Читать книгу Rochester Knockings - Hubert Haddad - Страница 20
ОглавлениеIf You Forget Me in the Desert
On Long Road since dawn, William Pill suspected that he’d crossed the Monroe County limits without there being anything yet to recognize: fields of wheat and other fodder for animals or humans frequently extended to where prairie grass once had alternated with lakes and forests. Those last few days in Ohio, then in Pennsylvania, leisurely riding toward an idea, he’d had the time to turn his memory in every direction. He had a few dollars left of his severance pay to which was added a sterling silver watch won through poker in Cleveland. Not far from Philadelphia, on the banks of the Delaware River, the Appaloosa had started grumbling awfully while the Spanish Barb, encouraged toward mutiny, had decided to lie down like a cow at the slightest halt.
And so at great cost he would have to change horses, for his own, having lost all stamina, would bring him nothing but the price of their carcasses. With most of his luggage piled on his solid new Quarter Horse, 1.6 meters tall at its withers, bought from a wheelchair-bound cowboy who claimed he’d broken his back in a rodeo—which he pretended to believe as much as that the queenly mare appeared to be easy-going—Pill started back up again on Long Road, reassured by his star and at the end of both a war and perilous journey. Despite some fickle Iroquois tribes and some bloody disputes between clans of breeders and families of farmers, New York State was a haven of peace in comparison to the West and the Great Plains at the borders of the Colorado River and the Rocky Mountains. His shoulder healed, the Mexican bullet in his pocket as a good luck charm, he owned nothing, aside from his double-cased pocket watch engraved with an eagle, a Springfield rifle, and the old Bible of his late friend Edward Blair—no inheritance, no family, not even a close friend. The only thing he had was the future, which belongs to no one.
In the late afternoon, still at a light trot on Her Highness, his boisterous mare with a flaming mane, he finally seemed able to recognize, like a face coming closer, the panorama of landscape. He had no more doubts when, on the left, mists parted to reveal the dense hills of the Iroquois, with their steep rocks here and there, markers between the cultivated plains and the break of high valleys where herdsmen lead their flocks on sunny days. Dividing these two was a river whose appearances varied, sometimes impetuous, sometimes sinuous and calm. Massive expanses of aspens and conifers with huge trunks brought a sort of meditative interiority to the landscape, a shiver of worry populated by bird song and indefinable echoes, as if silence itself were breathing. Two eagles circled in flight, high up, in the bruise of the setting sun.
Once again, with such an insidious fire in the heaths, the river sparkled at the bend of a shadowy valley. Pill finally caught sight of the big windmill-like reservoir and, posted on the lower side, a signboard with the inscription HYDESVILLE painted in black. A little farther off, in the middle of a pasture surrounded by low chalk cliffs where the black roots of pines burst up in places like the crooked fingers of the devil, stood one monumental tree, solitary, dans son immensité d’ombre. He recognized the Grand Meadow oak, which, by chance of a random fallen seed, had taken over a third of the sky with its branches, and with its roots doubtlessly explored the depths of Hell. From its low boughs was once hung high and taut, after many other summary executions, a certain Joe Charlie-Joe, son of a slave made white as snow before the Lord by the Mansfield ranchers because of a stolen kiss with the beautiful Emily, the sole heiress of her clan. This fifteen-year-old story had been repeatedly told to him at the saloon. The one who had denounced the unfortunate boy, a mother now with a necklace of the Virgin hanging above her admirable breasts, had been from then on the reigning mistress of the ranch one could see beyond the winter pastures: a large wooden house in the old style with white painted columns. Even further, a little below Long Road, the slate and metal roofs of downtown Hydesville blinked in the sun’s last rays. Apart from a few exhausted barks and the transparent noise of birds, no sound rose from the village.
William Pill pulled the bridle in the direction of these habitations, curious by their silence. Quick to change course, with one ear back, Her Highness ascended onto the main street. Her hooves rang in quarter-time rhythm, raising a white dust. The man had started to have a doubt in this desert; he had seen more of it in the south, where entire villages were empty of inhabitants. People around here had held on to their own good land, but California gold had driven many others mad. However, two young Mohawks crouching on the church steps gave him pause: Indians don’t like abandoned houses. He greeted them by raising a finger to his hat and continued his distracted visit of the place. An old man in suspenders smoking on his doorstep, some toddlers hanging from the skirts of a black nurse, a horse hitched to the gate of a grain counter, a band of cats around a tanner blind in one eye: these fragments of life in the flying dust were part of a community still intact, probably gathered together elsewhere, by the attraction of a healer come from Boston or Rochester, some itinerant preacher or the lynching of someone who’d been stealing chickens. At the window of a rather nice building that he recognized to be the home of Reverend Gascoigne, the tulle curtains parted to reveal a woman’s face, so luminous with her blonde hair let down, that he froze on his saddle to the point that his surprised Quarter Horse turned her neck and flinched.
Piqued by a sensation of unspeakable emptiness somewhere between his diaphragm and throat, William Pill took his reins in hand. He signaled a trot, eager to get back to Long Road, and his horse, mane in the wind, started to pick up speed. That’s when the click of a gun barrel engaged nearby.
“Stop there or I’ll shoot!” yelled a man, rushing over without losing sight of his target in the middle of the road.
The newcomer obeyed in good faith. He had recognized the marshal despite his heaviness and wrinkles. Was it possible that Robert McLeann would have remembered him?
“Get off your horse and approach with your hands up, Willie the Faker! We’ve got a lot to catch up on, the two of us . . .”
Knowing the unreliable trigger of the type of firearm being pointed at him, he did as he was asked. This McLeann, with his migraine-inducing integrity and respect for procedure, had always amused him.
Seated behind the office desk, gun lowered, the marshal had to admit his blunder while unrolling the Certificate of Merit personally signed by General Zachary Taylor.
“If it weren’t for your name and birth date written out, I might believe that you won this in a poker game from some other heroic fellow!”
“I won it with my own blood!” Pill replied with a certain emphasis, exposing the nasty scar on his shoulder. “And if you were only equipped with a telegraph, like all respectable sheriffs are, you could avoid these unfortunate mistakes . . .”
“That’s not going to prevent me from sending a request for information on your record first thing tomorrow by post!”
Pill laughed, one eye on the closed saloon door through the window, the other across the road.
