“I don't know.” The man looked skeptical. “I don't really need a truck, it's kinda beat up.”
He walked around Ben's vehicle for the
umpteenth time and kicked the tires again. “Tell you what, I'm
feeling generous. The gelding and a pony for the old Model-T.”
Kohn looked at the horses in the
paddock. They were eating a discarded sandwich off the ground.
“Threes horses, we need ja,” said
Kohn, holding up three thimbles.
A buxom woman in a
lavender dress walked up the other end of the alley with a basket
swinging in rhythm to her hips. The stableman's eyes were glued to
her approach.
“Mmm MM! Would you look at that.
Well, fella with the silver fingers, that is my final offer. If you
don't like it, then good day to you.” His eyes never left the
woman.
“Delilah, my darling, what brings you
here?”
“Just thought you might like a little
lunch, honey bunch.”
“I'm starvin, in fact, just like
yesterday, and same as tomorrow I hope, you gorgeous thing!”
“What are we going to do?” said
William.
“Well, I can probably get some work
here in Grand Junction, “Ben said, “but it will take a while
before we have enough. Have to take a room.”
“No, is to long,” Kohn said.
“Now Kohn, no stealin' or
shenanigans, that was the deal, If we can't get those horses in a
straight deal, we have to do something else.”
The thimbles clicked together in a
regular rhythm.
“Boy, boy,” Kohn said quietly,
“take peek-chure ja.” He pointed first at the ever-present camera
around William's neck, then at the stable keeper and the giggling
woman presenting him with his lunch.
“Awe, I've only got one shot left.”
“What'r you up to Kohn?” said Ben.
“Something else. Go William, take
ja.”
William walked up to the flirting
couple. He looked down into the view finder, waited til they noticed
him and clicked the shutter.
“Hey, what's the big idea boy.
What'dya think you're doin'? Why'd you take that photo? Gimme that!”
Kohn strode up behind the boy.
“New deal is, three horses for
truck... and camera film.”
“Why of all the dirty... alright,
alight it's a deal.”
As they led their new horses away
William looked up at Kohn. “Why'd that man change his mind?”
“Two women make lunch. One lunch goes
horses. Wife would not be happy if know she feeds horses and fat girl
feeds husband.”
“What do we do?”
“We wait,” the girl said.
She was about Ruby's age, maybe younger
but taller and heavier.
“Wait for what?”
The girl smiled. “You can read if you
like.” There were several books on a table in front of the chairs
and lounges that lined the locked and sweltering upstairs room.
The books all had the same author:
Ernest J. Tobias.
The other girl was reclined in a
rocking chair with her feet up on an ottoman. The two looked like
they came from and belonged in different homes. She rocked and fanned
herself incessantly with a small heart-shaped fan woven from reeds.
Ruby got up and went to the window. It
seemed like everyone in the community was out doing something.
Hauling rocks from a new field, carrying buckets of water from the
well, hammering on the skeleton of yet another ramshackle house made
from used lumber and old windows.
When she looked close she could see
Ester and Caleb toiling over a field of some green but scant crop.
She felt a little sorry for Ester, she
couldn't help but feel pleased about Caleb's dilemma. As a new and
unproven member of the community he had lost most of his possessions,
Ruby included.
She had been spared having to wed the
cruel old man, even though she was now the 'property' of Brother
Tobias it would seem. Ruby and dozen or so others from about thirteen
to thirty years of age. Most of them slept in a dorm room of the main
house together. Every night before the lamps were blown out, a church
elder would pick a girl or two.
They returned to their cots in the dark
after a couple of hours.
In the morning after prayers and
breakfast most of the girls went off with several elders. Ruby was
locked in the room with the chairs, just like yesterday. Today she
had company, Meerah was her name maybe.
Some of the girls were mean, most
ignored her. They all wore plain blue ill-fitting dresses. Ruby's was
too big for her. Her own clothes were ripped up for rags. One of the
older girls had used one to replace another blood stained rag from under her dress.
Unless there was a foot of snow on the
ground, there was always ten things to be done back on the farm. With
her mama in her state and her papa dead as I am, Ruby had to do nine
of 'em yessir. She wasn't about to complain about being shut inside
while others toiled in the sun. She just couldn't shake the
feelin—outside of being kidnapped and lost from her brother—that
she was in some sort of trouble.
“Ain't we supposed to do chores or
something?” Ruby said.
“No, they wanna keep us pretty, plump
and pale. Sometimes we do mending, peel potatoes maybe, but no work
in the sun, no dirt under our nails. They gunna fatten you up I
reckon. They got me on a diet. That's why I'm stuck back here with
you, not off with the others, little too fat Brother Erlick said.
“Where are the others?”
The girl rolled her head in Ruby's
direction with a minimum of effort and smiled.
“Hey new girl, if you're that bored,
You could always come over here and rub on my feet... or wherever.”
“This look familiar?”
