by David Boop
“Your brother fight with you?” asked that man at the bar.
“His last battle,” Shlomo gritted out.
“You’re a Jew boy who fought for the damn Yankees,” the man at the bar spat out, his southern accent becoming more pronounced.
Shlomo’s eyes hardened as he smiled. “Yes, mister, I did fight for the damn Yankees. I started at Gettysburg, and there I was when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. And I voted for Father Abraham in between.”
“You better hope you’re better with a gun than you are picking a savior, you Jew son of a bitch,” the man said, shifting his hip so his jacket fell away exposing his pistol on his hip.
Shlomo just smiled and, reaching over the bar grabbed a shot glass and bottle, poured himself a drink. “You know, mister, it is funny you should mention that.” Shlomo took his shot of whiskey and coughed. “Oy! That is a good shot of whiskey. But we were talking about guns. You see in Poland, indeed in all of Europe, Jews aren’t allowed to have guns. At least not in the parts I was in. But in America, Jews can have guns.” Shlomo drew his gun so quickly, it appeared as by magic.
The man at the end of the bar who had barely twitched his shoulder was already looking down the barrel of Shlomo’s gun. He froze, as did everyone else in the saloon. “Just to repeat, in Europe, Jews can’t have guns,” and with a loud slap the gun was back in his holster. The large southerner’s eyes gaped at the seemingly impossible speed. “But in America, everyone can have a gun.” And in a flash Shlomo’s gun was back in his hand pointing in the general direction of the southerner who even with his head start only managed to have his hand on his gun’s grip. “Even Jews,” Shlomo finished in a voice that was no longer even remotely friendly. “So mister,” Shlomo said putting his pistol back in its holster with exquisite sloth, “what you have to decide is, are we still having a discussion about guns and saviors, or is this something else?”
Slowly the southerner moved his hand away from his holster, and the room breathed a sigh of relief. “Where’d you learn to draw that fast,” he finally asked.
“Just something I picked up after the Army.”
One of the men at the table shouted out, “James, we should hire him to help out.” More men shouted in agreement.
Shlomo looked at the James they spoke to, and took his second drink. “Help out with what, Mr. James?”
“We have a problem with a mine that’s filled with gold.”
“That sounds like a problem I would like to have. I worked in a silver mine, but never a gold mine. How bad can it be?”
“It would be great if not for the band of blood thirsty redskins that have taken it over. All mining has stopped, and they killed ten men this past month. The mining company hired us to deal with it, but we can’t get at them in the mountains. We’d use artillery, but the mining company won’t let us do that. They don’t want the mine damaged.” James spat.
Shlomo thought about it and smiled. “Mister, this just may be your lucky day. I don’t think a fellow with a quick draw will be all that very useful in a battle. I was in a lot of them and, in most, quick wasn’t as useful as keeping your head down and shooting at a compass point, if you know what I mean.” About half the men in the room laughed in memory. “But it just so happens that I have an…ability—recently discovered I might add—that could be exactly what you need.”
James looked at Shlomo suspiciously. “What sort of…ability?”
“Tell me, Mr. James. Have you ever heard of a golem?
Part 2
The Golem
Shlomo, James Beaumont, and three of his men walked back to Cletus’s stable. Obviously, the men were “escorting” Shlomo, but they tried to be diplomatic about it. As they approached, Cletus brushed Rivka by the barn door.
“Cletus,” said James, “could we have a little privacy?” He said it like a request, but it was clearly an order.
Cletus looked suspicious. “You not going to hurt Mr. Slow-Mo? He looks funny and speaks funny…”
“Mr. Cletus, I’m standing right here,” protested Shlomo.
“…but he’s good people,” Cletus finished as if Shlomo had not spoken.
“That is kind of you to say, Mr. Cletus,” Shlomo said. “But I’ll be fine. Mr. James and me have a business arrangement to discuss.”
“Well, I guess I’ll be in the yard if you all need me. Come on, Rivka.” Cletus led the mule to the far end of the yard—Shlomo knew his mule well enough to jump nimbly out of the way as she stomped at his foot as she went past.
