Merkabah Rider: High Planes Drifter Read online

  “Gadara,” the monk said. His amber eyes darted north and he died.

  The Rider passed a hand over the dead man’s eyes and straightened.

  * * * *

  It took him two days to bury all the dead and commend their souls to God. Facing Jerusalem, his lone voice recited the funerary kaddish.

  He lingered for half a day more, utilizing his mystic exercises to step into the Yenne Velt to make sure no restless spirit remained behind to torment, or be tormented. It was a harrowing journey, for the residue of murder and sudden, shocking death clung to the place like a thick, black fog. No presence remained in the desolate mission to bear witness to what had happened.

  But from the depths of the well, there was ghostly weeping.

  A frightened child’s cry.

  The Rider, who had crossed the threshold of Hell, had no inherent fear of the dead. Admittedly though, his soul trembled at the audacity of what had been done to this place of worship. He did not know if it was the work of men or something else.

  Staring down into the blackness of the poisoned well was like peering into the fog of the unknowable, with the certainty that terrible knowledge awaited those who were but willing to descend.

  He drew upon the mystic training of his teachers and the experience of a life spent in the exploration of the empyreal. He drew no circle this time, recited no incantations, made no sacred preparations, just sat beside the well and entered into a practiced meditative state, drawing upon inner reserves of power through measured breath and the sacred incantations of his Merkabah forebears until he felt the release of all he was from the machinery of his physical body.

  Slowly, riding the invisible currents of the ether, he allowed his spirit to sink into the well, so deep that the light could not pass through to its bottom. It was not long before he found himself in the waist high water, looking at a small form bobbing on the cold, murky surface.

  He felt the presence of the spirit before it showed itself, a pale thing, curled into a fearful ball beneath its bloated, floating body, distorted by the dark water and anchored to the earth by dread. The Rider reached down gingerly and drew the little spirit up.

  It broke the surface of the inky pool, the pale, hollow faced ghost of a black eyed mestizo boy, with long, ragged hair plastered to his small head. He cowered against the dank wall of the well and stared at his own little corpse floating face down, black as oil in the impenetrable subterranean shadow. A bullet had pierced one of his eyes and blown the back of his head apart like a china cup. He peered at The Rider from a ruined face, one dark eye wide and terror struck, the other a bloody, gaping hole.

  In life, they could never have communicated, but here in the Yenne Velt, the shadow world of spirits, they spoke one language. Yet The Rider’s was the tongue of adulthood, and the boy was no more than six years old. He did not understand where he was or what had happened, and babbled on and on at the sight of The Rider, of whom he was afraid and called Devil.

  He did not know where his parents were, and wailed for them. When, at last, The Rider managed to convince him he was not the Devil but an angel of the Lord come to take him away, the boy calmed, but spoke only haltingly of pigs and a tall white man with a long rifle.

  One man.

  He gathered the boy’s small ethereal form to his like a wavering candle flame and brought him up out of the dark. When they had ascended to the surface, he released him to the luminous celestial winds like a handful of leaves. The boy’s spirit scattered, thanking him at last before his tiny voice was lost in the rushing tide of the eternal.

  When he returned to his physical form, The Rider broke apart the well winch with an axe and sent it clattering into the befouled water. He covered the well-turned-tomb with boards and said a prayer over its nameless charge.

  He had come here seeking the betrayer and murderer of his mystic enclave, his renegade master, Adon. But here, there had been another killer, and whether men hunted him seeking justice, The Rider did not know. As such, it was for him to take up the task.

  With chalk, he scrawled ‘All Dead’ and ‘Todos Muertos’ in large letters upon the gate with paint from the priests’ workshed.

  He and the onager took the road north, leaving the empty Mission de San Fransisco de Los Campesinos to sleep in secret silence.

  * * * *

  It was a bleary-eyed drummer, headed in the opposite direction, who first put meaning to the word ‘Gadara’ beyond its Gospel connotation. He had come across a sign for a town by that name, he’d said. Far to the north, in the hills. He had flipped a coin and come this way instead. The Rider warned him not to stop for water at the mission, and they parted ways.

