City of Ruins

by Mark London Williams

  They seem to think that getting rid of us, and of Jeremiah — who, I gather, routinely chastised them to listen to their god, and perhaps even blamed them for their troubles — might protect them from this heartbreak.

  They are wrong, of course.

  As I am discovering, nothing can really protect you from that.

  So the survivors here were deciding whether to harm us in order to prevent more harm to themselves. If Eli kept his cap, we could disappear if we had to, but how many could we take with us? And what would happen to the others we might have to leave behind? Especially to those younger than us, like James, the Bearded Boy?

  I had been translating for him and Naftali, so they could converse — could keep themselves calm while our fates were being decided.

  “So are you an Essene?” Naftali asked the Bearded Boy.

  “I don’t know what that is,” James replied.

  “They’re priests,” Naftali explained. “Holy men. With no hair cut.”

  I made a cutting motion with my fingers around my hair, as I translated the words for James.

  “Living in the desert,” Naftali added.

  “I’m no priest,” James said. “That’s for sure. I done some mean things before Rocket took me in. I used to steal food when I had to.”

  “At least you had food around to steal,” Naftali said.

  I was trying to keep them talking to each other, but wished I could serve them breakfast instead.

  I was getting hungry myself.

  That’s when Rolf struck, just as he did back in the caves with Merlin and Arthur, only this time, he didn’t have to use a sword — he had a gun. I have come to know guns in my travels.

  He grabbed Naftali, and demanded Eli’s cap. Then he threatened Naftali.

  And now during all these slow, stretched-out moments while Eli is deciding what to do, his cold gaze reaches me, as well. “You, too? Will I never be rid of any of you?”

  For a moment, it appears he might try using the weapon on me. I already know what his Reich was capable of. I remember flying over the field, in K’lion’s time-ship, watching the mother and child as the German soldier — the good soldier — took aim at both of them.

  I remember the clap of thunder then.

  And I am not going to let that happen now.

  You won’t.

  The voice again. It is coming back, in occasional wisps, though I had hoped never to hear it again at all, now that the slow pox has passed through me. I have enough to think about.

  “I want your hat, Danger Boy,” Rolf spits at Eli again. “Or I will start shooting.”

  “How do you know about ‘Danger Boy’?” Eli asks.

  “Do you think, just because the stupid Americans made a show of kicking me out of their secret program, I am no longer informed? That because of a mere thing like public appearances, I stopped working on my own? Or that I don’t still have allies on the inside?”

  “What do you mean, ‘public appearances’?” Eli asks him.

  It is the one called Andrew Jackson who answers: “They had to pretend to fire Rolf from Project Split Second when a newspaper ran a story about what he’d done as a Nazi.”

  “We haff since taken care of the newspapers,” Rolf answers. “They were too stupid to see I was the only one with the nerve to do what needed to be done with Project Split Second. None of the others had it. Not even your mother.” He grins.

  “What about my mother?” Eli steps toward him. The people around us are getting nervous again, more nervous than they already were.

  “Please,” Naftali says, whimpering. And I find that my own fear is slowly being replaced by anger. Anger at bullies who think history belongs only to them.

  “Let’s talk about your hat,” Rolf says to Eli. “If I had known about your Danger Boy project sooner, perhaps I could have prevented your stupidly crossing my path in San Francisco during the war, then crossing it again in England.”

  “Let him go, if it’s me you want,” Eli tells him.

  In reply, Rolf fires his gun in the air.

  Naftali screams, and jerks against Rolf’s arms, but Rolf holds on to him. “Babylonian,” Naftali whispers to me.

  I try to keep Naftali’s eyes trained on mine, so he can keep his own terror at bay.

  Eli is still uncertain what to do.

  “Your hat,” Rolf repeats. “I could care less about you. It is your hat I want. We shall end your stupid blundering through time right now.”

  Tears roll from Naftali’s eyes, then he shuts them hard, hoping, I think, to make all this go away. “You promised,” he squeaks out in another whisper.

