Shits and Gigs

The Forgotten

They say the rocks and dirt are stained with the blood of the forgotten, and they say the blood of the forgotten lasts forever.  Despair echoes in the caves and death whispers in the darkness of the shadows.  The sky is bleak like the world below it and the motion of the dark clouds is the only difference between heaven and hell.  A light wind picks up as the red dust swirls around the tumbleweed, heading in the same direction as the lost and forgotten.  Beneath my feet lies the hardened ground and in that ground lie the footprints of the forgotten.  The dirt on which I stand was once pure.  But now the dirt tastes of blood.  Blood of the innocent.  Blood of the virgin.  He was here.

The man wakes up.  He gets out of bed and he walks outside and he goes to the spigot to wash his face.  He wants to sleep but in his sleep he has the dream and in his dream she is there.  He knows it’s her, he can feel her presence but the man cannot see her face and he cannot hear her voice.  The more the man thinks about it the less there is to think about, until she is lodged into the depths of his faraway mind.

He walks back into the house and he puts on his riding clothes and he eats the bit of cornmeal leftover from the night before.  The revolver sits on the table next to the belt and the man picks up the belt along with the revolver and he wears them upon his waist.  Dust fills the air and the sunlight pierces through that dust and millions of particles are suspended in the air.  Next to the entrance a hat hangs on the hook built into the wall.  The man takes the hat and puts it on his head and walks out the door.

Over yonder past the sea of rubble and dust lie the faraway mountains like a distant kingdom that no man has reached.  The man grabs his horse by the reins with his left hand, and with his right he hoists himself up onto the saddle and with the reins in his left hand he takes off riding into the nothingness before him.

The man reaches town with the burning sun above his head and the red dirt beneath the horse’s feet.  As he passes by the buildings covered in dust he notices the townsfolk standing as still as the noon air.  The faces are gray with the dust that swirls around them and the beards are white and long and their skin is rawhide.  The eyes look up at the man as he passes through but the man does not see the eyes and he does not see the faces and the skins and the beards, he looks on ahead to where he soon will be.  He ties his horse up to the hitching post and puts his gloves in his back pocket and he fixes his hat according to the burning sun.  A kid rides by fixing his eyes on the man until he is no longer in the kid’s view.  Another man, an older man, walks up to him with a hardened face.

“You’re late.”

“Didn’t realize we had a time.”

“We don’t.  You’re late.”

The old man walks into the building followed by the younger man close behind.  The old man takes off his hat and throws it onto an antique desk situated next to the wall.  Before the old man says a word or takes a seat himself, the younger man finds himself a chair in front of the wooden desk and sits down with his hat on his lap.  The old man remains standing behind the chair and puts his hands in his pockets and speaks.

“How you holdin up?”

The man in the chair hesitates and then responds. 

“You ever heard of a man named Jack Whitaker?”

The old man pauses.

“Don’t believe so, why?”

“This feller, Jack Whitaker, had himself a nice spread over in Odessa, you know, where the dust don’t blow and the sun meets the stones and starts lookin real nice in the evenin time—“

“Yeah, yeah I know Odessa, gotta uncle who once lived there, don’t know where he is now though.”

“Well this feller, you know, Jack Whitaker, has himself a nice spread and all till one day he done found some chickweed, growin in the pen and rootin all over the porch, and if you don’t know chickweed lemme tell you, once that stuff roots it’ll be a helluva time gettin it out.  So Jack, he goes and finds himself some Mexicans, real dirty lookin Mexicans, to pull that shit out before the winter rolls in and the ground hardens.  So the Mexicans, they come to his place and they start rippin at the chickweed but it don’t help much, being chickweed and all.  After three days the damn Mexicans can’t do it no more, so he goes inside and grabs himself his eight gauge he had from the war and comes on out and blows the heads off of these damn spicks right all over the dirt.  So now, poor Jack Whitaker not only has his quarrels with the chickweed but now he’s got himself a pile full of Mexican brain stew right there in front of his house. Now Jack, he packs up his things and moves on out and now he’s got himself a real nice spread in Cherry County, couple miles east, you know, where that Jackson fella is from?”

“Rider…we didn’t get him.”

“…Yeah…I thought so.”

“I wanted—we wanted to tell you sooner, but like I said…you’re late.”

“Been tryin to sort things out with God.”

“And how’s that goin?”

The man they call Rider stands up from his seat and puts his hat back on his head.  He turns to face the old man and the old man stands waiting for a reply.

“I’ll let you know when it happens.”

With that Rider walks towards the door but before he makes his way out the threshold the old man stops him.

“We tried, you know…it ain’t like we didn’t try.”

