Pins (24)

 

Searles Valley, US
1849

Emmett pushed the horse for as long as he could throughout the night. His back ached. The pain came in throbbing waves. Abigail's head dipped and bobbed before him. She drifted in and out of sleep, and murmured to herself. 

They galloped across open brush country, skirting thickets of chaparral and mesquite. Withered and windswept trees seemed to grope at them through the darkness. The wind keened, and it felt as if the calls of the cloth-faced men were all around. Emmett's head swam. He felt himself slipping away as they flew through shadows and squat brush. 

Buck stumbled over a cutbank, and he jerked awake. He lost hold of the reins and gripped the saddle horn over Abigail's shoulder. The horse lurched forward, and Emmett felt them teetering for a moment, before they hit the flat again. The chaparral thinned, and they carved a path out into the barren desert, the horse pounding over granitic basalt. The stars winked out above them, and the darkness melted into a frosted indigo sheen. 

A fiery strip wavered on the distant horizon, and they passed through dry clumps of grass. The burning line swelled and soaked the sky. They loped over a ridge, and in the depression below Emmett saw a solitary shack erected in a grove of stunted trees. 

By the time they reached it, the sun hung like a great medallion in the sky, baking the cadaverous land around them. The cracked crusts spoke of a birth through violence and explosions, clouds of ash, and rivers of lava. 

The horse was lathered with sweat. Emmett closed his fingers and squeezed backwards. He slid off the horse, lowered Abigail down, and collapsed onto the ground. Abigail pulled a canteen from the saddlebags and drank deeply. 

'Turns out you was a mighty warrior,' Emmett coughed. He wedged himself up on his elbows. Abigail wiped her mouth and looked down at the canteen. Her knees were shaking.

'How'd you get that shot off?' Emmett said. 'How'd you know 'bout the hammer?'

'I seen Daddy shootin',' Abigail said, quietly. 'I seen you.'

Emmett frowned.

'You crawled over my darn back and stabbed one of them fellers,' he muttered. 'Maybe I won't make no more jokes 'bout you chewin' my ear off, in case that urge comes on you again.'

Abigail smiled sadly. She looked shattered. Emmett reached round, patted a hand across his lower back, and winced. He looked out at the dry desert around them.

'Leastways we got a good distance between us,' he said. 'Buck looks ready to hang up his fiddle.'

'Emmett, them... people,' Abigail said. 'Them cloth people. Don't it seem to you like they don't know how to fight?' 

Emmett pulled himself up groggily.

'How'd you mean?' he said. Abigail met his eyes and frowned.

'Like they know... what they think they should do, but they cain't do it right. They ain't got no control or... I don't know how to say it.'

'No, I know what you mean,' Emmett said. 'I remembered that from before. I don't think they're the same as me and you, Abi.'

Abigail passed him the canteen as he walked past her, and stroked the sweating horse.

'Then what are they?' she said.

Emmett swallowed and said nothing. He fed and watered the horse, and they checked out the  wooden shack. There was no floor, just packed dirt. Three pallet beds with grubby quilts lay on the ground. A woollen poncho lay on one. A lengthy leather rebenque was coiled in the corner, alongside old saddles and bits of harness. Emmett felt his stomach tighten. He placed a hand on Abigail's shoulder, and guided her back out.

'What is it, Emmett?' she said, blinking and rubbing her eyes.

'I don't think we should be here, Abi,' he said. He packed the canteen and hoisted her onto the exhausted horse. Lances of pain shot across his back. Abigail sighed and laid her head on Buck's mane. 

'Why? Why's there a hut here in the middle of nowhere?' she said.

'I don't know,' he said, looking out into the shimmering distance. 'But I doubt it's a friendly hotel they're runnin'. We need to get a ways off again, then we'll take a look at our war wounds.'

Abigail exhaled slowly, and Buck tripped forward as Emmett nudged his flank. The sun boiled the basin, and the horse scudded dust clouds around them as he eased it into a lope. They rode out of the dip and hit the parched plain. 

