Pins (29)

 

New Mexico
1849

They awoke to the sound of the cell door grinding open. Emmett blinked and struggled up, clasping Abigail as she rolled over and rubbed her eyes. It was still dark. A stocky guard wearing a flat-crowned campero hat and a leather bullet belt across his chest ambled in. 

'Vamos,' he said.

They sat for a moment watching the large man. Abigail shivered and pawed at the stone floor as she tried to pull herself up. Emmett tugged her close.

'Párale,' the guard said. He strode forward and grabbed a fistful of Abigail's hair, hauling her up off the floor. She wobbled and moaned, suspended briefly like a puppet. Emmett bunched his fists. The guard threw Abigail out the door. She clattered against the wall outside, and the man turned to Emmett. He caught him with a meaty left-hook, lifted him up by his jacket collar, and drove him out after her. 

Emmett spat blood as they stumbled up the stairwell. He veered into the iron bars in the corridor above. Abigail grabbed his hand and supported him as the guard led them out into the patio. They crossed the tiled courtyard, passing beneath a stone arch, and onto the roofed veranda of a domed building surrounded by chirimoya and palm trees. The guard opened the patina doors and led them into the cavernous interior of the casa principal.

Emmett clung to Abigail and held his throbbing mouth with his free hand as they walked down a long corridor. Light spilled through tall, wide windows to their right. The floor tiles were mint-green, and the walls were yellow-tinged, with deep-blue wainscoting. Hanging brass chandeliers with kerosene lamps lined the high-beamed ceiling. They passed a billiard room with velvet draperies. The guard stopped at another set of patina doors, and ushered them into a large study. 

A man in a white striped waistcoat, matching trousers and leather boots sat behind a mahogany desk. There was a crystal chandelier hanging above him, and behind there was a long repisa stacked with ornate glasses and bottles. Mosaic-patterned white drapes were drawn over a window on their right, and before it sat a leather sofa and a narrow coffee table. The man behind the desk spoke curtly to the guard, who turned and departed. 

Emmett pressed Abigail's hand, and stood swaying before the desk. He felt as if he had stepped into another world. The man introduced himself as the comandante, and then prompted them to sit. He did not give his name, only his title, and he did not seem interested in procuring their own names. 

They stepped nervously forward, and sat in the two wooden armchairs opposite him. A peon in a long sarape brought through two smoking bowls of menudo on a silver tray, and placed them on the desk before them. The comandante gestured again, and then sat back and smoked whilst they ate. Abigail set about the soup without care, dripping over the desk. Emmett stirred the tripe and chewed slowly. His jaw ached. He felt a sharp stab of pain, and something came loose in his mouth. He looked down at a bloody tooth floating in the bowl. 

The comandante watched them. His cigarette sent gossamer threads drifting amongst the lamplight. When they had finished eating, the peon drifted back through with two glasses of water, and removed the bowls and tray. Emmett and Abigail drank and avoided eye contact with the man opposite. The comandante crushed his cigarette out in an ashtray, removed another one from a tin box, and lit up.

'Mirame ahora,' he said, sharply. Emmett looked up. The comandante's voice was low and gravelly. He had a large bushy beard, and his dark hair was oiled back over his scalp. He tapped his cigarette on the ashtray and eyeballed Emmett.

'Do you feel refreshed?' he said.

Emmett glanced at Abigail, at her dirt-streaked face and sunken eyes. She was looking down at the floor. He sighed and fiddled with his trouser seams.

'Yessir,' he mumbled.

'Good,' the comandante said, smoothing the front of his waistcoat. 'Do you know the value of that which you have carried?'

'What have I carried?' Emmett said, meeting his eyes. Abigail swallowed audibly.

The comandante let his reply hang in the air. He looked towards the patina doors. There was movement in the corridor outside.

'We are not interested in determining their monetary value,' he said, breathing out smoke. 'How many times do you think your heart beats in the space of a single second?'

Emmett bit his lip. He understood the prompting, but did not know how to proceed. He wanted to come from a position of knowledge and control, but he had neither of those things. Abigail watched him out of the corner of her eyes. 

'Perhaps once per second?' the comandante said. 'Lightning strikes in a far shorter time. The shorter time becomes, the harder it is to keep up with. Do you believe that you navigate your way across a single timescale? From beginning to end? This is not so. It is evident in these variations. If we experienced the perpetual scale of the lightning strike, the hands of the clock would seem to go on forever. We function in, and rely upon, many different timescales simultaneously.'

Emmett held his cheek and rode a wave of pain. The comandante stood and picked up a mezcal bottle from the repisa behind him. A moth larvae was curled at the base of the bottle. He poured out a shot, drank it, and sat again, placing the bottle between them.

'Interweaving strands,' he said. 'The same interweaving strands. Take, for example, the recent strands of my own people, and those of the Apache. The Apache have long practiced raiding. They took our livestock, our food, our weapons. They took our women and children. They burned them slowly. One hot coal at a time, over many days. They tore their fingernails out. Broke their fingers and twisted and pulled and played with them. They scalped them alive and made them eat strips of their own flesh.'

