My passport is dropped into the wood stove. He turns to the other American passengers.
"All of you now come forward and surrender your lies. Documents purportedly issued by a government which ceased to exist two hundred years ago...."
A chorus of outraged protests goes up from the passengers but soldiers snatch their passports and dump them into the stove.
"Well, Mother and I want you to know we will report you to the American Consul," a tourist moans.
The officer stands up. "The currency you are carrying is of value only to a collector. I doubt if you will find one in a town of this size." He gets into the train, which starts to move.
"But what about our luggage?"
"It has been impounded. You may recover it in the capital on presentation of valid passports."
The train gathers speed. We are standing in a turn-of-the-century western town: water tower, a red dirt street, Station Hotel & Restaurant. I leave my countrymen waving credit cards and traveler's checks in front of a bland Chinese behind a counter who takes a toothpick out of his mouth, looks at the end of it, and shakes his head.
I walk along the street past a saloon and barbershop and turn into a rundown weed-grown street: Street of Missing Men. The houses on both sides look deserted. As I walk, the buildings change and the street slopes steeply down.
BATHS OPEN DAY AND NIGHT. I go into a steam room with marble benches. A boy smooth and white as alabaster beckons me and I follow him through a maze of showers and steam rooms into a waiting room and out into the street looking for a taxi on a steep stone platform over a green slope with stone steps going down.
We are looking for a Twin Taxi. He has a twin with him who is crippled, one leg in a cast. The alabaster youth sits next to me on a stone bench. He has no white to his eyes, which are a delicate egg-blue and shiny as glass. He sits there with his arm around my shoulder, talking a strange language that sets off little cartoons and film sequences ... languid white legs flicker ... silver buttocks in a dark room....
I can take the hut set
anywhere
I have rented a riverfront shack from someone named Camel. The river is slow and deep, half a mile wide at this point. Rotting piers along an unpaved street. Loading sheds in ruins, roofs fallen in. Standing in the middle of the street I turn now towards a row of houses. The houses are narrow and small clapboards, peeling paint, galvanized iron roofs separated by drainage ditches choked with weeds and brambles, rusty tin cans, broken stoves, pools of stagnant water running to culverts broken and blocked with refuse. I go up steep wooden steps to what had been a screened front porch. The screening is rusted through and the screen door off its hinges. I open a padlock and push the front door open. A musty smell of disuse and a sudden chill. Warm air seeps into the room behind me and where the outside air and inside air come in contact I see a palpable haze like heat waves. The house is about twenty feet by eight feet.
On my left is a blackened kerosene stove on a shelf attached to the wall, supported in front by two two-by-fours. On the rusty burner a blue coffeepot with a hole in the bottom. Above the stove are shelves, some dented cans of beans and tomatoes, two jars of preserved fruit covered with mold. Two chairs and a wooden bedstead at the end of the room, a stepladder by the bed . To the right of the bedstead is a door which opens onto a bathroom with two oak toilet seats side by side, a bucket black with rust, a brass faucet covered with verdigris.
I go back to the street and look around. At one end the street ends in a tributary. I walk the other way and the road turns inland. There is a shack with the sign SALOON at the turning. I go in and a man with eyes the color of a gray flannel shirt looks at me and says, "What can I do for you?"
"Where can I buy tools and supplies? I just rented the Camel shack."
"Yes I know. Do with a bit of fixing up, I guess.... Far Junction ... One mile up the road."
I thank him and start walking. Dirt road, flint chips here and there, ponds on both sides. Far Junction is a few buildings and houses, a water tower and a railroad station. The tracks are weed-grown and rusty. Chickens and geese peck in the street. I go into the general store. A man with pale gray eyes and a black alpaca jacket looks up from a seat behind the counter.
"What can I do for you, young man?"
"Quite a few things. I've rented the Camel shack."
He nodded. "Do with some fixing up, I guess."
"It sure can. More than I can carry."
"You're in luck. Deliveries twice a week. Tomorrow."
I walked around pointing: copper screening, tools, tacks, hinges, two-burner kerosene stove, five gallons of kerosene, ten-gallon water container with spigot and stand, water barrel, cooking utensils, flour, bacon, lard, molasses, salt, pepper, sugar, coffee, tea, case each canned beans and canned tomatoes, broom, mop, bucket, wooden washtub, mattress, blankets, pillows, knapsack, bedroll, slicker, machete, hunting knife, six jackknives. The proprietor walks behind me writing the purchases down on a clipboard. Alligator Gladstone bag? Fifteen dollars. Why not? Jeans, shirts, socks, bandanas, underwear, shorts, pair extra walking boots, shaving kit, toothbrush.
I pack the clothes and toilet articles into the bag....fishhooks, leaders, sinkers, lines, floats, minnow seine.
Now for the guns. Colt Frontier six-inch barrel 32-20 caliber, a snub-nosed 38 inside belt holster (this I pack in the bag), double-barrel twelve-gauge shotgun. I look at the lever-action rifles.
"It would be handy to have a 32-20. Same shells for pistol and rifle. Anything around here need a heavier load?"
"Yep. Bear. It isn't often a bear attacks ... when he does, this"—he tapped a box of 32-20 shells—"would just aggravate him."
He paused and his face darkened. "Something else needs a heavier load and longer range...."
"What's that?"
"Folk across the river."
I picked up the Colt 32-20 and holster. "Any law against packing a gun in this town?"
"There's no law in this town, son. Nearest sheriff is twenty miles from here and keeps his distance."
I loaded the gun and strapped it on. I picked up the Gladstone bag.
"How much do I owe you?"
He calculated rapidly. "Two hundred dollars and forty cents plus a two-dollar delivery charge. Sorry about that. Things keep going up."
I paid him. "Much obliged. Delivery buckboard leaves at eight tomorrow morning. Best get here a bit early. Likely think of a few more things you'll need."
"Any place to stay here?"
"Yep. Saloon Hotel three doors down."
Drugstore next door. Old Chinese behind the counter. I bought tincture of iodine, shaving lotion, permanganate crystals for snakebite, a tourniquet, a scalpel, a five-ounce bottle of opium tincture, a five-ounce bottle of cannabis extract.
Saloon Hotel. The bartender had russet hair and a face the same color. A calm slow way about him. Two drummers at the bar drinking whiskey, talking about the rising wholesale cost of fencing. One fat and clean-shaven, one thin with a carefully trimmed beard. Both of them looking like they stepped out of an old photo album. Poker game in one corner. I buy half a pint of whiskey and a stein of beer and carry them to a table. I measure myself some cannabis extract and wash it down with whiskey. I pour myself another shot, sit back and look around. A boy turns from the bar and looks at me. He is about twenty with a wide face, eyes far apart, dark hair and flaring ears. He has a gun at his hip. He gives me a wide sunlit grin and I push a chair out with one foot. He carries a glass of beer over and sits down. We shake hands.
"I'm Noah."
"I'm Guy."
I hold up the bottle of cannabis extract. "Want some?"
He reads the label and nods. I measure it out and he drinks it with a splash of beer. I fill two glasses with whiskey.