The Man of Mud
Having filled the beer mug of Capitan Antonio Guerrero in the back corner of the bar and having tended to a few other customers seated at various tables around the cantina, Juan-Carlos, the owner and bartender, returned to his place behind the bar.
He wiped his hands on the ever-present, stained white bar towel and grinned, looking at the customers lined up at the bar like attentive birds.
Juan-Carlos looked them over.
Exactly like birds, except for Ernesto, who more closely resembles an insect. Or perhaps a cowbird, laying his eggs in others’ nests in hopes he and his legacy would survive. Ernesto drank most often to help shed the feelings of inadequacy he’d carried around with him since birth.
Next to Ernesto sat José, father of the unfortunate Maldito and owner of a small fishing fleet. He would be a tern, and not only because of his profession. Like the tern, who dips his wings in the water and then drinks from them as he soars high in the air, no effort goes to waste.
Then a few other local men, sparrows and wrens, hard-working but mostly harmless, were seated between José and the few men at the other end of the bar.
Directly in front of Juan-Carlos, John Jackson Sterling and Javier Orosco, a couple of vaqueros who reminded him of a large crow and a small hawk, respectively, braced the young norteamericano, Charlie Task. That one was a visitor to Agua Rocosa from the bus. He was a devious, crafty hunter if Juan-Carlos had ever seen one. Probably a hawk or perhaps a small eagle, though he liked others to think he was friendly and harmless.
He checked to see that all the men had the appropriate libation in front of them, then lightly slapped the bar. "Since I laid the foundation in the previous tale, are you ready now to hear the stoory concerning the man of mud?"
The men nodded eagerly.
Previously, Juan-Carlos had teased them with the story. But then as a prelude he had related to them instead a story about a great storm that brought sadness and confused wind and the worst rain ever and very odd behavior among birds. There had also been something about a boarding house, which apparently nobody in Agua Rocosa except Juan-Carlos could remember.
"My friends, as I mentioned to you the other day, the man who rose from the mud had never been seen around here before. Either he rose directly from the mud itself, having been born of the earth, or perhaps he was some new breed of creature who washed down from the mountains. And of course, he might have fallen into the mud plain from the heavens."
Pausing for effect, he crossed himself. "Certainly, angels have been known to fall to Earth before. There is no good reason one might not be clumsy enough to fall into the mud flat." He waved one hand. "No matter. I will tell you the story, and you can decide for yourself. You remember it had rained very hard with very large drops for a week, yes?"
All of the men nodded.
"The events of this story occurred on the fourth day of the fourth week after that week of rain.” He paused. “But allow me to lay the foundation.”
A few of the men groaned, but Juan-Carlos was undeterred. “At the end of that very long week of rain, as you might imagine, the water was anxious to return to the sea. And perhaps as a token payment for the misery it had caused us, it mixed the grasses and twigs and old leaves with the dirt and clay it had carved out of the mountains to form a brand new layer of bricks-in-waiting on the mud plain.” He pointed vaguely over his shoulder. “You all know it. It is just north of town.”
Some of the men nodded.
“Those of us who know the brickmaker’s art could not have mixed the ingredients ourselves in more appropriate proportions.
“The sun, who had gone shy on that first dark, terrible day before even the first drop fell, suddenly remembered itself on the morning of the eighth day. As if to prove its power had not waned, or perhaps to erase the shame of its week-long impotence from the minds of men, it grew hotter with each passing hour right up until sunset on that eighth day."
He held up a hand to ward off an argument that never came. "I know. The air usually cools from the peak heat after siesta. But not on that day, and not on the days that followed.
“The temperature grew at least one degree hotter every hour until sunset on that day, and at sunrise on the following morning it began where it had left off. The coolest temperature on the ninth day was the hottest temperature from the eighth. And yes, it added at least one degree every hour on that day as well, right up until sunset. It went on that way for several days. By the fourth day of the fourth week, the mud plain had baked under a consistent 61 degrees!"
Charlie Task grinned. "Celsius, right?"
Juan-Carlos glanced at the American. "Yes, of course. That is about 140 degrees in your country. It is very hot." He smiled, then continued to the group. "As a result, the sun scorched that mud plain so quickly and so deeply that the plain cracked, dividing itself into bricks of various shapes and sizes."