  My friend Eli unclips his soft hat from his belt and holds it in his hands. “Don’t hurt him,” he says. “Don’t hurt any of them because of me.”

  “Just give me that, so I can leave this landscape of broken Jews.”

  Rolf is speaking English. Only a few of us understand what is going on.

  “Release the boy.” Someone else understands the situation, though: Jeremiah.

  I have not been out of my pox dream state long, but I believe, like Huldah, he is regarded as something of a prophet, too. Perhaps he is looked upon as Mother was in Alexandria — someone who says things out loud that make others uncomfortable.

  “Be quiet!” a woman in the crowd shouts. “You have nothing more to say in Jerusalem! We told you to go plant your seeds!”

  “Even your own people are against you. Out of the way, old fool,” Rolf says in the Hebrew tongue. Jeremiah’s eyes widen. “Oh yes,” Rolf adds. “We learned the language of the dead. For academic reasons. A few permitted traces of your race, which we were going to eliminate.”

  “Even the Babylonians didn’t succeed in that,” Jeremiah says. “We are not dead yet.”

  Rolf appears surprised by this response. Perhaps he was expecting something more fearful.

  “You are a ridiculous old man,” Rolf says at last. “You should have left when you had the chance.” And with that, he moves to strike Jeremiah in the head, with his gun.

  But Jeremiah swings back with his walking staff.

  “No!” Naftali bites Rolf’s arm. And before I can reach Naftali and pull him away, Rolf strikes him in the head with the gun. I see a trickle of blood in his hair.

  “Stop that, you bully!” James reaches Rolf ahead of me, and kicks him in the legs. Rolf is about to swing back and hit him when Eli charges Rolf and knocks him down.

  The gun bounces away.

  “He’s getting the Babylonian!” Naftali tells me, then looks at the blood on his fingers.

  “You’ll be all right,” I tell him, and pull him close. I tear a piece of my clothing off — I am still wearing the robe-like garment I was given when Eli and I were imprisoned by his own government — and begin wrapping it around his head.

  The loose gun is picked up by another of the time travelers, the one named Rocket.

  “Shoot him!” Rolf yells. “Shoot all of them!”

  Rocket looks at Rolf and Eli struggling on the ground, then puts the gun in his pocket.

  “What are you doing!?” Rolf screams. “You saw what they did to me!”

  “I saw,” Rocket said. “It’s what I had always wanted to do to you, every time you beat me!”

  Rolf’s eyes narrow. “You wouldn’t dare —” He can’t finish, because Eli tries to pin him to the dirt.

  Rocket watches his grandfather fight with my friend. The people of Yerushalayim watch, too, still from a distance, willing to let all of us hurt each other.

  Rocket paces over to Rolf, yelling at him, but does nothing to help Eli. “I did everything you asked! Did more than you asked—took care of the genetic experiments from all your secret programs for you and rounded them up whenever they escaped!” he says, pointing at K’lion.

  “ ‘Genetic experiment?’ ” K’lion repeats. “No, I am merely a wandering tkkkt! Saurian.”

  For the trouble of speaking up, K’lion elicits more cries of “Goat-demon!”


  But Rocket isn’t done with his grandfather yet. “And did you ever thank me? I took all your failed lab projects with me into the streets and kept your Odd-Lots Carnival, your freak show, out of sight, so nobody would ask too many questions.”

  “I am not some freak-show experiment!” the Bearded Boy says, pointing at K’lion.

  “Neither pttt! am I!” K’lion repeats. “I am an outlaw!”

  Eli now has Rolf pinned under him.

  “There was a time,” Rolf hisses at Rocket, “when you wouldn’t be allowed to do this to me.”

  “We aren’t in that time anymore” Rocket says to him.

  “No matter what time we’re in,” and even with all the dirt on Rolf’s face, I can see that he’s wearing a grin, “little Danger Boy here will be interested to know I was the last person to see his mother alive.”

