The Rock Child

by Win Blevins

  At supper I decided not to ask the Reverend any questions, for I was afraid of a marathon of elevated discourse. So the meal was taken in small talk, and I could breathe the Reverend’s frustration in and out. Why talk, he felt, if you do not admonish, entreat, or exhort?

  After supper, in the lounging room, I brought up to Sun Moon how some of me stuck in my craw. “I laugh at these folks,” I said, “but I feel like a hypocrite. I lived with Mormons, who were utopians and weren’t so bad. Were in fact better’n the gentiles that lived around ’em. I don’t feel a bit like laughing at you, but I guess a convent is a pretty utopian place, and it surely has celibacy. And I don’t laugh at myself, but I reckon musicians live in a world that seems ridiculous to others, even unto founding conservatories in the wilderness.” I appealed to her with my eyes. “Am I a hypocrite?”

  Sun Moon shook her head. “The Reverend Thomas,” she said softly, “is a disturbed spirit. He has little compassion and no clarity. You are right to stay away from him.”

  Sir Richard didn’t have to meet the Reverend and company, as he was late getting back from a ride and when he got back, the utopians had gone to bed. He solicited the booklet from Daniel and over a late supper read parts of it aloud. He got even more chuckles out of it than I did.

  Over the last piece of Maggie’s cobbler and coffee, Daniel broached the subject of me being the utopians’ host tomorrow.

  “Don’t need no idealists wors’n Mormons,” I replied.

  Daniel gave me a sort of friendship-hath-no-meaning-in-this-modern-world look.

  Sir Richard put his voice in. “I am possessed of an idea, or it possesses me. Daniel, you want to show these utopians around, making it look like sincere, not make them mad, yet get them to want to get gone and stay gone.”

  Daniel nodded. “God help me, they seek solitude and beauty. Why did they come during a time of perfect Indian summer!”

  “Oh,” says Sir Richard easy, “I believe we can get them to see things our way.”

  Daniel raised an eyebrow at him.

  Sir Richard told his scheme.

  “By God,” says I.

  “Perfect,” said Daniel.

  We worked out a plan. Daniel and I would be the hosts and Paiute Joe would be the guide. Sir Richard would be the villain, as the utopians hadn’t seen him. The rest of our Paiutes would be supporting villains. We worked it out in delicious detail.

  Sun Moon just looked at us in a way I couldn’t fathom. I suppose she thought low of scalawags such as us.

  When we started out the next noon, the day was so perfect, even the hint of breeze was warm. We were going to have to dis-persuade the utopians ourselves, because Lake Tahoe was going to do the opposite.

  Sir Richard had gone early to the Washo camp “to make preparations,” and I dreaded to think what these might be.

  I’d hoped Miss Wearing would stay home, because I wouldn’t have as much to feel guilty about. But here she was, perky as could be, and the Japanese fellow was staying home. Paiute Joe brought the horses around without a word. The Reverend eyed the critters suspiciously. “I don’t believe Miss Wearing,” he offered, “is accustomed to a Western saddle.” Clearly he thought the forking indelicate, and there were her skirts to consider.

  Daniel nodded, and I could see his mind working. “We’ll use the freight wagon,” he said. “Joe?”

  Joe headed for the barn. He didn’t care. He was getting five bucks for guiding and an extra five for going along with the ruse.

  “We’ll ride to Old Lousy Dollar’s Point,” said Daniel, “and have a picnic lunch. Then we’ll camp at Carnelian Bay, which may be your spot.”

  “Is there a road that direction?” inquired the Reverend.

  “You came in on the only road,” said Daniel. “Thus our solitude.”

  “Perhaps we should inspect that direction.”

  “I think you’ll want to see Carnelian Bay. It’s perfect for your purposes.”

  Myself, I thought we had a bang-up chance of getting the wagon mired along the shore north. Maybe Daniel was hoping we would.

  The Reverend nodded, accepting Daniel’s advice, and we were off.

  Sir Richard waited until we were all spread out eating what Maggie had packed for us, tinned oysters, cold boiled potatoes, onions, and cheese.

