The Horseman's Graves

by Jacqueline Baker

  The boy paused. “Who’s Baba Yaga?”

  Lathias picked up his skates. “It’s getting dark.” But the fire was blazing hotly now.

  “You don’t know about Baba Yaga?” Elisabeth said, looking up at the boy, eyes glittering. “You should. She used to live in Russia, but I heard she came to Canada.”

  The boy stared at her from behind the high collar of his coat.

  “Where to?” he said.

  “Nobody knows for sure,” she said. “Just that it was by a river somewhere. Up on the edge of a river valley, so that she could look out and see where all the young boys and girls are, to see if they are down in the valley anywhere. A good place to steal them. Nobody can hear them scream.”

  The boy moved closer to Elisabeth, his hands on his knees.

  Fine, Lathias thought to himself, good, you can both be stupid, then. Go ahead, scare yourselves. And he sat down on a rock by the fire and pulled a cigarette from his coat pocket.

  “You’re making that up,” the boy said. “Isn’t she, Lathias?”

  “No, I’m not. Look how he says nothing. He knows about Baba Yaga. He just doesn’t want to scare you.”

  “Why would I be scared? Tell me. What about her?”

  “No,” she said, “I don’t want to scare you either.”

  “Tell me already,” he shouted, standing up, his face reddened, though neither from the cold nor the fire.

  “All right,” Lathias said quickly, firmly. “I’ll tell you. Sit down. It’s nothing. It’s not a good story, but I’ll tell you. Sit down.” He shot a look at Elisabeth. Was she smirking?

  The boy sat, and Elisabeth turned her back to the fire and rested her head on her knees so that they could not see her face, and this bothered Lathias.

  “So,” he said to the boy, “there used to be a poor farmer—this was back in the old country—and he had a wife who was very sick.”

  “What was wrong with her?” the boy asked.

  “I don’t know. Influenza. I think.”

  “Did she die?”

  “Yes, she died. But before she did, she called her only daughter and gave her something wrapped in an apron and said, ‘I will not be with you any more, but this will take care of you.’”

  “The apron?”

  “The thing wrapped in the apron.”

  “What was it?”

  “Shh, listen, and I’ll tell you. She said, ‘This will take care of you.’ And then she died. When the girl opened the apron she found a doll made out of corn husks. It was an ugly doll and the girl did not really like it, so she just stuck it in her pocket and did not play with it. Now the farmer, he had always hated the daughter.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

  “He didn’t have a reason,” Elisabeth said.

  “He must have.”

  “Do you want to hear this story or don’t you?” Lathias said, flicking the red ash from his cigarette into the fire. The boy was quiet. “So,” Lathias said, “the farmer, who had always hated the daughter, decided to get rid of her. He took her to the forest at dusk, and he walked with her until they came to a little wooden hut standing on chicken legs—”

  “Chicken legs?”

  “Chicken legs.”

  “And with a fence around it,” Elisabeth put in, “made of human bones.”

  Lathias ignored her. “’Go,’ the farmer told the daughter, ‘knock at the door and see if you can borrow some lard for our supper.’ The daughter said, ‘But who lives there?’ And the father said, ‘Your auntie. She will give you some lard.’ The daughter said, ‘But I don’t know her,’ and the father said, ‘Do you want to eat tonight or not?’ And so the daughter opened the gate—”

  “Made of human bones.”

  “—and the gate creaked, Woe to those who pass.”

  “Whoa?” the boy said.

  “Yes, woe. Unhappiness. Bad fortune.”

  “Oh.”

  “Then the daughter walked past some trees and past a sleeping dog and she knocked at the door. No answer. She knocked again. Still no answer. By now it was just about dark and so she turned to go back to her father, but he was gone, there were just dark woods stretching all around her.

  “Then the door of the house creaked open and standing there was an old woman with legs as thin as bones and teeth made of filed iron and hair on the backs of her hands and eyes that were all white. ‘Yes, my dear,’ said the old woman, ‘what is it you want?’

  “The daughter was frightened, but she said, ‘My father sent me to ask for a bit of lard for our supper.’ And the old woman said, ‘Who is your father?’ The daughter told her and the old woman smiled a little and said, ‘Come in, then, and serve me for your bit of lard.’ So the girl went in.”

  “Why didn’t she run away?” the boy said.

  “I don’t know,” Lathias said. “Maybe she was hungry.”

  “I would have run away.”

  “She would have caught you,” Elisabeth said.