  “What!?” It’s just enough to distract Eli, and Rolf flips him over, and now has my friend pinned under him.

  “Not bad for an old man, eh?” Rolf yells. “The Drachenjungen never grow old and never forget!”

  “Stop it, Grandfather! Stop it now.” Rocket has taken the gun back out of his pocket and aims it at Rolf’s head. “Let him go. It’s my turn to be pointing the gun now.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Rolf tells him, “no matter what time we’re in.”

  It is unclear whether Rocket will actually fire the gun, but K’lion has seen enough and leaps over, knocking Rocket down to the ground. “No! No more mammals dancing with guns!”

  And then, with his tail, he knocks Rolf off of Eli.

  I consider these both good and fine actions, but the people around us do not. K’lion’s sudden movement and yelling — the actions of a “goat-demon” — ’cause everything that has been pent up to come exploding out in a fury.

  They rush toward us; they even jump on one another, everyone hitting and throwing things.

  “You cry for peace!” Jeremiah yells. “But there is no peace! Stop this! Stop!”

  But no one is listening to him. They are too busy fighting. Someone has K’lion’s tail, and Eli and Rocket crouch with their backs to each other to keep from being overwhelmed.

  I grab Naftali and James and try to move them out of harm’s way.

  K’lion now hops around, getting pelted with even more rocks. A.J. tries to protect him, and I pull Naftali and James under an overhang.

  But in the confusion, Rolf has crawled over to where Eli’s soft helmet landed earlier and now clutches it in his hand.

  “No!” Eli yells.

  He puts it on his head, and nothing happens.

  Eli sees what’s going on and tries to get over to him, but the crowd blocks his way.

  “Let me through!”

  “Let him pass!” I yell in Hebrew, but no one is listening to anyone.

  Rolf takes the cap on and off, but still nothing happens. There is an artificial covering on it, which Eli calls Thickskin, that prevents immediate contact with the material.

  Rolf must know this, too, as he starts scratching at the covering.

  Naftali and James hold on to me.

  “Gehenna-marked!” It is the woman who has been accusing us all along, and now she grabs at me from above, reaching into the overhang, pulling me away from the boys.

  “I knew it!” she screams. “Bringing us nothing but misery!”

  Eli has fought his way to within arm’s reach of Rolf, who puts the hat back on his head one more time…

  …and vanishes.

  And with it, perhaps, our only chance of getting back to Eli’s time.

  Eli groans and slumps to his knees. I think he’s hurt, but Rolf’s seeming display of magic increases the crowd’s rage against us to a lethal level. Naftali and James are both crying, terrified, and before I can even move to help anyone, the woman who is attacking me drops down in front of me, then steps toward me, holding a club in her hand…

  …when something behind me catches her eye, and she stops and points over my shoulder.

  “Look,” she says, to no one in particular. “Look!” she shouts now, pointing, and though I don’t think anyone can hear her, other people in the rioting crowd see the same thing she does, and more and more of them stop and point and say “Look,” until finally, you can hear each of their voices again.

  “Look. It’s her.”

  “It’s her!”

  Huldah.

  Huldah has come up, out of her cave.

  Back up here, to the surface, to the world. To the ruins of her city.

  And behind her are several of the slow pox victims, the Gehanna-marked, the people with Seraphic plague, or whatever name it goes by, other survivors, coming up out of the darkness with her.

  But I don’t know if they’ll listen to Huldah, since they haven’t really listened to Jeremiah.

  “Jeremiah is right,” Huldah says. “You will never have what you seek if you keep tearing each other to shreds.”

  “We don’t want any more strangers around us,” the Gehenna-woman tells her, still brandishing her club.

  I seek out the faces of my friends in the crowd, and see K’lion — who, of course, looks the most strangerlike of all — and then Eli. And then I look at Eli’s shirt.

  There is English on it, which I am surprised I can read. I am growing increasingly familiar with his native tongue.