  One second it was a waist-high boulder. The next it was a waist-high boulder with the biggest, meanest, most savage-looking Indian you ever seen on top of it, pointing a rifle straight at Daniel. The soldier who had disguised himself as an Arab trader, a Persian merchant, and a Tibetan lama was converted into an Injun on the warpath.

  “Mug wump, SAR!” barks Sir Richard at Daniel. Sir Richard had stained his face dark with something, and wore a mishmash of Indian and white-man clothes, like Paiutes did. The crowning touch was two eagle feathers stuck up at the back of his head.

  Daniel got to his feet, looking sheepishly at us. He stuck his hands in the air.

  Now the other Injuns stepped out from behind rocks and trees and pointed arrows or spears at the captive white folks. They were the Paiutes and Washo that worked for Daniel at the lodge, acting fierce. I thought they looked embarrassed at their part in this charade.

  “Boizle bombee!” yelled Sir Richard, or something like that, waving his rifle at the rest of us.

  We all got up, the utopians looking water-boweled. I was Jeehosaphat scared myself, scared the Reverend would see through Sir Richard’s ridiculous made-up words. I told myself he probably didn’t even know the names Paiute and Washo, much less the languages.

  Sir Richard addressed Paiute Joe now in a waterfall of words that made no sense at all. Later he himself in his learned way called his tirade “sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

  Paiute Joe listened soberly, and then translated. “He says we’re on Washo land. Washos not let no Indians nor any more white people on their land. Daniel only. Leave now.”

  The utopians looked at each other.

  Paiute Joe repeated louder, “NOW!”

  Daniel put in, “This is a renegade, Two Faces. He’s never liked me being here. The Washo people accept me. I saved the life of the chief’s brother.”

  I flushed at this embarrassing fairy tale.

  Paiute Joe marched on. “Go back to lodge, go road today, take stage, leave forever.”

  Sir Richard bombasted a couple more sentences in gibberish.

  “But one thing stay here,” Paiute Joe translated. “The woman. Two Faces take the woman, teach you not come here. Woman his now.”

  Sir Richard stepped forward with a hand out, like to grab Miss Wearing’s arm.

  The Reverend interposed himself heroically between brave and maiden, eager to sacrifice himself to save her from a fate worse than death.

  Sir Richard slapped his face, which must have been most satisfying. The Reverend actually staggered.

  This was more than Daniel could stand. “Enough!” he shouted, and I could hear real fear in his voice. He addressed Paiute Joe. “Tell Two Faces we’re sorry. He’s right, the Washo have not given permission to any white people to come here but me. I shouldn’t have invited you. My fault completely.”

  Paiute Joe did it, in gibberish.

  Sir Richard and the Reverend were still going at it eyeball-to-eyeball. I was feeling sorry for Miss Wearing.

  Finally, the Reverend says with a quaver in his voice, “Tell him we’ll leave with Miss Wearing. Otherwise, it’s a fight to death.”

  Daniel overrode the Reverend. “Tell him it’s a bad idea to take the woman. Many white men would come here from Virginia City and the gold camps to get her back. Lots of fighting, many dead, white and Washo. Bad.”

  Now Paiute Joe talked a bunch more gibberish, and I realized I couldn’t tell if he was actually saying something in Paiute or Washo or was just making up more crazy stuff.

  Sir Richard glared at the Reverend. Then he looked past her at Miss Wearing, looked her all up and down, like thinking about how she’d be in the blankets
. Finally, he stepped back. Still eyeballing the Reverend hard, he muttered some foolishness to Paiute Joe.

  “He says go now, he let woman alone. She look plenty funny anyhow, he says. You go, keep going, he watch to see if stop. Take belongings and go to stage today. If stop, he take woman.”

  The Reverend got up his best hero voice, and said, “Tell him we accede.”

  The packing up went real quick. Saddling too. Last I saw from my saddle was Sir Richard and the Paiutes starting on the boiled potatoes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  That Tuesday morning opened warm and sunny. All of us looked at each other over Maggie’s breakfast with the same thought. Any day might be the last warm day of the year at Lake Tahoe. Pretty quick would come the kind of winter that froze the bodies, minds, and morals of the Donner party. We were all going to be here one more day. Then Sun Moon and Sir Richard would be off to San Francisco, Daniel back to Virginia City, and me, well me maybe into another world, a Washo.

