The Rock Child

by Win Blevins

  Why two of them? Impossible! She shook her head violently. True. Two Porter Rockwells.

  By a mammoth act of will she refused her eyes permission to look up. Two. Now she even heard two of them, the clops of hoofs of two horses. The men didn’t speak. They were looking in silence, their eyes poking through the twilight, searching for her.

  The roots of her hair prickled. Her fingernails hurt like they were peppered underneath. Her belly churned. The scar on her face sucked at the bone beneath.

  Thus observing herself, Sun Moon reddened with embarrassment. He might not have seen me, but he will now. My face glows like a lantern. They might not have, she corrected herself.

  She wondered where Asie was, how far he had gone to do his grass-hunting-for-the-pony act. She knew he would come back if she got caught, he would sacrifice himself with her. She shrank smaller behind the sagebrush.

  She reprimanded herself. I am fearful. I must call Mahakala to my side. I must become a drinker of blood and an eater of men.

  Her scar hurt—crisis or opportunity? She forbade her hand to rub it. I will give scars, not receive them. She reached for the derringer in her waistband. Drinker of blood and eater of men. She took it in her hand and let her long, loose sleeve cover it.

  Then she realized. It’s not the scar that aches, it’s my other side, it’s the right, the untouched side. A-mo! The side he hasn’t cut. Yet.

  “Hallo! You!”

  One of the white men—she refused to call them Rockwells—walked his horse through the sagebrush to her left. Going toward Asie. She couldn’t see or hear the other white man. She could feel his eyes probing for her, insidious fingers.

  “What are you about there?” That white man talks funny. A few men at the mining camp had spoken in that odd way—John Bulls, the others called them.

  Asie answered something she couldn’t make out.

  The mounted horse clopped a few steps. The saddle creaked. To the right and well behind she saw the head and withers of another horse, a beautiful blood bay. Squatted, she put her head between her legs.

  “You alone, then, is it?” said the Brit.

  “Just me.” Even Sun Moon wouldn’t have believed him.

  The John Bull rattled off a bunch of words she couldn’t understand. Something about tribe, camp, wanting to trade, some such.

  She lifted her head. The blood bay stepped forward. Its saddle was empty.

  Skitch! A faint sound of sand behind her.

  She whirled.

  Sun Moon looked up into the face of Porter Rockwell.

  Big as bear paws, his hands took her throat. He lifted her higher than his head. She hung limp, like a dead goose hung by the neck.

  “Come here.” He spoke low and sharp at the same time. “Sir Richard.”

  She heard the footsteps of the John Bull—Sir Richard?—but she couldn’t take her eyes off Porter Rockwell’s face. And another devil. She quaked.

  Asie’s footsteps came toward her. “Put her down!” he said. His voice sounded edged but weak.

  “Keep your tongue to yourself.” It was said casually, softly. Rockwell set her feet on the ground but kept his hands on her throat.

  “This here is Sun Moon,” said Rockwell. He let Sun Moon down until her feet rested on the ground. “She’s a whore. Comes from Hard Rock City.”

  Moon put her finger inside the trigger guard, gently on the trigger. She had never fired the derringer, or any gun, but she was not afraid.

  “Put her down!” Asie said in a cat screech. He came staggering toward them like a falling-down drunk proclaiming his fighting prowess.

  Take your eyes off me and I will shoot you in the heart. If the John Bull lets me live long enough, I will touch my lips to your blood.

  “Sir Richard, could you take care of that nuisance? I’m busy.” Sun Moon’s eyes took in the John Bull, and her heart hurt in her chest. Bearing of a soldier, fiery visage, evil eye. Another Rockwell indeed.

  The John Bull stepped his mount in front of Asie. “Mr. Lo,” he said, “I regret being unable to address you by name. I’m drawing this sidearm. Do not make me use it.”

  Rockwell seemed to like that—one corner of his mouth turned up.

  Asie charged. He came screaming like a monster, arms outstretched at Rockwell.

  The John Bull jumped his horse sideways. Horse shoulder hit human shoulder. Asie went sprawling, then came up slowly onto one knee.

  “If you rise,” the John Bull told Asie, “I will shoot you.”

  Pause. Asie crumpled to the ground. “Rockwell, you were saying.”