  All of which gives me an idea.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Eli: Gimel, Gimel

  583 B.C.E.

  It was my jersey that finally calmed everyone down and kept them from throwing rocks at us or doing something worse.

  My jersey, that is, and the way Andrew Jackson Williams celebrates the Jewish New Year.

  First, it was Thea’s idea to translate and let everyone know what my shirt said: House of David. Though in Hebrew it sounded like “B’eight Dah-veed.”

  “House of David. See?” Thea explained. “He’s with the House of David, too.” A.J. confirmed the translation; no one tried to explain what baseball was, but the idea that I was with “House of David” could also mean I was related to King David.

  We didn’t bother to correct anyone.

  Of course, that made some of them madder — they thought I was claiming to be some kind of anointed or chosen one who was supposed to be descended from David himself.

  So it still might not have worked, except that Huldah came over to have a closer look herself. She couldn’t read English, but she looked at the garment, ran her fingers over it, and noticed the two mysterious letters sewn on the inside.

  “Gimel! Gimel!” she said, reading them. So they were Hebrew.

  “He has two gimels on this garment.” Huldah turned and explained to the survivors. She unbuttoned my shirt enough so she could lift the flap and point out the letters to everyone else. It was a little embarrassing. “The two gimels refer to reward and punishment — the sign of consequence for every action.”

  “What?” I whispered to Thea.

  “In Hebrew, each letter equals a number. Gimel equals the number three,” she whispered back, speaking fast. “And each letter, each number, has special cosmic meaning. The gimel refers to balance and to choice — each choice bringing its outcome, for good or bad.”

  “Like history itself?”

  “Yes. Like everything. In balance between light and dark. Mother would sometimes study the hidden meanings of holy texts, including Hebrew letters, in the library, especially with visiting scholars who were always trying to unlock ancient mysteries.”

  “What hidden meanings?” I asked.

  “It is what your father does with his science. Tries to make more sense of things.”

  “So then, this is like the Hebrew version of my uniform number? Number thirty-three? It’s part of the replica? Or does that mean it’s a real jersey?”

  “You are asking me a baseball question?” Thea wondered.

  “I guess not.”

  So gimel gimel was Green Basset’s uniform number: two threes next t
o each other, for number 33. And each three had special significance in Hebrew. Someone in the House of David must have known that. Did they know it just might have saved the life of me and my friends?

  There really is a lot of stuff that we can’t see, going on in the world.

  “The stranger’s garment,” Huldah was saying, “reminds us of what Jeremiah told us, when he said, ‘O, House of David, bring justice in the morning.’ He also asked for deliverance from the oppressor for those who have been robbed or scorned, for us to escape the consequence of someone else’s thoughtless, cruel actions, and to make choices that are wise, and that allow us to walk in God’s way.

  “It is morning,” she said, gesturing to the sun and the remaining traces of melting frost, “and everyone in this place, even these strangers, are part of the House of David now.” She lifted her hand, sweeping past the wreckage-strewn horizon. “And this is that house. This ruined place. It is up to us to decide what kind of house — what kind of home — will rise up this time.”

  “She’s good,” A.J. whispered to me. “A long time ago, I was against women preachers. But she’s good. If I still had my pulpit in Vinita, I’d invite her to speak some gospel.

  “Well, no sense havin’ ears if you’re not gonna listen to what’s bein’ said. I’m gonna finish my rebuildin’ project.”

  He walked over to where we’d started to build an altar earlier. Some of the stones had been knocked over again. He picked one up, and set it on top of another.

  Huldah saw him, and then she lifted up a smaller rock and put it on top of where there had once been a wall.

  The Gehenna woman picked up a rock. For just a second, I thought she might throw it at one of us. “There’s nothing left to lose by trying,” she said. Then she laid it on the remains of the wall, next to Huldah’s.

  After that, everyone else started to pick up rocks and stones and pieces of rubble, too.