How the Stars did Fall Read online

  He knew his house well and he knew where the pantry was so with some effort he pushed himself up off the bed. When he tried to plant his feet on the floor, his knees gave way under the weight and he had to use his arms to keep from falling face first onto the wooden boards. Once more he tried and the second time his legs held him up for a few moments, just enough for him to shimmy over to the wall and hold himself there. He waited a while, keeping himself upright, letting his legs warm up. Then he reached for the doorknob and swung the door open, the house black and quiet. He looked out into that void awhile, listening for something though he could not say what. Then he remembered. Remembered his power.

  The feeling of flexing those invisible muscles after so long was one of liberation, of an eagle uncaged and set loose upon the face of a mountain. Faraday climbed that sheer wall with his mind and in the world beyond, where he could see far, he found his parents sleeping in separate bedrooms. He kept searching, looking for the Indians. Moon and Tenhorse. He searched all through the house and in the fields surrounding it but he found nothing except rodents and horses and cows and a few dogs. But he stretched as far as he could, trying to push at the perimeter of his vision and there he found owls and caterpillars and maggots in the soil and a single coyote lost amidst the trees, his two yellow eyes rising and falling in the dark like the twin suns of some twilight world.

  Faraday finished scouring the world around him until he was sure the Indians were gone. His concern returned to his body and he found it lacking. His legs now held him up but not without some difficulty. He moved with the lantern in one hand, shimmying his way around the house, supporting himself with his free arm until he reached the kitchen downstairs. Faraday set the lantern down on the table and found milk in a tin jug covered by a piece of cloth. Taking it, he turned it and let the milk jut into his mouth, the rich whiteness immediately nourishing him, diminishing the gnawing hunger. But even as he finished drinking, he yearned for more solid fare and he found it in a half-eaten cake that had been left atop the counter. He picked it apart with his hands, shoving the crumbling pieces of cake into his mouth. Then he sat at the table and finished drinking the milk one big gulp at a time.

  His stomach filled to overflowing, he set the jug aside and blew out the lantern and sat in darkness, a solitary watchman, until his head slouched forward and he slept. When he awoke for the second time that morning, the sun had invaded the house, filling every room with a blinding brightness such that he had to shield his eyes from it while his pupils contracted. He heard the front door opening and footsteps. His mother came into the kitchen carrying a basket full of turnips and juniper berries. When she saw Faraday awake she calmly set the basket down on the floor and, taking his face in her hands, she wept and thanked God in whispers.

  “I knew you would come back to me,” she said, repeating the phrase to herself over and over until Faraday took hold of her by the arms and looked her in the eye.

  “Ma, where’s Moon and Tenhorse? Where are the Indians?”

  “You mean those ones that almost killed you? Your father ran them off with his shotgun.”

  “What? They did not almost kill me.”

  “It was that Indian woman last saw you awake. The doctor said he knew of many Indian tribes who cultivated the kinds of plants that can put men in these death slumbers.”

  “Never mind the doctor. I’m telling you it wasn’t them.”

  “Well, alright, I believe you. But there’s nothing that can be down now. They’re gone.”

  “I need to go find them. I know where Olivia is.”

  “Son, you’re delirious. You should go lie down.”

  “I know where she is, Ma. I…I can see things in my head. Find things.”

  That very day Faraday readied three horses, slinging heavy packs onto their backs and filling the packs with food and supplies. He took a pair of rifles and a few revolvers with him, too, and he found his old bitch Edith languishing in the stable, blind in one eye and heavyset. He petted her on the head and said goodbye.

  If the elder McKinnis had been happy to see his son moving and awake he gave no sign. He had come into the house for dinner and found Faraday ready to leave. The master of that property barely acknowledged his own son, taking his place at the table instead and demanding he be fed promptly. Faraday’s mother rummaged around in the kitchen and produced a plate of food for her husband, trembling at his unsavory countenance. Then she went out to see her son off.

  Faraday kissed his mother on the forehead and promised he would find Olivia before mounting one of the horses and riding away, the other two horses following behind pulled by the first.

  He strode out onto the road, always looking out for Moon and Tenhorse or any interlopers in the path ahead, his gaze uninterrupted by trees and hills or walls of rock or wood like some great lighthouse, its secret lens roaming the countryside. But the spaces around him were vast and he had to divide his attention between riding and scouring the constantly changing landscape, so that he feared he was not being thorough enough and might have missed a sign that could point him to Moon and Tenhorse. He strived on balancing the requirements of both tasks at hand until not long after he had left his father’s house he found the remains of a fire in a field. At once he reined his horse in and stopped. Then he turned the horse around and rode off the road and towards the field he had seen. Before he reached the abandoned camp he found the Indians at the very edge of the boundaries of his power. They were crouching about, hunting a fat rabbit.

  Faraday rode hard to their position until the horses were galloping and making a loud ruckus with the stamping of their hooves. When Faraday reached the Indians he found Tenhorse holding a bow up, an arrow nocked tightly upon the string and aimed directly at Faraday’s heart. Then the Indians recognized him.

