Hole. The windowless barroom glowed golden under the dim lighting as he pulled the tin-covered door open. Scattered about the short expanse, eight small, round tables were huddled in varying shades of dark, while a new fluorescent fixture gave a cool-white clarity to the bar, and a Wild Cherry slot-machine cast a dim yellow hope onto its three fortuitous wheels in the back corner. In the far crook of the counter, two men sat with eyes raised at Henry’s disturbance of space—a change in volume or pressure as the barroom clinked with a noisy silence, like a Prince Edward tin converted into a penny bank and placed under the impatient scrutiny of its owner. At the longer and more immediate stretch of bar sat a young man in a white t-shirt and jeans, his wide eyes peeking around his tense left shoulder before dropping to the scarred counter. As the rain quieted the silence, Henry strode over to the boy: the boy’s head hitting low on his chest as he quietly lingered next to him.

Y’re Zack Parsons boy, ain’cha? The words rasped calmly in Henry’s throat, and the boy ducked his head ‘til his chin tapped the bar.

Henry glanced at Sully, who was pouring two glasses from a bottle of Black Label. Sully shrugged his narrow shoulders and placed the tall glasses in front of the kid.

The boy’s chestnut eyes grew wider as he muttered, I didn’t ask f’r these, mister.

I know. Sully went back to leaning his red, scaly elbow on the front counter and watching a well-groomed reporter in black suit and red silk tie stand in front of an open wall of torn rooms and scattered rubble on the bar’s hanging cathode-ray tube. The reporter pointed his manicured hand to the skeletal building and announced, I am standing in front of what remains of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building after a van exploded in the front parking lot. As you can see, there are several charred cars, the camera followed the reporter’s finger and zoomed in on a blackened, windowless car, and the entire front of the building itself is gone, exposing all nine floors of the federal building. Emergency crews are still working round the clock in search of survivors, though the chance of finding any survivors, I am told, is very unlikely after the first seventy-two hours. It has been eighty-four hours since this horrific and really tragic event took place. Still, just one hour ago, two more bodies were found. That brings the total to more than 800 injured in the debris of the federal building itself, as well as from surrounding buildings that received damage from the sheer intensity of this explosion. The death toll has now reached 168, fifteen of which have been confirmed as enrollees of the America’s Kids Day Care Center, which was located directly above the blast. The other four reported children were unborn at the time of the explosion.

Rubbing his thick hands against his darkly stained windbreaker, the large, dark-haired man at the short end of the bar caught fragments of the bar scene, while the voice of the reporter kept grabbing his attention, irritating him with the manufactured sound of his voice. ’Ey, mister, looking down his chest at a worn spot in the bar, the dark-haired man, nearest to the wall, asked a syllable at a time, Why d’ we ‘ave t’ watch dis?

Sully didn’t turn from the live shots of the hulled out building, its rooms exposed to the artificial search lights. I fig’re every Oklahoman would wanna know what’s goin’ on. Hell, every American oughta care what’s—

Henry wasn’t paying any attention to Sully; he was still looking down at the boy, hovering uncomfortably close to him. The boy looked up with curled lips and wide eyes, a scar above one glowing white against his blood-filled face: I’m eighteen years old! I don’t have t’ do what my father says. It’s my life. Mine. Not his. And sure as hell not y’rs. The boy smirked. Dad says you nurse a whiskey bottle like a day ol’ calf. So what the hell is it t’ you if I get drunk? The boy’s commotion drew back Sully and the other two men.

Sully eyed the boy, whose resolution had broken at the first sign of resistance.

Boy, Sully’s tone darkened, you might be the preacher’s son, but you don’t talk that way in my place.

Turning up his unsettled eyes to Henry’s aged, green eyes, the boy saw the yellowing of the whites from decades spent measuring the sun, the permanently fallen lids weighted with untold experience and sorrow. Henry spoke quietly.

I don’t care ‘bout what problems you and y’r daddy are havin’. I’ve got three boys a my own. One y’ know ‘bout y’r age and soundin’ just like y’. Don’t assume t’ know me ‘cause you can’t fig’re y’rself out. The boy dropped his eyes to the floor, and Henry continued. I’ll tell y’ what I tell my boy and leave it at that. The longer y’ fight y’r own blood, the longer y’re gonna be fightin’ with y’rself…. But like I said, ‘ain’t none a my business.’ But y’re in my chair with my whiskey sittin’ front a y’.

