by Ian Weir
“We won’t talk about this. I don’t talk about my brother,” he said. “Why would you be laying in wait, to ask me such a question?”
“I thought—”
“Well, you thought wrong. I’m grateful to you, Mr. Weaver—you been a friend. But we’re not going to do this book you want to write. Leave it lay. Or write some damned thing once I’m dead. But I’ve got a job to do, right here—it’s looking out for that poor gal. And I’ll thank you to let me get on with it.”
He raised two fingers to the brim of his hat, in a gesture of seeing me off. It was a damned straw boater, of all things, in place of the shapeless monstrosity he’d been wearing when we met, the one that sat on his head like a possum squashed flat in the road. He and Em’ly had been all the way out to Meiggs Wharf that afternoon, where I do not doubt that they both ate ice cream.
“But are you sure?” I said.
“My brother is dead.”
The setting sun was directly behind him. I lifted a hand to shade my eyes, squinting to discern his face. There was silence for a moment, and then his voice again, rumbling hoarsely out of the dying light.
“I went after him, up into those mountains. We fought. I tried to carry him back down. But I couldn’t, Mr. Weaver. Couldn’t do it.”3
“Carry him down ... still living, you mean? He was still alive?”
“At first. But then I lost him. I watched him fall.”
“So you didn’t—forgive me, but I have to ask—you didn’t actually see him die?”
There was silence again. Then that voice again, from out of the dying light. “What have you heard, Mr. Weaver?”
“Nothing, really. Nothing certain. A kind of rumour.”
“Where did you hear it?”
“Just something that was said by someone. A fella. I don’t know him all that well. And I couldn’t say where he heard it.”
This was true, pretty much. Wyatt Earp had gone all sage and mysterious when I’d asked him for elucidation. He’d raised one eyebrow and uttered cryptic murmurs, before disappearing behind his newspaper once again: the future Lion of Tombstone becoming a Sphinx. He’d said just enough to make me suspect that he’d heard some sort of rumour himself, but had no actual first-hand knowledge. And why would Earp have followed up a rumour, after all? He wasn’t a lawman anymore; it had nothing to do with him.
“My brother is dead, Mr. Weaver.” Strother Purcell was a thousand years old, as he stepped stiff-legged past me. He was older than Methuselah, and carried more weight of sorrow. “Never speak of this again.”
It took me three days to find Tyree.
He’d disappeared from his corner on Market Street, and no one seemed to know where he might have gone. No one seemed to care overwhelmingly, either, which struck me as a melancholy thing. It crossed my mind that the poor bastard could have died—that he lay undiscovered in his room, wherever it was, lying glass-eyed on his back with his legs in the air, like a dead budgerigar. So few of us leave a trace when we depart this world, though we prefer not to be reminded of the fact. Besides, I needed the little man.
I’d sent out a letter or two to fellas I knew on newspapers here and there about the country, fishing for anything they might have heard about Elijah Dillashay. But Tyree, now—if anyone in San Francisco had heard whispers concerning Dillashay, then Tyree was the little fella who would have done so. And if he hadn’t heard anything yet, then he’d be amongst the first to hear in future. Tyree had keen ears, and kept both of them close to the ground. There’s an anatomical unlikelihood in that image, but let it pass. The point being, if the brother was still alive somewhere, then this was something the old man needed to know—for any number of highly obvious reasons, quite apart from any biography that might still get written. And he needed a friend to track this down, on his behalf.
When I found Tyree at last, he was in a tavern near Polk Street. It was a dingy little bolthole, around the corner from the building where—so I’d discovered—he had his digs.
“Christ on a cracker,” I said. “You look like hell.”
He’d fallen ill again, it seemed—had relapsed, or been gripped by some new affliction, worse than before. He was perched on a stool at a small round table in a corner—wearing a coat, despite the warmth of the day, his huge eyes lit with the residue of fever, behind those lenses.
“H’lo, Weaver,” he muttered.
“I need your help, my friend,” I told him.
“My help?” A sound gurgled up that may have been a laugh. “God help you, then.”