A buzzard coasted in a spiral arc above them. The surface was pockmarked with grooves and streaks, and they passed in a tempest of swirling white dust. Emmett searched the distance for signs of life, but the horizon glinted and fuzzed in the heat, and images came to him flaming and confused. The whip on the floor of the shack flickered across his mind. 

The sun drifted east as the day wore on, and he tried to gauge a pathway southwest by it. Islands. The Halfway Place. The Farm. Dusk came, and the sky was burnished with a livid carmine glaze. The temperature dropped quickly. They came upon a tangle of mesquite and sage brush, large enough to offer significant cover, and set up a rudimentary camp. 

The horse lay down and rolled in the dust. Abigail collected sticks and twigs, and they lit a small fire. Emmett tapped a mesquite tree with a canteen and rope, and used the sap to make a poultice. He spread it over Abigail's arms, legs and face. She did the same to his back. Her cuts were superficial for the most part, but his back had taken some nasty slices. 

They ate dried fruit and sourdough bread from their saddlebag supplies, and lay back on their bedroll to watch the stars wheel in the darkness. Abigail turned to Emmett as he lay trying to tie numerous threads together in his head.

'We need to start movin' by night,' he said. 'It's too open in daytime.'

'Why ain't you using them things for your cuts, Emmett?' Abigail said. 'Them pins. Piru said you need to git used to usin' them proper. You didn't have no more wounds last time.'

Emmett placed his hands on his head and ran them slowly down over his face.

'I think I'm 'fraid to, truth be told, Abi.' 

Abigail nudged up to him and wrapped her fingers around his wrist. The sage rustled around them. 

'It don't hurt to,' she said. 'We already need to fix your count. We need to learn this stuff if we want to do that proper.'

Emmett closed his eyes, and felt sleep pulling him down. Abigail breathed by his ear, and when he opened his tired eyes again the stars washed into a milky rush, as if galaxies were spinning down towards them.

'Let's git our heads down for a couple of hours, Abi,' he whispered. 'Then we can start out while it's still dark.'

'Okay bub,' she said.

*

Emmett was awakened by Abigail prodding him. It took him a while to refind the world. His eyelids were scratchy, and his head muggy. It was still dark and quiet. He clasped his hands over his head and looked up. 

Beyond the knot of mesquite branches the night sky was full of stars. Below the brush grove, the arid lava beds stretched out in the darkness. Dotted cacti and yukka dressed a xeric basin so ruptured and slit, it was as if the world had been broken and remade in a corrupt and exanimate likeness of its former self.

Emmett rolled onto his side and saw a tortoise chewing on mesquite grass within the brush behind Abigail. He blinked, and its high-domed shell reversed slowly into the shadows. The backpack was beside Abigail's bedroll, and a number of pins were spread out on her blanket. She was holding the leather notebook open in her hands. His fingers balled into fists.

'I think that's been a few hours, Emmett,' she said. 'You was out for the count.'

He rubbed his eyes and watched the pins on her lap.

'Ain't you slept?' he said. There were little scratches over her cheeks and forehead, and a substantial one on her chin, but the poultice seemed to have worked well.

'No,' she said, looking down at the notebook. 'I've been lookin' at all this. Emmett, I think there's patterns all the way through it. 'Member Piru said safe shapes? She told you which ones she thought they were? I think I can see them. I don't know for sure, but I think we should try... I think we ought to know. I think we ought to know what's safe.'

'What if they ain't?' Emmett grumbled. He felt irritable. It was disconcerting to see her holding the notebook, and sitting with the pins.

Abigail nudged up close to him. She flattened the notebook on his blanket. A complex shape was drawn across two pages. She pointed to a symbol at the top right-hand corner of the second page.

'She said this was a safe shape. Or she thinked so. This comes up a few times.'

Emmett looked down at the tiny outline of a closed loop. Scratchy marks were drawn through it, cutting the arc of the loop off at points. He pushed his blanket off, and sat up.