“Show me what you can do, Jew boy.”
Shlomo’s hand flew to his gun but just froze there waiting.
James grumbled but finally added, “Mr. Jew boy.”
Shlomo considered that enough, shrugged, and went to his wagon. “Gentlemen, if you could help me clear off the bags and get my coffin off the wagon, I’d appreciate it. Anywhere on the ground will do.” The hired guns looked to James who nodded. They helped Shlomo clear off the wagon in short order. Shlomo went to open the coffin when James held up his hand.
“What’s in there, Mr. Jew boy?”
“Dirt,” answered Shlomo.
“Dirt?”
“Dirt,” confirmed Shlomo.
“Just dirt?” James asked again sounding very confused.
Shlomo opened the coffin to reveal a coffin filled with light, dry, brown soil. “Not just dirt, Mr. James. It’s the dirt from my brother’s grave.”
“You’ve been carting the dirt from your brother’s grave from back East to all the way over the west?” James furrowed his brow, seemingly unable to grasp what Shlomo had said.
“Well, to be honest, not over the entire west. I don’t know if you know this mister, but the US of A is a very big country. I don’t know if it’s as big as Russia, but it’s pretty big.”
James used his fingers to squeeze his eyes shut as he said his next words as if in near pain. “I don’t care for your itinerary, Mr. Jew boy. Why the hell have you been carting this around?”
Shlomo looked at the men and smiled. Then he slapped his hands together and rubbed them briskly, then he raised them on either side of the coffin and began to speak. “Baruch atah adonie…” His hands started to glow.
Meanwhile, at the Knuckle Nugget Mine
Far off in the Knuckle Nugget gold mine, an Indian known only as Line Walker to the small group that he had protected, woke from his soundless and dreamless sleep with a scream.
When his followers asked him what was wrong he responded with, “There is still magic in this world.” And then he promptly passed out again.
* * *
Back in the livery stable, Shlomo slumped to the ground in front of a mass of dirt shaped roughly like a man—in that it had something like legs, head, arms, torso—but really, it was just a lump of dirt formed to the barest, brutish shape of a man. The men informed him in colorful words that they’d had seen snowmen with far more definition.
“What the hell is that?” demanded James.
“That,” a sweat-drenched and panting Shlomo explained, “is a golem.”
“What can it do?” James tipped his hat back and looked up at the giant mound of human-shaped earth.
“Golem,” Shlomo instructed, pointing at the three henchmen, “Don’t hurt them, but take their guns.”
“Screw you, Jew boy,” the man closest to Shlomo said as he drew his gun and fired directly at Shlomo, who stood no more than four feet away. The golem moved his hand to block the bullet with incredible speed for a creature made of dirt. The gunman gulped loudly as the golem reached for him. That caused the other two to draw their guns and all three blasted the golem, who did not seem to care. With one swipe of his earthen arm, three guns were knocked from three hands. As the men screamed in pain and danced around blowing on their hands or putting them under their armpits, none made a move to stop the golem as he slowly bent over to gather up the guns and bring them to Shlomo. He dropped them at his master’s feet.
“And he can do
the same to the redskins?” asked a smiling James.
“Absolutely,” assured Shlomo. “But, I should warn you there will be conditions.”
“What sort of conditions?”
“First of all, he can’t kill.”
“Why the hell not?” James sounded like a man who just found out Christmas was cancelled.
“Well, I shouldn’t say ‘can’t.’ I’m sure he could kill, but I won’t order him to do it. No way, mister. No how!”
“Again, I ask, why the hell not?”
“Because the legends of my ancestor Rabbi Loeb make it very clear that once a golem learns to kill, it will never stop.”
“What the hell do you care if he won’t kill you?” asked the earlier gunman, genuinely confused.
“Maybe he would kill me, mister. I sure as hell don’t want to find out. No killing. That’s final.”
“Well, how is that going to help us?”
“Mr. James, you saw what he can do. He’ll get those Indians out of the mine no problem. Knock ’em out for you, if that’s what you want.”
