3

July 1914

THE TRAIN DEPOT IN FREDONIA WAS ERECTED ON SILTY CLAY, WITH A floor of coarse wood and walls of canvas, flapping against the desert’s dust-wind. It was an appropriate location. Farther east and the tracks would lay in shifting sand; farther north would have been a misuse of fertile loam. The wood and canvas had arrived by an eight-mule team and wagon in January seven years prior; the loam and the dust-wind had come eons before that, when the ocean had receded and the sea creatures had died, leaving only bones and chalk, salt and silt.

The ticket agent glared at Ram, his stare as harsh as the dust-wind itself, so Ram turned back to the platform with his blanket and carpetbag and stood in the shadow near the belching train. The man had no reason to stare; all of Ram’s wounds were hidden under his long pants and a work shirt buttoned at the wrists. The pain in his side softened when Ram was standing. Gazing west from the platform, he saw storefronts with awnings lining the dirt road: HANSON’S IMPLEMENTS. EDGAR BROS GENERAL STORE. CHARLIE’S HORSE AND MULE RENTAL. Farther along stood a brick building with arched promenades. To the east sat a string of shacks, and beyond them sky and air and earth stretched away in every direction. A mound of sand rose in the near distance covered with gray-green brush; odd trees stood upon it, tall and waiting, tentacles reaching to the clouds. To the south, a jagged line marked the edge of mountains on the horizon.

A cluster of men strolled toward him, too slowly, and too pale, but Ram searched their faces anyway. Behind them, dark clouds sailed in the distance. The dust-wind played with a nest of brambles near his feet. Still, Karak Singh did not appear.

The horizon seemed to shift, falling away on his left; he gripped the fence rail to regain his balance. A horse whinnied from the road. He heard the jangle of spurs. The sun, the ache in his side, the blood-scent that rose from his bandaged arm, all of this unmoored him. He smelled coal ash mixed with manure and dust and heat and something else he could not recognize. A fragment of the wooden fence pricked his wrist, stinging him, and the earth righted herself.