American Saints (Part IV)

American Saints

Part IV

Sunset blues/sky like a bruise/you can choose fate/if you don’t hesitate/refugee rhythm/religious sect schism/marooned with quadroons on the moon as a prison/destiny manifested/the legend of white succession/iris like sabers/savior with no blessings/two roads/choose directions/zombified suns burn the night with God’s message/shelter in a shadow where the angels been resting/the war of heaven ain’t gone leave you lone you being tested.

-Punch Pilot, Track 2 “The Chosen People.”

Every cloud was stained pink, the sky swollen into the blue before purple. Jim fell in and out of coherence and the day burned down to the slow indigo of dusk. The bandages on his back were moist from blood and sweat. Cait watched Jim as he slept while her mind watched the red brushstroke of the day play over. She swung between guilt and fear and landed where she always lied. A space flung between the inertia of the two. A small headache bloomed behind her eyes and the ground seemed to tremble slightly.

The townsfolk dressed and cleaned Jim’s wounds from scant supplies they had smuggled from first-aid kits. A young woman gave him a few hydrocodone but Cait could see he was in immense pain. Another swallow of guilt. Sharp rye and brine. The Returners had corralled them all tightly into the town square; a makeshift camp from what had just been the center of the little tourist town in West Texas. The invaders stood guard at various intervals around the captives. They were trees alive with hateful eyes.

Jim lay face down in the grass breathing slow while Cait watched on. Around them, the huddled mass buzzed with anxiety. A mix of tourists and locals of all ages. All white, all afraid. Lisa Jo had sat with Cait while Jim’s wounds had been dressed–she left as soon as Jim was stable. An elderly man and woman from Wisconsin that looked as if they could be Jim’s own grandparents offered to watch over him as Cait went to look for Lisa Jo.

The sun began to melt across the sky. As it slid stains of orange and pink soaked into the fabric of the world. Some of the younger children played games of tag before their parents rushed to keep them still; afraid of provoking their captors with too much movement. The sky grew heavy with change. Cait now scanned the white faces for her only friend. Maybe her last friend left on Earth. She spotted Lisa Jo, talking to a woman with short curly brown hair and green cargo shorts. Cait strode over, her heart beating just as fast as it was earlier. Lisa Jo didn’t say anything when Cait walked up. Cait was a little put off by the heat that she seemed to radiate. With the peach sunlight behind her Lisa Jo was a soft fire.

“Hey, there you are.” Cait said slightly out of breath.

“Heyy.” Lisa Jo replied looking Cait up and down–then straight at Cait without blinking much.

“....Jim’s gonna be okay I think…thank you so much for staying with me while they wrapped him up. I don’t think I could have sat there without you…. I felt like I was in shock, like I couldn’t really believe that just happened..you know?” Cait blurted out as Lisa Jo didn’t break eye contact.

“....Cool.” Lisa Jo replied to Cait shortly after a pause. As if she had expected Cait to keep speaking. There was silence. A quiet burning. “...oh hey, this is Harper. Harper…this is Cait.”

Harper smiled and shook Cait’s hand. She was tall and tan, a bit taller than Lisa Jo and her hair was very frizzy. She had a lot of freckles and her voice came from her belly. “Nice to meet you!” Harper said as she continued to shake Cait’s hand. “This is some crazy shit huh?” She forced a laugh while her greenish eyes showed the same worry as the rest.

“Yeah…” Cait responded, bothered by Lisa Jo’s odd brevity. Harper pulled a travel size cologne out of her fanny pack and sprayed twice over her baggy purple tank top. She spoke again, looking around at The Returners and the crowd.

“I had been traveling through the Big Bend area for a month or so, I just left Marfa yesterday! This is a beautiful part of the country…anyways. This is rough, but we’ll get through this. Hey, you said you were Guatemalan?...Did they take you by mistake then?” Harper said to Cait sincerely, looking down into her eyes in a warm yet concerned way. Like a dad during a family emergency.

Cait felt herself burn with embarrassment as Lisa Jo stared at her and spoke with an intensity Cait had not yet seen. Fast wind on a hot day. “Yeah dude, we’ve talked a lot. And you’ve mentioned that people mistake you for a person of color a few times…but I k n o w I’ve heard you say that you were white. Did you try to lie and say you weren’t? That’s fucked up.” She said all this without malice, yet in the dying sun; Lisa Jo’s disappointment became its own dusk.

“....I didn’t mean to lie….it just came out!! I’m just tired-” Cait pleaded before Lisa Jo cut her off as the afternoon wind flew through the junipers around the town square.

