I saw John Peck on an evening trail. John Peck almost didn’t recognize me as the last time I’d encountered him he’d been on a late train going north, perhaps twenty years ago.
John Peck had been a tall boy with aggressive eyebrows and a way of resting his palms on his chest when he spoke about the future, as if he was both proud and protective of it.
“John Peck,” I called. “John Peck?”
The man on the trail stopped and looked back. He was lower on the trail and so he seemed smaller now but when he approached he took on the height of John Peck and his eye brows emerged suddenly into the slanted sun like two thick paitn strikes. He said, “Juan? The last time I saw you we were on the train going north.”
Two weeks later I encountered Horatio Peck in the Plaza Mayor in Chihuahua. He was drinking a bottled coke and had a yellow parrot on his knee, which he stroked with a finger and to whom he gave bits of food from a bag. I recognized him from the angle of his long legs, as the bench he sat on, while comfortable for people of average height, forced his knees to bend at a sharp angle.
“Horatio Peck,” I said. “Horatio Peck?”
“Is that you, Juan? The last time I saw you, what was it, twenty some years ago, was on a train, the train going south.”
On the trail, two weeks ago, I’d asked after John Peck’s family, which eventually brought us to his brother, the subject of whom made his thick eye brows fluff like angered cat tails. He grew terse and said, “It was fine to see you but I must be off. It’s late on the trail, you know.”
On that bench in Chihuahua City, I brought up the subject of Horatio Peck’s father, his business, and his family, and then, finally John Peck. I told him (and as I did I felt a sudden regret) that I’d happen to see him on a trail in the north. At the mention of John Peck, Horatio Peck made a sudden motion and the parrot flew away in a spray of yellow feathers. With violent abruptness, Horatio Peck said, “Unfortunately, Juan, it’s late. It was fine to see you, but I must dash off.”
I watched him, stunned to silence. He crumpled the bag of parrot food and disappeared into the city.
Standing above the street on the balcony of my hotel room, I was struck by these two strange encounters, so apart but also so proximate and unlikely, their unlikeliness, distance, and proximity the very proof of a growing conclusion. The evening took on a prophetic density, as if the noise of traffic, birds, and human voices all accumulated into a singular and ongoing arrangement. How was it that after twenty years time, I’d seen and spoken to John and Horatio Peck within the span of a few weeks.
The feeling I had was specific and detailed and, ultimately, horrifying. In the city of our origins, I knew, the two brothers would meet and everything would end. This meeting and this end would come as a result of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and so everything I did (and I didn’t know what I would do) from this moment took on a dark illumination and every action I had taken in the past, every word I’d spoken, became as heavy as stones.