'But that's not the only thing,' Abigail said, flicking the page. 'I've been readin' this the whole time you was asleep. Looky here.'

She pointed again. There was a complex shape drawn across two pages, and another obscure symbol in the corner of the second page; a small shape, near in approximation to two conjoined and overlapping triangles. There was a cross etched through the base of the first triangle, and a sharp dash running through the second one.

'I seen this twice,' Abigail said. 'I want to try it. I think we should.'

Emmett peered at the small triangles. The cross. He caught a memory of stooping to remove a pin from the ground, and shuddered. 

'What's so important about this one?' he said, but felt in his heart that he knew. The cross felt final, definitive. He saw himself trapped within a dead, ashen world. Sparkling lines intersected over the ground below him. 

'Look at these symbols, Emmett,' she whispered. 'How many possibilities do you rightly think there are? You said you couldn't get out when you was inside a shape. But you just pulled a pin out the ground and you was free. Likewise for anyone tryin' to get in. Like Piru did back in that valley. What's missin' here?'

Emmett ran his tongue around his dry mouth, and reached for a canteen. A small stab of pain ran up his back. He closed his eyes and sighed.

'You cain't keep puttin' this off, Emmett,' Abigail said. 'She telt us to learn it. You don't have no more options. I'm trying to help, and it's hard for me too. I feel like I'm supposed to be a grown-up now. I'm tryin' to be more than I am. Ain't neither of us got much cow sense, but we have to get this worked out. This is our job now.'

Emmett felt himself tearing up. He breathed and looked away so that she wouldn't see. The dark sprawl of the badlands fell away beneath them.  

'It's a lock,' he said, slowly. 'I reckon so. I reckon that's what's missing. Somethin' to lock and unlock them... shapes.'

Abigail leaned forward. Her eyes were bright and excited.

'So, what would you do with that?' she said. 'What would be the point?'

Emmett ran his index finger over the little overlapping-triangle symbol. 

'It's not to change your count,' he said, 'that was an accident.'

'And?' Abigail said. She was looking at him intently. Emmett felt his head growing hot.

'What're you lookin' at me like that for?' he snapped. 'That ain't going to help me git there. All's I know is to stick them in the darn ground.'

Abigail's eyes narrowed.

'Maybe we should stick them in your ears,' she said, 'and loosen some of the mush up.'

Emmett scratched his back and stewed. He reached for one of the pins impulsively, but Abigail snatched it away from him.

'Why'd you do that?' he said, throwing his arms up.

Abigail kept her eyes lowered, and turned the pin over in her hands.

'Don't know,' she muttered. 'You made me.'

They sat in silence for a while. Emmett stared furiously at the sandy floor. Eventually he lifted his head.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I'm sorry for bein' a mush head. Can you please tell me?'

Abigail met his white eyes, and smiled wanly.

'You're keeping it,' she said. 'I reckon it's like punchin' a little bit out, and keeping it. If you can make it safe so's no-one else gits in, lock it down, and open it, you're keeping it.'

Emmett frowned. His brain couldn't get up to speed. It was too abstract a concept. 

'A few minutes?' he muttered. 'What would that do?'

'What if you had a lot of little bits, Emmett?' Abigail said. 'What even is a few minutes if you have them forever? If you can go between... '

She paused, and her forehead creased. She touched the frayed collar of her dress.

'... pinned time and normal time?' she whispered.

'Pinned time,' Emmett echoed. The mesquite rustled around them. 'I s'pose folk could do an awful lot with that,' he breathed. 

Strange thoughts and possibilities unfolded before him. He saw dark doorways, passages, and moments relived and re-experienced over years and decades. He saw Abigail safe and happy; happy with him, and with everything he did. He saw his Daddy alive, and his mama alive. Everything was reachable and neverending, but he could not connect the myriad, incomprehensible threads within that ideal.

Abigail touched his hand, and he snapped out of his reverie.

'You think it's for us?' she said.
 

 

https://www.abctales.com/story/stephen-thom/pins-25