The boy stared down at the glasses and, feeling childish for having blown-up in front of the four men, slid off the chair and watched his feet carry him out of the bar. Sully shook his head and went back to explaining why he wasn’t going to change the channel.

Anywayz. I fig’re only an asshole wouldn’t take an interest in ‘is own people.

The broad-shouldered, dark-haired man hadn’t heard most of Sully’s speech, a fly on the wall having caught his attention, and he guffawed and repeated, ass-hole, to his smaller-built partner, who reached up to turn a cigarette beneath a tuft of sandy hair that fell over oddly pointed ears. The smaller man shushed the larger, who in turn lowered his head into his chest and apologized: Sorry, Lawrence.

Lawrence, cupping his glass with both hands, threw his fingers wide, his shoulders becoming rigid. I said hush!

The bigger man rolled his chin across his jacket, away from Lawrence.

Though he showed no interest beyond the news report, Sully noted every action of the two strangers, while Henry chose to shrink his world and, with it, the pain.

Henry was sitting now, staring into the brown liquor, remembering why he was there so he could forget more quickly. While he stared into the fluid, he knew the world around him was moving ever so slowly. But he felt like it was moving backward even faster; the brown liquid refracting a tall skinny bottle in the back, bending its body from its neck as Henry rested his chin on the counter, the bottle bowing or curling up with some contorting pain—thinner than it once was, than it was before the fluid and the glass warped its shape by breaking its God-given nature. Henry wanted to cry, but he had run out of tears some time ago, so he swallowed the distortion instead. He continued to do this while the shape folded out into several forms, all distorted and warped by the hard form of the container and its opiate, he murmured. Men use’ t’ smoke opiates t’ forget, he said to himself. I tried smokin’ while I was in the war. E’er’one seemed t’ smoke marijuana, which we could git cheaper than reg’lar ol’ tobacca smokes.

The broad-shouldered, dark-haired man had trouble focusing his thoughts, catching pieces of conversation, a scar in the bar, a tear in the forearm cushion, the dry, crusty eczema at Sully’s elbows. But the word war came through the jumble of random sounds and images without impedence, and he latched on to his moment of clarity without knowing the context. What war? he asked. Lawrence sighed and grimaced, and the dark-haired man tensed, tightening his fists, always sensitive to the negative feelings others felt toward him because he was different.

Henry didn’t ignore him; he couldn’t hear him over his memories.

Vietnam, Sully answered. He idn’t talkin’ t’ anybody, though. E’erbody has their own way a workin’ thangs out. Let eam mumble it t’ ‘imself.

The man with black hair didn’t hear Sully. He was staring at Henry, his eyes hung on the narrow, slouched form lost in a glass of whiskey. Were you at that, uh—Me Lee? he asked. Henry gave no sign of reply, and the man tightened his fists again and ran his lips over his teeth, up and down, up and down, remembering the first time he saw Woody Woodpecker on his father’s console television in color: reds and blues moving rapidly across the square of glass, his eyes tracing the lines hundreds of times per second with indistinguishable microsaccades, while his father yanked him off the floor by his arm, yelling, It’s dis-re-spect-ful not to an-swer, the dark-haired man stressed the syllables as if working each word out. It’s like you’re sayin’, I’m not worth your time.

Lawrence, watching the glass he was cradling, interjected, Leave the man alone, brother.

The dark-haired man lowered his head again, puckering his bottom lip and adding, Shot chil-dren at Me Lee.

My Lai, Lawrence corrected. Just hush!

Henry was picking at the edge of the counter with a black thumbnail, speaking distantly: They made me go. Lawrence, as if something had won out in spite of his best efforts, sighed and calmly leaned back, producing a lighter and pulling the cigarette over to his lips before saying, I heard when they got over there they got to fuck all the gook bitches they wanted.

Sully glared at the two men. The dark-haired man appeared to be looking at his shoulder, but Lawrence made eye-contact and took a long drag.

Henry wudn’t at My Lai, Sully said, turning back to the live feed. Now like I said, don’t give eam any mind, or anythang else he ain’t askin’ f’r. Or y’ll have t’ find somewhere else t’ drink y’r whiskey.

Lawrence gave a slight nod, noting the absent evening crowd and the tired face of the bartender with eczema, while the slower man smiled nervously, a twitch dropping from his left eye into the corner of his mouth as he folded his coat sleeves beneath the counter and nodded into his shoulder.