  Lathias raised his voice. “So she went in. Inside the house was dark, too, and there was a stink, like burnt feathers—”

  “And rotting flesh,” Elisabeth said.

  “—and the girl put up her hand against the wall to find her way—”

  “And the wall felt like cold skin.”

  “—’Light a fire,’ the old woman said. And so the girl had to feel her way around in the dark—”

  “And sometimes she would step with her bare feet on round soft things that felt like arms or legs and sometimes she would step on other things that felt like wet hair and all the time she could hear the old woman breathing, sometimes very close to her—”

  “Finally,” Lathias said, “she found the kindling and the matches and set a small fire going in the fireplace and it began to get light in the house. She was almost too afraid to turn around, afraid of what she would see now that it was light, but she did turn around and she was surprised to find ordinary walls and an ordinary floor and nothing lying around anywhere and only bunches of dried herbs nailed everywhere to the rafters.”

  “Just like the braucha’s place,” Elisabeth said.

  “You’ve never been in there,” the boy said.

  “How do you know?”

  “The girl should have been relieved that it all looked normal,” Lathias went on, “but it made her even more frightened. Then she saw the old woman sitting quietly in a rocking chair in the corner staring at her—”

  “With those white eyes.”

  “Well,” Lathias said, “she set the girl to work, and after a while she got up from her chair and said she had to go out but that she expected all the work to be done by the time she got back and a big pot of water boiling.”

  “And you know what that was for,” Elisabeth said.

  “What?”

  “To cook her in.”

  “Was it, Lathias?”

  “I don’t know. Probably. But by then the girl knew the old woman was Baba Yaga the witch. So she sat by the fire and cried and that is when she felt something poking into her leg and she reached into her pocket and found that ugly corn-husk doll and she remembered her mother and she cried harder and said, ‘Oh, Mother, if you can hear me, please help.’”

  Elisabeth shifted where she sat, but said nothing.

  “Well,” Lathias continued, “as soon as she said that, the ugly little doll sat up in the girl’s hands and told her, You must run away. But if you do the trees will lash your eyes and the gate will scream and bang and call Baba Yaga and the dog will tear you to pieces. Then the doll pointed to a shelf and said, On that shelf is a ribbon, some oil and a piece of meat. When you get to the trees, tie the ribbon to a branch. When you get to the gate, oil the hinges. When you see the dog, throw him the meat. There is also a towel and a comb. Take them and put them in your pocket.

  “So the girl did as she was told and ran out of the house into the dark. When she reached the trees she tied the ribbon to a branch and they
were still. When she reached the gate, she oiled it and it was quiet. She threw the dog the meat and the dog let her pass. Then she ran into the woods.

  “Soon Baba Yaga came home and saw that the girl was gone. She flew into a rage. She screamed at the trees, Did you not lash her eyes? And the trees said, We have served you so long and you have not tied our branches with even a thread; she gave us a ribbon. And she screamed at the gate, Did you not bar her way and call for me? And the gate said, I have served you so long and you have never poured even water on my old hinges; she gave me oil. And she screamed at the dog, Did you not tear her apart? And the dog said, I have served you all these years and you have never given me even a scrap of bread; she gave me meat. So Baba Yaga beat the dog, and beat the gate, and beat the trees. Then she flew after the girl.”

  “How did she know where to look?” the boy asked.

  Elisabeth turned around then and looked straight at the boy, and her eyes glowed in the light of the fire. “She followed her smell.”

  “Soon,” Lathias said, “the girl could hear Baba Yaga coming behind her and the doll said, Quick, throw down the comb behind you. So the girl threw down the comb and a great, thick forest leapt up. Then she heard Baba Yaga chewing through the trees with her iron teeth, so the girl ran on and when she could hear Baba Yaga coming again, the doll said, Throw down the towel behind you. The girl threw down the towel and a great river rose up just as Baba Yaga came through the trees and caught sight of her.”

  “And Baba Yaga smiled at her,” Elisabeth put in, “and her teeth and her fingernails were all bloody.”

  “But when Baba Yaga saw the river,” Lathias said, “she ground her teeth in rage and then she knelt down and drank the river dry and set after the girl again. When the girl heard her coming, she said, ‘Oh, now what will I do? I have nothing left,’ and the doll said, Throw me behind you.

  “The girl did not want to do this, because the doll was the last thing her mother had given her. But Baba Yaga was coming fast, she could hear her—”

  “What did she do?” the boy asked.

  “Just at the last second,” Lathias said, “she grabbed the doll and threw it behind her. A great mountain rose up. The doll was gone. But the girl was safe.”