  The Rider had sought that road for a few weeks before he’d come across a weather beaten sign naming the town in faded letters, and delineating a long, lonely path up through the cold high country.

  The storm overtook him the third day like a marauding white gang. The balmy dusk, rather pleasant after so long down in the arid desert, swiftly turned into an impenetrable night of flaking snow, which accumulated at an alarming rate and soon hid the road from his step.

  That first night he clung to the onager for warmth and slept little.

  The snow continued to fall on the fourth day. The wind that had brought it hunkered down in the valleys and blew frantically, battering against the hillsides and kicking up eddies of icy powder like a trapped animal raging.

  The Rider had not dressed for inclemency; he had not expected to see his breath at all on the journey. Yet there it was, billowing like steam from an engine in his reddened and wind lashed hands, easing them momentarily of their ache before surrendering once more to the cold air. The ends of his ears were hot to the touch and his nose ran into his beard.

  That night was terrible. He slept not at all. The snow fell steadily, and he was not inclined to lie down, for fear that he would be encased in a frosty bed from which only the Messiah could awaken him. He crouched before the onager until his shivering limbs ached, warming himself in the hot breath that puffed from its nostrils.

  In the morning, dread settled on him with the fresh layer of snow. He was too cold to get out the tefillin to pray, and knew if he did not keep moving until he found warmth, he would die. Like a fool he had not thought to gather kindling and there was none dry to be found now.

  He considered it strange that death could lurk in the beautiful, unsullied whiteness of the land. An untouched snowfield was the closest thing to the splendor of Heaven The Rider had yet seen on earth. It was peaceful when the howling of the wind died. The sound of his own feet and the onager’s hooves punching through the hard snow was comforting, as though they were sharing some intimate experience, which the Lord had made them alone privy to.

  Yes, it was beautiful. But it was a desert of a different kind, with its own hazards. No sunning serpents with beadwork coats sought to strike him or the onager unawares. Instead they were both bitten constantly again and again by the unseen snakes that twisted at them in the blowing of the chill wind. Their venom was no less poisonous. It debilitated them both, slowly, with a creeping, freezing ache that promised a quiet, sleepy death. It planted the seed of sickness down in his throat and strangled the life from the ends of his fingers until they glowed red in alarm.

  Back in the desert, there had been no water, only an abundance of dry heat that siphoned the moisture of the body like a creeping thief. Here there was plenty of water, but with his soaked garments, no way to remain dry and retain precious warmth.

  The snow briefly ceased falling and the land continued to ascend toward a high, treed place. The onager’s lungs rattled wetly and the creeping feeling in the pit of his throat had become a fitful cough that expelled loosened mucus with every wracking convulsion.

  Then he saw the old man waving to him from a hill off the road. It was no trick of the snow light.

  He was a thin greybeard in a red and black striped blanket coat. He wore a long white muffler with gray mittens and a black cap
that covered his ears. He stood alone in the white with a twisted, outstretched staff, a snowbound Moses. The Rider stumbled toward him, pulling the onager behind.

  “Been watchin’ you,” the old man said, his voice clear and strident in the stillness. He cut such an odd, prophetic figure, the Rider wasn’t sure if the old man meant he had watched his progress through the snow from where he stood, or augured the entirety of his career in some omniscient, divinatory manner.

  The Rider only sniffed and nodded.

  “Come on up to my place,” he said, “and get warm.”

  Without waiting for an answer, the old man turned and walked off, heading higher up the alabaster hills and further back, leaving a clear trail behind for the Rider to step in.

  They walked this way for an hour, never speaking, The Rider trusting. By dusk they had reached a squat, friendly cabin nestled at the edge of a bosque of ice gilded cedars, overlooking a nameless frozen stream. A heavy fever alighted and settled on The Rider’s brow like a perching vulture, and pierced his body with an irresistible shiver. The cold had breached like an army and now plundered his strength within.

