Everything in the world is building toward something. An entity so large and seemingly unrestrained as mankind simply cannot exist for the sake of existing. A goal, a time and place of revelation, is approaching, and men may at last see the folly in their ways. The clouds will be swept away. Then – bathed in the cool white light of understanding – we will understand that the old plans for solving problems were wrong. One cannot escape the hardships of their life merely by running away from them. Ultimately, all turmoil, regardless of whether it propagates from within or without the individual soul, must be stared down. Until the day when some hero boldly steps before the monster of destiny and defiantly declares his freedom from the bonds of ancient sinew, the actors of history will continue to blunder through chaos.
Now, consider if you will the fate of a hapless soul caught up within the greater plan of mankind, our hero Doc. He is - in no uncertain terms - a sinner, for he has taken others lives for purposes beyond the reasonable. However, he is not a heatless sociopath. Within the eyes of a young orphan, he finds himself after many years of being lost within a wilderness of regret. Alas! This comfort is short-lived, for the child is torn from Doc’s repentant hands. Angry, lost, bitter the listless man reconciles himself in fierce drinks until a group of unscrupulous fellows, seeking a unhonest dollar, trick a drunken Doc into entering the service of the military, and disengage the luckless man from his signing bonus.
Thus, Doc is thrown unceremoniously into the world’s eternal march toward some uncertain end. In this case, the nearing stepping-stone to oblivion is a conflict between the rouge Cheyenne leader Tamílapéšni and the brutal American military man Aldo Chester. The two forces align themselves upon the plains of Montana, which are otherwordly in their blankness. Everyone is tense and prepared for battle.
Doc thinks, as he readies himself for combat, that there will probably be nothing left after the nearing confrontation, after the end. The profound destiny toward which all people are racing is nullity; it is destruction by their own hand. Or so he thinks.
29.
Montana Territory: August 25, 1871
Doc lies awake through the night, listening to the howling of the unrestrained wind and wondering about the fate of the orphan child. He envisions her – robbed of innocent life - dead within a shallow gave. Though he tries to be optimistic, the torn and frayed man can not conjure an image of the orphaned child wrapped in the arms of some loving family. The method of his separation from her and the terrors of Doc’s past do not allow for hope. And so – almost lost entirely to the demons of his past – the physician turned soldier pulls out his rosary. Prayer is difficult.
He does not expect a miracle. He almost hopes that one will not come, that he will die in the coming battle, be sent to heaven, and find the girl up there. But yet persists Doc’s innate human urge to keep living. He fears what comes after the darkness. Most folks do. Thus, though he prays, Doc is not sure for what he asks. Every segment of his soul is torn between the urge to die and the desire to continue breathing.
* * * * *
Morning comes and with it the promise of death. Doc rises from his place upon the soil, content with the thought that he may soon fall back down upon it. He awaits his orders; receives them dutifully. Lost within the gray mist of his sad contemplations, Doc mounts a sturdy horse and readies his gun for wicked work.
The music of war and death compels Doc’s steed to lurch forward. He accepts this motion and slides into the darkness of battle, wherein all the colors of life merge into one: red. Blood flows freely onto the sacred Cheyenne soil. Bodies, both tanned and pale, fall down to the ground.
Doc steals a life, narrowly avoids the theft of his own. Yet, however, he feels naught but his past sadness. No fear arises into his mind apropos of the deadly dance which he is stumbling through. Reality is an afterthought. Doc is lost, for he has abandoned hope. A belief that this war, all this pain, may someday end no longer resides within his chest. He has been at long last hallowed out by the misplacement of a young child, who he was growing to love, to think of as his own of blood.
That the haggard man is no longer sure whether he wants to continue to live is a summoning horn for wandering bullets, which sense that by entering Doc’s warm flesh they may spare another soul more worthy to live from a bloody fate. The metal comes on like a soothing rain.
The sun sets over Eden.
