Merkabah Rider: High Planes Drifter

by Edward M. Erdelac

  “And the soldiers left?”

  “That’s the sad part. All of ‘em left but her soldier boy. He ran off from his troop to stay with her. Hung out a couple of days. I think he really meant to take her away.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nobody knows. Johnny thinks Alph ran him off, or killed him. Some soldiers came back looking for him, but nobody could say what happened to him.”

  “And she was found to be with child?”

  “She hadn’t been with anybody else. A girl like that? She could hardly speak English. ‘Course Alph let her have it when he found out. Told her he would disown her and run her out of town himself. I expect that’s why she tried to get rid of it. Goddamn, but the things men will drive a woman to and then turn around and blame her for.”

  The Rider looked at her fully.

  “Listen to me, Sadie. This is important…”

  The preacher had ceased his reading and the gathered mourners began to sing a disorderly version of ‘Shall We Gather at the River’ as some of the miners began to lower the box in the grave. Alph suddenly shook off the comforting hand of the man beside him and went to the lip of the grave and spun on the others.

  “Who done it?” he yelled above the singers until they petered out one after another. “Who done this to my sister?”

  He paced back and forth before the grave like a caged animal, and then went toward the group of women at the back. They shrank before him, all except a group of three out front who were a little better dressed, a little more powdered and well-kept than the others. The Rider couldn’t see them well from where he stood, but among them was a sharply appareled, slim man in a wide, pancake hat, who stepped between Alph and a red haired woman with a peacock feathered parasol and black velvet bustle.

  “Which one of you whores done it? Which one of you?”

  The slim man held up one manicured hand and with his other, flung back the tails of his crushed blue velvet frock to display a silvery, pearl handled pistol in a holster on his left hip.

  The big German paused, red in the face, and threw his impotent fury over the women with a withering but useless glare.

  No one said anything, and The Rider noted that several of the men and women mourners looked away as though embarrassed.

  The red bearded man and his sunny haired wife came over at last and took Alph by his elbows and led him away. The woman spared a glance at the slim man and the prostitutes, but quickly dropped her eyes.

  “Who are they?” The Rider whispered.

  “Pete and Eileen Arnold. They run the brewery. Alph works for them,” Sadie said. “They’re Germans too.”

  “No, no,” said The Rider. But he caught himself, for he almost said ‘the prostitutes.’ He felt suddenly embarrassed again. He didn’t know just what to say to Sadie.

  As the coffin was lowered, the hymn was forgotten, and many of the mourners replaced their hats and dispersed as the mill whistle blew sharp and steady. The women went off in different directions. Many of them were a sickly, tired looking lot who gave off an air of being beaten down. Their eyes never left the ground. It was early in the morning, but several were painted for their work already. Perhaps they had never retired for the night.

  The trio of well dressed women, one Oriental, the other yellow haired, and a red head, turned almost as one and went out of the cemetery together with their garishly dressed escort. These were not like the others. They were remarkably attractive and well-groomed considering their profession and location. They were like fine drapery in a shack, or blooming flowers in a dry gulch.

  They walked amid lace and silk and feathers, more like dolls than real women. They did not hang their heads either, but walked with a haughtiness that was undeniably intriguing. In the middle of them, the slim man led the red headed woman with the peacock feather parasol with the crook of his arm. She wore a pair of blackened glasses and stumbled slightly, betraying her own significant if slightly matronly beauty with a strange lack of grace…no. Not a lack of grace. The Rider watched the upwards tilt of her head which he had mistaken for haughtiness, and the overly trusting way in which she drew herself close to her thin escort. She was blind.

  The man at her side could hardly be called such, except that the gun he wore and the manner in which he had interposed himself between his mistress and the raging German said plainly that he would not suffer to be questioned on the matter. His garb was outrageously over-stylish. He contended with the women around him in the deportment of lace and silk. It poked out from his collar and sleeves. His pale face and expression were respectively smooth and womanly, and the trim, golden moustache over his noticeably red lips was ridiculous when taken into account with his tightly curled blonde hair, just visible beneath the tremendous brim of his rakishly tilted navy and white trimmed pancake hat. He wore leather trousers that accentuated his waifishness, and shining, high heeled boots with silver spurs that caught the light. The most euphemistic word The Rider could have mustered to describe the man would have been ‘dandy’— something he had heard in his western travels.

  He watched them pass as he might watch a colorful parade. They went off down the road past the No. 2, toward the far outskirts of town.

  When he turned his attention back to Sadie, he found that they were the last mourners left to watch the dirt fall on Rica’s coffin.

  “Her lovin’, grievin’ brother,” she hissed under her breath, “couldn’t even stay with her in the end.”

  “Sadie,” The Rider said. “Do you know…who would have performed the abortion?”

  Sadie looked at him.

  “You think I ought to know, is that it?” her expression was hard, and her voice trembled. “We all move in the same circles, isn’t that it?”

  “I’m sorry,” was all he could think to say. “I didn’t mean it that way…”

  He moved to touch her hand, but stopped himself.

  She stared at him, looked at his hands, frozen in midair, watched them retreat. For a moment he thought she would spit in his face, thinking he was recoiling from her because of what she was. Then her face seemed to relax.

