shattered window and rose into the desert winds.
The winds shifted, the sands settled. Night had fallen and the stars stretched out to infinity, tracing their slow spiral through the moonless sky. Despite his many and varied travels, Lead had never seen the evening sky so radiant. It felt to him as though God were reaching out with hands that comforted and yet proved conclusively what a diminutive and insubstantial creature man is.
The limo stood alone, empty save the mummy and trash; an oddity in a world of rocks, cactus, and sand. Lead’s eyes traced the sky until he found the North Star, Jesus’ Star. Lead followed the orb, used it to orient himself. He traveled through the night desert, fearing no monsters or demons, his mind cleansed of doubt and fear.
XIII. A nomad treks through life and shortly leaves thereafter
Lead wondered through valleys and dunes. He stayed low, out of the sight line, avoiding the men and dogs of Purgatory he knew must be following.
Lead trekked through dawn and dusk, always moving south. He sheltered in the daytime. Sometimes he slept under brush, though without fear of snakes or demons. Sometimes he slept in cars, though with no fear of the dead or their viruses.
Lead had been purged. All the sin, all the fear, all the doubt in his mind had been burned asunder by the shit and grime and horror of Purgatory. God did not speak to him with voice, but he felt God’s hand control his fate. His unbalanced mind found causes and reasons. Why had he met Terence Wood? Why had he suddenly decided to stop killing, to betray the Church? How had he survived the Crusaders and cannibals and filth? Lead incurred the belief that he was God’s true soldier. That he was protected from on high and had come to deliver His will.
God’s hand pressed itself in all he did. The early mornings and late afternoons were filled with divinities and shadows made clear in Lead’s addled mind. Lead traveled without fear. Things natural and old became to him an acknowledgment from God. Sunsets lit burning bushes. Boulders gave life to the faces of Moses, Jesus, Job, and the Apostles.
Lead giggled to himself. He contemplated the necessity of signs. God did not need to give him a sign; his constant survival was his sign. His inability to die was Abraham’s Angel or the Immaculate Conception or the parted Red Sea.
He ate all the candy and peanuts scavenged from the limo and his hunger drove him to capture bugs from under rocks. The fear of consuming poisonous venom and the sin of the desert’s mean creatures left his mind. At dawn of the third day he uncovered a rattle snake and crushed its head with a stone. He consumed the meat raw, without worry of illness.
Lead’s face and hands turned crimson in the unshielded sunlight, but he did not feel them. He had long ago scoured the filth of the Hall of Gluttons from his skin with desert sand, though it did nothing to erase the musk of excrement and insanity that wafted from him.
On the fourth dusk of his trek, Lead caught a smoke line in the distance. Lead crouched to the sand and stealthily crested the dune. A rag man sat shielding his meager fire from the wind; his skin was glowed yellow and sick in the fire’s light. Lead saw no markings of the Church, so he stood up and walked to the fire with hands raised. The rag man looked up at Lead.
“Evening stranger, no chance of you sneaking up, I smelled you long ago. You are welcome none the less.”
The rag man looked back to the fire.
“Please join me, company is rare here.”
Lead sat at the fire. The rag man’s face was as aged and tanned and wrinkled as a brown bag paper. The rag man pulled a dead lizard from his sleeve and skewered it on a metal wire. He held the lizard over the fire.
“Who are you?” Lead asked.
“I should ask first. It is you at my fire,” the rag man replied. “You’re dressed strangely. You have what almost could be taken for a Preacher’s Van Cleef around your neck and you smell worse than any man, woman, or child I’ve ever encountered. So I ask you good sir, who are you?”
“I am Lead.”
“That’s it, just Lead? No grand story, nothing to explain yourself?” The man said.
Lead thought for a moment. He gave gentle contemplation to the torrents and rage running wild in his mind. He looked to shapes shifting in the sand and the early stars smiling and realized the task of explaining himself was overwhelming.
“No.” Lead replied.
“At least you can tell me where the name came from. Last I remember mommas weren’t naming their babies Lead.” The man said.
“It was my regiment name in the Church Guard,” Lead replied.
“Well then that explains the Cleef. I don’t suppose you still preach with that shabby rig?”
“I don’t preach anymore, I’m…” Lead contemplated again. “I’m a pilgrim, I guess.”
The rag man smiled slyly. “Sure friend, you’re pilgrim, I’m a pilgrim, I think all us wanderers are pilgrims. Where is your pilgrimage to?”
“New Pueblo,” Lead said.
“Boy, I’m pretty sure that place doesn’t exist.”
Lead spit in the sand. “I’m pretty sure it does,” he said.
Lead let his finger drift to the handle of his Cleef. The rag man cleared his throat and shifted his seat.
“I’m on my way to New Mexico, maybe Albuquerque if it’s still there,” the man said nervously.
“I’ve heard there’s a lot of radiation zones out there, hot enough to kill a man pretty quick. You should consider New Pueblo,” Lead said.
The prospect of a traveling companion excited him; to have someone to talk to, another human being to interact with instead of silence or the rustling of hidden animals and desert winds. He could share the light of God.
“If it’s all the same to you friend, I’ll keep traveling my way,” the rag man said. “I don’t believe in radiation, anyway. All that nonsense about invisible beams killing you, government made it all up.”
The rag man turned the lizard in the fire. The smell of sizzling meat was intoxicating to Lead.
“No offense to your pilgrimage, I just plan to go my own way.”
Lead was briefly disappointed, then he rationalized that it was God’s will to let the man pass.
“Why are you leaving the Zona?” Lead asked.
“Lots of reasons. Were I to pick only one, I reckon one large one in particular, it would be the fact that I’m a drinker. When I find spirits and alcohol I consume what I can. When a young man, I used to joke that I was just trying to kill the beast inside me. As an old man I recognize it as the truth. I got a beast in me that demands I drink, and there’s no fixing or distracting it.”
Lead rationalized divinity again in his mind. He unraveled his car seat satchel and produced eight tiny liquor bottles. Lead held the bottles up to the fire’s light. The colored liquids radiated warmth. The rag man forgot his discomfort and drifted closer to Lead.
“You truly are a holy man. I tell you my problems and you bring me the solution and more problems. If you don’t mind sharing your wealth, I don’t mind sharing my dinner.”
The rag man’s eyes flashed eager in the fire light. He wet his lips with a brown tongue. Lead placed four bottles in the man’s palm. The rag man’s hands shock as he unscrewed the first bottle and held it up to Lead.
“Cheers, brother pilgrim,” he said and swallowed the contents in one swig.
The rag man closed his eyes and slowly shook his head in ecstasy. He held the now empty bottle over his heart.
“Scotch whiskey. Scotch whiskey is the patient man’s reward. It tastes silkier with age, and I tell you pilgrim, this little bottle has aged.”
The rag man licked his lips again. He opened his eyes and gestured to Lead.
“Please, I don’t want to drink alone. Have a drink with me. It will stoke your appetite.”