“Of what? Being white? Do you think you’re the only one who’s scared right now? Or the only one doesn’t feel weird about being white sometimes? Get over it! Our ancestors were fucked up dude. We don’t have to be. But you can’t fucking lie about not being white when you are. Even if being white sucks. You can’t just let me and Jim bear it all! You have a part too dude.” Lisa Jo said desperately in one breath. All around the wind continued to fly, and from the mountains the sound of canyon wrens echoing through the heart of the world. Cait felt the words crash over her like an unexpected wave before a rough voice punctured the growing bubble of her embarrassment.

“Being White is a privilege. And we should be proud to be white. Our ancestors were some of the bravest men that ever lived.”

The rough voice stepped through the crowd. Most people were quick to get out of his way. If the Returners weren’t around–he would be considered a giant. He was taller than all of Cait’s traveling party and he had a dense muscled physique. Like a police officer. He had long blond dreadlocks and electric blue eyes. So blue compared to Jim’s, Cait knew that they were color contacts immediately. His jeans were too tight and he had eyes made of teeth.

“And right now, we get the honor of carrying on that tradition in a way they never dreamed of. My brother died in Iraq so that we could live free. We can’t give up. We never have.” He addressed the crowd of people around who had stopped to listen. He spoke in a way that projected and expanded. To Cait, he reminded her of those televangelist preachers. “My name is Wess Wayne, White people have always had to sort out violent invaders that threatened our safety and freedom…this is no different. We will win. We will conquer them.”

Wess Wayne immediately reminded Cait of Jim’s father and the worst parts of Jim. Cait’s eyes flicked over to Jim and the old couple while Wess continued to preach. Wess’ rhetoric made her think of the last thing Jim had said before he passed out:

“....I hope Christian’s alright..he really stood up for me…”

“That’s bullshit dude!” Harper yelled, her green eyes glinting in the early evening. “Look around us. The world has gone to shit because of crap like that! Who knows what’s gonna happen?? But I know for damn sure this era is over. Wake up.”

Wess smiled and his large teeth seemed to grind against each other from the pressure of his jaw. Cait noticed he was always chewing. Maybe gum, maybe tobacco, maybe himself. Every part of him seemed ready to strike.

“I have been awake ma’am. I understand the true history of this world and the White man’s plight. How we have been hunted and infiltrated by foreigners, diluting our culture and drowning us one drop at a time.”

“AYŌ!!” the voice of S’an D’aelphon silenced everyone. Cait and the others were left to mull over everything Wess had said as their captors shouted instructions and marched them all to the edge of town back into the Chihuahuan desert.

Someone had brought out of their home an old wheelchair. Cait pushed the groggy Jim as Lisa Jo and Harper paced behind. Wess Wayne was far ahead of them and Cait was glad for that.

Night had fallen and The Returners stood sentinel in the dark atop their monstrous steeds. So black they were almost invisible against the backdrop of space. When they moved it was as if parts of heaven shifted. Restless with violent creation. Cait and the rest were marched into the arid grassland and she started thinking about the coyotes and the bodies and the smell and the spit that the earth had claimed.

“Sō!” S’an D’aelphon began addressing the crowd; his legion of assembled riders and their horses pacing impatiently behind. “I sey de place we tek yu all tu is holy. Only fa de mos’ worthy. De mos’ superioor of de superioor. De ones who survive. We ah giv yu all ah haf dey ‘ead start.”

There was no time for shock. There was no shock left in Cait. Instead, Cait found herself witnessing their exodus from outside of her own body. As if her spirit had been cut from her flesh and now was forced to watch motionless as the white mass was made to move.

They trudged through the desert, a people with no home.They ran in different directions, soon swallowed by the absolution of the desert night. They were refugees Cait thought. Fear was a schism that broke them into groups of ten or fifteen. Cait, Jim, Lisa Jo, and Harper found themselves moving at the same pace and the same direction of a loose pack of about twenty people. Wess found himself in this group as well. They ran through agave in bloom. Bright century plants that blossomed once or twice a lifetime tall as the Returners. Tight herds of javelina kicked up dust in between the scattered tribes of humanity and rattlesnakes sent warnings through the night. Cait witnessed a few panicked escapees be struck down by near invisible whips of lightning striking at their feet from the brush. Thunder filling up their veins.

Once again Cait knew the sky was watching them. The void above opened its eyes one by one then all at once. Light starved by time shining dead in the abyss. She looked up into a field of corpses and the crescent moon was a blade being sharpened by the hour. Cait returned to her body and found nothing left in her but terror.

She pushed Jim over the uneven ground. He didn’t say much and neither did most of their group. However, Harper gave words of support to those that were lagging behind, and she would walk with them at their pace. She even got the group to slow down a few times to make sure everyone stayed together. In the dark Cait could hear Harper’s steady voice alongside the coyotes in the distance. She heard them side by side.

It was about eleven o’clock when the group came to rest and put to mind what they should or could do. Harper spoke.