  Sun Moon drew the derringer with a lurch. I will drink your blood.

  Rockwell slapped her hand. The gun went flying. The man was actually grinning.

  “Sure glad we got that settled. Nearly got tired of waiting for you to make your move.” He nestled both hands around her throat again, and squeezed a little.

  “How is it you know this woman?” asked the John Bull.

  “See this scar on her face. I put it there. She deserved it, and more. Turn the other cheek, they say,” Rockwell went on, and gave a sinister chuckle. “So I’m gonna match this scar on the other side.” He drew her close to his face. “Right here,” he said. He stuck his tongue in her eye and ran it down her cheek like her scar. It felt like a slug.

  She pretended to vomit and heaved dry. Rockwell nearly dropped her.

  “What did she do?” said the John Bull.

  Rockwell’s eyes turned toward him, slowly, challengingly, as though noting an offense.

  “What did she do? She offended me. I promised her I’d kill her, ever I saw her again. So first I’m gonna cut her, then I’m gonna kill her.”

  Rockwell turned his eyes back to Sun Moon. She saw a queer, sick pleasure squiggle through them.

  Mahakala, give my arms strength. She clawed at his eyes.

  Rockwell shoved her back. As she fought for balance, he backhanded her hard. Sun Moon found herself facedown with sand on her lips and teeth.

  Humiliation surged up Sun Moon’s gullet. Now she vomited. Then she raised her face toward Porter Rockwell and smiled in radiant contempt. She called loudly in the Tibetan language, “Help me, Mahakala!” She added in English, “Kill me, or I will kill you.”

  “OK,” said Rockwell. “Deal.”

  He lifted her off the ground with his powerful arms, and his terrible hands began to squeeze her neck.

  “Wait,” said the other man.

  She felt the hands ease, and felt Rockwell’s trial, his strain to hold back his ferocity, to stop the flow of his lust for blood through his hands. The energy in his fingers slowed. She felt the blackness recede.

  “Who are you, Sister?” the John Bull asked in Tibetan.

  Sun Moon’s head turned in Porter Rockwell’s hands. Her mind spun in the opposite direction. He spoke to me politely in my own tongue, the language of the Pöba. Her eyes soaked up Sir Richard. He called me pomo, younger sister, politely, properly, in my own language. Miracle.

  Her voice scratched out in her own tongue, “Greetings, Gyenla, Elder Brother. I am Ani Dechen Tsering.” Ani was the word for nun, and her religious name meant Long Life of Great Virtue.

  “You are a nun?”

  “Ani Dechen Tsering of the convent at Zorgai.” Her own language felt grateful on her tongue.

  “You know this man?” The man’s accent was pronounced, yet he spoke properly.

  “He tried to rape me. I fought. So he gave me this scar by my left eye.”

  “Why does he want to harm you?”

  She felt the energy of violence running through Rockwell’s hands on her throat. At any moment it will snap out as lightning and kill me, and I will fail Mahakala.

  Eyes still down, she swallowed and found the strength to speak. “He tried to rape me. I kicked him in the face. He cut me. He took an oath that if he ever saw me again, he would kill me.” Mahakala, does a warrior think it martial to fight with words?

  A long pause. Then, “Let
her go.”

  For a moment Sun Moon did not understand the words. Suddenly she realized this Sir Richard had switched back to English. Her mind lifted and plummeted in waves and troughs.

  “I’m going to kill the bitch,” said Rockwell softly.

  But so far the violence in your hands is only waiting.

  “Let her go. She’s a nun.”

  Rockwell cackled loudly, like a goose honking. “A nun. Good training for a whore.” She felt his eyes turn back to her, and closed her own. “Now I’m going to squeeze. Squeeze your neck until you can’t breathe, and the pieces of your neck break in my hands, and you kick and flop to get air, and you die.”

  She brought all her awareness toward his hands and stiffened the muscles in her neck with her whole will. She had no strength left for her arms or legs.

  A gunshot.

  Hands dropped her.

  She crumpled to the ground. She opened her eyes and looked up. Where the physical form of her killer had stood, she half expected to see empty air. But Porter Rockwell inhabited that space still.

  “You bastard!”

  “Withdraw your sidearm and drop it.” From his saddle Sir Richard held a revolver straight at Porter Rockwell’s chest.