Abigail whimpered, and Emmett clutched the seat of his armchair. The comandante poured out another shot and threw it back. He ran his fingers through his greasy hair.

'In turn,' he said, 'we massacred their tribes, and stole away their own women and children. War became a way of life. Vengeance upon bloody vengeance. The pàdres, they established forts, and after the worst conflict, they began to deal out rations to the Apaches. Offerings. This resulted for a time in some kind of relative peace. After the Treaty of Córdoba we withdrew these offers, and they began to raid again. The cycle began anew, and a bounty was announced on Apache scalps. And so these two interweaving strands continue. We both of us navigate our ways through each other's timescales, and are bound in blood and massacre and destruction.'

He paused and exhaled. His forehead was slick with sweat. He glanced again at the door, and back to Emmett.

'But of course,' he said, 'you know this, and experience it in a distinct and separate manner. Have you seen them fly?'

Emmett frowned. 

'Fly?' he said.

The comandante's bearded face seemed to waver in the darkness of the room.

'They are birds,' he said. 'They fly. Momento.'

The patina doors opened, and the comandante rose. A heavy-set man wearing a velvet jacket, a satin sash, and a plumed hat walked in stiffly, looking at Emmett and Abigail. He was followed by the peon, leading a thin woman in blue oaxaca dress by the arm. Abigail seemed to shrink into her chair. 

The large man greeted the comandante and eased into a seat behind the desk, wheezing as he did so. Emmett knew him to be the hacendado at a glance. There were gold tassels on his sash, his boots were embossed with a silver serpentine design, and everything about him reeked of excess and decadence. 

The peon drew up an armchair beside the hacendado, and helped the woman into it. She sat slowly, and waved him away. She was desperately thin. Her face was jaundiced, and her eyes were deeply sunken and underscored with pitted grooves. There was a red silk rebozo over her shoulders, and the room was balmy, but she trembled nonetheless. The hacendado patted her knee absent-mindedly as she smoothed out her dress.

The comandante walked across to the sofa, opened the drapes, and cracked open a window. Sunlight washed over the room. He returned to the desk, poured himself and the hacendado large shots of mezcal, and turned back to Emmett.

'We can deliver you to the Apaches,' he said. 'They will cover your faces in honey, bury you in the ground up to your neck, and let the ants and scorpions eat your skin. Or perhaps they will cut holes in your bodies and fill them with hot coals. There are many interesting options.'

Emmett shuddered. Abigail reached for his hand. The hacendado coughed when he saw this. His face turned red, and he barked and hacked as they sat in silence. The comandante lit up another cigarette. Smoke unfurled in helixes between them.

'How well acquainted are you with the shapes?' he said. Emmett swallowed and leaned forward.

'I don't rightly know - '

'I grow tired of this,' the comandante snapped. 'You will tell me, or you can eat your sister for the pleasure of the Apaches. Are you familiar with safe shapes? Have you developed this skill?'

Emmett sat mute. The comandante and the hacendado watched him intently. Abruptly the woman spluttered, and vomited a stringy trail of blood. The peon rushed to her, and the hacendado patted her knee again. Red beads dribbled down her philtrum. 

'Quitarse el pene,' the hacendado said, lifting his hat, and dabbing at his brow with a handkerchief. The peon left a blood-stained cloth in the skinny woman's hands, and removed a knife from his boot. He paced round the desk and grabbed Emmett's belt. Emmett wriggled in the chair as the peon unbuckled it.

'We know how to make safe shapes,' Abigail shouted. 'We know.'

The hacendado waved the peon off, and he returned the knife to his boot and went back to attending to the skinny woman. Emmett breathed rapidly and buckled his belt back up. The hacendado skulled a shot. Mezcal dribbled down his chin. The comandante sat back and looked at Abigail.

'His wife is unwell,' he said. 'Yellow fever. She has not long. You arrival is a gift, and if you conduct yourselves correctly, and aid us in our requirements, then it may in turn prove to be a gift for you too. You will accompany us a secure distance into the desert and construct a safe shape. You will prove to me that it is safe, and you will save her life. If you fulfil this task, you will be free to go.'

'We need some of them pins,' Abigail said. 'We're s'posed to get to the Farm, so Emmett can fix his count. He's not well too.'

The comandante glanced at Emmett, slapped his hand on the desk, and stood.

'I have no time for this,' he said. 'You are not in a position to list a series of abstract demands. The items you carried are of great value. They are not and have never been yours. We have the opportunity to move outwith this sequence of brutal ordered moments. You will aid us with whatever knowledge you have garnered, and then you will depart with your lives. This is as fair a pact as you could hope to find in these times. Make yourselves ready to ride out.'

He wiped his palms on his waistcoat, clicked his fingers in the direction of the peon, and stalked out of the room. The hacendado stared at them with furious eyes. He drew a hand across his thick moustache, and picked up the mezcal bottle. The woman hacked blood up over the floral embroidery on her dress, and sat shivering in the fine light.
 

 

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