  After he finished telling the story, Lathias tossed the stub of his cigarette into the embers of the fire. He stood and kicked the embers apart with his boot and scooped up dirt and threw it on top and stamped on it again and said, “All right. Let’s go.”

  “But,” the boy said, “then what?”

  “Then nothing,” Lathias said, “she was safe. Baba Yaga couldn’t cross the mountain. Come on. Let’s go.”

  “But,” the boy said, still sitting and staring at where the fire had once been, “where would she go, that girl?”

  Lathias shrugged. “Home, I guess.”

  “But,” the boy said, “she’d be with her father. She wouldn’t be safe at all.”

  “Come on,” Lathias said, “it’s dark.”

  “That’s not how I heard the story,” Elisabeth said suddenly, from where she sat. “It didn’t end like that.”

  “How did it end?” the boy said.

  “Come on,” Lathias said, “let’s go.” And he stepped to the horses, unhobbling them in the dark, but neither the boy nor Elisabeth moved.

  “Well,” Elisabeth said, “in the story I heard, the girl doesn’t escape from the witch at all. She sits by the fire and cries because her mother has died and her father has left her to the witch and so she takes the doll and throws her in the witch’s fire.”

  “What happens to the girl?” the boy said.

  “When the witch comes home, she kills her and eats her and sucks the bones clean and breaks the bones up into a little basket and sends it to the girl’s father.”

  “And, then what?”

  “And then he falls down dead with grief, I guess,” Elisabeth said, and stood up. “How should I know?”

  “All right,” Lathias said, “I’m going home.” And this time he pulled himself up into the saddle and the boy jumped up and took the reins of his own horse and climbed up and sat waiting for Elisabeth. But she still stood by the smoking spot in the earth, standing so still there in the dark.

  “Aren’t you coming?” the boy said.

  “No,” she said, “you go ahead. I’ll walk.”

  “In the dark?” the boy said.

  “Why not?”

  Lathias had already begun riding up the draw. “Come on,” he called.

  So the boy rode a few yards, then stopped. “Lathias,” he said.

  And Lathias turned around and they both looked behind them. They could hardly see her there, could not see her face at all, just her dress beneath the dark coat.

  Lathias said, “It’s cold.”

  “Yah,” the boy said, “come on.”

  “No,” she said. “I think I’ll go see Baba Yaga up there, that witch of yours. To say you’ve been telling stories about her.”

  “I didn’t,” the boy said, his voice cracking, “I didn’t say nothing. It was Lathias.”

  “All right,” Lathias said roughly. “Enough.”

  “I didn’t,” the boy began again, but then Elisabeth burst out laughing, and both Lathias and the boy realized they’d never heard her laugh before—it was a strange sound, as if it was not a laugh at all, but a holler. Then she came toward them and as she neared she made a big show of wiping her eyes and such, as if she was laughing so hard she was crying.

  “Oh, forget it,” she said. “I made that all up. I’ve never even heard of a Baba Yaga before.”

  Lathias had half a mind to leave her there, for her cruelty, but he knew the boy would never allow it. So instead, just before she pulled herself up into the saddle, he said quietly to him, “Never mind. She’s just the braucha, just an old woman.”

  That is what he said. He did not tell the boy that he’d heard Elisabeth’s version before, too. She hadn’t made it up at all, she’d heard it from someone. He didn’t tell the boy that—what was the point?—he just rode on through the dark prairie, the boy and Elisabeth behind him, toward the dim lights of home.

  ——

  Soon Lathias began catching her in other little lies, too. Maybe she’d been telling them all along and he’d just never noticed. But it was as if now that he’d caught her in one, he was waiting for others, expecting them. And they came.

  There was one morning, he remembered it so clearly, the morning she stood waiting in Helen and Stolanus’s yard while he—Stolanus—cut a new block of wood for her to skate on. She’d said she’d lost the other, but Lathias doubted now whether even that was true, and anyway it didn’t really matter. Lathias was sitting a few feet away, preparing the wire and leather strapping, and the boy was beside him, kicking his feet against the frozen dirt.

  “Danke,” Elisabeth said to Stolanus, when he handed her the new block.

  Stolanus smiled and waved his hand. “Ach, nothing. Have a good time with your friends.”

  But when she did not walk away, but just stood there as if waiting for something, he added, in his clumsy, slightly inappropriate way, “That’s a pretty yellow bow you’ve got.” And he pointed to the ratty old ribbon sticking out from beneath her woollen hat.