  “You’re not supposed to touch a woman are you?” she said.

  “Shomer negiah,” he said, nodding.

  “I remember.” Her eyes looked far away for a moment. “You only touch the woman you’re going to marry.”

  He blanched slightly, to hear it spoken by her. It was true. He had been taught that touch was a sacred, personal thing, the first among all intimate physical connections, and not something to be dispensed casually. It was not disgust that stayed his hand. It was a deep, ingrained respect. And he had come to this town to throw that away.

  “Please,” he stammered. “Tell me, why are you with this Johnny Behan?”

  She sighed.

  “It’s complicated, you know? I didn’t come out here thinking I would…I mean, I never wanted to…I don’t think any woman wants to…”

  She looked at him, and her eyes looked so heavy and wet that he almost embraced her. Instead, he clasped his hands before him.

  “But you know how it was, living in those tenements. Four families under a roof. I couldn’t breathe there. I wanted to just get out. My friend and I, we came out here to be actresses.” She chuckled, shaking her head, and brushed away a tear. “We joined up with the Pauline Markham Pinafore Troupe. We were headed to Prescott when I met Johnny on the trail. He was campaigning then, for County Sheriff. He had a way about him. A big way of talking. He made it sound like he could lay the world at your feet. When he didn’t win…well, we traveled together for a while. And there wasn’t much money. And it was either I…either I got us some, or we starved.”

  She turned, and looked out across the graves. “I managed to…a man…helped me. I went home for awhile, but…home had never really been home to me anyway. Johnny sent for me. He said we could be married. He had all these schemes…we put our money in the No. 2. And well, it hasn’t taken off yet.” She balled her fists, and struc
k them against her thighs. “I said this wouldn’t happen again. I said I wouldn’t do it.”

  She turned, and looked at The Rider. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

  “But here I am.”

  He wanted to reach out to her then. He wanted to pull her by the hand and march out of Tip Top with her….what? Atop his onager? Where would they go? What would they do? Could he offer her any more than Johnny Behan could?

  “I don’t know who gave her the abortion,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’ve heard some girls go to the two Chinese sisters who run the laundry.”

  He looked past her for a moment, and fell on the four little graves near the brush. A little brown bird was perched on one of the planks, its throat moving as it made the queer churring sound he’d heard all through the service. A little brown bird with white dappled wings, like tree bark. It seemed familiar.

  “What is that bird?” he asked.

  She turned and looked as it beat its small wings and flew off from the plank.

  “Johnny calls them nightjars,” she said.

  The Rider stepped past her slowly, listening to the spades of the gravediggers biting into the earth. He stood over the plank where the nightjar had perched. Its crude inscription read ‘Unnamed Infant – Mar 1878.’ The other three were similarly marked, two from last year, two from this year, and the mound of fresh turned earth below which lay the aborted baby of Rica Gersten and her soldier. He wondered if the other children were the same as Rica’s. Then he noticed the other unmarked mounds. Three more, in a line.

  Four little marked graves, four married women, and no children at the funeral.

  “What about these?” he said, pointing to the unmarked graves.

  “They were here before I got here,” Sadie shrugged. “I don’t know what’s in them. I guess maybe unwanted babies.”

  “How long have you been here, Sadie?” he asked, as he heard her come up behind him.

  “Since February.”

  “Are there any children in town?”

  Sadie paused, frowning.

  “I’ve never seen any, no.”

  “Are there any other pregnant women?”

  “Manuel Calles’ wife is due in a few months,” she said. “He’s one of the saloonkeepers. Then there’s Eileen Arnold’s—she’s due any day now, and there’s a colored girl…I’ve seen her hanging clothes out back of The Bird Nest. She’s pretty well along. I haven’t seen her in a while. It may be she’s already had her baby.”

  Pete Arnold’s wife. The blonde haired woman on the arm of the red bearded man beside Alph at the funeral. She wasn’t stocky, she was pregnant.

  He went without a word out of the graveyard, and Sadie followed, asking again and again what the matter was.

  He didn’t answer until he had his rotating vice locked onto the edge of the No. 2’s bar, and had spread out his engraving tools and some small blank plates and medallions from his saddlebags on a piece of black velvet. Three blank rectangular plates.

  “Did your father or your mother ever tell you stories when you were a little girl?” he asked, when he had rolled up his sleeves and set his jeweler’s eyepiece in his eye.

  It was early yet, but Behan was on the other end of the bar pouring whiskey to a couple of bleary eyed men who had apparently hit the other four saloons on the road before stumbling into this one. The Rider watched them out of the corner of his eye. They were taking an interest in what he was doing, and in Sadie as she leaned on the bar beside him.

  “Sure, some.”

  “Did they ever tell you stories from the Talmud?”

  “Of course. Like…Moses, Noah, Adam and Eve…”

  He looked up at her and smiled.

  “Yes, exactly. Like Adam and Eve.”

  He took up his push graver and a tiny hammer. Joseph Klein, one of his old teachers among the Sons of the Essenes, had taught him engraving. He had chiseled and tapped the mystic etchings into his own pistol, and he had crafted most of the Solomonic amulets he wore. Those had been complex jobs. The pistol alone had taken months. This was relatively simple work. He scraped and graved as he spoke.