  Daniel spoke for everyone. “How about a day of fun!”

  “Angling,” said Sir Richard. He had his eye on Daniel’s rowboat.

  “Lying in the sun,” said Daniel.

  “Bathing,” said Sir Richard, which was his John Bull way of saying swimming.

  All of them sounded good to me.

  “You go,” Sun Moon said. Her look said, You go act like boys.

  OK, thinks I, let’s do.

  Sir Richard had brought a fly-fishing outfit to Lake Tahoe, one of those rigs where you cast a made-up fly. We put out onto the lake and rowed around and took turns casting those flies in every direction. I had a good time rowing and a good time looking into the amazing blue of the lake and getting near mesmerized. I wondered about those fish—what kind of critters would eat flies anyway, flies of hair or, worse, real flies. Luckily, we didn’t catch any, or even see any, so our peace was perfect.

  The big man watched the fishermen on the blue lake. He wore a black duster and a black slouch hat and stayed well in the shadows of the trees on the little rise and eyeballed the men and the boat. He didn’t have a Dolland like the John Bull did, so he couldn’t say if they were the ones. They probably were, if the Chinaman was telling the truth. A hundred bucks oughta buy good information from a Chinaman, but you never knew.

  He looked at the lodge. Since he was a patient man, accustomed to waiting for quarry, he watched it for a long time. No sign of activity. Once in a while he watched the boat and the passengers, too, but they never came near the shore.

  His instinct told him they were the ones. In a twenty-year career of killing, he had learned to trust his instinct.

  It felt very good. He had traveled a thousand miles by coach, bumping over the worst roads in the country, to find these people. He had hunted in Utah, in Nevada, in California. He had endured the parching heat of the deserts and the foggy cold of San Francisco Bay. He had doubted himself, he had cursed himself. Now he had found them. It felt very good.

  But where was the woman? She was his real quarry.

  Porter Rockwell squirmed. A figure was walking out of the lodge. A woman. Not the woman, though. This one was heftier and older. She carried something by one hand, a basket, it looked like to Rockwell. She walked to the shore, set the basket down, and walked back into the lodge.

  Where was the nun? In the lodge, probably, doing women’s stuff. She hadn’t left. The breed and the John Bull wouldn’t have let her journey to San Francisco alone.

  In a minute, while the men were still playing on the water, he would go down and slip into the lodge. If the nun was there, he would settle with her.

  “Let’s eat!” says I.

  “Let’s swim,” says Daniel.

  I rowed the boat toward the beach in front of the lodge.

  “Let’s swim and then eat,” says Sir Richard.

  “All right, all right. But I’m hungry.”

  “You’re about to get hungrier,” said Daniel.

  The cove was shallow, and Daniel said that kept the water warmer. I shipped the oars, stood un in the rocking boat, and started to take off my clothes. I looked toward the lodge. Yeah, it was far enough for modesty. In a jiffy I stripped, teetered on my board seat, and jumped into the lake.

  It was like jumping into sherbet.

  I flailed all ten of my arms and legs and splashed back to the boat. As I grabbed the gunwales, I took thought. Daniel’s ruse should not be spoiled. “Damn, it’s good!” I spouted.

  Sir Richard leapt into the sky and plummeted into the ice water. Surfacing, he shook his head madly and looked daggers at Daniel. But he kept up the spirit. “Splendid!” he exclaimed. “Nothing finer!”

  By that time I was back in the boat, shaking like a trill on the keyboard.

  To give Daniel credit, he jumped in, too, and grinned stupidly when he surfaced.

  What the hell—I dived back in.

  Sir Richard dived back in.

  When Daniel got back into the boat, we turned it upside down.

  Rockwell eased toward the lodge, quietly, from tree to tree, shadow to shadow.

  The woman came out of the front door of the lodge, the nun. Right in the open he stopped still.

  He tingled. Here she might see him, and no telling what she might do. He had long since learned, though, that movement is more easily seen than stillness. Better to stand stock still in the open than run for the shadows.

  She turned left toward Rockwell!

  He held his breath.