Rider pauses and stands with his back towards the old man.  He then turns around and storms into the room.

“Lemme tell you bout another story,” Rider raises his voice slightly as he gets closer to the old man, “it’s a mighty good story too, if I may add.  You know, after it happened, I done took to the road, lookin for answers and all.  I went ridin, out there, towards the red mountains and I done only take two hide skin canteens and my Smith n’ Wesson and I rode off under the blazin sun.  For three weeks I ain’t seen a single damn sign of life, till I reached these rocks covered with dust and red dirt and in these rocks was this cave.  I looked around and near it were these spears, tall and wood like, stickin out of the dirt all around and I done saw some kinds of carcasses rottin in the sun givin off a kind of smell I ain’t never smelt in my life.  Now I ain’t never seen no cave before neither so I reckoned it’d be best if I didn’t go in it.  But sure as shit, right before I started makin my way, this figure climbed on out.  The sun above was in my eyes so only God knows what I could see, but the figure came closer and finally I made it out to be a man.  An old man.  Now, this old man, he only wore a cloth around his loins and a long, thick beard that was grey like the clouds on a stormy day.  He was nothin but skin and bones.  I knew somethin was peculiar about this old man, livin in a cave and all with nothin but a loincloth, so I kept my fair share’s distance away from him.  He done mumble somethin softly under his breath so I couldn’t hear nothin but before he finished I says, ‘you reckon I can find some water round these parts?’  The old man kept mumblin without sayin a damn word, or even lookin me in the eye, so I says, ‘now old man, I reckon we just met and all, but where I come from, over yonder, back east where the sun comes up, when a man does not acknowledge another man, he is entitled to take offense.’  The old man kept mumblin and kept his head facin towards the dirt.  His hair was all long and in his face and his beard was real dirty.  I walked up to the old man and grabbed his arm and he shrieked and gasped for the still air.  He then looked me in the eye and he says, ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him.  If he is thirsty, give him somethin to drink.’ Now like I said, I could tell somethin was peculiar bout this old man so immediately I let go of his arm and took a couple steps back.  I didn’t mean no harm or nothin so I tells him I ain’t no enemy, just a passer by lookin for some water.  The old man looked down and went back to mumblin God knows what and I stood there too, just starin at him.  ‘You don’t happen to see injuns pass through here, do ya?’ I ask him.  He don’t answer though.  Quite honestly I didn’t expect an answer.  I decided I got all I was gonna get from him so I turned around to get back up on the saddle.  That’s when he says, ‘I do.’  I was so taken back I paused for a couple of seconds, but then I went and walked up to the old man and I looked him dead in the eye and I says, ‘now, you look here old man, if you done see somethin worth seein then you best tell me now.’  The old man didn’t say shit and he just looked on down at the ground.  For some particular reason the wind picked up at that time and the dirt around us got in my eyes.  I grabbed the old man’s arm again and he done shrieked and gasped like he be dyin or somethin and he says, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him.  If he is thirsty, give him somethin to drink,” and somethin all of a sudden became familiar.  He says those lines again as if he don’t even remember sayin them just a few minutes past and I could tell either this old man just wasn’t too good at rememberin or he was just one of those forgetful folk who don’t remember shit at all.  So I got on my horse and he stood there mumblin and I gave him somethin worth rememberin.” 

“Why you tellin me all these stories, Rider?”

Rider walks back to the door and holds the knob in his hand.

“I don’t know, that’s just what I do,” he opens the door and lowers his hat, “maybe you’ll remember somethin too.”

 He then makes his way down the steps of the porch and walks up to his horse still tied to the old hitching post.  He unties the reins and puts his gloves back on his hands and he mounts the horse to ride off into the nothingness. 

He has no name yet he has a face and he has a voice and his eyes are dark like the world from which he came.  His skin is stained with the blood of the forgotten, and the blood of the forgotten lasts forever.  He came here to take what God had to give, and instead he took what God was supposed to keep.  The wind picks up and the sky becomes darker and the dirt remains tainted with blood.  Off in the distance something screams for me.  I yearn for the cries of the forgotten but what has been forgotten no longer exists.  A silhouette can be seen perched on the edge of a cliff, far off into the distance, where heaven meets hell.  The creature is unearthly, the creature is completely black.  God had not intended for me to see what I hear.

A couple of days pass and Rider reaches town right before the sun goes down behind the distant mountains and the dark night starts to creep in from the east.  He ties up his horse and fixes his belt as he makes his way to the old saloon where man can make his own peace with God. 