  “Stuff it up your ass.”

  Sir Richard enunciated slowly now. “Pull your sidearm out of your belt by the grip with thumb and forefinger only. Drop it. On the count of three. Or I will send lead through your lungs and out your back.” The two men looked will at each other, and each knew. “One … two …”

  Thump. The pistol rocked slightly on the sand.

  Sun Moon sat up and rubbed her neck. She breathed. Air flowed through her neck and into her chest, sweet air.

  She turned her head each way, then turned it twice more, testing. Finally she looked around to see where the shot had gone.

  A saddled horse lay on the ground, flat, limp. The blood bay, beautiful and dead. Her heart twisted. Blood ran out the side of its head, just below its ear, down its neck, and into the dust.

  “That was a fine horse.”

  “The next one is for you.”

  “In this country they hang people for stealing horses.”

  Sir Richard said, “So if I kill you, they can’t do worse.”

  Porter Rockwell’s left foot wiggled. She could feel his spirit wanting to leap at Sir Richard. She felt nothing at all from him toward her. She was dropped and forgotten. She rubbed her neck. She glanced toward the derringer on the sand. Mahakala, grant me his life’s blood.

  “Sister, don’t try it,” admonished Sir Richard.

  Rockwell snickered. But he stood motionless in front of the motionless barrel of the gun.

  “Start walking.”

  “Why are you defending a whore?”

  “Start walking. She’s a nun.”

  “I’ll kill you. All three of you.”

  “Start walking. We’ll keep your saddle and gear.”

  “I’ll scalp you alive. You’ll be able to feel the skin peeling back on your skull. I’ll scalp her between the legs. I’ll cut his …”

  KA-BOOM! She saw the dirt fly between Rockwell’s feet. She saw alarm leap into his face, and slowly recede.

  Don’t kill him! Her hands ached to touch his blood, to run wet with it. She wanted to hold her arms high and let it run down to her elbows and under her clothes.

  She recoiled. A-a-a-h-h! So that’s how it feels to wish to shed another human being’s blood. Mahakala, maybe I cannot…

  KA-BOOM! Dust spurted and whirled on the wind up into Rockwell’s face. “I have three more shots in this revolver, six in the other, and one in the Hawkin. One will suffice, any one.”

  From the corner of her eye she saw Sir Richard slip his rifle out of its saddle sheath. His revolver never wavered.

  Rockwell’s feet moved. She felt as though his body went with them reluctantly. One step, another, another, pulling the body like a mule pulls a wagon. “I’ll kill all three of you. You last, Burton, so you can watch. You last and slowest.”

  KA-BOOM!

  She saw Rockwell’s feet carry his body away, his back to them. “I’ll chase you to the ends of the Earth. I’ll go sight-seeing in goddamn China.”

  The three of them waited in silence, first listening to the skitch of Rockwell’s footsteps on the sand, then watching his back until it disappeared.

  Finally Sir Richard said, “Forgive me for this intrusion into your lives. I am Captain Richard Burton. Sister, will you pick up your derringer. Next time learn to use it before you try.”

  She spotted it beneath a sagebrush, picked it up, stuck it in her waistband.

  A moment passed, Burton’s eyes switching from Sun Moon to Asie and back. In his eyes she felt the import of the next words. “We’d best get along. He will be a formidable enemy.”

  PART TWO

  WE SEEK REFUGE

  CHAPTER NINE

  1

  Sir Richard was thinking that Rockwell couldn’t follow us on foot. But we soon learned not to sell Orrin Porter Rockwell short. That man gave home to a monstrous spirit.

  We struck northwest, parallel to the road that ran around the north end of the Great Salt Lake to join up with the California Trail.

  Sweet gizzards, hadn’t we spun like a top? First Moon and I were bound for Great Salt Lake City, made up to be an Indian and his wife. Now we were spun around but headed west. And we were in the dark, with hardly no possibles—just three or four days’ food, and not enough water to last beyond the night.

  I pondered it. On the one hand, Sun Moon did walk across this same road from City of Rocks almost to the City of the Saints. If a woman built like a twig could do it alone, surely we men could walk back. On the other hand, Porter Rockwell had only been a bogeyman in her mind then. Now he was stalking us like a mountain cat. We were weak as new lambs.

