by Win Blevins
Brother Young looked back at us in the wagon bed, then up the hill at Rockwell and his side men. He looked all around at his sons. Everyone knew what he was thinking. Rockwell said, “No, Brother Young. Those scatterguns at this range will feel like raindrops. Our rifles will shoot you in one side and out the other.”
I could see Brigham Young figuring it, too. He didn’t like the sum he got. Me neither.
The Prophet nodded to himself, stepped down out of the saddle, and handed the reins to one of his sons. He nodded to himself again, confirming whatever it was. Then he began to walk.
Up that dusty, rocky ridge he walked, straight toward Porter Rockwell. It was a steep walk, and he was a man with a lot of heft. He did it graceful, though—he had more than fat in those thick legs—chugged on up there like an engine. Never once looked up at Porter Rockwell, or back at any of us. I expect his inner eye was checking out the country beyond the Great Divide right then. Only a fool would trust Porter Rockwell. Hell, Rockwell couldn’t predict himself.
This time he snugged that carbine tighter into his shoulder, pressed his cheek down harder on the stock, and squinted a bit more keen. And held his fire. Or did until he could near choose between Brigham Young’s chest hairs in his sights.
“Give me the rifle, Brother Rockwell.”
The Destroying Angel didn’t move, didn’t stir, didn’t shift, didn’t waver.
I took a deep breath. Seconds went by. I ordered myself to let it out, but it wouldn’t go. Minutes went by, seemed like. Rockwell’s sidekicks kept their sights on Brigham Young’s sons, waiting, waiting, waiting for the main man to decide.
Brigham looked right past the muzzle and into Rockwell’s eye.
I think I felt it before I saw it. Like a wind settling down, Rockwell’s spirit eased off. Some tension slacked out of his shoulders.
Sudden-like, he lowered the rifle. I could see by the way he looked at Brother Young, and the contrary way he held his head, the wind could kick back up at any moment.
Brigham Young held both arms straight out, palms up. “Give me the rifle, Brother Rockwell,” he commanded.
Rockwell done it.
“Tell your men to pull the caps off.”
Rockwell nodded at them, and they popped ’em, which turned their rifles into mere clubs.
“Come with me.” The Prophet turned and clomped his way back down the hill. His shoulders sagged, and he looked like an old man now—he never done so going up.
Rockwell walked behind him, but not hangdog. Somehow he’d given in without feeling whipped. He must have still had considerable Saint in there somewhere.
His two sidekicks walked down, too, acting real casual. Saint or gentile either one, I wouldn’t have been relaxed myself, not when I’d been holding a gun on Brigham Young and his boys.
“Brother Rockwell,” said the Prophet, “can we proceed on trust?”
Rockwell was glaring at Sun Moon, giving her the evil eye. She gave it right back to him. Somehow it doesn’t look the same from a hundred-pound woman as a two-hundred-and-more-pound man.
“I wouldn’t trust me,” said Rockwell, straight at Sun Moon.
“Agreed,” said Brigham Young. “What about your… confederates?”
“They ain’t nothing to do with it.”
“Fine. I’m going to arrange for you to spend a week in the lockup. Even a deposed governor, I believe, can muster that much power. I’ll think of a charge.” He turned to Harold. “Enough?”
“Two weeks,” said Harold.
“Three weeks,” said Sir Richard.
“A month,” said Asie.
Sun Moon just stared at Rockwell. When Brother Young raised an eyebrow, she gave a tiny nod.
“I’ll keep him occupied for a month.”
“He’ll never find her after that,” put in the lead skinner. “In San Francisco, she kin go in with her kind. Even in Dayton and Virginia City, they’s Chinese.”
The Prophet nodded curtly. He didn’t like talkiness.
Myself, I eyed Sun Moon to see how she took to being called Chinese. Her face was unreadable.
They rode back toward the city, Brigham Young and his sons. Porter Rockwell and his badmen brought up the rear.
The skinners clucked and our wagons headed the other way. Sir Richard said casual-like to Sun Moon, “So you can’t go for that hideout gun even when you need it. It isn’t you, Sister.”