  “But did you know that Eve wasn’t Adam’s first wife?”

  She looked at him, waiting for his explanation.

  “In the Alphabet of Ben Sira, it says that God created another woman for Adam out of the dust, just as he was made. This woman was named Lilith, and she argued with Adam all the time.”

  “About what?”

  “Everything.” The Rider shrugged, fitting a plate into the vice and cranking it tight. “Even… sexual positions.”

  Sadie smirked.

  “My kind of lady.”

  He took up the little hammer and carefully began to tap letters into the plate with the iron grave.

  “Some say she fled Eden, or that she seduced, or was seduced by, an angel and ran off with him. Some say she learned magic, either from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, or from her angel lover.”

  “She traded up,” Sadie said, looking down the bar at Behan, who was now looking at them, his hands on his hips as he whispered to the two drunks. “I can understand that.”

  “Hey buster,” called one of the drunks. “Why don’t you quit that infernal tappin’?”

  The Rider glanced over at them, held their eyes until they looked at each other, and went back to work.

  “Maybe he don’t hear so good,” said the other.

  “Maybe he don’t speak English,” said the first.

  The second man slapped his hand on the plank, upsetting The Rider’s tools, nearly causing him to fumble the etching.

  The Rider sighed and straightened. He looked at them again.

  Behan smiled and poured the two of them another drink each.

  “On the house, gents,” Behan said.

  The Rider carefully folded up his tools in the black velvet.

  The two drunks shared a chuckle.

  “I guess he speaks that language well enough,” said one of them.

  They reached for their drinks.

  The Rider took out his Volcanic pistol and slammed it heavily on the plank.

  The impact jarred the whiskey glasses on the other end, spilling liquor over their hands and shirt fronts.

  The Rider looked at them expectantly, his hand resting lightly on the gold and silver chased pistol, fingers drumming lightly.

  The two drunks looked at each other briefly, lips slightly parted. They touched the frayed brims of their hats to first The Rider and then to Behan, and excused themselves and headed outside.

  “Well that’s just fine,” Behan said, mopping up the bar with a moldy towel. “Say just what the hell are you doin’ over there anyway?”

  The Rider sat back down and methodically unfolded his tools again.

  “What do you care, Johnny?” Sadie interjected.

  Behan pursed his lips and snapped the towel on the bar.

  “You’re right, Sadie,” he muttered. “I don’t.”

  He came from around the bar with his hat in his hand and his coat over his arm.

  “How much longer will your cousin be gracing us with his presence?”

  “Not much longer,” The Rider answered.

  Sadie looked at him and he saw, but he pretended not to notice. He turned back to his meticulous work.

  “Well you be sure and tell me when,” Behan said, slapping on his hat and shouldering into his coat. “I’d hate to miss sayin’ my goodbyes.”

  He went to the door and with an order for them to watch the bar, he was gone.

  “You could trade up too, Sadie,” The Rider murmured in the quiet.

  “I guess any man would be an angel after Johnny Behan,” Sadie said, going behind the bar. “But where am I gonna find an angel out here, in the middle of hell?”

  She looked at him pointedly, but he didn’t answer. The fact was, he didn’t know.

  “So what happened to Lilith?” she said, after the only sound for a few minutes was the tapping of his little h
ammer. Her voice seemed haggard.

  “Adam told God what had happened, and God sent three angels out to bring her back. They found her on the Red Sea. She didn’t want to return. She cursed Adam and said she would put her hand against all his children for generations to come.”

  He cleared his throat, putting the finishing touches on the amulet, blowing away the excess now.

  “The angels said they would drown her, but she made a deal with them for her life. She would have dominion over newborns. The first eight days of a boy’s life are for her to dominate, and the first twenty for a girl. In this time, if a baby sickened, it would be because of her. But she promised that if she saw the names of the angels on an amulet about a child’s neck, she would leave them alone.”

  The Rider sat back, rubbing his eyes. He gave the vise a twist, catching the amulet. He turned its face towards her.

  On it, he had inscribed the names Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof.

  He shrugged.

  “I guess even angels want to be remembered for something.”

  Sadie’s mouth opened slightly, and she took the little amulet from The Rider. Their fingertips brushed slightly, but Sadie didn’t seem to notice. The Rider felt as if all his nerve endings had turned to his fingers, like a plant turning towards the sun. He didn’t recoil, but he felt his ears grow hot.

  He quickly put another blank amulet in the vice.

  “I had something like this, when I was a little girl. My mother told me it had been hers—that my grandmother had made it.”

  “Your grandmother was a knowledgeable woman,” The Rider said.

  Her eyes were smiling, as they had smiled when they’d first talked about San Francisco. She was far away, and The Rider wished they were in that place together. Who knew? Had Adon not found him, perhaps Sadie and he might have met near South Park, in her father’s bakery. He might have seen her in the neighborhood or at Temple. They might have found one another in the brief, simple time before their respective lives had gotten underway and diverged so dramatically, become so irrevocably complex.