He wiped an imaginary stain on the bar with his towel. "Many of us went to the mud flat to load wagons with those blocks. I remember it so well because my old dog, Rojo, had been very ill. As the wagon pulled away from my house that morning, with me dangling my legs off the back of it, he lay listlessly under the porch."
He shook his head sadly. "I tell you, I wondered whether he would even be there when I got back at the end of the day. My father was not a patient man and he saw signs in everything. He said it took Jesus Christo only three days to return from death, so if an animal was ill for more than three days—Well, let's just say sick animals had a way of disappearing around our house.
“But I did not want my old dog to disappear. I was only a boy, maybe seven years old." He bent his arm at the elbow and held his hand out, palm down. "About that tall. I was not yet able to look over shoulders. I could only look past waists, but I could work." He paused and smiled, waiting for a little laughter that was not forthcoming.
"I think I also mentioned earlier that we could not be sure where the man of mud came from. But the one thing of which even I could be certain, even at my young age, was that he could not be merely a flesh and blood human who had somehow become stuck in the mud and could therefore wash it off at will."
He held up one hand. "I know you are skeptical at heart, my friends, and you have every right. But consider, even if a human man had somehow survived the flooding and the deluge of mud, is there any possible way he could have survived four weeks in the plain without food or water? And in such unbearable heat?
“No, of course not. The cords of death would have wrapped themselves around him long before that and dragged him screaming into his grave." Juan-Carlos' eyes grew wide. "And yet—” and he spread the first two fingers of his right hand and pointed with them at his face,” as I witnessed with these very eyes, the man rose up directly from the mud plain!
“Oh, he was the real article, my friends, with actual mud for skin." He held his thumb and index finger a short distance apart. "As surely as I stand here before you, his mud skin was an inch thick in places. It was easy to measure because, like the plain from which he rose, he was cracked all over.
“There was not a surface piece of him bigger than a two-inch square. And if the dried mud did not go clean through to his skin, well, you could not tell where it stopped. He was shattered all over, thick and thin, but holding together even as he rose from the mud plain that we figured was his mother.
“But I am getting ahead of the story.
"When I first perceived him I did not quite make the full connection. It is like when you see the quick, blurred edge of a shadow in your peripheral vision and are left to wonder whether whatever cast the shadow was really there. Or like when you see something full-on but cannot quite make your mind believe what your eyes are seeing. At first I saw the man of mud like that, only partly with my vision and more as a thought on the edge of my mind where the imagination folds into reality.
“At first, the man of mud was only a head and one shoulder—his left shoulder—in the dim morning light, bulging up from the baked plain. He might as easily have been a boulder, lying against the mud-coated hunched-over limb of a desert willow that had washed down from the mountains and sticking up from the mud, only impersonating part of a man. To this day I am not sure whether his first motion captured our full attention or whether he caught us up by simply thinking about moving.”
“In fact, I do not recall that he was ever lying fully on his side, although I supposed he must have been. Perhaps before we arrived."
He wiped at the imaginary spot on the bar, then looked up at his audience again. As he leaned forward, his eyes grew wide and his voice neared a whisper. "I have to tell you a secret. I might have looked away for a moment." He straightened and shrugged. "It is possible that I might even have passed out, amazed and overwhelmed at what I was about to witness. Yet I felt the passing of only a moment, so I could not have been out very long.
“Whatever the case, when I first actually saw him, my friends, plainly and with my waking mind, he was upright and just about to begin unfolding. He was standing on a point, but still curled up tight in a fetal position, if you can see that picture in your mind."
Juan-Carlos stepped back so the men could see him behind the bar. He raised his right foot from the floor and set it as daintily as he could atop his left, then drew his chubby arms up close to his body as if about to squeeze through a passage that was too narrow by half. "He was like this, but also crouching, his chest against his thighs and his knees tight up under his chin."
The men leaned over the bar to look.
Juan-Carlos held the position for only a moment before he stumbled and grasped the edge of the bar with one hand, then surfaced again. "It was as if he had been packed away in an egg, but vertically, with the smaller end of the egg on the ground. His left foot was still part of the plain, and his right was affixed on top of the left.