  We stayed off the road, which was just good sense. “Rockwell could follow the road, but he’ll have the devil’s own time seeing our tracks at night.” That was Sir Richard’s figuring. Not that he believed for a moment that Rockwell would follow. “On foot? Without water?” he asked. “No food, no weapons, across the alkali wastes and these dry, spiny mountains? Even I…”

  The man’s singular fault, if you haven’t already figured it out, was his smugness. Wasn’t he born to means, to culture, to understanding? Wasn’t he an Oxford man? Wasn’t he author of a bushel of books? Wasn’t he British? Pretty much all white people feel something like that. Sometimes, the less excuse, the stronger they feel it. The British, sure to God, have raised it to an art.

  We walked and rode and walked and rode, taking turns on the horses and on foot. The land was parched, but the evening was cool. We might have been heading into the devil knows what. Yes, Sir Richard was crazy to go. But maybe he had his reasons. I was crazy to go, and had no reason at all. Except that ever since I near drowned in the river, things had looked different to me. How? Couldn’t say.

  Within the hour we knew that Rockwell was right behind us, and having a fiendishly good time. He’d stand on ridges in the moonlight, where we couldn’t help but see him. Once when he was outlined by the full moon rising behind, he spread his arms. He looked for all the world like a predator, about to launch into the night air, swoop down, and seize us with beak and talons. It gave me the shivers.

  He cut loose. “Aw-ooh, aw-ooh, oow-oow, Aw-ooh!”

  I can’t spell how it sounded. It was the call of the beast. You could imagine it was a wolf crossed with an eagle crossed with a lion, but it was worse than that. It was the cry of the hunter, the call of the killer, and the cackle of the devil. It gave me triple shivers.

  “Can you handle a rifle?” Sir Richard asked me.

  “I will shoot him,” injected Sun Moon, touching that derringer in her waistband. We were all mesmerized by the sight of Rockwell as predator.

  Sir Richard had seen all the firearms expertise from Sun Moon he could stand. He held the Hawkin out to me. “Give it a try. It’s too lon
g a shot, but he needs the reminder.”

  I’d shot my foster brother’s Hawkin from boyhood—meat for the pot. They’re muzzle-heavy. This one was full stock, caplock, seventy-five to the pound. Since the distance must have been four hundred yards, the only thing that was going to get to Rockwell was the sound.

  I knelt, used my knee for a rest, pulled the set trigger till it clicked, and squeezed the other. The report was just a piddle in the desert night. Rockwell never moved. I saw nothing of what sagebrush, powdery alkali, or snake hole the lead may have crashed into. I half expected Rockwell to cut loose with his demonic cackle-cry. In my imagination it echoed off the rimrock and rattled mockingly between my ears.

  “Hold on to the rifle,” said Sir Richard. “You may need it.”

  Even now my bones remember that night. Walk, walk, walk. Through a dry wash, heavy underfoot. Up a side hill. Along a prickly ridge. Back into a dry wash. Across an alkali flat, mud sucking at my shoes. Across a sagebrush plain. Walk, walk, walk.

  We led the pony and took turns riding Sir Richard’s mount. The rider was the lookout. On every rise I’d stop, turn in the saddle, and look for Porter Rockwell. I saw him twice during the night. Each time cold lightning flickered up and down my spine.

  The summer land was dry and cracked. So was my tongue. Worried, I kept my mouth away from the canteens all I could. We filled up with water at Bear River in the first hour, but all night we saw not a drop. Not long before dawn we came to the Little Malad River. A thin trickle made its way snaky-like toward the Salt Lake. The water could be drunk. But where would we find water again?

  Sir Richard hauled out his own maps. He was a man for papers like you never saw. He carried maps and charts of my own country I’d have never guessed existed. He had a couple of books in his saddlebags. He had pen and paper to make notes on, which he did, morning, noon, and night. Sometimes I wondered if he saw anything on our journey besides blank paper, paper with words all over it, and the words he was always making up in his head. When we dug for water in a dry creek bed, thirsting, did Sir Richard feel thirsty? Or did he only get whatever description of it was a-borning in his mind? Did he taste the life-giving water? Or only his words for it? Which was real to him, the world or the words?