Solomon Creed. Simon Toyne

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СКАЧАТЬ visited our town before, Mr Creed?’ Morgan asked.

      Solomon shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

      ‘You sure about that?’

      ‘No.’ He glanced over at Morgan. ‘Why?’

      ‘Because of that cross you’re wearing round your neck for one thing. Any idea how you came by it?’

      Solomon looked down and noticed the cross for the first time, a misshapen thing hanging round his neck from a length of leather. He took it in his hand and felt the weight of it. ‘I don’t recognize it,’ he said, turning it slowly, hoping his scrutiny might shake a memory loose. It was roughly made from old horseshoe nails welded together and twisted at the bottom so the points stuck out at the base. There was a balance and symmetry to it, as though whoever made it had been trying to disguise the precision of its manufacture by constructing it from scrap metal and leaving the finish rough. ‘Why does this make you think I’ve been here before?’

      ‘Because it’s a replica of the cross standing on the altar of our church. You’re also walking around with a copy of the town’s history in your pocket that appears to have been given to you by someone local.’

       Someone local. Someone who might know him and tell him who he was.

      ‘May I see it?’ Solomon asked.

      Morgan studied him like a poker player trying to figure out what kind of hand he was holding, and Solomon felt anger simmering up inside him at his powerlessness. His body started to tense, as if it wanted to spring forward and grab the book from Morgan’s hand. But he knew he was too far away and the nylon bindings were still strapped tight across his legs; he would never be fast enough, and even if he was Gloria would react and stick him again with whatever she had knocked him out with the first time – propofol most likely, considering how quickly he had recovered from it –

      … Propofol … how did he know this stuff?

      How did all this information come to him so easily and yet he could remember nothing of himself?

       I have an ‘I’ burnt into my skin and yet I have no idea who ‘I’ am.

      He breathed, deep and slow.

      Answers. That was what he craved, more even than an outlet for his anger. Answers would soothe his rage and bring some order to the chaos swirling inside him. Answers he was sure must be contained in the book Morgan held in his hand.

      Morgan glanced down at it, deciding whether to hand it over or not. He chose not to. He held it up instead and turned it round for Solomon to see. It was opened at a dedication page, something designed to encourage people to gift the book.

       A GIFT OF AMERICAN HISTORY

      – it said –

       TO – Solomon Creed

       FROM – James Coronado

      Pain flared in his arm when he read the name and again he felt what he had experienced back on the road, a feeling of duty towards this man he couldn’t remember but who apparently knew him well enough to have given him this book.

      ‘You have any idea how you might know Jim?’ Morgan asked.

      Jim not James – Morgan knew him, he was here. ‘I think I’m here because of him,’ Solomon replied, and felt a new emotion start to take shape inside him.

       The fire was here because of him

       But he was here because of James Coronado.

      Morgan tipped his head to one side. ‘How so?’

      Solomon stared out of the rear window at the distant fire. A yellow plane was flying low across the blue sky. It reached the eastern edge of the fire and a cloud of vivid red vapour spewed from its tail, streaking across the black smoke and sinking to the ground. It sputtered out before it had covered half of the fire line. Not enough. Not nearly enough. The fire was still coming, towards him, towards the town, towards everyone in it. A threat. A huge, burning threat. Destructive. Purifying. Just like he was. And there was his answer.

      ‘I think I’m here to save him,’ he said, turning back to Morgan, certain that this was right. ‘I’m here to save James Coronado.’

      A shadow flitted across Morgan’s face and he stared at Solomon with an expression that could not mean anything good. ‘James Coronado is dead,’ he said flatly, and looked up and out through the side window towards the mountains rising behind the town. ‘We buried him this morning.’

       II

       ‘What lies behind and

       what lies before are tiny matters

       compared to what lies within.’

       Ralph Waldo Emerson

       Extract from

       RICHES AND REDEMPTION

       THE MAKING OF A TOWN

       The published memoir of

       the Reverend Jack ‘King’ Cassidy,

       Founder and first citizen of the city of Redemption, Az.

       (b. DECEMBER 25, 1841, d. DECEMBER 24, 1927)

      IT IS, I SUPPOSE, a curse that befalls anyone who finds a great treasure that they must spend the remainder of their life recounting the details of how they came by it. I therefore hope, by setting it down here, that people might leave me alone, for I am tired of talking about it. I had a life of a different colour before riches painted it gold, and if I could return to that drab and unremarkable life I would. But you cannot undo what is done, and a bell once rung cannot be un-rung.

      The story of how I found my fortune and used it to build a church and the town I called Redemption is a brutal and tragic one, yet there is divinity in it also. For God steered my enterprise, as he does all things, and led me to my treasure. Not with a map or compass, but with a Bible and a cross.

      The Bible came to me first. It was delivered into my possession by the hand of a dying priest, a Father Damon O’Brien, who had fled his native country under a cloud of persecution. I made his acquaintance in Bannack, Montana, where he had been drawn, as had I, by the promise of gold, only to discover that it had all but run out. He was already close to death when our paths crossed. I was down on luck and short on money СКАЧАТЬ