Ophelia's War

by Alison L. McLennan

  I walked over to him and set my sack on the counter. Lanterns, rifles, pots, pans, pickaxes, bridles, and ropes hung from the walls and ceiling. If you could imagine it, you could probably find it somewhere at the trading post. The cacophony of all those ticking clocks made my head pound. “How can you stand it?” I asked and put my hands to my ears.

  “What’s that?”

  “The ticking.”

  “Can’t hear them anymore. I wind them up every morning and none of them keeps the same time. Worthless junk! With the railroad, very important to have a clock that keeps time.” He scratched his head and looked at me. “You here to buy, sell, or trade?” His voice was a tired singsong with an occasional high note of irritation.

  I absentmindedly stroked a wooly buffalo hide. I wanted to rest my head on it, but I resisted. Frozen black buffalo eyes stared down at me from an enormous head mounted on the ceiling. I removed my hand from the hide and put it over my sack.

  “Do you have the means to assess and purchase jewels, sir? You see, these jewels may be extremely valuable. Maybe worth more than everything here combined.”

  He seemed calm, but I could hear his breath quicken and whistle. He was thin and bald with spectacles perched on the end of his nose. “Of course I have the means. But I’m no fool. I don’t keep large sums of money here. Truth be told, most of the jewels that people try to hock are fakes.”

  “Fakes?”

  “Nothing but colored glass. Let’s see what you got.”

  I reached inside my sack and pulled out Dolly and my Buck knife.

  “That’s a nice knife. Can’t give you anything for the doll though.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. I turned Dolly over and began to slice her open. I just couldn’t do it to her face. We’d been together too long. As I pulled out some stuffing and then the jewels from inside her, the man’s breath grew louder than the tick-tock of the clocks. His hands fumbled and he licked his lips as he picked up the rubies. He took out an eyepiece and stood by the window. Dust motes danced around him as he studied the rubies for what seemed like eternity.

  The stern glare of the buffalo head seemed to convey a warning. I tried to shake off the image of my head mounted next to his. Finally, the man came back from the window and placed the necklaces on the counter. “Sorry,” he said and shook his head. “Glass, just as I expected.”

  I stared at him. He looked into my eyes for a few seconds, then dropped his gaze to the jewels and fingered them gently. “Good imitations—but imitations.”

  All my hopes and dreams rose into my chest where my heart clenched around them. I was afraid they’d fly out and leave me forever if I dared to speak. “Are you certain?” I squeaked.

  “I’ve been doing this for thirty years and I’m sorry, miss, but those jewels are not real.”

  “Are they worth anything?”

  “Only if you try to pass them off as real. But I can’t help you with that. I’m out of that game. Too risky, especially around here. Town’s too small. Maybe in Gotham, Boston, one of those big eastern towns, you might have some luck passing them off, but it’s a dangerous game. You got to know what you’re doing.”

  I tried to think of what to do. I had let Uncle Luther take my maidenhood for a pile of glass. I couldn’t believe Mother had been carrying around fake jewels her whole life thinking they were real. Her ancestors must have been fooled too. Why would anyone bother to curse imitation jewels?

  “This necklace has been passed down in my mother’s family for generations. I just can’t fathom that they are fake rubies. Why, there’s even a curse attached to selling it!” I studied his face.

  “Who is your mother?” he asked.

  “What do you mean? My mother passed two years ago.”

  His breath whistled through his nose again. “Who was she before she passed? What was her maiden name? Who were her people? Did she come from a prominent family? Only a very wealthy and prominent lady would possess a necklace like this—if it was real, that is.” He added the last part so quickly it raised my suspicion.

  It occurred to me that I didn’t know my mother’s background. The only thing I knew about her family was that they had disowned her and she didn’t ever want to talk about them. And she and my father had both loved Joseph Smith, perhaps more than each other. “My mother was a Saint.”

  “Uh-huh. Whole Utah Territory is full of Saints, except us Gentiles of course. We’re the sinners.”

  My parents had followed Brigham Young’s orders and gone to the farthest, driest corner of Zion to grow cotton. He had told them it was their calling. I wondered if they would have lived if they disobeyed, if they’d gone somewhere sensible to live that wasn’t hot as hell and full of droughts, flash floods, and disease.