“We’re doing a good job sticking together…and we’ve put some good distance between us and them! But…we need to decide together on a direction we’re going. Right now, by my compass we’re headed North.” She said, taking the time to look around at everyone as the murmurs of agreement spread. Ripples through the desert pond. A brown haired man in his forties or so spoke up. “Our son, Anthony–we got separated from him during the attack. We don’t know if he’s still back in Fort Davis or...we need to find a way back.”

Harper addressed the man and his wife with empathy. “...I can’t imagine how you two must feel…how old is he?” Harper asked the tall blonde haired woman leaning on the man. She had the eyes of a soldier that had come home to a country changed. “Anthony is nine…this can’t be life now.”

“That boy is a martyr…if he’s gone.” Wess interjected. Cait felt the crowd be seized by the spread of his voice; the prairie grassland around becoming an amphitheater of sand and survival. “White boys and men have always laid down their lives for the American dream.” He continued as Anthony’s parents recoiled at the suggestion of their son dying for some noble white cause–and yet, they listened. Everyone did until Harper spoke. She too addressed the herd as one.

“And that’s part of the problem. White boys have been brainwashed by white men like you, and then they end up terrorizing us all! Or they end up dying for your stupid cause.” She said loudly to a crowd that met her back with contemplation.

“There’s nothing stupid about our survival ma’am.” Wess said coldly, taking a step towards Harper in the moonlight. Lisa Jo took a step closer to Harper while Cait felt Jim shift at the word survival. Cait’s breath quickened. Wess continued.

“This very land we are on was born from White survival. The White men here survived comanches and mexicans to carve some civilization out of the frontier. Texas itself is a symbol of White survival.” He then turned back to Anthony’s parents.

“Your boy might still be alive for all we know. And if he is, he’ll be another hero in a long line of heroes. Like my brother, Trevor…don’t give up hope. The White man won’t die today. They will never get rid of us.” A smile so big it threatened to tear his face apart erupted from his lips as he said, “No nigger from space is going to force me out of my home. Not without a fight. We just need some trees tall enough to hang the big ones from right?”

There was some relieved laughter from the crowd, tension breaking, some normalcy. Meanwhile Harper and Lisa Jo recoiled. Cait felt her hands grip Jim’s wheelchair tightly, and she felt Jim tense up a bit. Lisa Jo stepped forward angrily.

“Dude shut up. My wife and brother-in-law are Black. And it doesn’t even matter if they weren’t. Never say that word again.” Lisa Jo’s flame from earlier grew white hot as the moon. She shook with anger and her large hands were balled so tightly her knuckles shone white. Cait too had had enough of Wess, and surprisingly it was Jim who spoke next in a drugged voice.

“.... some of what you say makes sense…but the way I see it…I’m the only one that’s fought those motherfuckers. Stood up to them. That knows what it’s like…and bud–let me tell you…there ain’t no conquering them. I got my views…but….. I only saw one person come to help me back there, and it wasn’t you. And he wasn’t white. I honestly expected one of you all to help me..I would have helped you.” Jim glared in desperation at the assembly of survivors who turned their eyes to the grass or to the stars. Jim looked at Wess, their blue eyes at war. “But it was Christian. And as big as you are man–where were you?”

There was silence amongst the group as the stars above continued to decompose buried under the tomb of eternity. Wess’s eyes narrowed, slicing between Lisa Jo and Jim. He smirked. “You’re traveling with blacks? How can you stand the smell?”

“Alright!” Harper said marching forward and getting eye to eye with Wess. “You wanna know something? My grandmother was a Black woman. I might not look it, but I’m mixed okay. And I’ve had enough of your shit.” She said with ferocity, before addressing the rest of the group.

“And honestly, I’m tired of Black people having to be someone’s grandmother, or wife–or to save you for them to matter. I’m tired of part of me being seen as less than the rest of me.” She said with a plea. Cait felt a new wave of shame about her choice to lie about being white. She was running from something bigger than her. So big it was chasing them all in different ways. Jim, Lisa Jo, herself, her parents, Jim’s parents, the people in London, the soldiers at Fort Davis, the pile of bodies–it was something that had always been running after them, Cait realized. Harper had chosen to face this beast, when she actually had the way out Cait desperately wanted. Much stronger than earlier–the ground shook once again.

Wess stared down at Harper with a stony expression, the little color in his face evaporated and his voice rigid. “...being that your grandmother was…black, you should know better than anyone what a privilege it is to be White. She didn’t lay down with a black man did she? You wouldn’t be here if she did. She chose a better destiny for you. A real future. Once this is all over, you know that we’re going to punish them right? Niggers I mean.”