Henry seemed not to have noticed, his grey-blonde hairs still dusting at the table as he stared through his half-emptied second glass and spoke to the images trapped in the dirty fluid of time. I was drafted. Scared, so scared, yet proud. It was mid-way. There weren’t protests yet. We each dreamt a the glory of our fathers and grandfathers that come back from World War II with medals and parades…. We didn’t. I was walkin’ down the highway and I heard a man yell from a passin’ car, ‘Murderer,’ and he threw a bottle a piss at me. Papers called us murderers. Stories kept comin’ out ‘bout the children we shot. We never knew. I watched a guy pick a li’l girl up once, and then—next thang, we was tryin’ t’ pick his dog-tags from what looked like the li’l girl’s—it was her head. We couldn’t tell. The grenade she was carryin’ had blown their bodies int’ pieces and laid ‘em t’gether like they’d never been apart.

While Henry spoke, Lawrence shook his head and mumbled fiercely at his companion. Sully was scrutinizing the two men, his hand searching the shelf below the counter to remind him where the butt of the shotgun rested, when the springs on the barroom door screeched against the strain and admitted the soft patter that carried the familiar scent of red earth and ozone, and Billy Makee.

Sully, Billy nodded.

Billy.

Billy let the spring clap the door shut and said, Comin’ down like Hell in the Rapture out there. He watched the TV for a moment before continuing. Can you believe what some people are capable of! Have they found anyone in a while?

Sully turned away from the TV and started pouring a beer. Not in a while.

Billy reached up and took down his clay-stained, straw hat, running his fingers through his mid-length brown hair with his right hand and holding with his left his hat at his side so the rainwater would collect and drip off the brim. Heard that McVeigh character learned all that stuff in the army. He was some sort a survivalist. Can y’ believe that?

Sully threw a glance at the two strangers at the end of the bar. Ain’t much I haven’t seen. Karen have that baby yet?

Billy, noticing Sully working on a mug, raised his hat in protest. None f’r me, no thanks. Sully switched off the tap and looked up inquisitively, Billy answering, That baby’s gonna be here any day and I need some cash t’ fill up my truck, else we gonna have some trouble gettin’ there.

Glancing over at the two men at the end of the bar, Lawrence watching attentively from whisps of cigarette smoke, Sully shook his head at Billy, saying, I ain’t got over twenty dollars in the register. Went t’ bank yesterdee.

Damn the luck!

Sighing, Sully added, That gas station on this side a Chandler oughta cash it f’r y’. Mike’s pretty good ‘bout stuff like that.

Hospital’s in Cushin’. Billy raised his hat to the north and dropped it to his side, forcing several drops off the brim. I was hopin’ t’ get gas somewhere along the way."

Sully chuckled. Y’ gonna wait till that baby’s halfway out t’ fill the damn truck up?

Just in case is all I’m sayin’. Billy opened his arms wide, his hat scrapin’ the door. If she goes int’ labor t’night, I would like some cash on hand. Hard t’ trade a paycheck f’r a few gallons a gas.

Sully leaned back on the counter, turning his attention to images of firefighters weaving their way through cement and twisted rebar. Well y’ ain’t—

The sound of hard knuckles against the counter struck the two men and left a wadded bill in front of Billy. That’ll get y’ there, Henry stated. He had pulled his worn leather wallet from his back pocket and shuffled through several bills before laying out a ten. Replacing his wallet, he put his head back on the counter.

Billy just eyed the ten at first. I wudn’t lookin’ f’r charity, Henry.

Henry spoke distantly. Early weddin’ present.

A tinge of embarrassment blotched his face, and Billy took the ten up, replacing his hat and murmuring a thank y’ as he stepped out into the drizzle. The two men at the end mumbled frantically back and forth before getting up: Lawrence putting out his cigarette while the slower-looking fellow fiddled with the zipper on his one-size too-small windbreaker. As they started around the bar, Lawrence did one button on his brown-patched tan overcoat and twisted a ring that looked like a steel nut around his thick index finger, while the dark-haired man stared over his shoulder at Henry before stepping through the door.

Sully looked to Henry, who had gone back to whatever he was watching play out in the glass, before turning back to the TV. After a few minutes, Henry raised his weather-cracked hand and began to tap his jagged nails against the glass, suddenly speaking up. I remember when my three boys was born, Sully. Seemed the same then, but each as different as me and you.