“It's a thimble,” said the man
behind the counter.
“Of course it's a thimble wise guy.
Do you sell any like this one?” My head was still pounding and I
had very little patience.
“No, don't think so. Lemme have a
look.” He brought it close to his eye and turned the thing over
seeing the tar coating the inside. He sniffed. “Aha!” he said. “I
don't sell this particular item, this is one of them the fancy ladies
put in glass cases, ladies who don't sew or mend. I think I have
heard of this though. This thimble doesn't even belong to a lady if
I'm correct.”
He wrote down an address on a receipt
and handed it to me.
“Show your thimble to the man at this
shop. He'll be able to tell you more.”
The bar was more crowded than I
expected. It was still mid afternoon. He wasn't hard to spot, a tall
man at the bar with his large black hat still on his head. I took a
deep breath and walked up to the bar. I slapped the thimble on the
table. Time seemed to freeze as I waited for what he would do. He
picked up the thimble and placed it on a blackened pointer finger on
his Left hand and pressed hard till the tar inside the thimble set to
his fingertip. Every other finger was so adorned.
“Tak.” he said.
He took a drink.
“Listen mister. I got a beef with
you. I gotta goose egg on my head cuz a you.”
No reaction.
I'm not a fight'n man. Never thrown a
punch cept what was in good fun or sport, but thinking of Charlotte
and her daughter, all her tears and anguish, thinking of the cowardly
lump this guy had given me; something just kind-of gave way inside of
me.
My fist flew fast, but twice as fast
came a steel grip around my wrist. The guy didn't even look up.
Without letting go, he got up from the bar, dragging me with him, and
threw me into the street amongst jeers and cheers from inside.
“Tak, thank,” he said holding up
the hand with the newly recovered thimble. “Home go ja.”
He disappeared back inside.
A sane man would have simply walked
away, but his action only infuriated me more. When I ran at him
inside he lifted me off the ground with my own speed like he was
swatting at a fly. I landed behind the bar.
My next attack was met with his fist. I
saw stars. Through my blurred vision I could see he was still sitting
at the bar, sure that the annoying fly had gotten the message.
I had not.
The chair I broke over his back got his
attention. He was engaged now. I danced in front of him, fisticuffs
at the ready. His reach impossibly longer than mine, I couldn't hope
to land a blow. I dodged his first couple throws. The next landed
square on my nose. There was a crunch. I could taste the salt of my
blood as it ran past my lips.
Still I danced before him, ready to
take any opening he might allow. The next punch was to my jaw. It
took me off my feet, but I was soon back up.
The crowd had taken to the sport and
had formed a noisy ring around us.
He knocked me down again with his
thimble tipped wrecking ball fists. Each time though, I got to my
feet and raised my own fists; fists that had not yet hit a thing. He
gave me an odd look of exasperation.
I had gotten the swing of his blows by
this time and dodged the next one. I grabbed it as it went past. I
sunk my teeth into his arm just before it disappeared into his black
jacket. I don't know if his scream was of pain or rage, but after all
my failed attempts to cause any sort of harm, I found it euphorically
satisfying.
That was not my plan though.
The fist of the arm I was biting opened
instinctually. I could see the objects of my attack. Before he
started bludgeoning me with his free hand I reached up and started
popping thimbles off his fingers.
It sounded a bit like popcorn.
The tall man fell to the floor and
began grasping at the scattering thimbles like a blind beggar who's
tin cup had been overturned.
I stood over him, bleeding, soaked in
the delusion that I had won. Until he had replaced the last thimble I
and the room of rapt spectators ceased to exist to him. As he rose
from the floor I figured it may have been wiser to use that time to
get my carcass out of that bar and as far down the street as my legs
could carry me.
I had saved him the trouble of the
chase, yet he seemed ungrateful.
He held me aloft from my lapels and he
ran me backwards across the room. I wondered at that moment what I
my poor back would encounter first, a wall, the piano, God forbid,
the antlers of the mounted buck.
It was the wall.
I crumbled to the floor trying to fill
my lungs with air again. He picked up the rag doll—me—and set me
in a chair. He had a bottle and glasses in his hand when he returned
from the bar. He poured two whiskeys and slid one across to me. It
stung like hell in the cuts in my mouth. Pain began reporting in from
various parts of my body, some I didn't even remember him striking or
throwing me on.
I thought this was as good a time as
any to deliver my message.
“Where's her baby you sonofabitch!”
“What ja?” he said.
“I know you're on the take for those
baby stealers.”
“You no with Steinberger Brothers?”
“Never heard of em.”
He turned the new information around in
his head. I sipped my whiskey and mopped blood with my handkerchief.
I guess it ain't unreasonable to consider he may have had more than
one client.
“I think you from someone else. You
take heap beating, like badger, keep coming back.” Kohn gave what
may have been a smile. “We talk about your baby now ja.”
Continued in episode 13
Continued in episode 13