“My friends, he was so perfectly balanced that, at first, I held my breath. I even clamped one hand over my mouth and tilted my head forward slightly to be sure my breath would go through my nose and directly toward the ground. I was certain the slightest breeze from a passing dove or even my breathing in his direction, even from that distance, might have been enough to topple him."
He glanced about the cantina and wiped a spot on the bar. "And of course, that’s where the story truly begins."
Some of the men nodded, and they all finished their drinks.
He refilled their glasses and put the bottle on the bar within easy reach of them. Then, having had ample time to think and recall events from so long ago and from so deep within his mind, he continued in a conspiratorial whisper. "From that point the man of mud unfolded very slowly. His head came up first, his chin detaching from his chest poco a poco, little puffs of dust and bits of debris falling down past his belly to his feet."
He leaned forward. "I for one was very glad he was being so patient. In the first place, I was witnessing nothing short of a miracle, so I wanted it to last as long as possible. And in the second place, if you’ve ever dropped an adobe brick that was not fully cured—Well, you can imagine what might have happened if he had been in too great a hurry. I do not even want to think of how his head would look rolling about on that cracked, puckered plain, eh?"
His eyes twinkling a bit and a slight smile curling his lip, Juan-Carlos paused to leave a space for laughter, but his listeners did not oblige him.
He passed a hand in front of his eyes. "The mud man’s eyes remained closed. Perhaps they were sealed or maybe even filled with mud. But he began prying his chin from his knees and moving his neck up and back. When his neck was mostly straight—Oh, it was a sight to see! He seemed almost to rise out of the very ground itself!"
He hurriedly crossed himself and a couple of the other men did likewise, though they were unsure why.
"The next movement was almost imperceptible at first. First he began the very slow process of prying his chest from his thighs, again with little puffs of dust and bits of debris rolling down over his belly to the ground.
“Bits of grass and very small twigs protruded from him here and there, but I was sure he would remove those later. Very carefully of course. His hips began to unfold too as part of the process, and between his hips and his thighs one wrinkle at a time grew shorter and less deep and then disappeared.
“When he had accomplished that with the same indescribably slow, almost imperceptible motion, he unfolded his arms, which had been crossed over his chest in the same way they arrange the arms of a man in a coffin for who knows how long, perhaps millennia." Here, he paused and crossed himself again.
A few of his listeners again mimicked the motion.
"When he had moved his arms away from his chest but they were still in front of him like this—" He held his forearms vertically a few inches in front of his chest, his hands against his shoulders. "He carefully flexed his elbows, both at the same time. His hands peeled away from his shoulders, and his biceps dusted away from forearms. As before, minuscule dust clouds puffed and small bits of debris flaked loose and fell away.
“For a moment I thought his lower arm and hand on each side might break off and drop to the ground. I believe I said aloud, ‘No! Flex one at a time so if you lose one, you will still have the other!’
“But I must have only thought it because he made no notice that he heard me at all, nor did the others who were there. Besides, they were considerably older than I and would have cuffed my ears had I said something out of line." He grinned.
"Well, the man of mud continued to flex his elbows until all the little wrinkles were smoothed out. Then he rotated his wrists and shoulders, still very slowly, almost as if testing them."
Juan-Carlos held up one hand and donned a serious look. "Understand now, I am rushing through the telling, for up to this point his rebirth, if that is what it was, had taken well over two hours. If he had straightened himself in the time it takes me to tell the tale, he would have shattered himself, fingers, hands, arms, toes, feet and legs akimbo and scattered all across the ground." He paused, this time to let the image sink in rather than for laughter.
The listeners laughed quietly, nervously, but paid rapt attention born of drink, naïveté and a tolerance for tall tales.
Juan-Carlos polished the spot on the bar and shrugged. "Even when he had straightened and worked the kinks out of his head and neck and torso and arms and hands and fingers, his right leg was still crossed tightly over his left. And his right foot was twisted back to the right and still firmly planted atop his left foot. And do you know, through all the motions he had accomplished, he had never lost even the smallest bit of his balance.
