Henry is perched on the porch of a sweets shop, chewing cherry licorice, overlooking the main street of a small town south of Taos.
Across the street, in front of the butcher shop, an aproned butcher around Henry’s age is being viciously berated by a big man with a red face, wearing a heavy woolen suit and derby.
Henry gets off his perch and walks to his horses.
One horse is laden with gear and the other just a simple saddle.
He tosses a carrot to his laden horse and she catches it and chews. He throws a carrot to his unladen horse and it bounces off its forehead, “Next time.” He throws another carrot and the horse catches it, “Told you.”
The argument across the street escalates and the racial epithets begin to fly at the butcher.
Henry unties both horses and comes around to gain a better view of the action in the street.
As the big man tears at the butcher’s apron and connects with a punch to the face, the butcher gracefully counters with a powerful right hook to the man’s jaw, rendering him unconscious before he hits the mud.
The butcher steps back and shifts a fourteen inch carving blade sheathed on his belt. He removes his apron to wipe the blood pouring from a cut above his right eye, and watches as a group of angry people gather around the unconscious man lying face down in the street.
Henry mounts the laden horse and leads the other horse behind him.
As the butcher crosses the street to get some water from a pump, Henry drops a pistol in the mud and slowly rides up the street.
The butcher looks at the pistol on the ground, as Henry drops the reins of the unladen horse, leaving the horse standing still.
As eight furious men move towards the butcher, he scoops up the pistol, mounts the horse, and follows Henry out of town.
A couple of hours later, Henry and the butcher are riding up an ancient trading road through the mountains. Henry speaks without turning around, “Handy trade, butchering.”
The butcher laughs, “Between extortion and rent, I keep nothing.”
Henry turns and looks at him, “The big guy, he your landlord?”
“Was.”
The butcher looks up to a spiraling hawk, then down into the valley where a group of pursuers are riding after them at a quick clip, “Riders coming.”
Henry rides slow and calm, “How long you had that shop?”
The butcher turns back to the riders, “Three years.”
Henry rides even slower, “What’s your name?”
“Name’s Samuel.”
Samuel glances back at the pursuers, now making their way up the hill. He checks his pistol to see if it’s loaded.
Henry comes to a stop, dismounts and sits on a rock, “Get off your horse.”
“Why?”
“So you don’t get your head blown off.”
Henry skips a rock off a cluster of boulders.
Samuel dismounts and crouches, readying his pistol. The riders are so close he can make out their faces.
Henry whistles sharp and loud and a burst of rifle shots come whizzing above the heads of the riders in a surgically precise manner. The riders panic, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Samuel searches for the source of the gunfire, “Who was that?”
Henry watches as the dust cloud disappears, revealing the riders galloping at full speed through the valley back to town.
Samuel stands, “Who was that? They with you?”
Henry draws a perfect circle in the sand with a stick, “You want a job?”
Samuel laughs, “You gonna give me a job?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of job?”
“Building roads.”
Samuel scans the landscape in all directions, “Out here?”
“For a start, yeah.”
“What kind of roads?”
Henry ricochets another rock, “Anywhere anybody needs to go, I’ll build them a road.”
Samuel squints, “Who are you, man?”
Henry throws a strand of cherry licorice into his mouth and gives one to Samuel, “You said ‘extortion’. People around here ain’t learned that word yet. That’s a city word. What city you from?”
Samuel kicks a rock loose with the heel of his pristine lace-up boot and skips it down the hill, “New York City.”
“What street?”
“Rivington Street.”
“Fancy.”
Samuel laughs, “What do you know about Rivington Street?”
Henry mounts his horse and begins to navigate up the hill.
Samuel looks up to see seven hawks circling.
He mounts and follows, “Why did you help me?”
“You got integrity.”
“How do you know I got integrity?”
“You coulda took the easy path.”
“What would that have been?”
Henry glances back, “Could have slit his throat with that sword you got in your belt.”