He walks through the doors and finds himself a stool at the bar.  Four seats over there is an elder man with an old worn hat and a mouthful of blackness.  His skin is tired and weathered and his eyes are shaded by the thick of his brow. 

“Been wonderin when you’d come in,” the bartender, a big, tall man, whose face is strong and shoulders broad, steals Rider’s attention and puts down a small glass in front of him and he fills up that glass with fine golden whiskey.

“How you doin, Joe?”

“You know me, can’t complain.  How bout you, father?”

The old man four stools over picks up his head for a second without saying a word and glances over at Rider and then looks back down at the empty glass before him. 

“I ain’t your father, Joe.  I ain’t your father and you ain’t my son, so don’t you go callin me that no more.”

“My apologies, Rider, my apologies.”

The bartender goes back to cleaning the glass in his hand and Rider looks down at the drink in front of him.

Hey, Joe?  I don’t mean to pry, but you wouldn’t happen to remember an injun comin in here, bout six weeks past, do ya?”

“God, Rider, I really can’t say.”  The bartender looks at him with sad and worried eyes as he continues to clean and wipe down a glass.

“You sure, Joe?  Bout six feet tall?  Big lookin fella?”

The bartender turns around to put the glass back in a case and he speaks with an insistent voice.

“I can’t say, Rider.  You know I can’t say.  Why don’t you just enjoy that nice glass I poured for you.”

Rider looks down at the glass in front of him and he touches the sides, inspecting it yet not paying any attention to it at all. 

There is a long pause of silence as the bartender goes about tending the bar and the old man four seats down stares into his empty glass, the same glass he stared at when Rider walked in.  The sun continues to lower in the distance and the sky is a painting and the dirt remains still and red.  Rider looks down at his glass then speaks.

“Give me a name, Joe.”

The bartender looks up at Rider and stands without moving a muscle or saying a word. 

“Give me a name.”

“I can’t.”

“Give me a name, Joe.”

Rider’s voice rises as he begins to shake violently and he breathes a heavy breath and his eyes become dark.  The bartender reaches under the bar and looks at Rider with a stern eye.

“Easy, Rider, easy.  I don’t want no trouble, and neither do you.  We was in the war together, I don’t wanna have to do what I don’t wanna do.”

Rider grabs the glass in front of him with a mighty grip and jumps off the stool and thrusts the glass at the wall behind the bar.  The glass shatters and Rider’s eyes become darker.

“Give me his fucking name!”

The bartender without hesitation grabs out a rifle from under the counter and aims it steadily at Rider’s face and the old man at the end of the bar remains staring at his glass. 

Rider slowly backs up and falls into the chair of a nearby table and he sits down with his hands in front of him.  He continues to breathe heavily but after a few minutes the breathing subsides.  The sun is almost gone and the moon is in the sky and silence fills the air.

Rider looks down to the floor and is calm like the air outside.  The bartender lowers his rifle and keeps his eyes on Rider.  After a long moment of silence Rider remains facing towards the ground and speaks. 

“I see her in my dreams, Joe,” the bartender does not move and stares at Rider who sits in the chair.  With his hands out in front of him and with his palms facing the ceiling, Rider emptily examines them and tears begin to form in his eyes.  His voice is shaky yet strong as he continues to speak, “I see her in my dreams and—I mean—she’s there and all…she’s dancin, Joe.  The skies are blue and there’s flowers and the wind’s blowin in her hair and the sun shines off her eyes like she’s glowin, and she’s dancin,” at this point Rider is in tears as he struggles to put his words together, “and—I wanna hold her—I wanna hold her, Joe—she just—she just looks so pretty.”

The bartender walks around the end of the bar and makes his way to Rider who is sitting in the cold wooden chair with tears in his eyes falling down his face.  The bartender puts his hand on Rider’s shoulder with a reaffirming grip.

“I know, Sam, I know.”

The old man sitting four seats down clears his throat and for the first time makes a sound.  He speaks with a hard and raspy voice, a voice that has been through thick and thin.  The old man speaks but does not move or turn his head.  He speaks while staring into the empty glass in front of him.

            “I once knew a man…from El Paso…who done sold his soul to the devil.  I asked him, ‘How you still here, on Earth, yet still in hell?’ he tells me, ‘I once saw the face of God, and now, every wakin second, I’m tormented—with ten thousand hells—bein without him.’  So I ask him, ‘why don’t you just ask for his forgiveness?’  He says, ‘it’s too late, my heart’s too hardened.’” 

            There’s a long pause and both Rider and the bartender remain staring at the old man down at the end of the bar.  The wood floors creek and the stench of the mold in the banisters taints the silent air.  The old man continues to gaze into his empty glass and the bartender breaks the brooding silence.