James rubbed his jaw in thought. “That’ll do,” he said. “You stack em up, and we’ll just kill them after.”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. James. The golem can’t be involved in an action that will result in death. Isn’t the Army rounding them up anyway? Let them have the Indians.”
“The Army will just leave them to starve on a reservation. It’d be kinder just to kill them and be done with it.” James seemed to fervently believe this. His men, still cradling their hands, managed to nod in agreement.
“I’m sure you’re right, Mr. James. But nonetheless, if you want my golem you have to promise to bring them to the fort. Let the Army have them. What do you care? They will be out of the mine, after all.”
James thought some more, smiled and said, “What the hell, Mr. Jones? The redskins can starve for all I care so long as we get them out of the mine. What other conditions you got?”
“I would like a thousand dollars in gold.” Shlomo grinned knowingly. He had roped them in, now came the haggling, something he also excelled in. They settled on six hundred, a hundred more than he expected.
* * *
Twenty-four hours later, a hung-over Shlomo and James, along with the fifteen men in his gang, waited behind a low hill from the entrance to the Knuckle Nugget mine. Well, fourteen now. One man had poked his head above the slight rise and was rewarded with an arrow through his eye.
“Goddamn, you redskin sons of bitches!” James challenged.
Shlomo put a hand on James’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Mr. James. That will be the last man to die today.”
The dusty Jew went to the coffin and, clapping his hands together once more, began his blessing. When he was done, the golem rose as Shlomo fell to his knees. After a moment, he ordered his golem to stand on the rise and moved behind it. As he did so the golem was hit with many bullets and two more arrows, both of which stuck in his body.
“Listen if you would, you Indian people,” Shlomo warned them. “If you fight my golem, he may not kill you, but he will beat the tar out of you and don’t think that he wouldn’t. He will. I’ll be honest, he won’t kill you, but you will still lose. You will still be thrown out of the mine, and you will be bloody and bruised when you go to that Army fort. I suspect the Army fort is not a nice place, but will it be nicer if you go there all broken and battered?”
In response, many more bullets bore into the golem with little effect, but one arrow flew between the armpit of the golem, a space barely bigger than the arrowhead itself and through the brim of Shlomo’s old hat. “Oy Gevalt!” Shlomo shouted and scurried back over rise.
“So that’s how Jew boys say ‘holy shit,’ huh?” James and his men hunkered down as not to repeat Shlomo’s mistake.
Shlomo was about to give a detailed explanation of the subtle meanings of that most versatile of phrases, but decided then was not the time. Instead, he called to the golem. “Golem, go to the mine and knock out anyone who is fighting. Don’t kill them!”
The golem went over the rise, and Shlomo waited a moment, sighed, drew his pistol, and followed. Luckily, no one took any shots at the scrawny Jew in the funny hat with the mountain of earth rumbling toward the mouth of the cave. The Indians had barricaded themselves behind three built-up areas of rock and dirt. Shlomo recognized that someone here had fought in the Civil War and not just on horseback. Shlomo dropped behind a pile of rocks barely big enough to hide behind, then poked his head above the rocks to watch the “battle” unfold.
The golem went to the first line of works ignoring every bullet and arrow. Shlomo only saw the upper body of the golem behind the barricade. Every couple of yards, he would hear a grunt, or a crack or a brief scream as the golem swept through the Indians’ defenses.
After five were knocked out, the last two abandoned the line and ran for the second defensive line. One of them was a beautiful Indian woman who caused Shlomo’s mouth go to dry. He was about to command the golem not to hurt her when several bullets ricocheted off rocks around her as she fled. James’s gang quickly popped up and were taking pot shots like some weird carnival game. In a flash, Shlomo drew and fired his own gun above their heads yelling, “I said, NO KILLING!”
The men ducked back down and did not reappear. By the time Shlomo returned to the Battle of the Knuckle Nugget Mine, the golem had cleared most of the second line. The distracting Indian woman ran for the cave entrance.
“Golem,” Shlomo shouted, “drag the knocked-out Indians to a pile near the cave entrance.”