Not till then did I see her hand was inside her jacket the whole time, stuck. Her head hung.
I turned to watch the Mormons ride back toward the city. I’d grown up thereabouts, but figured to be done with the place for good this time. They were good and bad, the Saints—good as Brigham Young, bad as Porter Rockwell. Speaking of him, as far as I could see and maybe farther, Rockwell kept his head turned back, glaring at us, no doubt especial at Sun Moon. She never let herself glance his way, but she watched him in her mind’s eye, and felt afraid.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Toward noon, far out of rifle range from Orrin Porter Rockwell, Burton brought up what the skinner said. “Virginia City!” he exclaimed.
Harold Jackson nodded. Seemed less than civil as a way for a youth to answer a captain of the Queen’s army, Burton thought, but Americans ran to such foolishness—their drivel about equality and all that. Besides, the dust and the heat had obliterated all manners.
Virginia City, queen of the Comstock! To use an Americanism, it set the blood a-jangle!
Several years earlier the Comstock Lode had been discovered, richest vein of silver ore on Earth, they claimed. Of course, everything in America was the biggest, richest, deepest, highest, or most of whatever it was. Americans seemed to have cornered the market on grandiosity. People poured into the Washo District, which was the name of all the country around those parts, coming from everywhere, especially California. A lot of miners and prospectors were disgusted with California. Washo was the comer. An influential man had even told Burton in confidence—every secret in the nation was available over cigars and whisky if you dressed respectably—that the silver and gold from the new Territory of Nevada was financing the War Between the States. Where there was nothing but dust and Digger Indians three years before!
Wherever two people gathered together on the Oregon and California Trails, or even a drunk and a prairie dog gathered, their talk was Washo ahead and the War of the Rebellion behind. Jeehosaphat (Burton was enjoying making fun of American speech in his mind), in Virginia City, word was, every man was rich. Feller could spend a dollar for breakfast and two for dinner, drink champagne, and keep a Chinee to do his laundry by day and his pleasure by night.
Burton winced when those last words came to his mind, and glanced sideways at Sun Moon. In the Occidental view, women of color were little but an opportunity for sexual indulgence. He himself had carried such an attitude to India, and all his experience in the East and in Africa strengthened it. Having spent entirely too much time in Deseret, he found the fantasy of any woman appealing. Oh, Isabel!
Most Mormons would have no truck with Virginia City, however. The city by the Great Salt Lake might have emptied, Saints flowing West like a raging river, but for Brother Young’s injunction against mining. Work of the devil, he said. So the Mormons steered clear, except when the prospect of profit appeared. Thus these wagons, the captain was sure. The best sort of sin is the one that yields a buck.
“Is this the Pony Express route?” queried Burton. The one he’d taken two years before.
“No, when the telegraph come in, the stage stations on that route dried up and blew away. This is the old California Trail. It has better grass anyhow.”
Harold turned away, and Burton regarded his back. The wagon bumped. The midday August sun was brutal, the dust choking. Sun Moon and Asie rode with their lids half-shut, their minds doubtless in a better place. Burton decided conversation was preferable to boredom.
“So. We are on safariy. With little preparation.”
“What’s suh-far-ee?”
says Harold.
“A desert journey. An Arabic word.” When this brought no response, Burton plunged on. “Virginia City offers good commerce?”
“We used to trade just to Mormon Station, emigrant trade. Since the boom on the Comstock, even California cannot keep up with the demands, and in winter the passes to California close. More than ten thousand souls in Virginia City, about like Salt Lake City. The demand is great.”
“’hat ain’t the only kind of calico trade,” said the skinner. “Veritable.”
“Our guests are higher-minded than you, Muley,” said Harold.
The skinner turned to them, and Burton saw how he earned his name. He had a face long as a mule’s, blue-gray with stubble from the cheekbones down, and front teeth big as thumbs.
“Is the captain high-minded?” queried Muley in a high, whining voice. “I wouldn’a said so. I’d a bet the captain is a man veritable fond a’ calico.” Burton had once seen a parrot’s eye whirl in circles. Muley’s eye did something like this now.
