Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival Page 10

  This was a show of power. His brother was rubbing it in his face. Jesse could hear Wayne's voice. She's mine now. Mine to fuck as I please.

  Jesse's fists clenched the bedsheets, catching wads of cotton. He stared at the ceiling, trying to focus on the glow of his high. Trying to distract himself by watching the wallpaper's ornate forms twist and melt as the acid coursed through his brain. But it was to no avail. All he could hear, all he could think about, was his brother fucking the woman who was supposed to be his wife.

  His mind's eye played out a revenge fantasy:

  White's revolver, in my hand.

  I open the door, to Wayne's room.

  I fire every shot loaded in the revolver.

  Slow-motion ribbons of blood arc across the bedroom; across the sheets; across the walls; across her startled, but relieved, face.

  And then I take her by the arm. Take her away from this place. I take her back to the light in the desert.

  The desert opens up, and swallows us.

  And we awaken, once more in reality.

  Jesse shut his eyes, then, feeling guilt for relishing the thought of the murder. But still, he could hear the rhythmic creaking on the other side of the wall.

  Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!

  His eyes were closed tight, as tight as could be. Colorful fractal shards danced in his mind, a kaleidoscope of his own making. He willed himself to be distracted into the fantasy, to be transported away from this place. For a while, at least.

  Jesse awoke in an instant the next morning, short of breath. He was still tense. A shower sounded more essential than anything else in the world. He peeled the sheets off his grime-and-sweat-coated, half-naked body, and proceeded across the hall to the bathroom. Once inside, he fumbled for a few moments, figuring out how to work the shower. Why can't they all be the same?

  Finally, water began to flow, and he ran his hand under its high-pressure shower head until he'd found just the right kind of hot. He stepped into the shower, and found himself sitting in the tub. Only now did he realize how badly his muscles ached, and how tired he was despite sleeping in. He stayed under the shower head, keeping out the world beyond the bathroom, for as long as he needed to.

  Once sufficiently soaked through, he toweled off, and threw on the clothes he'd acquired hours earlier. He looked in the mirror, took a deep breath, and set about searching for Wayne. Help came in the form of Martha, who was cleaning up the kitchen after a breakfast which, it was apparent, everyone else had been content to just let Jesse sleep through.

  "Mr. Cole is leaving for the factory grounds," Martha told him with a characteristic smile. "If you hurry, you might still catch him."

  "Thanks," Jesse said, and walked out the side door to the garage.

  The four walls of the garage consisted of metal doors that rolled up into the ceiling, like the security gates Jesse was used to seeing on storefronts in rough neighborhoods during afterhours. Three of the four walls were retracted at the moment, making the garage a kind of open-air stable.

  This was Jesse's first good look at both of Wayne's prototype automobiles. He walked up to the Mark II, and put a hand to its hood, finding its slick lacquer pleasing to the touch.

  Wayne popped up from the other side like a Punch & Judy puppet. "Oh, Jesse!" he exclaimed. He wore an unexpected grin on his face. "Come here!"

  "What is it?"

  Wayne motioned for Jesse to follow him, and pulled back the tarp on the third vehicle in the garage.

  Jesse was dumbfounded. It was his Jeep, just as he'd last seen it. The tires had been replaced with wooden wagon-style wheels, sure, but otherwise it seemed in perfect order. Seeing it struck him now in a way he didn't quite expect.

  "I don't believe it," Jesse said.

  "Yep," Wayne added, with a satisfied pat of his own midsection. "She came in handy when we had to reverse-engineer her in order to make the other two."

  Jesse ran his hands along its sides. He hopped into the driver's seat; he couldn't help himself. Wayne just leaned his arm against it, watching Jesse as he ran his hands along its interface.

  "How do you explain this thing when people ask about it?" Jesse said.

  "Well, if anyone gets a peek, I tell them it's a German car. Trust me, nobody around here has any idea what they're supposed to look like, so it passes."

  Jesse realized he was smiling. It was the first time he'd smiled since he'd arrived. "Thank you, Wayne," Jesse said.