We ain’t so different, Henry. Y’ just have more hair than me.

Henry stopped tapping the glass. Y’ don’t bury y’rself in a bottle either.

Sully turned now, leaning his forearms on the front counter. I don’t have to. I’ve buried myself in here. Rubbing his clean-shaven chin with his thick fingers, Sully went on: Y’ wanna know the biggest difference ‘tween you and me? What I carry ‘roun’ only affects me ‘cause all I’ve got is me. Just keep those boys in mind.

Henry’s green eyes blazed into the last sip of dirty image. But I did. I shot kids. Women…. If Vanessa had ever known the things I done b’fore she found me…. I would a lost ‘er…. I did anyway. Took ‘er t’ punish me.

Sully dropped his heavy eyes to the counter. Y’re the only one punishin’ you, Henry. He glanced around the empty barroom before settling his eyes on the scarred counter. I don’t have children. Besides, it was just by luck that I didn’t end up—one more year a war, and I’d be on that side a the counter.

But y’re not. Henry’s nose was close to his hand and he could smell himself through the pores of his skin, could smell the blood that pounded beneath, beating out the constant rhythm of a fatal time. We do have somethin’ in common though. The blood.

Sully frowned. Listen. You’ve been comin’ in here ever since…well, ever since Vanessa died, mumblin’ out y’r problems. And I ain’t said anythang ‘cause I fig’re it’s y’r way. But y’ obviously need t’ talk t’ somebody, Henry. Now, I ain’t ever lost a wife. I ain’t even been married. And I know I cain’t begin t’ understand—

Thanks anyway, Sully. Henry slowly pushed the empty glasses closer to Sully and stood, counting his slow, focused steps to the door and restarting in the doorway, while Sully called after him, Henry. The tin door clapped behind him, the rain falling softer, but still making the truck difficult to see. As Henry stepped closer to the Scout, he saw a disarray of headlights breaking through the rain to his right and he suddenly felt something hard hit him on the back of the head, dislodging his final thought: Who took ‘em apart?

Paradise

Outside the seventh gate

The sons of Adam and Eve stood

And beheld the Cherub,

The burning, twisting, double-edged sword.

The Cherub wore four faces,

Turned to each cardinal direction,

And the eastern face—

That of a majestic white lion—

Spoke calmly to the men:

"The Lord banished your forefathers,

From the garden long ago,

But he has newly decreed that

Man shall enter again,

And violate Eden’s sanctity."

With that the angel took

The fiery weapon in hand

And his mighty outcast wings shook

Before he flew from the band.

The men wondered at God’s decree,

But as for the warning,

None perceived, and when the men stepped

In God’s secret garden

They learned the beauty of haven:

A river flowed clean, clear,

Through the midst of God’s own womb.

They stabbed at the air and spoke

Of the many fruit and nut-bearing trees

And they partook, and grew.

But man was not as he had once been

And plows and horses they brought.

All began to dig in

And destruction is what they wrought

The men broke the land,

And they spread as their numbers grew.

They cried, "We could feed more

If only we could build more fields."

Men felled the ancient trees,

Those that had flourished before man,

And they constructed fields

And stone houses for all to live in.

Soon there was a village,

Then a town, and a stone city

Grown too large for the dead garden.

And man began to ponder this paradise:

"Since God’s has perished under another man’s,

Let us go forth and build our own prize,

For each should do as his brain demands."

And so arose Sumeria, Persia, and Rome—

Each paradise collapsing beneath its walls.

And other men began to contemplate

How paradise had been built just for two.

So they began to build, with fathers, mothers,

Husbands and wives, sons and daughters—each a brick,

And as mortar-thick, love should do the trick.

And so arose a man’s garden, his heaven:

Wife and child, he and God, love and sanctity.

But soon they found sanctuary profaned,

How every garden is bound on all sides

By an ever encroaching desert.

Some men will live to see the sands kept at bay,

But others will find a tremendous blast,

Like a bomb blowing sand into glass,

And this will mark the last—

Paradise will pass.

—Alison Duny, her commonplace book

Barren Wilderness

Clank, Cord Alastair relaxed his fibrous muscles beneath his tanned hide, bringing high the heavy driver—the prairie sun dimly glinting off the darkened metal—before he gripped through rawhide gloves the winged handles of the homemade t-post driver once again, doubling the force of the driver between his push and gravity’s pull: clank. The iron post moved half-inch by half-inch into the sun-baked earth, and Cord felt the sweat bead on his arms and run, bead on his arms and drip to the cracked earth from his out-thrust elbows as iron clanked against iron. When he finished driving the post, he let the driver fall to his side, placing his left hand on the t-shaped top and eyeing the pole’s erectness and its position in the line that stretched a half-mile from the gravel intersection to the iron corner-posts of the North fence-line.