  They brought the onager in with them and placed it in the back room. The old man kept a mule, and the two animals took to each other’s company, the onager relieved by the heat of the other. The place smelled of pipe smoke and hung with the heavy spice of the unwashed, and a faint, sweet odor of fruit. It was warm from a fire left smoldering in the fat iron stove, which the old man stoked with a bundle of kindling wrapped in cheesecloth. The walls were stacked with precarious towers of canned goods, like the master storehouse of an accomplished glutton. The corners overflowed with the empty tin shells, the labels recalling departed peaches and jams by their faded print and lingering sweetness. The old man propped his staff in a corner and took off his hat and muffler.

  The change in the temperature made The Rider light-headed, and he shivered in his wet coat and coughed, catching himself on the table as the old man ran one long, bony finger over the labels, selecting a can from the wall like a scholar picking a relevant book from a high library shelf.

  The Rider unbuckled his gun belt, setting the gold and silver chased pistol on the table. It would need oiling. If the old man was disturbed by the gun or impressed by its peculiar ornamentation, he showed no sign. The Rider saw no weapon in the house, not even a squirrel rifle.

  He stripped off the heavy, damp coat and shirt and spread them on the floor before the stove. Beneath his coat, his body was draped with strings of pendants, bodyguards and talismans. The old man seemed to take no notice of that either. He gave The Rider a wool blanket and invited him to sit at the plain, wood table on an upturned barrel that was the only chair.

  Soon, the old man had a broth bubbling in a pan, and he offered it to The Rider with a wooden spoon.

  The Rider hesitated. He doubted the soup the old man offered was kosher, but he quietly asked forgiveness and that his impending sickness be taken into consideration as an extenuating attribute.

  “Praise Gawd,” said the old man, smiling. He was dirty, and one of his blue eyes wandered. He was balding and looked as if he had not shaved in many months, for the bushy grey of his wild beard sprung from his thin neck.

  The broth was good, and seemed to embolden The Rider’s stiff limbs. He whispered a bracha for the nourishment, however unclean it might be.

  The old man prayed too, but The Rider caught only the low intonations of ‘Gawd’ and ‘sustenance.’

  “Praise Gawd, praise Gawd!” the old man said, with ever-increasing exultation. “Just you rest easy now, son. Let this fill and warm the nooks o’ your body like the healin’ power of the Holy Spirit. Yessir. I watched you comin’ up the hill. Watched you for a long while. Thank you Je-sus. Were you lost?”

  The broth purged The Rider of the memory of the bitter cold, yet the mounting fever sought to remind him. Wailing outside in the black stovepipe, the wind cracked the stiff hides nailed across the windows and made the rafters creak as it ran barefoot and exuberant over the snow blanketed roof.

  “I was following a road...but the storm caught me. I don’t know if I’m still on it.”

  “The only road up here is the one that leads to Gadara.”

  The old man dragged a low crate across the floor to sit on.

  “Yes. Gadara. That’s where I’m headed.”

  The old man stared with one eye.

  “Glory. And why might you be going to Gadara?”

  The Rider thought of the boy in the well. Of the monk doubled over in his chapel, of the bodies in the sand.

  “I’m looking for someone. A man.”

  The old man clapped a wrinkled hand to his lips as if he had been struck, and his eyes widened.

  “Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty. Give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name...”

  And with each ‘give,’ always there came an insistent rocking back and forth and the punctuation of his knobby hands clapping. His knuckles and fingers were distorted from some wasting arthritis, threatening to poke through the threadbare gloves, yet still he slapped them together.

  “Praise Gawd. Do you know what the name of that prayer is, son?” He spoke excitedly, and without pause, as The Rider had once before heard a cattle auctioneer in San Francisco speak.

  “Psalm twenty-nine. ‘The Lord of the Thunderstorms,’” The Rider murmured.

  The old man’s eyes lit, and he smiled.

  “Yes sir, that’s right. You know your Scripture. Good! Good! The Lord God Almighty is the Lord of the Thunderstorms. It is His Divine Power that makes the lightning strike, makes the clouds boil in the sky, and makes the thunder crash on the mountainside.” The old man laughed. “Yes sir! Praise Him. That’s His voice you hear when the thunder rolls and the crop-buds bust through the black soil in springtime. Glory!”

  The Rider smiled and nodded. The man hardly took a breath. He was like a preacher long without a congregation. He kept rising from his crate in his excitement.