  "Of course. I mean, we pulled her apart and put her back together three times, so we had plenty of opportunity to clean her up."

  Jesse was happy to see his car in one piece. It made him feel a little more connected to sanity, at least, just as his wallet and his driver's license had. But there was still so much to address with his brother. "Listen, you got a few minutes to talk?"

  "Afraid I can't," Wayne replied, his face contorted to say Gee, wish I could help. "Got to get to the factory. Things are hectic down there so close to our opening."

  "Let me come with you, then."

  Wayne didn't say anything for a moment. "Sure. Yeah. That'll be great." He didn't sound quite convincing.

  The side door to the house swung open. Susanna emerged. She saw the two boys by the Jeep, and gave a curt nod to Jesse. Then she walked over to the Mark II and climbed aboard.

  "I may have to go off-site today," she warned Wayne, not waiting for either one of the men to speak. "I'm having to do more and more of the managing myself, I feel like. These hired guns are just about useless sometimes."

  "Gives me and Wayne some time to catch up," Jesse said. He looked at Wayne to gauge his reaction. His brother didn't return his gaze.

  Together, they watched Susanna pull out of the garage and drive away towards the factory on the periphery of Bridgetown.

  "Come on," Wayne said at last. "Let's get going."

  A few minutes later, the brothers were bouncing down a service road in the rickety, sputtering Mark I. Jesse took note of Wayne's dark, circle-framed sunglasses. Another fine Cole Co. product, bringing twentieth-century fashion sensibilities to the nineteenth.

  Jesse was pensive, increasingly lost in his own head as they went. He didn't know whether to ask for Wayne's help living in this place, or to punch him in the face for taking Susanna away from him. Still, though, Wayne's voice found its way into Jesse's stream of thoughts. It cut in like radio interference from a pirate station. "...We'll be expanding into new markets, too," he said at least three separate times. "Twenty-three in all by the end of next year!"

  It seemed Wayne was talking about everything under the sun except the things Jesse cared about. The obvious things. Jesse got the distinct feeling that Wayne was trying to keep tight control over the flow of the discourse. Jesse's irritation grew, and his goodwill for his brother was rapidly wearing off. He began to think his brother giving him the Jeep was a ploy to placate him for the time being.

  "You know what, Wayne?" Jesse said at last. "This is all very interesting, but fuck you."

  Wayne made a sour face, and there was a long silence. "Alright, you want to talk about it? We can talk."

  "Good," Jesse replied.

  "I fell out of the sky, nearly dried up in the desert," Wayne began. "Then this fellow looking like he walked off the set of a John Wayne movie found me, said he's the town sheriff. So I came back to town. I was the second stranger to show up in those hills. He asked if I knew a girl named Susanna. Turns out they were getting ready to haul her off to the asylum. I covered for her, said I was her husband."

  He swerved to avoid a rock in the road.

  "We ended up taking the only jobs we could to earn a living. And it wasn't easy stuff. Backbreaking labor. But I didn't leave for the city—where I was sure I could find a job pushing papers. Why? Because I was trying to get us back home. I was trying to get her back. For her sake, and for yours."

  "Looks like you lost sight of that plan at some point."

  "I never saw another rabbit-hole like the one we fell into
that night. As best as I could tell, we were stuck here. And meanwhile, I realized there's an untapped industrial boon to be had. Bridgetown is sitting on oil. So I got some investors involved, started work on the factory, and claimed the land while it was still cheap." He put his hands out, indicating the oil derricks that dotted the horizon. "We can do more good here now than I ever could back home. And if we put automobiles in the hands of Americans for next to nothing..." Wayne turned his attention from the road to lock eyes with Jesse. "Well, it's just like selling razor blades. You give 'em the handle cheap, you can sell 'em razor blades for a lifetime."

  "What about the fact you've got Sheriff White running around, forcing people's land from their hands?"

  Wayne gave him a perplexed look. "Who said I was doing that?"

  "Come on, Wayne, I'm sure all the land you're pumping oil out of wasn't just up for grabs. What did you promise him in exchange? How'd you buy him out?" Jesse didn't see fit to mention Earl McInnis, or the Lotus Boys, or Mr. Black.