  Moon pulled Tenhorse’s arm down and ran to embrace Faraday.

  “We’ve been waiting for you,” she said. “Your father and mother ran us out, believing us the source of your distress.”

  “I know.”

  Tenhorse grunted something out in the Ohlone tongue.

  “What did he say?” Faraday asked.

  “He said it took great restraint to keep from killing your father,” Moon translated.

  “Well, tell him I am grateful for that and for the both of you waiting for me.”

  Moon repeated what Faraday said to Tenhorse in the Ohlone tongue.

  Then she added: “It’s a good thing you’ve come, because I don’t believe we could’ve lingered here much longer. Tenhorse says this country is not safe. Many men with heavy arms roam about, circling like vultures. And we hear the thundering of falling stars to the west by the sea.”

  “Some kind of battle?”

  “I believe so. Now tell me. What happened when you touched me? I only saw you go out into a deep sleep and not come back. Tell me you found something.”

  “I did. I saw my sister in San Francisco in a brothel and I saw the whole city in flames, flooded and ruined.”

  “Then we will find her.”

  The three, reunited once more, set out together back onto the road, each on a horse. They rode until the evening without coming across any other travelers. Then they came upon a serpentine river, narrow and gray in the day’s last light, and crossed it without dismounting, holding the packs of supplies up above their shoulders so as not to ruin everything within. On the other side Faraday saw that the land was better occupied and the road was beset by cottages and cabins just out of its sight. Residences of fur traders and loggers and freeholders. They resolved to find a hidden place to make camp, to light a fire and dry their clothes and eat and sleep. Faraday led them away from the road, where he found a cave with no occupant. There they made their camp, lighting the fire just outside the mouth of the cave. With night came a comfortable cold and the three of them slept just inside the cave over the cool soil in almost complete darkness were it not for the fire, which they let burn out while they slept.

  In the morning, F
araday saw a convoy patrolling the road, marching down it towards the east, so they avoided it, preferring instead to carve out a path for themselves in the thick grass and tall redwood trees weaving around the cabins sprinkled randomly here and there. They rode until they were close enough to Oakland for Faraday to look into the city from afar. He wished to ascertain three things by observing the regular intercourse of the citizens of Oakland: whether the ferry boats to San Francisco were functioning and available; whether they would find hostility in the city; and whether they could find someone to defraud in order to procure the coin necessary for the crossing of the bay. Of these three, the first was most important, for upon it the other two depended, so Faraday first traveled in his mind’s eye to the very edge of the city where he found that the ferry was not functioning and that the harbor had, in fact, been appropriated by a crew of sailors which had docked adjacent to the wharf a frigate of the US Navy, its mighty sails all furled and stowed away.

  “We’ll have to take the long way round,” Faraday said. “Ferry’s shut down. Lots of Union soldiers in the city.”

  The long way involved riding south towards San Jose, then west and then north, hugging the bay all the while until the land narrowed and San Francisco waited on the tip of that peninsula like the head of a hammer guarding the western approaches of the country.

  While they rode, Faraday picked up on some movement on the edges of his consciousness. He saw a company of soldiers arrayed off the road, struggling past the brush, their rifles dangling from their arms. Then he caught sight of their leader in his mind. A youthful man with a sparse moustache. This man now ordered the men to change direction, to pivot towards the road—a stretch of road Faraday knew was only minutes ahead. So he stopped his horse and looked back at Moon and Tenhorse.

  “Soldiers ahead,” he said. And with a quick motion of his hand he directed them to follow him off the road, the horses easily conquering the thick brush beneath their hooves. They rode for many hours. Then came night, and night demanded a camp.

  They ate little, drawing from their provisions only the minimum necessary for them to go on. And they went to bed quick, eager to gain some rest for the day ahead. But their sleep had to contend with a different foe that night. While they lay on the ground a great symphony of destruction erupted above their heads. Sounds of explosions, of cannon fire and gunshots filled the night. The trees kept them from much, but that music of death rupturing the soundscape allowed them to imagine what was falling upon the city of San Francisco. For a moment Faraday tried to reach the fighting with his mind’s eye but they were too far.

  The Indians stood at the sound, Tenhorse listening closely, then saying something to Moon.

  “Tenhorse says the battle is about twenty miles away,” Moon said.

  “I reckon he’s right,” Faraday said.

  Twenty miles was what stood between them and San Francisco. Now Faraday wondered what would be left of that city by the time they got there. And his sister. What fate would befall his sister, caught in the middle of a war? Some part of him desired to touch Moon and look far out for Olivia like he had done before, but he could not bear to pay the same price again. If he went out for another week, then surely he could no longer help Olivia. None of the three could sleep, so they waited for the sun to climb the heavens. They sat next to each other watching the trees. By the time the first light of the morning began to gray the horizon all sounds of warfare had ceased.

  They unhitched their horses and rode out cautiously. On the way north towards San Francisco, Faraday smelled smoke in the wind. Then they passed over a hill and saw a cottage burning in the distance. But before they could rejoin the road they heard another sound. The clicking of a rifle’s hammer and then in loud English: “Halt!”

