Evan lay in the deepening dusk of evening and watched the valley of the Colorado River fill with purple shadows. The breeze moving the leaves of the walnut tree above him was still hot, but the peak of the day's heat was gone with the vanished sun. In the darkening sky, the nighthawks hunted.
The nighthawks were nimble birds, gray in color, with streamlined bodies and narrow tapered wings spanning nearly a foot. At least half a hundred of them hunted within his view along the river. They darted and dove, turning on a wing tip to catch the night insects rising up from the lush vegetation by the water. They called out with shrill shrieks as they chased their evening meal. They snagged the living morsels of meat from the aerial larder with quick mouths and swallowed them whole.
Many times as a boy, Evan had seen the amazingly agile nighthawks feed with their wild acrobatics. He had lain on the ground as he did now and watched them weave about through the evening skies in a feeding frenzy. The sight always brought pleasant memories.
After eating and a nap, he felt stronger. He was healing, with the bullet wound totally closed and only the bright pink scar remaining. The injured lung had regained part of its capacity to draw air. He knew it would never be totally whole. There had been too much damage done to it. He had seen men function with but one lung. He had one lung and half of the other, so eventually he should be able to perform nearly to his previous vigorous level.
Ben and John were within Evan's view sitting near the river's edge. They were talking, and he could hear their voices but could not make out the words. Brutus grazed on the riverbank near Ben. Evan smiled as the thought came to him that the horse acted more like a huge dog than a horse. Brutus never let Ben get far away. Frequently he would raise his head from grazing to check his master's location. If Ben moved beyond fifty yards or so, the horse would close the distance, and then again begin to graze, or stand surveying the land all around.
Evan saw Ben leave John and come toward him through the shadows. He squatted beside Evan.
"Evan, John said you're a surgeon. That so?"
"I was," Evan replied looking into the man's shattered face. In the gloom of night, the man's appearance was gruesome.
"He said you're the best that ever was. That you saved his leg when other surgeons wanted to amputate it."
"There's some truth to that." Evan was immediately afraid of where the conversation was heading. "I was lucky enough to help, but most healing is done by a person's own body."
"Did General Grant appoint you his personal surgeon?"
"He did do that."
"When he had hundreds of them to choose from?"
"Less than one hundred. We were always short of surgeons."
"Still, he chose you." Ben studied Evan, who had now risen to a sitting position. The man had a tense, wary expression, and Ben believed he was thinking of the oath he had made to never perform surgery again.
"I've got a favor to ask you, Evan. I want you to fix my face."
"I can't do that."
"Does that mean you can't or you won't?"
"Both."
"Both? Don't play games with me. Look at me, damn it. I'm a monster."
Evan shuddered, and Ben saw it. Still, Ben drove ahead. "I want to look human again. I think you can do that for me."
"I've cut the flesh of too many men. I can't stand to do it again." He held up his hands and examined them in the half-light. "Do you know how many arms and legs these have severed from men's bodies? Hundreds, Ben, hundreds. And dozens of men have died from the pain while I cut and sawed away on them. I just couldn't save them, no matter how hard I tried."
Evan's whole body was shaking now. "I'll never take a scalpel or saw in my hands again. Not for you, Ben. Not for anybody. I couldn't stand for another man to die with my knife cutting his flesh."
A heartrending moan escaped Evan, and he lowered his hands and clenched them together in his lap to stop their trembling. The thought of cutting into Ben's face made him almost vomit. Never, never would he agree to it. His growing revulsion to performing as a surgeon had begun months ago. The last days as a surgeon with the general's army had been horrible. Yet he was a soldier, and had continued to perform his duty and operate on the wounded. Then at the last, he had made the oath to himself, and with that done he had thought he would have some peace from the heartrending images of men dying under his hands. Instead, with every day that passed, he was repelled more and more from his profession.
"Don't give me a crybaby story," Ben said harshly, boring in. "Your actions didn't kill them. The goddamn war caused the wounds and the pain that killed them."
He caught Evan by the shoulder. "I'm asking you again, help me get shut of this face that scares even grown men."
"I'm not going to operate on you," Evan said, controlling his voice with a determined effort. He pulled loose from Ben's hands. "And anyway, several operations spaced over months would be required. One to do so much, then time to heal, then another operation, and time to heal, and so on. I would have to literally cut your face away from the whole side of your skull and start rebuilding and shaping from the beginning. The pain would kill you, or drive you mad."
Ben threw back his head and laughed, the sound ringing with bitterness and as hard and brittle as the clang of metal upon metal.
"You don't know what real pain is. The pain of being so ugly that it drives you mad." Or how near I came to killing myself, and only a wolf that was probably as mad as I was stopping me. "I can take the pain. Whatever amount there is of it."
"It would kill you."
"No, it won't. When we're ready to begin, dose me as best you can with laudanum and cut away."
"I'm not going to do it."
"I've saved eight thousand dollars. It's all yours for helping me to be a man again and not a sideshow freak."
"No amount of money will change my mind. I'm just not going to do it."
"You're a selfish bastard," Ben said with disgust.
"Goddamn you, Ben!" Evan growled, openly angry. "No man can't say that to me." He started to rise to his feet.
"Stay down there, Evan. I don't want you swinging at me. I can whip you with one hand, but I don't want to hit you." Ben knew he had gone too far in calling Evan a selfish bastard. The man had a right to be a surgeon, or not be one.
"I apologize, Evan. I was wrong in saying that to you."
Evan remained there halfway to his feet, staring through the gloom at Ben. Then he dropped back to the ground. "Maybe I am selfish, but that's the way it's going to be."
Without another word, Ben stood erect and went into the night.
* * *
For a long time Ben sat morosely on the riverbank and thought of his conversation with Evan. He had so desperately wished Evan would agree to work on his face, to take away some of the ugliness, no matter how little. But between the wish and the thing was a whole world. Life had a bitter taste.
Ben pulled away from his anger at Evan for refusing to help him. He focused on the night, the murmur of the water flowing past at his feet, and the chittering song of the insects of the darkness. The night creatures seemed especially tuneful. The half-moon was overhead and was casting a beautiful silver light down upon the water of the river. There was beauty around him and he could see it, hear it. He was the only ugly thing in all the night.
Ben couldn't continue to travel with the two men after the argument with Evan. His quick temper had robbed him of that pleasant association. He rose and whistled Brutus to him.
He collected his belongings and loaded his packhorse. Without a word to the other two men, he rode into the darkness, and onward through the night and into the next day. At noon, he finally halted in a clump of trees growing in a hidden place. He lay down to rest. Sleep came fitfully, and he dreamed with the image of his face in the water of the spring haunting him.