  After a dozen steps she turned right again, along a huge pile of logs. She walked beside the pile, spread a blanket on some grass, and lay down.

  Are you mocking me? Rockwell squeezed his throat down on his anger.

  She rested there, easy. Maybe she even closed her eyes. The top of her head was toward him.

  He looked at the double-barreled shotgun, wondering if he should have cocked the hammers. No, he thought, too risky.

  The boat turned toward the shore, and Rockwell understood. The naked men would come to the basket left on the beach for them, probably a lunch. Sun Moon lay behind this pile of logs for the sake of modesty. The pile was huge. Gentleman Dan must be planning a fair bit of building.

  Rockwell took a slow step backward. The nun didn’t stir.

  He stood very still. With his eyes he calculated how many steps sideways he would need to get a tree between them. Eight or ten. He did a shuffle step to the left. She didn’t react. Another. She was still. Still facing her, he sidestepped behind a tree. Then, slowly, carefully, he crept backward, deeper and deeper into shadow.

  Now he would circle behind and check out the lodge. He needed to know all the players in this game. No surprises.

  We stretched out on the beach, bare skin to the sun. I only wished I could put back side and front side to the sun at once. I shivered in great ripples. I would always have a vivid memory of the cold of Tahoe water.

  “I’m here on the other side,” called Sun Moon.

  “Where?” says I.

  “On the other side of the logs.”

  We all looked at the pile and got it. “OK.”

  Still dripping and panting for breath, Sir Richard says to Daniel, “I will not forget how you played me for a greenhorn.”

  Daniel had no more breath than Sir Richard, but he kidded, “Appears to me you’ve lost your horn.”

  I looked around and saw we all three had lost our horns to the cold. Had Sun Moon peeked at us, she wouldn’t have seen a male thing.

  Daniel handed out the sandwiches. Anything would taste good. Anything except the big jar of cold lemonade I saw Maggie had included.

  I lay on the grass, closed my eyes, slowly fed my face, and felt the sun on my skin. I wasn’t going to move until my thing was warm enough to come back out.

  A pretty picture, thought Rockwell. He was peering out the big windows at the front of the lodge. Behind him the cook who called herself Maggie was neatly bound, dismissed as a problem. Before him, like a beautifully spread table, lay what he
most wanted in the world. The nun, the John Bull, the breed, and the man who blew up the mine shaft. Perfectly naked, the men. Some of them probably napping, or at least with their eyes closed. A picture to warm a man’s heart.

  He studied the layout, studied the log pile, and knew where he would stand to command the situation.

  I wasn’t asleep, exactly, but I was dreaming. I was in a feather bed, and Sun Moon was next to me, cuddled up innocently. I was feeling my own breathing and listening to hers. I could stay there forever.

  Klick-kluck was what I heard.

  I didn’t register what it was until it snapped a second time. Klick-kluck! That was the ugliest sound on the Earth if you recognized it, the hammer on a percussion firearm being set. When it came twice, that meant that you were facing a double-barreled scattergun.

  I forced my eyes open and edged them around slow, up to the log pile between us and Sun Moon. I expect all three pairs of male eyes headed there warily. And all three saw what was risen up there, black enough to throw a black shadow over a sunny day and a whole sunny life. Holding the klicking shotgun, surely loaded with buckshot, and grinning like a devil that’s caught a clutch of sinners red-handed, stood Porter Rockwell.

  “Howdy, boys,” says he.

  I heard Sun Moon gasp hoarse beyond the logs.

  “Miss Holiness.” Rockwell nodded in her direction. He kept both hands on the scattergun, but he didn’t have any worries. No man was going to rush him, not naked into the face of buckshot, which they say makes an oozy corpse. We were caught with our pants down, no joke.

  “I’ve come to finish a job,” said Rockwell. “Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, I had me a problem.” He stomped his left leg, and I saw now a green hide was shrunk tight on the shin—must have broke it in the blast.

  He waved the double-barrel left and right. “I’ll need one barrel in that direction,” tipping the muzzle toward Sun Moon. “That’ll leave me a full barrel for your direction, boys, plus the wallop in my belt,” where at least one revolver stuck. “So I wouldn’t get no ideas.”