About us malingered such a clientele as you’d expect, in a place like this. Layabouts and chancers, and stick-armed drunkards lifting glasses with shaking hands. Tyree’s hands were shaking too, and his face was more pinched than ever.
He looked hunted.
That was the thought that came to me, of a sudden. He looked like a man who was harried and hunted down.
“Strother Purcell, eh?” he said.
That stopped me. “What about him?”
“It’s him—that old man. I saw you with him. That’s Strother Purcell himself. You found him—still alive. Or what’s left.”
I might have tried to deny it. But really, what was the point?
Tyree sketched up a little smile. He was trying to look arch and knowing, I think, but mainly he just looked sickly. Then abruptly, the smile collapsed. “Jesus, Weaver—I thought he was dead. But...what happened to him?”
I answered truthfully. “I don’t know—not exactly. In fact, I don’t hardly know at all. He fell to pieces after that business—whatever it was—with his brother. Up there in the mountains of the North.”
“Jesus,” Tyree said again. He was drinking whiskey. Lifting his glass, his hand shook worse than ever; he used the second hand to steady it. “Still alive—but a wreck. I would never have believed...that man, of all the men I ever saw.”
He seemed genuinely distressed about it—that’s what seemed so curious. A man he’d seen once in his life, assuming the story he’d told me was true. And yet he was shaken by that man’s fall, as if Strother Purcell in tumbling had brought the very roof-beams down.
I was touched somewhere close to the heart—I truly was.
I thought, as well: Oh, this story must be told. It truly must, somehow, some way.
“He told me he tried to carry his brother down,” I said, leaning closer and keeping my voice down low. “Back down from the mountain, after they fought—up in Canada, that winter of...whenever it was.” “It was 1876,” Tyree said. “They rode through Hell’s Gate and the Black Canyon, along the Wagon Road. Then north, up into the Cariboo. Dead of winter.”
“The brother was still alive—that’s what he told me. After they fought. He tried to carry him, but he failed. Is that what happened?”
“It was a travois,” Tyree said. “Like the Indians make. That’s what I heard, anyway. He tried to lug him down the mountain on a travois. But the mountainside gave way. An avalanche, or some such—it took both of them down.”
“How does that even make sense?” I said. “He hunted his brother for fifteen hundred miles. He shot him. And then, he—what—he tried to rescue him?”
Tyree shuddered a little, all over, as if with cold. As if the ice of that faraway mountain had come creeping all the way down to San Francisco, and his breath when he spoke might billow white. “I expect he wanted to take him back for trial,” he said. “Down South, to a Judge who could hang him. No, I don’t know that for a fact. But if it came down to the guessing, then that’d be mine. It’d be rightful, y’see—as he’d’ve seen it. The right thing to do. That’s how he thought.”
I’d begun to feel a smidgen shivery myself, as I sat there listening to this. As if the Arctic frost had inched its way to my side of the table.
“You saw him just that one time,” I said.
Tyree nodded. “Ten years old.”
“And based on that, you can claim to know how he thought?”
“That’s all it
took. You’d know it, if you’d seen him back then. If you’d seen him the way he was.”
“And...what about the other one? The brother. If Purcell survived, then maybe Dillashay did too?”
The little man hunched tighter. The pony glass of whiskey was on the table before him, clenched between both of his hands. The knuckles were white. “No.” He stared down into the glass. The light from the window shimmered on the whiskey. “Lige Dillashay is dead.”
“That’s what you heard?”
“Lige Dillashay could not have survived. Not possible. Once the devil caught that man’s ankle, he’d not let go.”
I leaned forward. “Anything you hear—any leads, any information. And I’m not asking for a favour—I’ll pay you for it. Cash on the nail. All right?”
Tyree lifted his head. His eyes were lamps and he shuddered again, all over. “Weaver, listen to me,” he said. “Whatever you heard, or think you know—forget it. Lige Dillashay is dead, and burning. If he isn’t, then he should be. Just leave it.”
It was, all in all, one of the more singular conversations I’d experienced of late. And Christ knows, this had been quite the season for those.