Off and on for most of the week, Cord had been replacing the barbed-wire fence that comprised his and his brothers’ inheritance—sixty steadily sloped acres of love grass, milkweed, Johnson grass, and knee-high sage grass—when he wasn’t working across the road for Ms. Taylor. She had seen the disrepair on her way to Wednesday Evening services and had given Cord the Friday off to tend to his own.

Cord turned his scrutinizing green-flecked eyes from the row and stepped back to the faded green Scout, placing the driver on the primed tailgate and picking up the water jug. He removed his dirty-white cowboy hat and tilted his head back with mouth agape. He was grateful for the water that made it into his mouth and even more so for what didn’t manage its way in, and he was grateful for the wind he could see and hear rustling across the frayed tips of the sage grass before it whispered coolly to his perspiring skin. It was a gentle breeze, free of dust—the kind one hopes for all summer, but knows one won’t always get, sometimes replaced with a stillness only the heat-warped, mercuric air breaks in the distance. This wind, though, was the type of breeze that carries rain sibilating through the tall stems.

Cord meditated on the dark, bulbous clouds; then, reaching for the driver, he realized he had driven the last t-post. He sighed as he rested his gloved hand on the driver and glanced over his shoulder at the double-length gap that remained. He considered pulling a post from somewhere else, or even pulling them all and resetting them so each would take up a fraction of the unclaimed distance. Shaking his head and setting his jaw against the gap, Cord shoved the driver toward the cab and slammed the tailgate, stomping the floorboard as he sat heavily against the worn seat springs. The truck rolled backward, catching as he let off the clutch, and crawled to the top of the hill where the ancestral homestead still clung to a few greyed planks from the roof of the original sodhouse—the structure’s white tin-roof now proudly protecting the planks from their once vigilant timekeeper, while the porch Cord’s father had hewn of cedar from the surrounding pasture skirted the once muddy foundation.

His jeans adding to the wear of the old cloth seat as he slid out of the truck, Cord could see the dark clouds moving in from the northwest, faint discharges of lightning and thunder resonating across the graded terrain as he started to put the driver, roll, wire-stretchers, and come-along in the shed. Quickly he pivoted on his boot heel and toward the house instead, rapping his knuckles against the left-centre porch post, where nine scars ran up from knee to waist at intervals. Cord stepped into the house and took a dented aluminum pot from the scarred hanging cabinets. He cooked for one, knowing Korbis wouldn’t be in ‘til late, if he came in at all on a Saturday night. He made chile out of salsa, ground beef, and chile powder, and sat in a corner of the open living area with a bowl and some saltines at a square three-foot table covered with a floral-print, plastic table-cloth that hung from the edges down to the floor. Crushing a handful of crackers into the bowl and dusting off the remnants, he felt his appetite depleted. In part, he was upset with himself for misjudging the distance. But what sapped his appetite wasn’t his failure as much as his need to enter town. With the sound of a cracker crunching along with a spoonful of chile, Cord glanced out the window at the electric clouds and listened for the grumbling storm, his breathing slowing to match the strengthening pattern. He grinned at the slight tremble of the house as the lingering clouds cracked open, iridescent fractures spreading instantaneously across the sky as rain began to tink against the tin roof. Standing, he stepped over to the kitchen window, watching and listening and feeling the trembles dance in his fingertips as they rested against the metal sink. He always felt the urge to stand in the rain, but he was never sure why, except that there was something romantic about standing in the rain: all of one’s senses going off at once as one falls under the blanket that links all the world in a drowsiness that looses the self and floats the soul in some forgotten element like ethereal space. He felt a tinge of embarrassment at his naïve idealism; he was too old to think such things. And yet, even as one senses the blanket covering all like the tents siblings put up to shrink time and space into a single moment of shared intimacy, he felt more alone because he could sense time and space collapsing around him. Whenever he felt the blanket touch his every surface, whenever he felt the rain soak through his every pore, he felt cold and hollow. Cord sighed and stepped over to the table, bringing his bowl back to the sink before making his journey into town.

