Martin Smith - Stallion Gate

NOVEMBER 1946

1

The cell at Leavenworth was four feet by eight feet, barely large enough for Joe to sit at one end on an upended pail, but there was room in the dark for a circle of figures. Nearest Joe was a mountain lion, gray and white in colour as a snowfall at night. The cat's spine was a rattlesnake and the snake's scaled head peeked over the lion's shoulder. There was a girl with the body of a bird, a swallow. She had a beautiful, triangular face and her eyes modestly avoided looking at Joe, who was only in dirty GI underpants. Across from her was a minotaur, a blue man with a shaggy buffalo head. At the far end was an officer who had brought his own chair to sit on. He had a long skull and sallow skin and ears pressed almost flat into close-cut, black hair. He wore the patient manner and tailored uniform of a career officer and didn't seem the least bothered by the overhead ring of golden sticks that beat against each other in subdued claps of light.

"You're from New Mexico, Sergeant Pena?" the captain asked.

"Yes, sir," Joe said.

The minotaur hummed softly and rocked from side to side. Joe tried to ignore it and the captain paid no attention at all.

"You know the Jemez Mountains, Sergeant?"

"Yes, sir."

"As I understand it, Sergeant Pena, you're in here for insubordination," the captain said. "But the real fact of the matter is, you were sleeping with an officer's wife."

"Not lately, sir. I've been in the brig for twenty days, the last ten in the hole on nothing but water."

"Which is what you deserve. There is nothing stupider in this man's Army than consorting with the wife of a superior, you'll admit."

"Yes, sir."

"Any ill effects?"

"Some hallucinations."

Joe had started seeing things after the fifth day in the hole. Guards banged on the door every time he lay down, so he hadn't slept, either. The cat had come first. Joe thought the stench of the cell would drive even a phantasm out, but after the cat came the woman on wings. It wasn't a religious experience, it was just crowded.

"You have the feeling you're never getting out of here, Sergeant?"

"It had occurred to me, sir. I'm sorry, sir, I didn't catch the name."

"Augustino."

"You're a defense lawyer?"

"They didn't want to admit you were even in the brig, Sergeant. They've as good as buried you. No, I'm not a lawyer. But I can get you out."

The snake twisted its head and regarded the captain with interest.

"Why don't you tell me how, sir?" Joe suggested.

"You haven't been back to New Mexico recently?"

"Not for years."

"Wasn't too interesting?"

"Not interesting enough."

While the snake watched the captain, the big cat turned its yellow eyes languidly to Joe.

The captain nodded. "I know what you mean, Sergeant. I'm from Texas, myself."

"Really, sir?"

"On my sixteenth birthday I applied for the Citadel."

"Is that so, sir?"

"You get more dedicated officers out of the Citadel than you get from the Point."

"Interesting, sir. Can you get me out of this fucking hole or can't you?"

"Yes. I have the authority to get anyone I want. Sergeant, do you remember a J. Robert Oppenheimer?"

"No."

"Jewish boy from New York? He had tuberculosis? His family sent him to New Mexico?"

"Okay. I was a kid, too. That was a long time ago. We went riding."

"To Los Alamos?"

"All over, yeah."

"He's back."

"So?"

"Sergeant, the Army is setting up a project at Los Alamos. Oppenheimer is in charge and he will need a driver. You are, in almost every particular, the perfect man. Violent enough to be a bodyguard. Ignorant enough to hear classified information and not understand a word. Be liaison."

"Who with?"

"Indians, who else? Most of all, you might be a name Oppenheimer would recognize and trust. I put you on the list. We'll find out."

"If he doesn't?"

"You'll rot right here. If he does pick you, you'll return to your various scams, Sergeant I expect that. You'll be in glory. But don't forget who found you in this hole. I want his man to be my man. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

The captain rapped on the door to go. Waiting for the turnkey, he added, "I hear your mother is Dolores the Potter. I have some wonderful pieces by her. How is she?"

"Wouldn't know, sir. I haven't been in Santiago since the war started."

"You don't do pottery yourself?"

"No, sir."

"You're not that kind of Indian?"

"Never was, sir."

The captain took his chair with him when he went. Joe leaned back on the pail and shut his eyes on the figures who stayed in the cell with him. He could hear new apparitions arriving. Then he opened one lid and caught the girl with the swallow body lifting her dark eyes and through the murk giving him a wistful look. He laughed. He knew nothing about visions, but he knew women. He was getting out.

DECEMBER 1944

2

Staff Sergeant Joe Pena was playing the piano for the Christmas dance. He had a narrow face for a Pueblo Indian, a deep V of cheekbones, a broad mouth and wide-set eyes. Black-black hair and brows, one brow healed over an old split. His uniform was crisp, the chevron on his sleeve so bright it looked polished, his tie tucked in between the second and third buttons of his shirt. Picking out ballads on the parlour grand, he gave a first impression of a huge, attractive man. Also of damaged goods.

The lodge's walls and columns had the honeyed glow of varnished ponderosa pine. In keeping with the Christmas theme, red and green crepe festooned wagon wheel candelabras and the open balconies of the second floor. Paper reindeer were pinned to the Navajo rugs on the walls. Atop the eight-foot-tall stone mantel of the fireplace, a porcelain St Nick stood between Indian pots.

"Everyone's here." Foote supported himself on the piano. Foote was a lean and horsey Englishman in a threadbare tuxedo.

"Not everyone," Joe answered while he played.

"You say. Who's not here?"

"Soldiers aren't here, MPs aren't here, WACs aren't here, machinists aren't here, Indians aren't here."

"Of course not, we don't want them here. It's not their bloody bomb. Bad enough that we have the military command. Especially that Captain Augustino creeping around like a Grand Inquisitor."

"I'm ready." Harvey Pillsbury brought Joe a bourbon. In his other hand he carried a clarinet. "I really appreciate this second chance, Joe."

"Just blow. Last time you were silent. It was like playing with a snowman."

Harvey had the contours of a snowman, and downy hair and the high, nasal accent of west Texas.

"Be prepared for quantum improvement."

"Whatever that means." Joe finished the drink in a swallow. He played "Machine-gun Butch" and everyone sang along. I " was a rough and ready Yankee, He'll never let the old flag touch the ground. And he always will remember the seventh of December, With his rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat, and he'll mow 'em down." The Germans and Italians sang loudest, and the crazy thing was that Joe liked them, Foote included and Harvey especially. Most were Americans and most of the Americans were babies straight from college. The boys had loose ties and sweaty faces. The girls had short skirts and scrolls of hair around broad, polished foreheads. A rent party in Harlem it wasn't, but they were trying.

Harvey had stood through "String of Pearls", clarinet raised and trembling and utterly mute. During "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree", Harvey licked the reed, forced a squeak, two notes in a row, then three. Halfway into "This Joint Is Jumpin' ", Joe switched to a bass stride, forcing him to blow erratically through a riff like a butterfly flying for its life, and at the end Harvey beamed, red-cheeked and triumphant. "'White Christmas'?" he suggested.