The Horseman's Graves

by Jacqueline Baker

  But the answer to that he would not, now, ever learn, for as he worked his way to the back of the hut, seeking his own face, his eyes found another, pale, as if she too had been drawn there, the old woman stretched on her pallet, cold, her eyes open in an eternal stare.

  ——

  Margarehta Stehr, née Nikolei, formerly of Culelia, Dobruja, third daughter of Piotr and Anna Nikolei, deceased, widow of Joseph Stehr, deceased, mother of Peter Stehr, whereabouts unknown, mother of others dead or never born, friend of no one and companion to none, or so, at least, it had seemed; this Margarehta Stehr, this Russian, who had suffered what sorrows and had suffered also what joys (for Alles isch in einem Sack, it was all in the same sack, it all came from the heart, not?) no one knew, this old woman, the braucha, witch, faith healer, was buried with a full Catholic Mass the following morning at ten o’clock, a Thursday, buried in the cemetery at Knochenfeld, and the sky did not darken and lower, clouds did not gather blackly on the horizon and condense, torrential rains did not fall; lightning did not rend the sky, nor was it punctured by hail the size of a man’s fist; spring snow did not blast forth in a blizzard the worst in recent memory; rivers and streams did not still and flow backwards, nor even slow in their eternal monotonous pace; the earth did not groan and split open; no funnel clouds whirled sickeningly, ripping barns and houses and cattle skyward in a terrifying apotheosis; no, there was not even so much as a crazed wind to tear hotly at the grasses and the dirt like the outraged breath of God.

  One who once was, was no more; committed, returned to an earth of dust and ashes that welcomed her no more than it did any other, did not fold its arms about her, was only hacked open because of and for her and then closed over her, and it was done.

  The earth should have stopped in its orbit, the sun and moon extinguished in a tandem cold death and the stars after her, plummeted to earth like outcast angels in unabating grief. But it was only a day in May like any other, a Thursday: mild, not unusually windy, the sky blue and clear and pocked with giddy sparrows who winged on, oblivious, troubled neither by the living nor the dead.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “We should have gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “To the funeral.”

  “What for? What was she to us?”

  “She was one of us, not? One of the community? And of the parish, too?”

  “She was a Russian.”

  “She was an old woman. She helped many.”

  “But a Russian just the same.”

  “We should have gone.”

  “No. Better to stay at home. Let the Russians bury the Russians.”

  ——

  The old woman had not, technically, been deserving of a full Mass, having not attended church since the move to Knochenfeld some years previous. It was too long for her to walk, that is what everyone said. But, Father Rieger wanted to know, why did she not get a ride with someone? A woman of her stature, a woman of her importance in the community (though he himself did not condone her doings, they rang too much of paganism, of old country peasantry and ignorance and heathenism, it would not do), surely someone would have offered her a ride. And so it was her choice to stop attending Mass.

  (He could not have known that no one ever did, no one had ever thought, through all that time, to even offer to drive her to church and home again, not out of ill will but only out of thoughtlessness, an understandable and therefore forgivable sin of omission.)

  But Father had given her a full Mass anyway, fearing public outcry. Now he saw he needn’t have; there had hardly been anyone there, Art and Ma Reis, the Schneider brothers, all the ones you might expect. But the church was only half full, not even. And so the bishop would not learn of it, that he had given a full Mass where a full Mass was not deserved. Or would he? Surely no one would say anything to him. Would they? He made a mental note to speak to Ludmila Baumgarten at his earliest opportunity. There was no reason she should not have a solo now and then, was there? No reason Mass could not be lengthened slightly to accommodate it. No reason at all.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The night after the braucha was buried, little Cecilia’s condition worsened. She began to stir in her sleep and the flushed red look of her cheeks faded and paled and then paled some more and she opened her eyes and they glittered darkly in the dim light of the kitchen.

  “There,” Leo said to Mary. “You see? What did I tell you? She is better.”

  Mary crossed the kitchen slowly, wiping her hands on her apron, and bent over the child.

  “She is dying,” she said.

  Leo sat a moment, blinking at her, as if he had not heard. He went to stand, then sat down again. His face darkened and he made a sound in his throat that was not unlike a growl. He stood again. Mary took a step back.

  “What have you done?” he hissed, grabbing Mary by the hair. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” Mary gasped. “I did—she needs help. A doctor. She is dying. Leo.”

  Leo shoved her before him, toward the door, not loosing his grip, wrenching her by the arm, the hair. She was crying now, struggling, as they tripped and wrestled. Behind them the baby began to cry, too, weakly.

  “You never wanted her,” he said. “Now you want her gone. And me, too.”

  “Leo, no, Leo, listen, no, no.”

  “Get out of here.” Shoving her toward the door. “Get out now, get out, all of you, whores, whores, you get out.”