***

Kendrick, a population of a hundred and seven, was the nearest town and four country miles from Cord’s home. As soon as the International dropped into its lion purr, and the tires struck sun-bleached blacktop, Cord felt the boundary of his microcosm broken and given way to a larger microcosm, more open and dynamic. Kendrick had been founded on the skirt tail of the railroad. As the railroad had become less necessary, so had the town—its attractions dwindling along with its population—until the few families that remained had little to do but work hard and tell stories. Of course, in a town of so few, news spread word of mouth alongside gossip, and few gave the time or the effort to distinguish. Cord could always sense the phones ringing as he passed through the invisible membrane that separated his world from theirs, he could sense all the parts of the stable setting begin to move, like discharges in some disembodied brain, and he could hear its thoughts: He should a been somethin’; Shame, he was in medical school when it happened; Works as a farmhand, like his daddy use to; Poor boy, not even a family of ‘is own, just the two brothers he had t’ raise; Ain’t they all grown-up? Yeah, but he’s nearin’ forty now—too late. He drove past the old red-brick buildings that once were a grocer’s store, a post-office, a bar, and a theatre, making his way down the sloping Main Street that spread out its stubby dendrites to curl its grasp around the white homes with round rooms hanging over wide verandas in the old Southern style—a greenish-brown fungus discoloring and eating at the peeling paint. Near the rounded end of Main was Buck’s Feed, where the rusty grain silo squatted as a pregnant giant, round bellied and ready to spill its young. At the loading docks past the silo, a black Ram sat patiently by, while a lean youth tossed sacks of sweet-feed into the back of a white F-350. As he pulled past, Cord noticed a thin woman stepping out of the black Ram. Her dress, though generally average—denim skirt and white, button-up shirt—knitted his stare with the black shawl wrapped ever so gently about her head and face, only her eyes showing through the mournful veil. He killed the Scout, his attention turning from the hijab to a brawny older woman standing beside the bed of the F-350 watching the young man. When the woman turned to advise the boy to place the sacks closer to the cab and tie the tarp off before the rain hit, there was a familiarity in her face, and Cord turned so as not to catch her attention, moving toward the glass double doors at his usual slow pace.

Is that li’l Cord Alastair? I’ll be. The brawny woman started stepping closer, her thick thighs stretching the seams of her jeans, keeping her to a short stride. I ain’t seen you in a horse’s rear-end a years.

Cord walked on casually.

Shurl, the woman announced, Shurl Mason. I only live ‘bout a mile from y’. Don’t—

As the glass door swung closed, Sheryl fell inaudible. Cord started toward the counter, when a sense of unnatural stillness grabbed at him, and he turned his attention to a lean man in his mid-twenties staring. The man stood with an assured confidence, but his blue eyes betrayed some intimate fear before the buzz-cut head bent, and the lean body put the broom handle in motion—the eyes on the sweeper, but still watching.

That’s my brother Tony, Buck announced. Buck was standing at the register filling out a receipt.

Cord glanced at Tony, who gave an almost imperceptible nod with upturned eyes.

Didn’t ekspect t’ see you f’r some time, Buck said, reaching a slender, callused hand up to his ear to put his pencil away.

Cord stepped up to the counter. One t-post and four NO TRESPASSING signs.

Buck pulled the pencil back down and began tallying, when Sheryl walked through the door. You hear we goin’ t’ war with Egypt? Buck asked Sheryl, continuing without waiting for a response. ‘Bout time. We aughta wipe all them sand-niggers off the planet. Finally get some peace.

You best watch y’r language, Buck Robertson, Sheryl scolded. Ol’ Jack Henry done got ‘imself one a them mail-order brides from there. And she’s on ‘er way in here this minute.

Cord laid out a hundred.

Really! Buck turned his lazy gaze on Cord. Wha’ d’ y’ think about that?

Cord eyed the change in Buck’s hand. Dudn’t affect me.

Shaking his head, Buck said, That’s what I fig’red. Here’s y’r change. Y’ know where the post and the signs are.

Without looking at Sheryl, Cord turned and started his leisurely pace toward the open shed holding fencing—Sheryl stepping up to the counter to make an exchange with Buck about Cord’s behavior—when the door swung open and the woman in the hijab stepped inside: her white, long-sleeve shirt loose at the bottom so as to drape over her round belly. Cord glanced into the woman’s dark brown eyes and then to the floor as they stepped past each other, switching places in the room.