  “Tell you what. I’ll take these fakes off your hands and you can pick out anything here you want—got some real nice dresses and ladies boots in a trunk out back.”

  The hair on my neck stood up, and a warning bell rang in the back of my brain. I looked to the buffalo for guidance. “Sir, do I look like I just fell off the turnip cart?”

  He studied me. “Well, not just, but maybe a few days or a week ago.” He stared at my dirty dress.

  “Unless the jewels are real and you’re trying to cheat me.”

  “Missy, I’d like to spank your skinny behind for the way you just insulted me.”

  “I bet you would. But that’d cost a pretty penny. Or maybe you’d just trade me for a dress?”

  His demeanor changed and his mouth hung open as he tried to size me up under the buckskin coat and threadbare dress. “So, you’re a whore. Had a notion that might be the case. Must not be a very good one if you can’t make enough to feed and clothe yourself with all the desperate and lonely men around here.”

  I shoved the jewels and stuffing back inside Dolly and placed her in my sack. “I think I’ll get a second opinion. Maybe I’ll take them to someone who can see.” I smiled and nodded in reference to the thick spectacles hanging off the end of his nose. “Good day, sir.” I slammed the door behind me.

  Outside, the one-eyed troll turned to look at me from his roost in the shaker chair. He had stopped admiring his boots and sucked on a pipe. The smoke hung in the air, smelling of licorice and bringing back some vague memory I couldn’t place. I wanted to linger in the odor, but my anger set me in motion.

  “Which way to the river?” I asked.

  He pointed northwest. I nodded thanks. I needed to go to the river and clear my mind. Ever since I could remember, I’d been drawn to rivers. Although fording rivers on the long march to Zion had proved dangerous and slowed progress, the rivers had been our life blood. We’d travel miles from one to the next, always stopping to rest and revive. Even the cantankerous Virgin had seen me through many troubled times as I’d sat on her banks and watched the sunlight dancing on the water. If the river could keep flowing, then so could I.

  As I walked, questions about my mother, Uncle Luther, and Zeke plagued me. I didn’t know much about my parents’ histories. They were gone, and it was too late to ask. I wondered about Zeke. I prayed he was still alive and that I might find him one day. I wanted to believe Pearl loved me like her lost sister, and that she had set me loose without money only as a way to bring me back. Since I had no family, I could be her lost sister. I’d do anything or be anyone so I wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.

  I reached the river and stumbled upon what looked like a duck hunter’s blind. Sticks and thatch covered a dugout. Vestiges of human activity lay scattered on the ground—a tinderbox, straw matting, a huge pile of feathers, a fire ring. None of it looked too fresh, so I figured whoever had been there had hunted the place out and moved on. I threw my sack into the dugout and walked down to the river. The area seemed safely abandoned, so I sat on a rock and took off my shoes. Then I stood up and stripped off my dress.

  The cold water was dank and dark with mossy stones, much different from the Virgin’s sand and silt. I tried to clean my dress as bes
t I could before my feet and legs went numb. I stood barefoot on a rock, wrung out the dress and my bloomers, and then hung them on some branches to dry. Although the sun felt good on my skin, I crawled into the dugout just in case someone came along and spied me naked.

  I emptied the contents of my sack and sat on it so I wouldn’t get dirt on my bottom. The dugout provided adequate shelter. I thought maybe I could live there for a while until I figured out what to do. My stomach growled and I reached for a roll. My mouth watered as I held the bread to it. I took a bite, closed my eyes, and savored the buttery taste.

  While eating that delicious roll, I smelled licorice. Panic-stricken, I dropped the roll and scrambled for my gun. As I gripped the six-shooter on my lap, I stared at the abandoned bread covered with dirt. I placed my buckskin coat on my lap to hide both the gun and my nakedness. Then I listened for the troll with his licorice-smelling tobacco. But the rushing river drowned out most other sound. The smell passed and I began to wonder if I’d imagined it.

  Out of nowhere, the spurs of his black Wellingtons appeared right at nose level in the opening of the dugout. I cocked my gun and looked at Dolly. She lay beside me face down. Stuffing sprang from the gash on her back.