Calico, yes, that’s what they call it.
“Muley!”
The skinner shook his head and stuck out his horsey teeth. “Save your tongue to me, I ain’t none of your Saint.”
“Even a gentile can tell when there are ladies present,” said Harold.
Muley turned his head around and moved it back and forth in little jerks, like a rooster. His eye stopped sharp on everyone, including Sun Moon. “Don’ see me no ladies. Veritable see me some yaller calico!” He stood up and waggled his arse.
“Enough, Muley,” said Burton equably. He looked at Sun Moon and saw by her eyes that she understood and was miffed. Yes, that slang she would know.
The skinner turned back and attended to the mules. “Oh, the gentlemen is offended at Muley’s tongue, is they? Then let them be offended by this.” He broke into his own version of the California Trail song “O, Susannah.”
“We’re sons of whoring fathers, boys,
And mothers drunk on brew,
Who whispered as they wrung our necks,
‘God curse and condemn you.’
Thieves, capitalists, and all their friends,
They wish us hearty speed,
Behold the world will steal from us
If our steps to fortune lead.
“Oh, California!
Thou land of broken dreams,
Where worthless mud and yellow piss
Are found in all thy streams!
“The lot of us—have we not left
The best of life for this?
To give our youth and all our strength
For whores and gamblers’ bliss!
So drop your cocks and grab your socks!
With hopes by fancy led,
Go where the Sacramento flows
O’er its swindling bed!
“Oh, California!
Thou land of broken dreams,
Where worthless mud and yellow piss
Are found in all thy streams!”
“Muley,” said Harold crossly, “Father doesn’t have to hire you.”
“No fear ’bout that,” said the skinner. “You kin pay some other fool sumbitch drive you back.”
“Muley?”
“This be my wagon and my mules. I’m for Washo, veritable, like them other fools.”
Burton couldn’t help intruding. “Why, Muley? If miners only get robbed by thieves, gamblers, and whores?”
“And capitalists,” said Muley. “Don’t forget them capitalists. Bonanza ain’t in the cricks or the earth. It’s in selling grub and clothes for five times their worth! Veritable! I aim to be a capitalist, just like Harold, here, and his father. If I get real lucky, I’ll be a monopolist.”
Not bloody likely. Muley wore an undershirt for a shirt, pants of osnaburg, and boots that looked like a hide scavenged by vultures. His stubble was tobacco-stained. His speech was crude in the extreme. Americans are nearly as particular as we British about keeping profit where it belongs, among the mannerly and well dressed.
“What was your father, Muley?”
“Preacher man,” said Muley. “Hardshell Baptist.”
Burton’s mind did a twirl. Yes, in America vicars may be uneducated. They read scripture on their own. Maybe that’s where “veritable” comes from. “Is your father still living?”
“My pap?” said Muley. “Same as dead. Runned off and j’ined them Shakers. Lucky for me he waited, veritable. No place to put his pecker now!” Muley cackled.
“I ought to dismiss you,” said Harold.
“Mebbe Porter Rockwell ull dismiss us both first.” Muley didn’t even look back at Harold, but just flicked the reins. The mules ignored him—it was too hot.
Burton looked around warily. The wagons were passing around the north end of the Great Salt Lake, where the country was broken, and every hillock and gully offered a hiding place for a rifleman. On the occasional flats, even the scrub gave cover enough for any bushwhacker. Good show Rockwell is in custody.
Burton pictured Virginia City in his mind. Yes, a chance to see the celebrated carnival of greed. A chance at whisky, and by report even fine brandies. Chinese there. A chance of opium.
And Porter Rockwell? Burton didn’t think so, not with a month’s start. And yet. A whiff of danger makes a man alive.
Captain Burton felt envious. His own actions were circumscribed by the rule of takiyyah, concealment of everything to do with faith, history, and customs. He even had to perform his prayers out of everyone’s sight. Sun Moon, however, meditated openly in camp every evening, gazing at her small altar, singing and chanting softly. She could be open and private at once because everyone knew she was just a superstitious heathen, and naturally had heathenish practices, which no white man would inquire about.