The golem did as instructed. Shlomo took the opportunity of a lull in the action to run to the side of the cave entrance and wait with his drawn pistol. Sure enough, the woman poked her head out and threw a stick of dynamite at the golem as he was walking away from the pile of Indians to get more. It landed at his feet. Shlomo shot above her, forcing her back into the cave.
The dynamite blew the golem’s lower body clean off. Groans wafted from James’s gang on the rise of the hill, while faint cheers and war whoops came from the cave. But after a moment, total silence fell over the battlefield as the remains of the golem vibrated and wind whooshed from all directions. As the wind increased, all the blown-up bits were blown back toward the golem’s upper half. Faster the wind swirled, like an unnatural dust devil, and faster the pieces gathered. As the last of the wind died down, it revealed the once-more-intact golem. Without a moment’s pause, the golem picked up where it’d left off, dragging the last two unconscious Indians to the cave entrance, as directed. Task finished, the golem waited for its next command.
Shlomo shouted into the cave. “Listen to me, Indian persons. You can’t win. Please don’t make me send him in after you. You surrender and you leave. Good at my word, no one has died yet. Don’t make me go back on my word.”
“We don’t trust the word of white people,” said a strong, angry and yet very feminine voice.
“What a coincidence. Neither do I. But you will have to trust me.” Shlomo shrugged. “I’m the one with a golem.”
After some heated words, a scraggle of women, children and elderly left the cave, about fifty in all.
“We’ll wait for your warriors to wake up and then you must be on your way to the Army fort,” Shlomo confirmed.
“This is our land,” the very pretty, but very angry, Apache warrior woman called out while helping one of the oldest men Shlomo had ever seen keep to his feet. “Your promises are the same as every white man: lies.” Shlomo was again impressed both at her beauty and her fury. He was less impressed that all the fury was directed at him.
“You’re right about the lies, but this ain’t your land anymore.” James arrived on scene, producing a burning stick of dynamite for which he made to throw at the pile of knocked-out Indians.
“NO!” Shlomo grabbed at James’s arm causing him to drop the dynamite at their feet. Both looked down and then at each other before scrambling up the hill as fast as they could. James
kicked Shlomo, forcing him to tumble back toward the nearly finished wick. As he scurried for his life, Shlomo watched as more sticks of dynamite passed over his head to fall among the helpless Indians. “Golem, protect the Indians!” The first stick of dynamite exploded still too close to Shlomo. As the bomb made him deaf and the debris assaulted him, the world spun around him in a sickening way.
Shlomo lay in the dirt, semiconscious, watching the events unfold but unable to do anything about them.
The golem ran at James’s gang. The men blasted at the golem with everything they had to no avail. The men were tossed around like ragdolls. Shlomo saw bones protruding out from skin, and “heard” wordless screams. The second set of dynamite went off, reducing the hapless Indian braves to so much meat. Pieces of blood and gore hit the golem, and it froze for a second.
Shlomo knew this moment. The golem had failed in its task and would now seek vengeance.
When it moved again, it grabbed the heads of the hired guns between its massive hands and squeezed. Their skulls popped like shattering crockery.
James screamed for his men to retreat, but not before grabbing Shlomo by the shoulders and dragging him away. The Indians fled back into the cave. Almost sullenly, the golem stood at the cave entrance protecting the Indians from the outside world.
Shlomo’s last thought before succumbing to the dark was that it was a pity. Once an hour had passed, it would crumble back into a pile of dirt.
“Who’s going to protect me?”
Part 3
Shlomo’s Hanging
Shlomo woke up in a jail cell, his ears still ringing. He slowly got up and brought his hands to his aching head. Out loud, he said, “Lord, if you want I should be dead for all the bad choices I have made in my life, could you not find a quicker way?”
Then a rope was slung over his neck and tightened. “On the other hand, Lord don’t listen to a schnook like me. We can take our time.” He followed the length of it, all twelve feet, to find James Beaumont waiting outside his cell, a huge grin on his ugly face.