  The Wellingtons turned in a slow circle until the pointy toes were aimed right at me. I could not control my breath or the loud pounding of my heart. As he crouched, I heard his knees crack and his new leather boots squeak. His face appeared. He stared at me with his one good eye. This time he did not hold my gaze. He looked from me to Dolly and back. “I won’t hurt you. Just hand me that doll,” he said and reached for her.

  I raised the six-shooter from under the buckskin coat and pointed it at him. Dolly was all I had left. “Put your hands up and get out of here, or I’ll shoot you right in the face,” I said.

  Crouched on his haunches, he put his hands up. A look of shock, confusion, and mild amusement crossed his face. I wish he’d been afraid. But he wasn’t. It was too bad.

  “Now, there’s no need for that. Put the gun down before you get hurt.”

  I shook my head. He lunged at me and I did the only thing I could. I fired.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Blood and solid matter splattered onto my face and body. I suppressed the urge to scream. My ears rang from the gunshot. The close-range bullet had knocked the man backward onto the ground. He squirmed but did not make any noise.

  When his writhing stopped, I assumed he was dead. I put my buckskin coat on, stuffed Dolly in the crook of my armpit, and crawled out of the dugout.

  He lay curled with his scarred blind side pressed against the ground. The bullet had opened his old wound, and that side of his face, so full of anger and tension, had exploded. Blood oozed out, mixed with the earth, and pooled around his head, forming a ruddy brown halo. His quick, fast breathing was in step with the frantic roaming of his intact eye over the ground and sky as he searched for something to gaze upon, maybe to find meaning in death, or maybe just to hold onto the world a little longer.

  His gaze landed on me and fell to the patch of wooly red hair between my legs. I remembered I was naked from the waist down and placed Dolly in front of my private. In the distance my dress and bloomers waved like a truce flag as I realized they had revealed my whereabouts.

  The sight of Dolly over my private seemed to bring the man back to how he came to his present circumstance. He groaned and mumbled in a low angry voice, “I survived Bull Run, Carthage, Yorktown, and I’ve been kilt by a girl and her doll,” he concluded with obvious regret about the lack of glory in his demise. He closed his eyes.

  I felt sorry for him. But what was there to do? “Well, sir,” I said, “you shouldn’t have tried to steal her.”

  His eye snapped wide open and he studied me. Tears welled and fell. His collapsed, broken face formed a twisted, bizarre smile. A strange sound emerged from him as his body convulsed. I wondered at his strange behavior before I realized he was laughing—howling in a fit of wild hilarity.

  I would have liked to laugh too. Yet his gruesome countenance and the fact that I had probably just killed my fourth man filled me with enormous heaviness. For months I had been going back and forth as to whether I was responsible for the deaths of the two card players who had shot each other. Strictly speaking I didn’t kill them, they killed each other. Yet I had undeniably killed Uncle Luther. Maybe this one-eyed man wouldn’t have hurt me too bad. But he certainly would have stolen Dolly and the ruby necklace. I tried to stay rooted in my righteousness.

  He finally stopped laughing and died. I had never seen before and have never since seen someone die laughing. Later, I discovered he was the infamous one-eyed Red Farrell, a hard humorless man, a Confederate deserter, and the indebted henchman to Simon Bamberger, the pawn shop owner who had told me my necklace was fake.

  I emptied his pockets and stuffed them with river stones. “I told you I was going to shoot you in the face if you didn’t back off. I gave you fair warning and you didn’t listen. You didn’t believe I’d do it. Well I did it. I did what I said I would and this is your fault for not listening.” I kept talking to him, scolding him for his actions, even though he was dead. In his breast pocket where a watch should have been, I found a locket with a tattered picture of a lady. I couldn’t tell whether it was his mother, sister, daughter, or sweetheart, but it tugged on my heart strings. I figured any man who carried a picture of a woman in his pocket couldn’t be all bad. I asked him about it, but of course he was dead and didn’t answer.