“Of course, having watched the unfolding process all along, we were all waiting for him to continue. Some of the men were taking bets on whether he would crumple or succeed. That is when I noticed the priest had come out from the village as well. Someone must have sent word back to him about the miracle. Anyway, he frowned at those who were taking bets. They continued to do so, but they were more quiet and pious about it, vowing to give part of the proceeds to the church.
"They bet on everything. For example, whether he would peeled his right leg off his left leg before freeing his left foot, or whether he would free his left foot first. Whether he would work the kinks out of the toes before releasing his right leg from the ankle up, and so on.
“But none of those things happened, and I suppose all of those who wagered got to keep their money, minus the part they had vowed to the church, of course." He crossed himself, as did a few at the bar.
"Instead, his feet and legs remained where they were for the time being." Juan-Carlos paused and leaned forward. "But his eyes opened, my friends! And they were as much a contradiction as the living, breathing man of mud himself!
“They were the same dull, flat, adobe brown as the rest of him, but also they were the deepest, saddest eyes I have ever seen. They were devoid of hope and life and even dreams or self-awareness, yet they also contained the whole universe!" He glanced around the cantina, then leaned forward again and tapped himself lightly on the chest. "I looked into those eyes, my friends. And do you know what I saw? Far, far in the back I saw stars!"
Three of the men gasped in unison, "Stars?"
Juan-Carlos straightened, wiped the imaginary spot on the bar and nodded. "Some were closer and brighter, and some were more distant, but they were yellow and white and sparkling red and blue. And none of them were planets masquerading as stars because they were all twinkling. There must have been thousands of them, even millions.
“But what is odd, even with me peering into his eyes from only a short distance away and with all the others gathered around, he took no notice of us. He was too empty, too sad. Or perhaps too focused on a purpose. I believe his bones ached with a thousand years of loneliness and waiting." He sighed and shook his head.
"And the paradox continues. He also was full of wonder, like any creature in brand new surroundings might be. Or perhaps when revisiting a place he has not seen for a thousand years. He seemed to take note of even the smallest nuances. I have often wondered whether he was abandoned."
One of the vaqueros, John Jackson Sterling, un Tejano who had crossed the Rio Grande several years earlier, leaned forward over the bar. "By who? I mean, who y’think might’a done that to ’im?"
Juan-Carlos straightened, shook his head and wiped the bar with the rag. "Oh, I do not know. Some of us thought he was abandoned, but not by parents. Perhaps by his village or his country. Or even by his world if it was different than ours." He shrugged. "And others thought perhaps he was an angel and that maybe—"
"An angel?" It was Charlie, the visitor from the bus.
John Jackson Sterling spoke again. "Did he have some’a them wings?"
He looked at Charlie first. "Sí sí, un angel." Then he shifted his gaze to the Tejano vaquero. "Pero no, there were no wings." Juan-Carlos tapped his index finger on his lips for a moment and rolled his eyes to look up at the ceiling. Then he shook his head. "No, no wings. Those who thought he might be an angel thought perhaps he had done something wrong and that he had been cast into the mud by other angels.
“Or perhaps recast from the mud. Surely either one would be the opposite of what an angel was used to." He quickly crossed himself, as did nearly everyone else at the bar. "Not that we know what angels are used to and not that we should, but the ones we have seen seem airy and light no matter their size. So if he had been an angel, surely being recast in old, heavy, stiff, dried mud would be at least an inconvenience."
Charlie grinned. "What happened next?"
Javier’s eyes were dull with tequila. "Sí, tell us wha’ happen’ nex’."
Juan-Carlos leaned forward, his elbows on the bar, and spoke quietly. "Well, of course, he unfolded his right leg from his left, peeling one away from the other as if they had been compressed there for a very long time. And he peeled his right foot away from his left at almost the same time. Then he flexed his ankles and toes, slowly, of course, over a half-hour or so."
The bartender slung his rag over his shoulder and set his hands on the bar, palms inward, then moved them apart. "Then he set his feet about shoulder-width apart, like that, and stretched his arms toward the heavens. He rolled his neck in every direction, his head lolling almost to his shoulders." With two fingers Juan-Carlos again pointed at his own eyes.
"And then he looked directly at us. We all fell silent with anticipation, as you might imagine. Waiting, anxious and even a little afraid."