He tosses a canteen over his shoulder to Samuel, who plucks it out of the air without even looking, “Your job, does it pay?”
“My job will pay your great grandchildren’s grandchildren.”
“Not a bad job.”
Henry pops another strand of licorice into his mouth, “Long as you’re honest.”
Samuel stops his horse, “Mister. Hey. Listen to me.”
Henry turns and Samuel stares him in the eye. “I don’t care who you are. Nobody got to tell me to be honest. You heard?”
“Heard.”
Samuel looks up to eleven hawks circling, “I don’t know your name, I don’t know nothing about you. Don’t know why you’re offering me a job, don’t know how you know Rivington Street, and I don’t know where I’m headed.”
Another hawk joins. Samuel now counts twelve hawks, “That said, I’ll take your job.”
Henry smiles, “Enthuzimuzzy.”
He turns and rides nimbly up the hill, avoiding the deep cuts in the hard sand, scampering up the rocky old trade route that countless people dug many thousands of years ago with the repeated steps of their bare feet.
Samuel lingers a moment, watching twelve hawks circling high above, then rides up the hill just as deftly as Henry did.
Hours later, Henry and Samuel are sitting around a fire.
Henry is carving a figure out of a hunk of wood with his knife.
Samuel hears a rustling in the trees and sees eleven men emerging from the darkness to tie up their horses. He watches them tend to the horses with great care, “How come your pals don’t ride with you?”
Henry throws a stick into the fire, “I need distance.”
“Distance from what?”
“Whatever steals my mind. Whatever’s in the way.”
“Of what?”
“My vision.”
Samuel takes two short thin cigars from his vest pocket and offers one to Henry, who studies it, “I do know the value of a quality cigar, and I thank you. Yet, I don’t smoke tobacco much.”
He puts it behind his ear, “If you don’t mind, I’ll save this fine cigar for a future time.”
“I don’t mind.”
Samuel lights his cigar, “What’s your name?”
Henry carves at the figure in his hand.
Samuel studies Henry out of the corner of his eye. He turns his collar up against the wind and decides to say what he’s thinking.
“Telegraph says the man they call Billy the Kid was shot in Fort Sumner. A few days ago. He rode with eleven pals. Regulators. Folks around here say it ain’t true, they’re saying Billy escaped. You got an opinion on that?”
Henry carves.
Samuel stares into the fire, “Mind if I ask a question?”
Henry lifts his eyes, “Nothing better than a question.”
“Do you have a problem with the fact that I know who you are?”
Henry turns to Samuel, “Rest easy, Samuel.”
He looks into the flames, “We’re gonna be good pals.”
One of the regulators walks up to the fire, nods to Samuel, and makes room for the other men to gather.
Henry points his knife to Samuel, “This is Samuel. A man of integrity.”
Vague and exhausted grunts of welcome come from the men.
One of them packs a long pipe, lights it with a burning twig, take s a pull and passes the pipe to Samuel, who inhales and passes the pipe onwards.
Through the flutter of flames, Samuel’s eyes drift over the faces of the young men who have seen and done enough to where they don’t appear to be young anymore.
All except for Henry.
Henry is timeless. It’s difficult to get him into focus, as if he’s in perpetual shimmering motion, even while still.
“My spare.” He tosses a red, black and white handwoven blanket to Samuel, “It’s clean.”
Samuel wraps himself in the blanket and lays back. His eyes follow the embers from the fire up to see twelve hawks spiraling intertwining patterns in the sky, “Them hawks have been following us all day.”
“Them hawks have been following me my whole life.”
He throws the figure he was carving into the fire and watches it burn, then lays back on his own blanket, also red, black and white, “The day I don’t feel them hawks with me will be the day I die.”
Henry and Samuel drift off to sleep, as twelve hawks fly imperfect circles in the sea of the New Mexican sky, so far beyond the stars.
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