Harper spit in Wess’s face. He reached up to strike her and Lisa Jo pulled out Jim’s old revolver from her tote bag. She aimed straight at Wess’s face. The desert wind blew and the mass of white people fell quiet as coyote cries split the night into fractals of shadow. Wess smiled.

“I suppose this is where we part ways.” He said quietly.

“...we were never going the same way...” Lisa Jo breathed out as she cocked the gun, her eyes wide and filled only with Wess. Cait could hear her own breath, as well as everyone else’s. She once again saw herself from outside of herself, as if she sat on top of the mountains overlooking them all. She had a strange feeling that Lisa Jo was sitting right next to her on that mountaintop, watching herself prepare to kill a man. This was the world now. This was always the world Cait realized.

In the end, Wess and the other white folks headed far Northeast, leaving Cait, Jim, Harper and Lisa Jo alone in the dark.

Cait was the only one who spoke as they moved to the Northwest.

“...I’m sorry I lied.”

The group loped into the very shadow of the Davis Mountains and stone from beyond time rose all around them and stretched their voices into the abyss. The tall shadow of Jim’s words seemed to brush up against the underside of the sky.

“....I’m glad you grabbed my gun.” Jim said, deadpan from exhaustion–then, the first spark of laughter all day. A small fire they all took turns carrying through the long night of the new Earth. The flame of laughter crawled up the mountain walls on both sides and lit their way. Cait felt warmer even as her headache grew worse.

Lisa Jo kept talking about Wess’s clothes as they progressed over the rugged ground. “His pants were soooo fucking tight dude! How did his balls even breathe?? How do you guys do that??” She chuckled, helping Cait maneuver Jim over rocks and stubborn grass as Harper laughed back and chimed in.

“Yeah Jim, is that why you guys like to pee outside so much? So you can just unbutton your lil cowboy pants and breathe?” She teased good naturedly from ahead, pausing every so often to scout their path for snakes and scour the mountains for shelter.

“I don’t wear lil cowboy pants.” He laughed before wincing in pain. Cait immediately pictured Jim’s faded Levi’s as she pushed him through the dark.

Harper stopped, looked back and responded,“Yeah you do. All you white boys wear your lil cowboy pants and drink Tecate like someone should notice you for it.” As Cait laughed, she remembered high school parties on unchaperoned docks. Jim and some of his friends that would go on to die of overdoses with their natty lights and tight jeans. Spitting tobacco into the marsh.

“Oh my God!” Lisa Jo exploded with laughter from behind. “Yes Y’all doooo. Like it’s cute sometimes, but you guys wanna be tough redneck cowboys so baddd. Well, I guess you are kind of a tough redneck Jim.” She said with a sigh.

Cait remembered one of Jim’s friends at the party–Bradley. A private school redneck. Bradley would pull his dick out under the desk during class and then ask the kid next to him to pass him a pencil. He would die three years after they all graduated. Jim was devastated. Bradley wrapped his car around a tree after a bad breakup.

“...we’re not all bad..”Jim said groggily.

“Not all good either.” Harper said firmly but not unkindly. “It’s good that you said what you did to him though. I really hope that kid Christian is okay…” Jim was silent as Cait pushed him slowly over the rocky ground. Lisa Jo was silent as well, her eyes on her feet. Cait was sure her mind was on Kalima and Christian.

Cait looked at Harper and hesitated for a second before asking, “....how come you didn’t tell the Returners you were mixed?” Harper didn’t reply immediately. She kept moving forward. When she did speak, it was to point out a cave they could rest in. Cait left it alone.

The cave opened up into a high blackness that was made up of echo and drip. The sound of an underground water system nearby. Near the entrance an old burlap tarp and a blanket some previous camper must have left. Harper shined her phone flashlight deeper in the cave and they spotted a soft waterfall that had collected into a pool of freshwater. Harper spoke again.

“...I think we should stay here for the night. We can at least hydrate.” She said walking over to the pool of water and filling up her bottle and taking a big gulp before continuing.

“We still have until sunrise till the Returners come after us. We should rest up and head out in the morning.” She said tiredly, flopping down on the ground and spreading out. They all did the same, Cait helped Jim lay on his stomach as Harper gave him some water before she walked over to the pool herself and took her first drink since morning. Relief.

Once they had all laid down, Cait immediately felt exhaustion take her into a dreamless sleep of only sound. Chanting and church song. Laughter that stabbed and cut through her dreambody. The cry of vultures and water splashing. The sound of water became louder than anything else. It was as if a shipwreck was being dragged from the ocean floor, Cait could even feel the spray of water on her cheek. The ground shook even harder this time. She bolted awake as had the others. Standing in front of them, nude and dripping wet–a Returner–a shadow that seemed to swallow the dark around it. Every breath he took was as if the abyss was biting and swallowing itself.