  The soldiers kept their rifles trained on Faraday and the Indians while one of their number searched for weapons to confiscate. That soldier patted Faraday down first and took from his belt a revolver. Then he did the same to Tenhorse, taking the Indian’s big knife, and Moon, finding no weapon on her. Tenhorse barked a few choice words at the soldier which no one understood. Moon answered back with her own words to Tenhorse. By all accounts, an attempt to calm him.

  “Quiet down, now,” one of the soldiers said, hitting Tenhorse in the stomach with the butt of his rifle. The one who spoke had two stars attached to his hat and carried himself as the commander of the others.

  Once the soldiers had stripped Faraday and the Indians of their weapons they proceeded to shackle them. Then the soldiers began to march, pulling the horses and their prisoners behind them. They marched all morning, stopping only to drink, offering water to Faraday but not to the Indians.

  Their destination was Fort Tancredo.

  The fort’s gate was barred, and it opened only when the soldier with the two stars tapped thrice upon a porthole carved into the wood. Then men pulled at the ropes that constituted the gate’s opening mechanism, the gears grinding and the gate rising and revealing the scene within. It looked very little like a shrine of warriors and more like an infirmary. Cots had been placed all along the center of the fort, where men in Union blue bled and wailed and a single doctor in white made the rounds, running from one emergency to another. There were men missing arms and legs and bullet wounds hidden beneath rags still leaking blood. And there were men who looked well enough but for their forlorn countenances, their faces unable to conceal an inner injury, perhaps greater than those done to the flesh, wherein the soul is the victim and never again can the man look upon the texture of the world and not feel repulsed.

  The soldiers took Faraday and Moon and Tenhorse to a cell underneath one of the watchtowers. A converted stable, the space still smelled of hay and horse dung. There the Indians were left, one of the soldiers locking the heavy door behind him. Faraday they took to the main building, a humble wooden lodge set against the northern wall. The soldier with the two stars knocked thrice upon that residence and a man with blond hair and stripes on his sleeves opened the door.

  “We found this man on the road, sir.”

  “And? Who is he?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “You didn’t think to ask.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Goddammit. Bring him in. I’ll question him.”

  The soldier pushed Faraday into the lodge and looked around, uncertain of what to do next.

  “Put him in that chair. There. Yes, that one,” the decorated man said.

  Now the man took a chair of his own and sat in front of Faraday. And he almost began to speak but he noticed the soldier was still standing in his lodge.

  “Dismissed, sergeant.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Once the sergeant closed the door behind him, the man got up from his chair and ladled out a thick brown liquid into a mug. He took a sip from the mug and then turned to Faraday.

  “Where are my manners? Would you like some chocolate?”

  “What’s chocolate?”

  “Well, would you like to find out? If you knew how hard it was to get chocolate in this godforsaken corner of the world you’d beg to taste it.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “Alright. Suit yourself.”

  The man finished drinking from his mug while he stood and only moved from his position once the mug had been completely emptied. He set the mug down on a table and took his seat in front of Faraday again.

  “My name is colonel Fillmore, commander of this fort and all of the men here stationed. Who are you?”

  “My name’s Faraday.”

  “Faraday of what?”

  “Faraday McKinnis.”

  “Alright, McKinnis. Do you belong to the enemy?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Don’t play dumb, now. Are you a member of the criminal group that sacked the city of San Francisco and continue to infest it with their presence?”

  “No.”

  At that answer, the colonel got up and stroked his thin blond mustache, th
e color of it almost matching his skin, so that from certain angles it appeared he had no mustache at all but a streak of paint across his upper lip as if the maker had splattered him carelessly in the far-gone epochs when the race of man was first thought up and drawn. The colonel had gotten up to collect a thick ledger from his desk, and with it he took his seat and began to leaf through the pages, reading aloud the names there written.

  “Joseph Haskell, Eliander Cosby, William Carrigan, Anson Payton, Sherrod Getchell, Matthew Freeman—”

  “Is this torture?” Faraday asked.

  “These are the names of soldiers once in my company who have defected to the enemy. They have forsaken the Union and all it stands for in favor of joining with the usurper.”

  “I don’t know anything about any usurpers.”

  “I believe you. What do you know about?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean to know who you are. What it is you hide in that head of yours.”

  Faraday took a deep breath. Then he looked down at his feet, his shoes all but worn out. When he looked up, he began to speak to the colonel and he did not stop until he had related as much as he could about where he was from and where he was going, omitting only those details concerning his own illicit activities and those of his brother and, of course, his great gift. The colonel absorbed the information readily, drawing from his hearth more hot chocolate while he listened and sometimes taking notes in his big notebook as if he wished to remember every single minutia about Faraday’s odyssey. Once he had finished his spiel Faraday took another deep breath and said he would have some of that hot chocolate if that was okay, and while the colonel ladled out a portion of the beverage, Faraday hoped what he’d said would be enough to convince the man of his innocence in all matters concerning the current conflict between the Union and San Francisco.