The Zona Read Free Page A

without reason committed to paper.  Here was a fugee.  Lead traced his finger over the map.  Here was a man found wrong with the Lord and Church and thus needed to be punished or smote.
    “What did he do?” Lead asked.
    Smith leered at Lead’s lapse in etiquette.
    “Tis not for you to know or inquire, Preacher, a mark’s offense is between himself and the good Lord.”
    Lead looked at Smith’s smug and hateful face.  The reek of Smith’s dirty skin permeated everything.  Lead felt smothered by it.  A hatred swelled within Lead for this petty officer of the Church, this sinful feudal lord of Kingman, with his fools’ technology and backsliding.
    Lead’s hand shot out with trained speed.  His fingers twisted into Smith’s beard.  Smith let out a surprised yelp and jerked his head.  Lead spun the Radioman into a head lock, and planted a boot firmly behind Smith’s knee.  They both collapsed to the ground, with Lead’s arms wrapped tightly around Smith’s head and neck.  
    “Don’t toy with me filth!  For what offense must I apprehend?”  Lead hissed into ear.
    Smith struggled against the hold.  Lead noticed a tattoo of a drop of water at the corner of Smith’s mouth disappear into a dimple as he swallowed.
    “Tis not for me or you, Preacher, but tis for the Lord, and the mark, and the parish to know, ask not of me which I know not.”  Smith gasped.  The drop of water again disappeared into a dimple.
    Lead shoved the Radioman away and rolled to his feet.  He felt soiled from the physical contact.
    Smith scuttled like a wounded beast into a shadowed corner of the room.
    “Tisn’t proper for a Preacher to question Parish,” Smith whispered from the darkness.
    Lead took a pouch of silver notes from his belt and tossed it next to the radio.  He took the box of contraband.
    “If I hear you have defamed me to the parish, I will smite thee with no hesitation or remorse,” Lead said and left.

    That evening Lead hunkered next to a tumbleweed fire in the sand between Kingman and Yucca regions.  The heat of day was erased and forgotten by night’s chill and all the desert’s creatures for which day does not exist.
    Lead contemplated the night, set to the tune of crickets who were legion and insatiable.  He took the magazines from the box and poured the bottles of spirits onto the earth.  The liquid fell through the sand as though it were without corporal presence, absorbed without stain.  The spirits joined the earth, where they had once started, where all life and matter had once started at God’s behest.  Lead looked over pages of naked women, of men and women engaged in intercourse.  His face was warmed by the fire and feelings he did not trust within himself, guilt and excitement built at the sight of blatant sin.  More than the fornication, he was fascinated by the physical locations of the lovers.  Some did their act on lustrous red vehicles, versions of which Lead had only seen twisted in the dust.  Others fornicated in rooms with large beds, which made Lead think of home and mother and the comfort of a childhood that lived on in flashes and dreams.  Some pictures showed daylight with a blue sky.  Lead often thought of a blue sky.  His sky was various shades of yellow and orange, with a sunset shift to purple and pink fire.
    Lead looked at the wrist of a naked tattooed man adorned with a beautiful jeweled watch.  He had seen such luxury on the wrists of Bishops, but only from a distance.  It was brilliant as though crafted from the stars and bits of what falls from heavens during the darkest nights.  Lead touched the page, wishing that the watch would become real and fall out and be his.
    He spent the long evening staring at the watch before flinging it and the rest of the sinful books into the fire. He slept with dreams of himself riding a white steed in front a crowd of adoring followers, a beautiful, jeweled timepiece on his wrist.  

    Lead stood at the wrought-iron door