  “But He’s not just Lord of the Thunderstorms, no sir. He’s the master of every storm. Everything sleeps in the winter but the Lord. Good Gawd! He already had His seventh day of rest, y’see. Yes sir! Even this old snowstorm blowin’ outside. He brought that with a cool blast of his nostrils. Praised be His Name!”

  “I almost wish....,” The Rider whispered, trying out his weakened voice and blinking back the discomfort of speaking. “I almost wish He hadn’t.”

  The old man laughed and clapped his hands indulgently again.

  “Well but, I don’t know about that.” The old man went on. “The storm is the chariot of Gawd. He’s out tonight, a’visitin.’ The King is out among His servants in the guise of the storm, visiting His subjects like the king in that Shakespeare story. Blowin’ their doors and their shutters shut, so’s they’ll stay safe tonight.”

  With that, he made the gesture of doors swinging shut with his twisted hands.

  The Rider supped, and listened to the wind. The old man watched him and seemed to take pleasure in the sharing of his hospitality. The Rider’s head felt as if it weighed forty pounds, and lolled on his neck if he let it.

  “Praise Him!” the old man ejaculated again. “But every once in a while there’s a stray lamb loses his way.” He grinned pointedly, and there was a sparkle in his anxious eyes. “Every once in a while, He waylays a lost traveler, just like He sent the fish to waylay Jonah, and when he knocked Saul down off his horse on the road to Damascus. Glory.”

  The old man dipped his clouded chin with each heavenly intonation. Once The Rider had seen a man who would curse uncontrollably, as though he were sneezing out profanity, but here was an old man who convulsively spit salvation.

  “Jonah was diverted from his course because God had work for him,” he muttered, finishing the soup.

  The old man’s face became suddenly solemn, and he rose to stand by the open door of the stove and looked at the fire inside.

  W
hen he turned toward The Rider again, the stove glow danced portentously across his weathered face, like lamp light on old parchment. He motioned towards the barred front door.

  “That He did, boy. That He did. You say you’re lookin’ for a man. Medgar Tooms.” The old man raised his eyebrows, laconically. “That’s his name, if you’re headed for Gadara. You give thanks you didn’t run into him out there. Not in the state you’re in. Oh, he’s out there, don’t make no mistake. He’s the only man headed up there. But The Lord of Storms is watchin’ out for the faithful tonight.”

  The old man uttered a final “Praise Him!” and took the empty bowl from The Rider and set it on the stove.

  * * * *

  Medgar Tooms crossed the blowing landscape and a herd of pigs marched behind him.

  They squealed at the biting cold, and shouldered to be near him and take part in his unnatural warmth.

  The snow swirled around Tooms and cut into his face, but he did not flinch. The wind whipped at his long gray coat and tried to knock the broad brimmed hat off his head like a rambunctious schoolboy. Tooms was not amused. He didn’t shiver and he didn’t blink, even as the white flecks scraped at him like icy grains of iron birdshot, desperately trying to penetrate the slot thin slashes of his dark eyes.

  One of the lagging little shoats behind him gave a high, shrill cry and stopped in its tracks. It nosed the snow up to its belly, then shuddered and collapsed. Several of the larger hogs circled around it and began to worry it immediately, tearing its wind-burned flesh.

  Tooms did not stop. In all, there were about thirteen pigs following him. Blue hogs, wire-haired shoats, and pot-bellied pigs, their pink skin flushed red from the winter storm. They scuttled along in a milling herd like piper’s rats, their swirling breath like the smoke of thirteen little fires. Tooms did not wait for the ones who fell behind. They would catch up or they would die.

  Though the storm would surely impede him, it could never stop him. He walked on, letting his long legs break holes in the dunes of bright white and piston methodically, carrying him surely northward. He did not hasten, nor did he slow. His breath puffed like the steam of a black engine. The big Whitworth rifle was propped over his right shoulder, while his left arm hung loose at his side. Broken manacles, and their long lengths of chain, rasped metallically and cut shallow furrows in the tramped snow, first one, then the other, monotonously. Their iron was cold against his wrists, yet he did not hug himself for warmth, as if he disdained comfort.