  But Wayne's attention was pulled elsewhere before he could retort—a flash of light and a booming shockwave registered out on the oil field to their left. Black smoke rose high into the sky. One of the tower-like derricks was beginning to burn.

  Wayne cursed, and turned the car off the main road towards the site. It began to jostle violently along the way. Jesse wished they'd taken his Jeep.

  "It's those fucking thugs. I bet you anything," Wayne said. He threw the Mark I into higher gear and floored it as they bounced around in the uneven terrain. "They've been a thorn in my side since the beginning. They live in the hills like vultures. We're far enough from civilization out here that the government mostly leaves them alone. But if Bridgetown becomes worth something," he glanced at Jesse, "that'll change!"

  "Why would the Lotus Boys want to burn the fields?" Jesse asked. Of course, he knew the answer. He was just very curious to hear Wayne's justification for all of this.

  His brother forced a laugh. "Maybe they know that a rich, industrial Bridgetown would mean the end of their safe haven out here, beyond the eyes of civil society." Wayne angled the Mark I towards a wooden shack that lay a quarter-mile from the burning derrick, beside a steep hill.

  Jesse could see Susanna taking cover behind the shack beside her own car. Wayne pulled up alongside, and the brothers disembarked.

  Jesse walked to the edge of the shack and peered around the corner, hunting for a better look at the derrick. He saw two figures on horseback, both cloaked in black, hollering war cries and firing their rifles in the air, triumphant. The duo circled the derrick a few more times. Then they rode off beyond the hills, leaving the towering inferno as a work of performance-art graffiti.

  Jesse took several steps toward the scene. He was far enough away from the shack that the others' voices were muted. From his vantage point, he watched as Cole Co. workers, and then White and his deputies, began to arrive. Everyone ran about, no doubt barking about shut-off valves or some way to quell the chaos. He was mesmerized by the scene, and by the strange beauty of the burning tower as it belched flames a hundred feet into the blackening sky. It was a tower, he noted, that wasn't supposed to exist in the first place.

  He reached for his pack of cigarettes, and realized with a bit of dismay it was his last one. He didn't even remember smoking the last two. No matter, he'd just have to get used to the local variety. He lit it, and savored several long draws from it, watching opaque pillars of black smoke rise into the sky. Petrochemical energy, sitting beneath the earth for eons, scattering into the sky in a chaotic display.

  He tossed the empty pack onto the ground, and flattened it with his boot.

  Someone behind him took a few steps towards him, accouterments jangling with each one. He glanced over his shoulder to see if it were Wayne or Susanna. It was neither.

  A man in a black duster and a black hat stood before him. The brim of his hat cast a long, deep shadow, such that Jesse couldn't quite make out his features.

  Sandeman. It was the stranger in the desert, the one that had spooked Jesse the night before.

  "It is quite a sight, isn't it?" The figure said.

  "You were watching me last night," Jesse blurted. Then—a realization. "You're him, aren't you? Their leader. The one they call Mr. Black."

  The man nodded almost imperceptibly. "We need to talk, Jesse."

  "How do you know my name?"

  "Follow me. We can't stay here." Black turned around, without waiting for acknowledgement.

  Jesse followed.

  "Where are we going?"

  Black pointed ahead. There was a horse, tied up to a hitching post beside a well. "I'd like to invite you to my side of Bridgetown," he said. "So you can get a full sense of what we stand for."

  Black untied his horse, and hopped on. "Have you ever ridden before?"

  Jesse shook his head.

  "Just climb up, and hold on."

  Jesse got on the horse, and situated himself behind the ominous figure. What was he doing? He turned back to look at the cabin—but it was already hidden somewhere beyond the hill. Susanna and the others were probably too busy trying to put out the fire to even notice his absence.

