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“Have you been out here very long, Mr. Glick?”
“A while. I was in the Philippines, then I looked for gold in the Sierra Madre.”
“Why did you quit using your name?”
“I was in the Philippines from ’99 to ’03. You ever hear stories about what went on there?”
“One or two. I’m not sure I believe them.”
“Most people don’t. That’s why I don’t bother telling them about the things we did in their name.” Glick walked past Hackberry and raised his head just above the boulders and looked out at the mesa and the campsite that lay in its shadow. “You’re aware that bunch is trailing you, aren’t you?”
“How do you know it’s me they’re trailing?”
“They staked out an Indian yesterday and made his family watch it. They thought you’d been at his hut. They were looking for a Texan over six and a half feet. Know what their kind can do with a wadded-up shirt and a bucket of dirty water?”
“I don’t study on other people’s grief. Have you seen any colored cavalry? The Tenth in particular?”
“I’ve met up with some white soldiers, mechanized infantry and such. I’d say they were right nice boys. Why’s that bunch down yonder after you?”
“I burned up a load of their guns and ammunition. What happened to the Indian?”
“He hid in the hills when they got through with him. People say Indians are savages. I’ll put my money on a white man anytime.”
“You’re not making my morning any better, Mr. Glick.”
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t use that name. You want some grasshoppers?”
“Not right now. What’d you do in the Philippines that made you give up your name?”
“It’s what all of us did. In their villages, along the river where the women washed clothes, on the roads and in the fields, anyplace we found them. We wouldn’t leave a stone upon a stone. It gets inside you. I woke up thirsting for it. Worse than that. I’d wake up in a male condition thinking about it.”
“Does the name ‘Beckman’ mean anything to you?”
The man in the duster fixed his eyes on Hackberry’s. “That’s Beckman out there?”
“Beckman is the man whose property I destroyed,” Hackberry said. “There’s a fellow down below who might be him, but I couldn’t swear to it. You know him?”
The man sat down on a rock, his hands cupped over the rips in the knees of his trousers. His eyes were swimming.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Hackberry said.
“There’s no hiding from it.”
“From what?”
“When you do certain things to others that humans aren’t supposed to do, somebody is assigned to find you out. The worse you are, the worse the man that gets sent after you.”
“You offered me food after I threw rocks in your cave. Not many would do that. My opinion is you’re a good fellow.”
The man lifted his gaze, either at the sky or at nothing. The sun was shining directly in his face; his eyes seemed as bright and empty as crystal. “Out here in the desert, I don’t have to think about what I don’t have. Out here, I don’t have a past. I’d like to keep it that way. I’ve been fooling myself.”
“I hate to tell you this, sir, but your words have a way of zooming right past me.”
“They find you. No, it finds you. Always. You haven’t learned that? It’s out there.”
“What is?”
“It.”