            “What the fuck are you talkin bout, Ezra?”

            Rider stands up and walks to the bar and gathers his belongings.

             “I’m gonna take off,” Rider grabs his hat off the bar and leaves some money in its place. 

            “Take care, Sam.”

            “You too, Joe, thanks for the drink,”

            “But you didn’t drink it.”

            Rider walks out of the saloon and night has fallen and he unties the horse.  He mounts the horse and sits upon the saddle and rides off into the nothingness from which he came.

The faint cries become louder, I can understand the cries.  I begin to walk toward the unforeseeable distance; the mysterious creature perched upon the distant cliff continues to become larger.  The cries repeat and repeat a single line; a line now burning in my skull and anger fills my heart.  The sound is unbearable, yet the words are so clear.  The creature perched upon the cliff now spreads its black wings and cries for me louder than ever.  But something stops me.  Something familiar.  My feet stop moving, and I turn to look back.  As I look down at the blood stained dirt behind me, I notice my footprints are now gone—gone like the footprints of the forgotten.  The silhouette of the winged creature disappears off into the distant horizon and the steady wind around me becomes dead.  Now I hear a different cry.

There’s a knock on the door and the sun has risen and Rider is already awake. He gets out of bed and puts on his pants and he goes across the room to answer the door.  There’s a slight breeze coming through an open window and the red dirt outside under the empty sky remains as still as the hollow air.  When he opens the door, an old man is standing before him.

“Hello, Rider.”

“How’s it goin, Sheriff?”

“Thought I’d take a ride this mornin, see how you’re doin.”

“I just saw you the other day.”

“I know…may I come in?”

Rider moves out the doorway and the sheriff enters the house following him.  After taking a seat at the table, the old man removes his hat and Rider brings over a cup of water and sits down at the table as well.

“I heard you paid Big Joe a visit the other night,” the sheriff puts his hat onto the table followed by his gloves.

“Yeah, well, I was due I suppose.”

“Heard you were asking questions.”

Rider pauses and then stands up from the table.  He makes his way over to the hook built into the wall by the door that holds his hat and he takes the hat and places it on his head.

“I’m goin on the road for a while.”

The sheriff stands up as well and walks over towards the front door.

“Look, Sam, I just wanna say…that I’m sorry.”  The sheriff continues to speak as Rider grabs his belt and his revolver from the bedroom and places it onto the table.  “I know we ain’t best of kin, to say the least, and I know your business is your business and ain’t nobody else’s.  But I wanna tell you somethin.  I wanna tell you that I’ve been thinkin long and hard bout our talk a couple days past, when you told me bout that old man in the caves and all, and I’ve thought about what you said, bout hopin I’d remember somethin or another.  Well, I came here today, Sam, to tell you that I do remember.  I keep thinking back to a time, before all hell happened, when you meant somethin to this town and this town meant somethin to you.  And I remember what you once told us when dark times were upon us much like these times here.  You told one of those stories you’d always tell us, somethin bout not listenin to the badness, that there was so much good in life, all around us, in the people we knew and loved, and it’s the good that brings us closer to God.  I listened to what you preached and I took it to heart and everyone thought you was nothing but a lyin fool and so was I.  But they didn’t understand what I saw, and what I saw was you, and all your goodness.  That’s somethin I ain’t never gonna forget.  Now I know you’ve left the church, I understand that, but if you do this, Sam, what you’re bout to do…well…let’s just say you ain’t gonna be the only thing leavin this town.”

Silence consumes the room and Rider remains staring at the floorboards and the sheriff stands waiting for a reply.  Rider does not move he only thinks and before he can think any longer the sheriff walks up to Rider.  With his head down and shoulders back the sheriff sticks out his right hand and gives Rider a white slip of paper.  “But I reckon it’d don’t matter what I say.  I reckon you still got those things to work out with God.”

Rider pauses and fixes his eyes upon the sheriff who stands before him and then looks down at the paper in his hand.  A couple of seconds pass and the sun bears down on the distant rocks and Rider grabs his belt with the revolver and wears it on his waist.  Rider makes his way towards the door, but is stopped by the sheriff who has moved off to the side.

“Hey, Rider?”  Rider stops and remains facing the empty land that awaits him.  “What’ll you say to him?”

He pauses and stares at the sheriff.

“I’m gonna tell him bout this dream I’ve been havin.”

“The one bout your daughter, dancin in the flowers and in the wind?”

“No, I’m gonna tell him bout a different one.”

To forget is to forgive and to forgive is divine.  Well bless me Father for I have sinned, because forget I cannot do.