  "Of course," Black said, "I'll have to blindfold you." He took out a long strip of dark fabric, and Jesse obliged, allowing Black to put it around his head and tie it tight. It struck him at that moment how valuable a ransom property he would be—at least, how valuable Black would think Wayne's own brother would be. If Black knew Jesse's name, he could easily know his blood relation. But what Black couldn't know was that Jesse's being out of the picture would be quite the stroke of convenience for Wayne's personal affairs. Jesse tried to put this out of mind.

  Black got the horse moving. Soon, they had left the scene at the derrick far behind.

  "You can remove the blindfold now."

  Jesse took it off, and let his eyes adjust to the light.

  The outlaw had led the horse down a winding, rocky canyon. The mouth of the canyon opened up now, into a wide, circular basin surrounded on all sides by limestone walls and obelisk-like towers.

  Within this natural amphitheater, at least two dozen tents had been erected in a round-table arrangement.

  At the center of the camp, there was a fire pit. A garrison of bandits milled about the camp. Some were bedraggled, with long beards and rough skin. Others were younger, practically still boys, with a mean gleam in their eyes that said they'd grown up hungry and so trusted no one. All of them had rifles slung across their backs, or revolvers at their sides.

  The twenty or so men Jesse could spot all turned to face Black and his new guest. Their leader acknowledged them with a slight wave. He led the horse to a hitching post, and Jesse hopped off.

  "Keep walking with me," Black told Jesse. "My tent's the one in the middle there, just across from us by the pit."

  Jesse walked, through this crowd of shifty-eyed bandits, protected only by his current, tenuous association with Black.

  Jesse opened the flap on Black's tent at his behest, and walked in, Black right behind him. It took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the dark.

  "Can I get you something to drink?" Black asked. "Tea?"

  Jesse nodded. "Sure." He looked around the tent. This seemed an improbable place for a tea drinker to live—in a tent, among bandits, relegated to these harsh wastelands where high society dare not build.

  Black's preference for tea over whiskey was not the only thing about him that ran counter to the stereotype of an outlaw. His tent was full of objects of antiquity, both

  European and native. And unlike his henchmen, armed to the teeth as they were, Black had apparently gone to the scene at the oil field without so much as a pistol. When Black placed a tea set on the floor mat between them, it did not consist of simple metal cups, but a set of fine china. Jesse wouldn't have been surprised if Black revealed himself to be an academic, studying the bandits as part of some anthropological stunt.

  Sitting cross-legged before
Black, Jesse could finally take in his features. In a way, he was surprised to find the enigmatic figure had a normal, plainly human face. It was long in its features and pockmarked, the face of a man who'd lived a hard forty years.

  "They say you're no ordinary man," Jesse said. "But some kind of mystic. That you understand the strange properties of Devil's Peak."

  Black raised his brows and tilted his head. "I may know a lot of things," he said, "but as far as I know, I'm no mystic." Black took a sip of his tea then, and made a goddamn, that's tasty face, as if still surprised to find it so satisfying. "Well, Jesse, what else do they say about me? What does your brother say about me?"

  "Wayne says if Bridgetown becomes too important, your gang will run out of town. He says that's why you're waging war on him."

  Black laughed, a big, genuine laugh. "Oh, is that what he told you?"

  "Yeah, but you people live in tents. You're already in exile, and there's plenty of desert where you could hide and scheme. No, whatever it is that's got you rankled up over Wayne, it's more than that."

  Black rubbed his palms together and rested his chin on his clasped hands.

  "Well, what is it, then?" Jesse asked. "Why stick around and wage war on a town that's not got much going for it besides the one factory? Why not act like real bandits and ride the rails, robbing banks, or whatever it is you're supposed to do?"

  A fly buzzing around the tent made its presence known. Black clapped his hands over it, and kept them pressed together.

  "I'm no common thug," Black said. "For starters..." He released his hands, and the fly buzzed out, unscathed.

  "...I cannot hurt a fly."

  What was Black going on about?

  Black began to answer Jesse's unspoken request for elaboration. "When we are brought into this world, we are entrusted with certain mortal responsibilities. I violated that trust. So I was punished. I lost the power to harm, and gained a new responsibility in its place. Now, my job is to be a guardian. You could call me a gatekeeper."