Upon the Road, a Stranger
I came upon the road by chance, and shall not name lest I be twice damned.
Arthur Lester had been my compatriot, and we had robbed that bank and lost the Milton brothers to a hail of lead upon our parting ways just as soon as we had departed that little town in Sacramento.
“Roberto,” Arthur said, “I say we bury half our gold, and split the rest to clean us up and set us a proper venture. What about that yonder tree?”
“As good a place as any,” said I, “and may the Lord not find us hanging from its branches someday.”
I don’t know what type it was, so old and gnarled, tainted by soothe from a fire, of summer heat or a thunderstorm. Either way, come and go the touch of that feckless master we call God. Aye, I reckon, it was God’s hand we should bury our gold under that ill omen totem pole, planted to mock men of our ilk. The thing lived despite the fires and winds, and crocked fingers pointed from its branches down that road which stretched on onto forever.
“Where does the road lead, you think?”
“All my thoughts are gone, Arthur. If vaqueros better than I ever wonder down this path I see none of their marks, nor the imprints of hooves, though I’m sure this road has known them,” I pointed out the tell tale signs of packed dirt, “for it was beaten to shape by their sort, time, and time again.”
“Onwards then, brother.”
And we went down that road, Arthur and I, on the first night I did think we had believed we mayhaps have a future to look forward to. Next morning, Arthur’s horse began to slow down and by evening, it had heeled and in a breath’s length it had died.
“Damn beast! It nearly crushed me under!”
“Come, my nag is strong enough for two,” and I was glad we had only left behind the gold bonds, and kept with us the paper dollars we could hide in our leathers, to keep us light and save thieves from temptation.
It was on our third day that we wondered where in damnation that road could lead, whether to Heaven or Hell or some place beyond for we saw no signs of life, and when the third day came we knew terror for the sun was red and air shimmered, blood and fire, and we saw cut against the distance the figure of the stranger.
His shadow was darker than black and his broad brim was a halo, but this was neither angel or saint. He stood against the burning blood eye of God, as the skies drained of colour, and we dismounted ten paces from him, our hands on our holsters. Arthur was shaking as bad as I was, fearing this to be some devil.
“This your land, hombre?”
“The land belongs to no man,” said the stranger, “but there is the matter of the gold.”
Arthur would have drawn then, but I stopped him. “You’ll miss him,” I whispered into Arthur’s ear; even at that distance, I trusted the stranger’s aim more than ours. He was solid as rock, and we couldn’t help but shake from the heat and the coming chill of night, and our weariness from the road, and fear of being hunted.
“What of it?” Arthur yelled, not bothering to deny our crimes.
“That gold is of no use, and you’ll have it back someday, perhaps. This land is hungry for something else. It yearns for blood and bone to grow its strange fruit.”
“I don’t care who you are, devil or brujo,” I said to him, “but let us reach the end of your road. You already have one of the horses, the blood is paid.”
The stranger spat at our feet and laughed, tilting back his head. “Damnation Road belongs not to me. Philosophers of the ages would said it prettier, but I’ll calls it as you sees it, simple as is. A dead horse is worth a live horse. A dead man is worth a life.”
Arthur was red with rage and yelling and spitting at the stranger, his gun on his hand, and my heart was cold and my hand steady; I knew what the stranger told us before Arthur could comprehend it, and before Arthru could raise his revolver, my knife was on his neck, then out.
Arthur shot the ground and let go of his Richard to put his hands to his neck and I pushed my knife again, this time in his heart, and that stab I felt in mine own. Anger and surprise, a horrible sadness. I wept as he died in my arms, and I kissed Lester on the lips, the kiss of Judas, his blood on my tongue bitter as iron.
I closed those accusing eyes shut, and asked without looking away, “Here’s the blood to buy my own. Now let me carry him home,” but the stranger simply laughed, “what of his soul? Must it stay here also?”
“Fret not for shadows,” answered the stranger, “take what you can carry and leave him to the land.”
And so I carried Arthur’s money, his piece, and my guilt.
The road ended and it was not the road which I had traveled, but another which I had known before. I had made it far, past the state line, some impossible distance. The town which met me cared little for the color of my money, so long it looked like a dollar, American.
I washed myself for the first time in days and my reflection did not surprise me, but did make my heart twice as heavy. I had white against the black of my hair, and I had a scar on my chest which there had been none. Worst yet, my shadow was not mine, but the stranger’s.
This I knew for certain every night since, in these past twenty years, for it moves on its own accord and vanishes into the darkness, laughing, returning at dawn to mock me with the horrors it done under moon’s light, every star a witness.
I bought a ranch, begot children, but my wife died during my absence. We was rustling cattle on a long journey for anything they could eat, in a terribly dry summer, when the stranger returned one dawn to whisper in my ear, “You’ll thank me yet,” cackled my shadow, “she had put the horns on you, old bull.”
Some young man had been her lover, and they hanged him for my crime, crying and begging. A man young enough to be my son, born the day I had first believed to have reached that road’s end, and killed for my weakness; for the stranger was the price of my sinful ways, and I was too much the coward to ever confess and risk damnation in the eyes of my fellows. This way I had known their pity, and that had a scorpion’s sting to it.
I write this now because I may not return from that road. I would have taken that young man with me, to trade his life for mine upon our return, but the stranger is always ahead of me on Damnation Road, laughing, mocking.
“Not a drop of rain, not even a drop of blood,” the stranger sings like a drunk, “if only you could get that gold again.”
Whipped as I am, old, I go now. I know I may die, but should I return I can save what’s left of the ranch and save my children from misery. Perhaps my shadow waits for me, and that of Arthur, hanging both, side by side, like strange fruit from that burnt tree.
Swaying, creaking, heavy with our sins.
Signed, in possession of his soul and wits, if not his shadow and his fate,
Roberto ‘Vagamundo’ Vargas.