  All in all he didn’t have much of value—just his gun, knife, and those boots he’d been so fond of. I pulled off his boots and discovered an intricate red leather pattern embossed in the cuffs. For a minute I found myself admiring them as he had. I released his gun belt and set it next to his boots. Although he wasn’t a big man, as I wrapped my arms around his calves and started dragging him toward the river, I felt his strength and solid stature. I became overheated from the effort of dragging him and stopped to take off my buckskin coat. I had to avert my eyes from his terrible bullet wound. He had been an ugly man to begin with, and the bullet sure hadn’t helped. As I dragged him toward the river, his wound and long scraggly hair collected sand and dirt, making him such a mess I couldn’t look at all.

  The water numbed my legs as I dragged him into the river, which ran high and fast from spring snow melt. With one of my legs wedged behind a boulder so the current wouldn’t sweep me away, I pushed him out and let the river take him. I made sure he was good and gone before I scrambled out of the frigid water back onto the riverbank.

  I lay belly down on a rock and stuck my face into the water, first drinking and then scrubbing my skin of blood and rouge. The rock had absorbed heat from the sun and it warmed me. I wanted to stay and rest for a while. But I didn’t want to be naked anymore, and I was scared someone else would find me. I took my clothes from the tree and dressed.

  The man’s boots, gun belt, and hat were scattered on the riverbank. Although his dead body had tumbled down the river, his belongings still seemed to contain something of him. I walked over, picked up one of his boots, and pulled it on. It almost fit, so I pulled on the other one. I fastened his gun belt around my waist, then fetched his hat, dusted it off, and placed it on my head.

  I paced the riverbank. The water bubbled and tumbled on, never pausing to wonder why. A feeling washed over me and something entered me—his spirit. I had only myself to blame. I should have known better than to put on a dead man’s clothes.

  The dead are subtle. In real life, they do not moan and drag chains through the night, reaching out for you with skeletal fingers like the ghosts of Charles Dickens’s stories. I had tried to conjure my mother and father on several occasions, but I was never visited by their ghosts. All that came were memories. I held those memories, replaying them in my mind so I would not lose them. Luckily, Uncle Luther’s ghost never came to me. I tried to forget him. I hoped his spirit was dwelling in outer darkness, or hell, or wherever the damned go. Yet I wor
ried I might meet him there one day.

  All I can say of one-eyed Red Farrell is that I felt his spirit in me. I knew then that he wouldn’t have killed me. He would have hurt me enough to take Dolly and maybe a little extra for the aggravation, but he was not a murderer of the fairer sex. He had lived in misery with unbearable pains plaguing him for some time, and in death he found relief. Like me, he’d already lost everything and everyone dear to him. What was his life besides pain?

  He had loved his new boots and for some reason I felt he wanted me to have them. I never heard his voice. I never saw him. I just knew. In the years to come, he didn’t exactly haunt me in the traditional sense. Yet he was sometimes there watching when I wished he wasn’t. It was an invasion of privacy, but a small price to pay for killing a man.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Red Farrell had hitched his mare a little way from the river. That’s why he’d been able to sneak up on me. The horse neighed and stared as I approached. The hat, the guns, the boots were all her master’s, but she seemed relieved when she discovered I was not him. From her spur scars, I could see that Red Farrell had been harsh. She watched me remove the spurs from the boots and throw them on the ground. She ate the dirty roll from my hand. Then I mounted her without much fuss.

  We galloped north out of town through tall timothy grass, past cottonwood trees and scattered homesteads. A large peak loomed to the north like a castle. I later learned it was called Ben Lomond, after a similar mountain in Scotland from where many of the local settlers had emigrated. Bouncing in the saddle with my hair blowing behind me, I felt the power of the mare between my legs, and for the first time I felt strong and free. I wanted to hold that feeling and keep riding forever.

  Yet when the homesteads became scarce and thunderclouds stretched ominous dark fingers toward the earth, my freedom turned to dread. Experience had taught me the dangers of the mountains. I wanted to take shelter in a warm log home, and sit down for dinner with my mother, father, and Zeke. But I had no one. And although I had a fortune in the ruby necklace, I had no way to sell it. I turned the mare around and we galloped back, toward Junction City—toward Ogden and Pearl.