The People: And Other Uncollected Fiction Read Free Page B

fortune. He turned the wagon due north and headed up the Pacific Coast. He felt a hunger to be in a new place but had no idea where the hunger or the place had originated. Night after night he tracked it to the stars. They shone like piercing brilliant pearls. He felt more and more a broad love for nature but wasn’t sure why. However it happened, nature made him feel serious and concerned, a sensible way to be. Nature was also in the sky, where many things came together; it was, he felt, something he had guessed out as the oneness of the universe. This thought astounded him because he had never had it before.
He felt in himself a destiny he could not explain, except that when he approached it to claim it as his own it seemed to tear itself out of his hands and spin skyward. Yozip believed he could be somebody if he tried, but he did not know what or how to try. If a man did not know what to do next, could you call that a destiny?
    Sometimes clusters of soldiers appeared in a field and quickly disappeared.
    One of them fired a shot from a rifle at Yozip, but he fell on his belly and then quickly went his way. Ishmael had jumped two feet into the air. Yozip never saw the soldiers again; and besides he had heard the war was over, for which he cheered the Lord.
    In Seattle, in a burst of imagination, he sold his wagon for an unheard song. Only one man would bid a cartwheel for it. So he kissed Ishmael goodbye forever. The horse whinnied briskly, pure morale. Yozip got rid of his dry goods, giving away an oversize housedress for a thin woman to a fat lady who laughed engagingly and plucked a white hair out of his beard. He went assaying in a swift stream for a day and a half and discovered a discolored stone that turned out—when he had licked it with his fuzzy tongue—to be a nugget of pure gold that someone might have lost out of a hole in his pants pocket. Yozip sold the nugget for a horse he mounted, and galloped around to see what there was to see. You can’t tell until you get there and look twice. It then occurred to him he still had two mouths to feed; so Yozip headed eastward, looking for an honest day’s hard work.

TWO
    The Marshal
    ONE DAY YOZIP, on his sleek black horse, rode into a town fifty miles east of Pocatello. He thought it was time to refresh himself because he was not feeling his best and the horse dawdled. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do next, but that was his state of mind these days. He would look for a room in a boardinghouse and rest a week before moving on. It already seemed to Yozip that something was wrong with his life although he had no idea what. It had occurred to him that the few people visible on the main street regarded him uncomfortably as he passed by on his horse. When he smiled at them they responded by looking away. Here you are peaceably entering a town on a new horse and everyone reacts as if they had known you for years and never liked you.
    He sensed he was in the presence of error and wondered what it was. The town seemed to be silently awaiting and appraising him. As he trotted on, several more people appeared. The horse broke into a mild gallop. Yozip observed about a dozen men and a woman in a flowered hat standing at one side of the road, and a crowd of about twenty people gathered together farther up. He was tempted to raise his new cowboy hat to them but didn’t like to misrepresent himself. He was surprised by and concerned about his thoughts. Either there is more to life or I am a fool. He had accomplished nothing to speak of. He rode on disheartened.
    Yozip thought he would stop at a saloon, water his horse, and gulp down a glass of beer. If he stayed longer than tomorrow his
first order of business was to find himself a job. He was looking for work and he was looking for a boardinghouse. He was not looking for, or at, this burly man who faced him with a drawn pistol.
    “Git off, the stranger said to Yozip, pointing at his horse.
    Yozip dismounted in a