Extricating myself, I left Tyree huddled and shuddering on his bar stool and went outside, into light and life, giving one valedictory shudder of my own. I had it in mind to slope down to Mulvaney’s, to see if any of the newsmen I knew had stopped by. I could troll them for information, I thought—subtly, so as not to give anything away.
But I didn’t get there. The afternoon was lying in wait with its strangest turn yet: one that could make you think those old Greeks really were on to something, about Fate and what-all else.
I was making toward Geary Street when I saw the drunken man on the corner just ahead, exhorting sinners. He was shambling and slurring, and passersby veered to give him a wide berth—except for those who paused to jeer instead. “Mock—oh, yes, mock!” he cried. A clutch of young fellows were happy to comply; the catcalls flew. He was undeterred. “I am as you see—a sinner, jus’ like you. Yes, jus’ exactly like each of you!” (“No!” a young wag interjected. “We smell better!” General merriment, and an apple-core chucked.) “I am lower than the muck—oh, I am, I am, and I know it.” (“So do we!”) “But I shall be raised up, despite of my unworthiness. ’Cause I stand before you, river-baptized, by Brother Jacob Jacobson himself!”
It was Brother Amos, from the Gospel Mission by the dockside south of Market Street. The strange duck who’d been ladling out stew to indigents—the one so thin that his head was just a skull with hair and skin, who had stared at me with Mother Weaver’s eyes.
And recognized me.
“You!” he cried. “Oath-breaker!”
Christ.
The catcallers had started to move on, leaving me momentarily exposed. Brother Amos lurched toward me.
He’d fallen from the wagon, quite obviously. Fallen abject and headlong—but he was strangely undismayed. Possibly this was just something that happened to him, every few months—hell, on alternate Tuesdays, for all I knew—after which he’d clamber back up again, once the binge had run its course. Or else possibly this was the tumble that would wreck him, once and for all.
“Friend o’ mine, you see a wretch before you. But friend? I see an even worse one, before me.”
He stank of gin and urine. But he still had my mother’s come-to-Jesus eyes. They were bloodshot and they burned.
“Friend o’ mine, it’s not too late. No, never too late—not ever—whatever you may be thinking.”
In fact, I was thinking how very much I would like to be elsewhere, just at the moment. But Brother Amos had me by the sleeve.
“You can still make amends,” he said, eyes burning bright. “Friend o’ mine, you can be the man you yearn to be, in your heart. But it’s getting late—oh, it is—I b’lieve you know it. ’S late, and time to be bringing in the sheaves. We can pray together, friend—right here—if you wish it. And you do—oh, you do, friend o’ mine, you do, you do—even if you don’t understand that yet.”
This was getting out of hand. We’d caught the eye of passersby; smirks were kindling, and elbows were a-nudge.
“Let go of me,” I muttered, wrenching free. I shoved him to emphasize the point—a little harder than I’d actually intended. He staggered back, and one of the smirkers stopped smirking, to call out a protest instead. “Easy, fella—there’s no call to hit ’im.”
Damn.
I dug into my pocket, fishing out a coin. “Here,” I said gruffly. “Buy yourself something to eat. Or—hell if I care—go get another drink.”
Brother Amos looked wounded. Mother Weaver’s eyes had a flair for that look, too. But he took the coin.
“I am a wretch,” he lamented.
“So you said.”
“But I been Saved. By a greater sinner than I will ever be. A greater sinner than you can even imagine.”
“Sure,” I said, beginning to edge away. “The Reverend Jacob What-Not.”
“Jacob Jacobson.”
“In a patch of potatoes, was it?”
“A hail-flattened cornfield.”
“That’s the one.”
“In Ulysses, Kansas.”
“Sure. Well, you take care of yourself, and—”
He had my sleeve, again. “The Reverend Jacob Jacobson was the worst man, once, who ever lived. He told me that himself—an’ it was true. But even he was Saved. So there’s hope. Hope for me, an’ hope for you too, friend o’ mine.”
I had heard enough of the Reverend Jacob Jacobson for one afternoon. For one lifetime, in fact. I tried to tug my sleeve free again, but Brother Amos held fast. The man was like a limpet.