Burton, however, was aflame with curiosity. He had studied the secrets of Hinduism, had in fact been initiated as a Naga Brahmin. He was acquainted with the esotericism of the Tantras. He was devoted to his own mystical practice, Sufism. Though he knew something of lamaist Buddhism, to him Sun Moon represented an avis very rara indeed. A nun of the lamas, practicing before his very eyes. His mind spun with questions. The prospect of answers, theological discussions, made him dizzy. So dizzy that he held his tongue: He had plenty of time, and hardly knew how to begin.
Those chants, though, pushed him beyond the limits of his patience. Why Mahakala? Mahakala, the Tibetan equivalent of Kali, the goddess-monster?
He watched as she rose from the lotus position and put the altar away.
“Sister?” Burton began, speaking in Tibetan. He knew she loved to speak her own language.
She looked at him in silence. It was evening, and the sun, setting on the rims of the mountains to the west, cast a reddish gold light on her features. Burton thought again how lovely her face and form were, only enhanced by the scar, and how much he regretted their loss to celibacy.
“Sister, I fear impertinence. Please forgive any offense. Among your vows, as I understand it, is neither to kill nor commit other violence.” Burton well knew, in fact, that the other four beginning vows were to be celibate, not to drink to intoxication, and neither to steal nor to lie. He heard that novice monks took thirty-one more vows, and full monks 253 more still. Presumably nuns took similar vows. “Why then do you make offerings to Mahakala?”
Burton’s very breath was curiosity. Among the Hindus he was acquainted with, Kali was a horrific figure. He knew the story of her birth. Kali sprang forth from the brow of the Great Goddess Devi in extremis of battle against demons. Wearing a tiger skin, armed with a sword and a noose, she laid waste all around her. The demons saw that she was garlanded with human heads, carried a staff with a skull handle, and used as ear pendants the corpses of infants. Her third eye gleamed scarlet. She decapitated and crushed her enemies, laughing, and drank their blood.
Burton had seen hundreds of images of this deity. Her skin was black, her face gaunt, her eyes red and sunken. Her mouth gaped, her tongue lolled, her ski
n was emaciated. She was an inspiration not to Hindus of compassion but to the assassins known as the Phansigars, or Thuggees. So why a lamaist nun making offerings to such an ogre?
He saw Sun Moon’s uncertainty. He saw emotions tug at her beautiful face—he imagined on one hand they were the desire for privacy about matters of the spirit, and on the other hand compassion, the duty to teach, the need for understanding. He was wise enough to let her decide for herself in silence.
“Do you know Tantrism? Left-handed, esoteric Tantrism?”
“Yes, Sister, a little.” Seekers of the truth through Tantrism walked paradoxical paths. In their view, if celibacy and honesty are virtues, it is also true that all opposites are the same, all dualities one—celibacy is lechery, honesty is lying. Burton knew that some practitioners of Tantrism sought enlightenment not through chastity but through extreme indulgence. He accepted these paths, and at the same time felt mystified by them.
“Mahakala is neither male nor female. She is time who devours all. She is the source of all, Creatrix, Protectress, and Destroyer.”
Burton nodded, but he felt uncertain.
“Like Shiva, her consort,” Sun Moon went on, “she dances eternally, at the same moment bringing the world into being and destroying it. She lives in a cremation ground yet is the Mother of Life. She kills yet she protects. She is merciless but is all mercy.”
I wish we were speaking English, or Hindustani. Burton understood the doctrine of the unity of dualities, though sometimes its practical forms seemed daunting.
“I have not done Tantric studies myself, but I know the rudiments. The practitioner seeks unity in opposites. As death, Mahakala is the essence of what is forbidden. Thus the practitioner goes toward her to assimilate and overcome death, to transform it into a vehicle of redemption.” Sun Moon paused, regarding him attentively.
If only she would speak not of doctrine but of herself.
Sun Moon spoke very softly now, as though deliberately requiring effort by the listener. “Mahakala is not only death but triumph over death. The practitioner masters her and so himself.”