The men silenced even their breathing and leaned forward so they would miss nothing.
A gleam in his eye, the bartender took his rag from his shoulder and wiped the bar again. His voice grew more somber. "And then do you know what he said?"
Every man listening shook his head and complete silence reigned.
Juan-Carlos pushed back from the bar, spread his arms wide and grinned broadly. "He said, ‘Hey, anybody know where a man can get a bath and a drink?’"
The men erupted into laughter, punctuated by the mouth of the tequila bottles clinking on the lips of the glasses and the sound of coins hitting the bar. Even Charlie, the casual visitor from the bus, laughed, wanting to feel included. Although a chill had lodged itself in his spine. He was not quite sure what the others had found so humorous.
Still laughing, Juan-Carlos waved his bar towel back and forth to get their attention. "No no no, my friends. I only wanted to break the tension a little."
A sober look came over his face again and he leaned forward. "No. As I said, the man of mud seemed to realize finally that we were there. He looked directly at us. He raised his arms slowly, although not as slowly as he had moved before, as if he were going to welcome us all into an embrace.
“For a long moment, he seemed much larger than he had seemed before, as if he could easily have gathered all of us into that one embrace. And he assumed a pose that made me think he might well unfold his wings at any moment and flex them, but that did not happen. And then—without saying a word that we could hear but saying many words that we could feel in our bones—he told us politely but firmly to return to the village. When his lips finally moved, he spoke in a mysterious language that I sensed was ancient. I understood the sounds of the words, but not the words themselves.
“The priest paled, took a step backward and fell to his knees, making a quiet thump on the ground. His gaze never left the man of mud as he offered his translation. 'One wrongly called accursed will come. We must prepare the way.' Those were the priest’s exact words."
Juan-Carlos shrugged and wiped at the imaginary spot with his bar towel. "‘One wrongly called accursed will come. We must prepare the way.’ I have never forgotten them, but they seem not quite right. I have given them much thought over all these years."
José drained his beer and slipped from his barstool, his eyes dark and locked on Juan-Carlos. "Enough stories for me. This was a good one, Storyteller. Even such a fanciful story is almost believable when told with such flair."
Juan-Carlos started to ask José whether he wanted another beer, but the look in the man’s eyes silenced him. He nodded. "I will see you tomorrow, José, or in days to come. Perhaps then we can—"
John Jackson Sterling said, "One called a cursed what? What was he talkin' about? An' what'd ya'll do?"
Juan-Carlos shook off the thought of José’s eyes and looked at John Jackson Sterling as if he had just walked in and sat down. "What? I do not know. And of course, we all did as the man of mud said to do. In fact, I ran all the way back to the village. I forgot there were even wagons there."
He looked at each of the other men in turn. "But do you know, before I was halfway back to the village a great trembling passed beneath me in the ground." He shrugged. "I think the earth was shuddering as she finally released the newborn man of mud.
“And all of a sudden I grew warm from my head to my feet. But it was not an oppressive heat such as we already had endured. It was a good warmth, like the sun on a cool day. Then I realized it was a series of waves of warmth, washing through me from my head to my feet, over and over again. That was the first time I was ever actually aware of my thoughts and memories, as if they were physical parts of me.
“Beneath the waves of warmth the thoughts and memories were wrinkling and segmenting down out my brain. I began to wonder what I was doing out there on the edge of the mud flat. I felt happy and light, kind of released, but also heavy and trapped. And for a long moment I could not move. Something in my bones told me to go home, but something else made me want to turn around." He sighed.
"I did turn around. There in the distance, the blurred figure of a man was moving away alone across the plain, north and east, toward the mountains. But I felt like I was watching something very private, so I turned away. With the warmth and happiness washing through me, and having forgotten why I was so far from home, I returned to my home. I would settle in beside my tired old dog and wait with him until he slipped into the next world."
He shrugged again and cast a furtive glance toward the empty table where the old man and his witch usually sat, and his voice grew quiet. "Of course, I cannot say what anyone else might have seen or not seem, and I am certainly no priest so I cannot vouch for miracles. But I will tell you this. When I got to my house, my old dog was running in the yard, chasing the chickens as if he were a young pup."