It was the slap of the wooden handle against the cement floor that caused Cord to pause at the door. And then the moan, along with shouts of She’s got a knife! that made him turn back when he could’ve walked through the doors unaware. Tony had the woman by her lapels, but she held tight to the man trying to throw her down, while her words came out in a frenzy of confusion that no one in the room could interpret.

Tony! Buck yelled, bounding over the counter. He grabbed hold of Tony’s shoulders, but Tony pushed Buck back with his elbow, and, as Buck fell backward, he held on to Tony’s shoulder, causing Tony to lean and spring forward on top of the woman, knocking her to the cement floor. Buck crawled over, putting an arm around Tony’s neck and falling backward with him, dragging himself and Tony away from the woman, while Tony yelled, She’s got a knife! They’ve all got knives! Shoot ‘em! Shoot ‘em!

It’s alright, Buck said. Y’re here. Y’re home. With me. Home. The man wiggled and, giving up, fell into tears and deep sobs. Remember Bull Dog? Slit ‘is throat—fucking him and slit ‘is throat! There’s no honor in that. There’s no honor.

Cord could see the soldier in the man, both lying on the cold concrete floor sobbing for ghosts. But his focus was on the woman. Sheryl was bent down next to the pregnant woman, who had rolled over onto her side gripping her belly. Cord thought for a second and never gave a second thought.

***

He drove home through the downpour: his eyes fixed on the road, but his mind reviewing the events at the feedstore. He wanted to walk away—it wasn’t his business—but something gripped him, and he was on his knees before he realized he had moved, talking to the woman, embryonic fluid spilling to the floor. He wasn’t sure if she could understand, so he maintained eye contact with her, nodding calmly to her. She began to nod back, and Cord started breathing exercises to see if she would pick them up. She mimicked his actions. He kept hearing the woman’s cries muffled through her niqab and Tony crying, almost in sync with the laboring woman. And when the baby came, it was a symphony of pain and confusion. With the slick and sticky baby seated in his right hand and resting its head in his left, its weightless, cookie-brown body weakened Cord’s strong, callused hands. Its tiny rose lips trembled, and the blue circles of his eyes glowed back at Cord, complete. Sheryl had said something, though he was uncertain what it had been. He had looked at her tired, weathered face, and over her shoulder at Buck, as he held his brother Tony and rocked him with assurance. Then, he had grabbed Sheryl’s wrist. She resisted at first, but Cord leaned into her, folding her arm into a crook to nestle the babe, and he left.

His once buoyant soul was moored in the child’s eyes, and when he got out of the Scout, he stood before his father’s home. He felt he should cry, but he couldn’t. Instead, he walked to the shed in the back of the house, the rain soaking through his clothes, washing away the residua of mother and child from his arms, closing in around him. Taking hold of the smoothly-worn ash handle of the double-headed axe, he walked briskly to the porch and put the axe head to the scarred post. He struck below the ninth scar—the thud resounding over the heavy rain and booming thunder. Removing the axe head, Cord took in the tenth scar, and then put the axe head to it again, thunk, again, thunk. Faster, harder. Thunk, thunk. Swifter. Thunk. Cord chopped at the post, driving deeper, and deeper still. A quarter through, then halfway. A bit more. Deeper, faster. Time, fail-ure, the post belched. The chips flew in bits, till the pole began to creak, and Cord stopped. His breath failing to outpace the storm, he looked at the post, at what he had done. Just a little more and it would fall. Propping the axe beside the gashed post, Cord drifted inside to the shower.

***

He rested one hand on the shower head, closed his eyes, and lowered his matted head, feeling the warm water jet against his crown from a few decalcified holes, soaking into his black hair and pulling it forward and down to his brows where he could sense the water dripping off. The water ran down the toned curves of his farmer’s muscles and he relaxed, feeling the tension leave with the rush of the water.

As the water ran over his lips, a few drops collected and hung in his philtrum. He felt good about what he had accomplished; but the child, like the rain, had brought with it a resounding awareness of the quiet pounding in his chest. As the stillness settled in the wake of the receding storm, filled with the distant, cavernous echoes of thunder, of electricity, of motion, of life, Cord couldn’t remember deciding to shower. Blowing the water from his Cupid’s bow, he opened his eyes and began soaping.

