from the tyranny of stratigraphy
Pull looked across the methodical ridge, squinting, eliminating time, paralyzing within his own mind the movement of his adversary. Reducing an entire being, another segment of humanity, to a sequence of liquids mingling with other liquids within Pull’s own skull. A release of chemicals. A trained and precise release.
“Target at one o’clock,” he said loudly. His smile dissipated from frightened to absurd. Another set of chemicals – precise and controlled. Created by months of endurance and frozen in an instant. Frozen and repeated. Frozen and repeated. Frozen and repeated. Whenever. Frozen and repeated. A mixture constituted of one part man and a thousand parts before man. The one part which, being of man, controlling the remainder like a mad general with his willing army. His teeth, at first glance, the most memorable thing about him, glinting and white from almost ear to almost ear.
He ran along the back of the crest of the ridge. “Target now at two,” he then said softly at a level just above a whisper.
Another set of chemicals and he crouched. He and the target had both moved and were within a dozen meters of one another. Pull was naked but for his boots, crouching and naked, with just his boots and the rifle.
All there was of him was the one eye and the barrel moving in perfect methodical precision along, behind, the vacant ridge memorized and comprehended in strategic detail. And in the synapses behind the eye other chemicals moved and the other man fell, open and alone beneath the enormous and empty sky.
Pull’s skin was black with dirt and the sun. His hair hung down long and stringy from the sides and the top of his head. His boots were old black combat boots. One was tied with a short length of dirty string that had once been white. The other boot was open and the tongue wagged while he ran. It could have been sad. This naked soul running behind and along a narrow dirt ridge. Speaking first loudly and then softly to himself.
It was horrible as he raised and then sighted the long shaft of the rifle at the fallen man a second time. He screamed, “For the animals,” in a shrill yelp not unlike that of a feral dog, as, after squeezing at the trigger twice, he ran over the ridge past the body and out into the open country.
Beyond him the air was heavy and pulsed with the heat of the day and, in two distant depressions, what looked like small pools of blue water, but certainly were not, lay in the sand and rock.
Then silently and with equal precision about fourteen of them came from within a deep cleft that was hidden in front of the ridge. They were small and naked. All with long, clean hair. Both boys and girls. They climbed out from the crack. Lifting themselves spry and like cats – one arm here, a knee emerging there. They all came at once. None made any effort to help one another. And then, at the surface, they moved slowly, one at a time, to the body. The first was a boy and he kicked sand at the face.
The head of the body was twisted strangely and resting gently on its side against a pillow of sand. The boy knelt down before it and looked sidelong into it. He skipped back once, suddenly as if he saw it beginning to move. Then he kicked sand at the face again and stared at it, leaning sidelong and down toward it, from further away. A raven circled close above. It cawed a dozen times and climbed higher in a spiral above the body. A single coyote cried from somewhere nearby.
Then another boy, the largest boy, jumped directly onto the back of the body. The boy landed squatting and leapt off again as soon as he landed. The body responded. It collapsed slightly into the sand beneath the weight of the boy. And then it rose back slightly as the boy jumped away. Otherwise it didn’t move. Then all of the children were on it, removing the shoes and clothing. The clothing was bright yellow and blue and the yellow shimmered brightly whenever the movement of the children, in undressing the man, juxtaposed a large quantity of the yellow against the blue.
Four of the boys and one of the girls rubbed their feet, momentarily and sequentially, against the face. Two went out into the sand and collected the bicycle, a red which appeared to be black in the overabundance of sunlight. Several carried the shoes, the clothing and the bicycle back to the cleft and began to descend.
The others hefted the naked body to a knoll beyond the ridge. There was a small hollow which opened to a larger cave at the base of the knoll. The children pushed the body past the hollow and to the entrance of the cave.
Pull sat on the top of another knoll, opposite that cave. He remained completely still and watched the last of the children walking slowly and quietly to the cleft. His head turned abruptly, swiftly to face the cave. A coyote appeared in a flash of bronze, almost imperceptibly, its color matching impeccably the color of the stone and sand, on the side of the knoll above the cave and it dropped in a single swift motion down to the edge of the hollow that formed the mouth of the cave. It landed with delicate precision on its front paws and slid with depravity and lack of caution onto the body. In an instant, when the forelegs of the coyote touched the sand, the dog’s eyes met those of Pull.
It seemed to smile, panting, its tongue pulsing slightly, wetly in its open mouth. Its eyes fixed on Pull.
The moment passed. It turned and found the body. Another three coyotes descended and entered the cave as Pull noticed the ravens arriving.
Nineteen ravens and Pull sitting, quietly, panting, at the apex of twenty knolls.