The Pursuer

The deserts of the earth are filled with ghosts. They are the great calm pools toward which flow the vanished civilizations, the corrupted wisdom, the lost dreams and abandoned gods. The spiritual vestiges of a thousand centuries of forgotten religions and unanswered prayers lurk in the sun-baked canyons, the dusty arroyos and the momentary whirlwinds.

The great San Juan Basin stretches out mile upon mile across the Colorado Plateau northwest of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is a desert of intricate rock structure, enormous, flat stretches of grey, alkaline sand, cut through by innumerable dry washes and red-orange arroyos. The dominant flora are the grey-green sages and tumbleweeds, cacti of every variety, pear, stick, Palos Verde, even Saguaro, the stately, druid-like forms standing silent sentry over the homeland of the Navajo. In ancient days, this land was verdant and fertile, the land of choice for a people who believed that they had found the center of the world. In it, a religious center flourished, a place where the Old Ones came to their contemplative work in dark structures called kivas, in the hope that the prayers of many would have greater efficacy than those of a few. In time, the intricate knowledge of astronomical events and processes was accumulated from thousands of careful observations, and records were left of this knowledge in petroglyphs and in the architecture of their buildings. This knowledge was incorporated into their religion, in the reverent hope that a way could be found to control the natural processes of the earth and sky. When the land dried up from drought, the people died or fled, some say driven out by the gods who were offended by the arrogance of the supplicants.

A misty blue seeped into the black sky at the eastern horizon in advance of the sundisc and the suffocating heat and smell of ovenbaked rock and sand. There was no movement and no sound. The desert was its own reason for being and it killed and nurtured whom and what it willed with eternal indifference. It was pure and stark and there could be no comfort or compassion here but only the struggle to survive, suffering and death. What sanctuary there was consisted only of penance for the anguished soul who yearned for silence, solitude and simplicity. It was where the mystics came who sought nothing more than to see into their own hearts and consign to oblivion all else with which the world had corrupted them.

He opened his eyes in the dark little room and could not remember where he was or how he came to be here. He lay still, waiting for some vestige of awareness to come to him so he would know what to do. The small windowlight above where he lay was just visible. He sat up and looked about him. Desert debris was strewn about on the dirt floor and there were small tracks and patches of dried hair and skin and tiny bones where the predators had left them. A door hung from one remaining rawhide hinge in the wall in front of him and pieces of the roof lay about where they had fallen long ago. He looked through the other open doorway and saw another room identical to this one, but missing its far wall. He rose slowly from his pallet and stood waiting for his head to clear.

He remembered the last whispered words of Thomas, the first Pope of that name: ‘Da mihi veniam. Da mihi veniam, Domini. Forgive me.’ So Father Michael Francis Clayton, S.J., Knight Commander of the Sacred Order of the Keys of St. Peter, traced the sign of the cross with his thumb in blood on the forehead, and, in extremis, absolved his pontiff. Ego te absolvo, ego te absolvo, ego te absolvo. In Gloria patris, et filio, et spiritui sancto, sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. In pace requiescat. Rest in peace, little priest. ‘Little priest of the poor,’ his countrymen had called him.

And Father Michael Clayton laid the head of the Bishop of Rome back down on the broken stones and rose to his feet, filled with a terrible resolve.

He couldn’t remember what day it was. He hadn’t for a long time, and did not care. He didn't know who or how many, but he knew they had been after him for some time. It felt as if they were all around him, now. Now that he’d stopped for awhile. He could almost hear them gibbering in the darkness when he laid down on his pallet last night, trying to trick his mind into falling asleep.

They thought they knew him, took him for someone they could isolate and finish off when they were damned good and ready. Let them think that. Let them think anything they wanted. He was already dead but he was still dangerous. They’d learn that before all this was through. He also had the advantage of their hatred for him, a rage and an insane desire for revenge which would distort their judgment and make them underestimate him. He would send them all to hell, the same everlasting hell into which he had sent so many of their kind.

He opened the flap of his rucksack and brought out some matches. The ruined little adobe house was rife with tinder material, and this he gathered into a small pile and surrounded it with dry sticks and slabs of wood from the fallen roof. He lit it and walked outside to his truck and retrieved a thermos and some food in plastic bags and a small stew pot and cup and brought them inside.

He poured the last of the coffee into the stew pot and set it on three small rocks which he had placed around the fire. He stood up and stared down at the pot as if he expected a djinn to appear. As it heated the coffee started to smell like old socks. He took the cold cornbread he had made two days before out of the sack and sat down. It was the only bread he knew how to make, and it lasted about as long as tortillas and was easier to eat.

In a few minutes the coffee was hot and he poured his cup full and took a sip. Then he bit into the cornbread which tasted almost as good as cardboard, with the coffee that tasted like he thought dirty socks would taste. He sat looking down into the cup for a moment, then reached over to his rucksack and took out a bottle of brandy. He sweetened the coffee and tasted it again. Like socks with brandy poured over them.

In ten minutes, he was pulling away from the ruin. He stopped the pickup short of the dirt road and looked back east. The sand had blown across the little road in several places so that it might just as well have been a cow path across a sparse prairie of sage grass and mesquite. He turned west, as he had for the last week, and headed off toward the dark sky. Ahead was a deep arroyo with a precarious wooden bridge. He didn't know if it had running water in it but if it had, then it might as well be called El Rio de las Animas Perdidas. The river of lost souls.

He crossed the bridge slowly and it popped and cracked like sounds of distant rifle fire as his tires rolled across it. The mournful mutter of the battlefield. As he started the climb out of the little canyon, the nose of the truck pointed upward and he caught sight of the full moon. A good omen, perhaps. If it were, then it would be the first in a very long time.