  Elisabeth raised her hand to touch it and said, “I found it on the road.”

  And Lathias and the boy looked at her and then at each other and the boy opened his mouth to speak but Lathias shook his head and so the boy just stood frowning at her a little. And Lathias thought, Why? If she had said that the ribbon had been a gift or was important for some other reason, that it had belonged to her grandmother, or that someone had sent it to her or, well, almost anything, he could have understood.

  But not Elisabeth. Her lies, at least the ones about herself, were rarely inflating. If Lathias or the boy had seen her in town at the grocery, she would say she had been at the hardware. If she had found a blue bottle at the fort, she would say it had been a brown one. Lathias
could not understand it. She traded the ordinary truth for an even more ordinary lie. And, more than not understanding, Lathias felt uneasy. It reminded him that she often did what he did not expect and for reasons he could not begin to comprehend. It reminded him that he did not know her at all.

  And he didn’t, of course. Friends, Stolanus had said to her. But Lathias was not a fool. He knew they were not that, the three of them, never that.

  TWELVE

  “December, and still no goddamn snow.”

  “Christ, if it’s this cold, we should at least have some snow, not?”

  “Another drought year.”

  “Maybe time to get that Hatfield back again.”

  “Ach, those crops were not so bad even. They just wanted better.”

  “Greed, that’s what that was.”

  “I said they never should have brought him. I said, don’t fool around with that stuff.”

  “Yah, I remember you saying that.”

  “What stuff?”

  “All that black magic stuff.”

  “Witchcraft.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Ach, you sound like an old woman.”

  “As bad as Ludmila Baumgarten.”

  “Here, you better throw some salt over your shoulder.”

  “Better throw the whole shaker.”

  “Christ, no, he’ll break a goddamn mirror.”

  “Yah, you go ahead and laugh, go ahead, but you just tell me, have we had any rain since? Snow?”

  “Christ, don’t blame Hatfield, we never had no rain before.”

  “Another goddamn drought year.”

  “Not so fast now, there’s still time. It’s barely just December.”

  “December, Christ, yah, that’s what I mean. Damn near Christmas.”

  That is what the men said around the coffee shop. And so, rather than think of drought, they thought of Christmas.

  They thought of Christmas there at the coffee shop where old Wing and his wife had strung garlands of silver and gold tinsel, they thought of Christmas at Stednick’s Dry Goods with the bolts of red-and-green checked fabrics, and they thought of Christmas at the bank and the livery and the hardware. And the boy, too, running errands around town with Lathias, listened to the conversations and felt the bristling, the undercurrent of something good to come, and he thought of Christmas, remembered, or thought he remembered, a time when all their friends and family gathered on Christmas Eve, dressed in their best clothes, the girls in ribbons, the boys in stiff high-necked shirts, and a big supper all laid out and lots of singing, at least three renditions of “Silent Night,” and an uncle with his accordion, and then, late into the evening, the moment all the children had been anticipating with excitement and dread, the clanking of chains and jingling of bells that meant the Kristkindl had come, and the children would cling together, or climb onto the laps of their parents while the Kristkindl, all veiled and dressed in a moulting robe of fur, taunted them, going from house to house, and swung a long willow switch and growled, Have the children been good this year? And if the parents answered that they hadn’t, he might strike them with the switch, or cuff their ears (or worse, dangle them down the well by their feet like he had done with Little Tony Lintz last year until Big Tony Lintz said, Hor auf. Das isch genug.), and then finally, thankfully, the Kristkindl would lumber like a bear back out into the night, and on to the next house, and then the children could laugh about it a little, just a little, and chase each other and squeal Kristkindl! Kristkindl!—the older ones anyway, the younger ones or those who had been punished still clung tearily to their parents, and there would be more singing, and then they would all bundle into the cutter or the sleigh or the stone boat and ride across the darkened prairies to midnight Mass, where so many candles burned they stung their eyes and Father Rieger robed in purple (or was it gold?) held forth in his dreamlike and inexplicable Latin and they would all sing “Silent Night” for the umpteenth time, and when Father Rieger said, Peace be with you, they replied, And also with you, and it seemed possible, all that peace, and when they said, We lift up our hearts to the Lord, it felt as if they were lifted up, and when they prayed silently, peacefully, all their hopes united and swirled up with the guttering candles and incense and muffled coughs toward the dim blue vault of ceiling and beyond, up up, and their hearts, too, for it was Christmas, the eve of the birth of Christ, and peace was with them all, all was peace.