“Look, I don’t care about Jacob Jacobson,” I said through clenched teeth. “Whatever he did—or whoever the hell he was. Let me go, damn you, or I swear to God—”
“Dillashay,” said Brother Amos.
He’d pulled himself right up against me. Whispered the name into my ear—as if this was the secret that would seal a compact between us, making us friends in Jesus ever after.
“That was his name,” Brother Amos said. “He never tol’ it to me—but I found out. The Reverend Jacob Jacobson was once the fearsomest outlaw of them all, Elijah Dillashay.”
–TWENTY-ONE–
From The Testament of Rebekah7
The Southwest, 1892
1.
“I HAVE BEEN SCORNED and scourged,” Brother Jacob would cry. “I have been well-nigh broke on the wheel of retribution.”
Yes, he spoke like that. Rebekah would marvel to hear him.
“I have been lost, my friends, and I have been betrayed. I have been beaten and left for dead, and nailed to hang on the tree of my own transgressions. But I give thanks for every torment I endured—for I deserved each one of them. Oh, my friends, I am the worst man that ever walked.”
(“No,” they would exclaim, though they loved to hear him say it. “No, never—you are not!”)
“Oh, it’s true.”
(“No!”)
“I stand here in the Sight of God, a sinner ten times worse than any one of you. Yet I am washed clean again in the Blood of my Redeemer.” They loved him all the more for this, though they were afraid of him as well. Even Rebekah was afraid, just a little, and she feared few men, excepting her Daddy and her brothers. Brother Jacob’s eyes were dark as coals, and there was coiled power in the way he moved, despite the maiming of his body. And that voice of his. It would simmer low and quiet, to draw you in: “And I’ll tell you something, friends. I’ll share with you a secret. Shall I do that?”
(“Yes!” they’d exclaim, and lean in close.)
“The scourging I endured—the torment and betrayal? It made me strong. Oh, yes it did. It made me ten times stronger than before—stronger than ever I was in the days of my youth and wickedness. And there’s someone who will pay a price for that. Shall I say his name to you, friends?”
(“Yes, say it!” they’d reply,
though they knew already.)
“That someone, friends—” And suddenly his voice would rise. It would soar and roar and ring out like the mightiest church-organ: “That someone is the devil!”
(“Hallelujah!”)
“I never seen a godly man with such a deal of danger in him.” Esther said that once. She was standing beside Rebekah by a sludgebrown meander of river where Brother Jacob was preaching.
“D’you s’p-p-pose,” Rebekah began to say in reply. “D’you s’p-p-p—” But the words wouldn’t come, so she gave up making the attempt. She was stirred by Brother Jacob’s preaching—that was the problem. She was exalted by it. When Rebekah was exalted, the syllables jammed themselves unbearably. She would otherwise have said: “D’you s’pose there was no danger in Moses? Or the Lord God Jesus Himself?” This had been a saying of her Mamaw Plovis, back home. “There was no Man ever walked this earth more perilous than the holy Lamb of God.”
On an evening in May they were inside a barn in the Prescott Valley. The sun sank low and dust-motes danced in shafts of light. Only a dozen souls had come out to hear Brother Jacob’s preaching, but that was all right. It was their first time in this part of Arizona, and now word would spread. A few days earlier, near Tempe, whole multitudes had come. They stayed right where they were for six days straight, Brother Jacob and his closest followers—a real Crusade, with a writeup in the newspaper and any number saved. Other times, other places, Brother Jacob would preach to Rebekah and Esther and the birds. But that would be all right too.
“It was g-good enough for Jesus.”
Rebekah had said this to him once, when no one came out at all. It really had been just Rebekah and Esther that time, along with the poor simple boy from Nebraska who had tagged along with them for a bit. Brother Jacob had been sunk in brooding, afterward; a darkness had come upon him, which Rebekah did not like to see.
“‘Wh-whenever two or three are gathered in m-my Name,’” Rebekah had said on this occasion, quoting the Bible. She spoke slowly and with great care, so that the stammering might not take hold.