Charlie said, "Excuse me, Juan-Carlos. Sir, you said your memories of that day were washed away, so I have to ask. How were you able to remember what happened and relate it in this story?"
"Ahh, my new friend, you have a good ear for detail. You are right, of course. Most of my memories of that day drained right out through my feet." He questioned the other men with his eyes and saw that they were interested too.
He shrugged. "I suspect that is what happens, eventually, with all imperfect memories, but I never forgot the one perfect memory of that day. The words the man of mud uttered in that amazing ancient language that seemed so familiar to me. Also, perhaps because it was so closely tied to that perfect memory, I never forgot the priest’s translation: 'One wrongly called accursed will come. We must prepare the way.'
“Even back then, I knew in my seven year old bones something was not quite right, and I kept right on knowing it over all these years." He shrugged. "That one perfect memory and the priest’s translation, combined with my determination to understand what the mud man really meant to convey, eventually dredged up all the other memories as well. And those are the story you've heard today."
He glanced down the bar. "A final drink, my friends? This one is on the house."
All of the men nodded, and he obliged them.
Charlie looked at him. "So did you ever figure it out? Did you ever come to understand what the man of mud truly meant to convey?"
Juan-Carlos looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. "Indeed. As is all too often the case, the priest’s translation was flawed in one word only. The man of mud did not say someone had been called accursed. He spoke of one wrongly named Accursed. That is, one who was wrongly given the name Accursed. So there is quite a difference in that one word."
The local men uttered an audible sigh and shook their heads in wonder.
Charlie observed their reaction, but he kept his questions to himself.
* * *
Juan-Carlos had failed to mention to his audience that this was the first time he had conveyed the whole story about the man of mud. As he had told his audience, one perfect memory had not been washed away by the waves of warmth that day. As his customers downed their drinks and drifted one by one away from the bar and out the door of the cantina, he smiled. The memory that had been lodged firmly in his mind right up until earlier this very day was considerably different.
Other than the beautiful, odd words in the ancient language and the priest’s flawed translation, for all these years he had been able to remember only one frame of the scenario. The moment little seven year old Juan-Carlos Salazár had imagined the slightest movement from the boulder and the branch that he thought resembled a man. He had fled without shame and spent the rest of the day beneath the porch of his parents’ home wondering what he might have seen if he had remained.
He also had felt an odd association with some others in the village, most notably the old man and his witch. But they would uphold that version of the story—the version in which he fled immediately—and ridicule him whenever he dared mention such fantastic foolishness.
On his way to the cantina, like any good storyteller would do, Juan-Carlos had decided to tell the version that was lodged in his heart. And as he had told it, the whole story had flooded forth. He wiped at the bar.
Perhaps a man of mud who is preparing the way for another has the ability to dull memories for a time. And perhaps he can even instill memories of a day spent beneath a porch instead of in a mud flat if his reasons are strong enough.
He smiled again. For he knew the one who had been named Accursed. Tonight, this telling of the story had been his part of preparing the way. He smiled again.
The man of mud did his job well.
* * * * * * *
About the Persona
Gervasio Arrancado was born in a small shack in Mexico and raised in the orphanage at Agua Idelfonso, several kilometers, give or take a few, from the fictional fishing village of Agua Rocosa.
He is fortunate to have made the acquaintance of Augustus McCrae, Hub and Garth McCann, El Mariachi, Forest Gump, The Bride (Black Mamba), Agents J and K, and several other notables. To this day he lives at that place on the horizon where reality just folds into imagination.
About the Author
Harvey Stanbrough was born in New Mexico, seasoned in Texas and baked in Arizona. For a time, he wrote under five personas and several pseudonyms, but he takes a pill for that now and writes only under his own name. Mostly.
Harvey is an award-winning writer who follows Heinlein is Rules avidly. He has written and published over 75 novels, 9 novellas, and over 230 short stories. He has also written 16 nonfiction books on writing. and he is compiled and published 30 collections of short fiction and 5 critically acclaimed poetry collections.
To see his other works, please visit HarveyStanbrough.com.
For his best advice on writing, see his Daily Journal at HEStanbrough.com.