  The screen door coming off its remaining hinge as they slammed through it, out into the spring night, and the girl there in the yard looking up at them.

  “Elisabeth,” Mary cried.

  But Leo paid her no notice, hollering and shoving Mary down the stairs where she fell in the dirt, and the baby in the house behind them, crying, crying, and Leo down the stairs after Mary, yelling, “It’s you. You did it. Tell me what you did, you tell me what you did,” and, “No, Leo, nothing, nothing, listen, I never would, she is sick,” and, “Whore, Jezebel,” swinging at her now, her arms up to stop him, back and forth, and the heaving breaths and the struggle, and neither one even noticing that the baby had stopped crying, that the house had fallen silent behind them.

  Leo was on his knees in the dirt, bleeding from the nose, and Mary crawling away from him, when the silence came upon them. They stopped and held their breaths, and then they noticed the girl was gone, too, Elisabeth.

  Leo lunged for the stairs, tripping, staggering through the doorway, and Mary coming slowly behind him, gasping, into the kitchen, and stopped, the fire burned out of them both by the sight before them.

  For there sat Elisabeth, in a kitchen chair beneath the picture of Gus in his coffin, and the baby on her lap, a smear of ashes in the shape of a cross on her little forehead and Elisabeth making the sign of the cross over her, saying,

  “Jesus Christ walked over the land,

  Carrying three roses in his hand;

  One did sting, the other seared,

  The third one disappeared.

  In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

  She made the sign of the cross twice more and, without looking up at them, asked for water, lukewarm, with a bit of sugar mixed in, and a teaspoon, though neither Leo nor Mary moved from where they stood in the doorway.

  “Give her to me,” Leo finally said, but without conviction.

  “I see it now,” Elisabeth said mildly, and nodded her head without looking up, so they could barely hear her. “You touch this child,” she said, “and I will kill you. I will do it.”

  Leo opened his mouth, flapped it shut.

  Elisabeth looked up at him then, and in the same easy voice said, “She showed me, the braucha did. I see it now. I see you, Leo Krauss. I know who you are. And I see that man up there”—she nodded pleasantly at the picture of Gus over the table—“and I know who he is, too. And I have watched you, fighting your own blood. And I can tell you this: you won’t ever get it out of you. And it’s in her, too.” She looked at the infant i
n her lap. “She is sick with your blood. And with my blood, too. My mother’s blood. Bad blood, on both sides. She is dying from it. But I will get it out of her, and I’ll kill anybody who tries to stop me.”

  And then she ran her hands over the child, from the crown of her head, down over her arms and her torso and her legs, and she whispered over her,

  “I call you out, dark blood,

  I call you out, Satan’s blood.

  Blood of sinners, I call you out.

  Go in the wind,

  In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

  Leo stood in the doorway. He did not speak and he did not move, but only stood listening and there was a sound in his ears like the flowing of a river, and he stood in the dark and he listened to it. And he was amazed at the sound, amazed at the calm in the girl’s voice, in her hands, and he thought of Cecilia and he thought of the children he’d had with her, gone to the winds, and he thought of the blood running in their veins, too. And he knew the girl was right. He took a step forward and then another, Elisabeth watching him all the while.

  “Please,” he said, or thought he had, because Elisabeth nodded and turned her head away from him then.

  Mary had gone for the sugar water, and she brought it in a little cup with the teaspoon and Elisabeth fed it to the baby, drop by drop, and sat there with her while Mary pulled up a chair and then Leo did, too, a little apart from the women, his hands on his knees, eyes glittering, and they both sat watching Elisabeth and the baby, and the night came in through the broken screen door, and the moonlight, too—the walls were blue with it, and the floor, their faces even—and the breeze stirred softly through it, and with it the smell of dirt and new grass and the sound of crickets and the faint tinkling of bottles from the old cottonwood, and Mary watched and Leo watched, bright and feverish, as Elisabeth prayed and fed the child, who did not know its own blood, and prayed again, hour after hour, all of them together there beneath that picture of Gus in his coffin, through the long hours until dawn.

  PILGRIMAGE

  ONE

  They came. By horseback, wagon and car, they came down dirt roads, across newly seeded fields, before Mass had even begun, yes—from Knochenfeld and Johnsborough and St. Michael’s—for word had reached them, they had heard the drowned girl was alive, yes, of course, they knew that, die laufenden toten Gestalten (that alone was enough to make them all want to see her), but that was not what drew them that particular Sunday, it was more than that: she had healed a dying infant, that little one of Leo Krauss’s. (Little Cecilia, wasn’t that it, after his dead wife? What, Mary was dead? No, no, not that one, the first one, Cecilia. Yes, she had healed the child, who would not otherwise have lived, or so they’d heard, healed with her own hands. It was nothing short of a miracle, that is what they had heard. But where had they heard it? Why everyone knew. But how did everyone know? Well, did it matter, there was a saint among them, a worker of miracles, did it matter where they had heard it? There was the baby, little Cecilia, but they heard there were others, also, the blind, the lame, the deaf, she had healed them all. But that could not be, they knew of no one who was blind or lame or deaf. Well, no, of course not, she had healed them, hadn’t she? But before they had been healed …? Well, they were not from here, obviously. Where, then? Ach, how should I know, probably Triumph, they are all blind and deaf over there, anyway, are you coming or not? Yes, I’ll come, then, just to see, I don’t believe it myself, but I wouldn’t mind seeing. Oh, you’ll see, all right.)