***

He lay in bed and absorbed the calm tink of the lingering drizzle against the roof and the window beside his bed. He was still trying to quiet his mind and his heart when he heard the front door flung open and two voices giggling—one of them a male voice, a precursor to the high-pitched giggles of the other as the complementary voices made their way to the bedroom on the opposite side of the house. He knew it was Korbis, and he assumed it was three or four in the morning.

Cord didn’t hear any sounds for a while, and he didn’t want to, so he got up and closed his door. Walking past his dresser and back to his bed, he turned to watch the rain as it became a mist, still streaking the window as droplets formed into weighted orbs. Thoughts churned in his head, and he turned back and forth for some time, his body tense and as uneasy as his mind. Slowly, the sound of a muffled moan came from across the house, followed by louder, more rapid sounds of excitation. When the rhythmic creak of the bunk bed’s wood frame came through, Cord got up, dragging along his patchwork quilt. He hadn’t realized it before, but Korbis’s door was wide open, and with a single flash of lightning Cord caught a glimpse of the female form sitting erect, her breasts pushing forward hard nipples, her face pointed up, making visible the parted lips from which the pleasure rushed forth to fill the house, as her long hair gently brushed the small of her back near her rounded hips, which she thrust forward and was easing back. Cord stepped to the front door quickly and quietly through the pleasuring moans and old creaks into the gentle mist. In the grey, weathered rocker, using the chill blanket to seal him off from his brother and the sexual figure that sat atop him inside the house, Cord felt the blanket close in his senses. Still, it couldn’t stop his mind, and his heart dulled on.

Nomads

When the aging oak had marked the northwest corner of Greenwood Cemetery, its straight, narrow limbs had flexed toward the sun, shading its roots. Now, the gnarled goliath, gorged on the lifeless flesh of men, shaded half the early cemetery, obscuring the past in clock-work shadow. Still, the oak’s greatest secret lay tangled in its roots.

At 63, Shamel Alastair, bed-ridden with pneumonia, had drawn his eldest son close and whispered, I shall shade my progeny ‘neath my limbs. Jesse swore to his father he would make it so. But as he held his tanned face inches from his father’s pale, sweating visage, the rancid smell of bile turning his cheek, Jesse’s eyes met for the last time the raised pink D scarred on his father’s neck. Shamel’s answer was labored, but certain: It is my shame, and my honor. What Jesse never learned was his father, the son of a poor Irish farmer who had settled in Missouri, had been drafted in 1846 under the suspicion of invasion from Mexico, and that, on the undefined border, Shamel had left his cheap rifle in the doorway of a mission, welcomed with silver crucifix about his neck to worship the Catholic God. The officer in command was the son of a Protestant plantation owner and a true American of the third generation. When he learned his Catholic soldiers were sneaking across the arbitrary line to pray, he turned his back as American hands carried flames to God’s temple, and closed his ears to the high-pitched cries, "Violación—violación—violación!" tearing from the pueblos—the sounds buried beneath the guttural ecstasy of Luther’s people. That night, Shamel Alastair, along with other Catholic Americans, stole away, and war was soon after officially declared against Mexico. On September 21, at the Battle of Monterrey, the Battalión de San Patricio appeared; a band of deserters and traitors, they knew their punishment would be death if captured. Shamel fought face-to-face with his former comrades and shot more than one Mexican soldier who turned, quickly gaining respect as a calm and efficient soldier until he and several others were captured in 1847 at the Battle of Churubusco. As the U. S. flag rose to meet the Mexican sun, those who had joined after the declaration of war were hanged en masse. Shamel Alastair, having deserted before the declaration, had a hot iron pressed into his neck, a painful, hissing D marking his desertion and disloyalty. He was sentenced to hard labor, but soon after escaped and disappeared into Indian Territory. His only markers after death were Mártires Irlandeses—a street in Mexico—and a hand-sized stone into which Jesse had carved his name. Over time, many forgot what the soldiers had died for, and the expanding oak had pushed the stone aside: later caretakers mistaking the weathered rock for the former boundary marker, as the tree took Shamel’s bones into itself.

Although he was sitting, Joshua Alastair was on the balls of his tennis shoes, his right leg moving up and down like a pump-jack. A young woman moved to his right and around in front of him, her notes held firmly in one hand, while Joshua, clutching a number-two pencil and pinning a green slip of paper with his right hand, quickly reached down and dragged his worn, faded bag to the side of the narrow desk. As the woman slid past and sat in the desk one seat down from his left, he saw that she was plump and short with copper skin and