  Only on Sundays, that is what Leo had told them all. Only on Sundays. Father Rieger stood on the church steps, watching them all come and watching them all go, back down the road, toward Krausses’. Then he turned on his heel and went inside, locking the rectory door behind him.

  ——

  Mike Weiser and Marian sat in their car at Knochenfeld, watching the last wagon roll away.

  “My God,” Mike said, “I never would have thought it.”

  Marian turned to him in astonishment.

  “Don’t tell me you believe it, too,” she said, “all this nonsense.”

  “No,” Mike said. “I never would have believed it would all come to this. It just doesn’t seem to end, one thing after another.”

  “That’s Leo Krauss. I told you. Many a year ago, I told you. And you never wanted to believe me. Always wanted to see the good. But it’s always trouble with him, nothing but trouble.”

  “Yes.” Mike sighed and nodded. “And you were right.”

  He started the motor and clunked the car into gear, pulling out onto the road behind the others.

  “Now where are you going?” Marian said.

  Mike just stared over the top of the steering wheel.

  “Good God,” Marian said. “But you never learn.”

  “No,” Mike said. “I guess not. I guess I don’t.”

  ——

  When they neared the Krauss place, they could see Leo there at the gate, a shotgun slung absurdly across his shoulder, as he stopped with an upraised palm each wagon and car and horse. Sometimes the people handed him something which he stuffed into the right-hand pocket of his suit jacket. More often they turned around and headed back down the road, passing Mike and Marian as they went. Mike pulled the car to a stop at the end of the line.

  “And just how long do you plan to have us sit here?” Marian said.

  But Mike did not answer. He only sat watching as people turned back and rode past them.

  Finally, Mike leaned out the car window and called to an old man and woman he did not recognize who were just passing in their buggy. “What is going on?” Mike said. “Why are you leaving?”

  “It is too much for us,” the old man said, reining up. “The wife here has had bad pains in her stomach, but it is just too much.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Why, we can’t pay what he’s asking. We have just a small farm, south of the Sand Hills there. We’re not made of money.” He looked over at the old woman, placed his cramped hand over hers. “I am sorry for it. But there’s nothing we can do.”

  And the old woman smiled a little and squeezed the old man’s hand.

  Then he chucked his mule into motion and they rolled off down the road.

  “Well,” Marian said, “and there you go. Charging money to see that girl. He cannot sink any lower.”

  “Wait a little,” Mike said, though tightly now, “we will talk to Leo himself. We don’t know the whole story yet.”

  Marian made a little snort. “Yah, he is taking the money for the girl and her mother. He will build them a new house, maybe. Or buy that girl a dress that fits. Or some shoes, even, or maybe a little food. Satan, that is who he is. Everyone knows it but you. You think because he lost a wife and you lost a wife that you have something in common, or that you should be sorry for him. Is that it? Is that what all this has been about?”

  Mike snapped a look at her, and Marian knew she had gone too far, knew she should not have mentioned Eugenia, the dead wife (her own sister, and so she had a right to speak of her, had she not?). But she had gone too far.

  “Wait a little,” Mike repeated, “we will talk to Leo.”

  Marian snorted again and looked out the window, but said nothing more.

  They reached the gate at last. Leo came toward the car, the shotgun thumping his side with each step.

  “Good God,” Marian breathed. “Is he alive, even?”

  For Leo looked worse than they had ever seen him. He had lost weight, though he could hardly afford to, and his eyes had receded even farther into his head and they were bloodshot and sore-looking, as if he had not slept in weeks. His hair, hanging untidily over his forehead, had fully greyed and it matched perfectly the tone of his skin and the dusty, faded old black of his suit so that he gave the impression of being all one dull colour, except for the eyes which burned darkly there.

  “Leo,” Mike greeted him, solemnly, “it’s been a long time since we’ve seen you.”

/>   “And did I put something in your way,” Leo drawled, “that you could not see me?”

  “We haven’t been around much visiting,” Mike said, “that’s all, with the seeding and that. Busy, you know how it is this time of year.”

  Leo coughed and spat in the dirt, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, but said nothing.