The Jewels of Nebraska #12 -Unfair Fight

To start this series from the beginning.
“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

The Jewels of Nebraska, #11 -Heaven

To start this series from the beginning. 

So this was the desert. She pictured it different. Sand dunes, cactus with arms like a man, coyotes and cowboys on horseback. There was none of that. It wasn't even flat; distant mountains and constant canyons; wounds carved into the earth with God's angry plow, bizarre red rock formations rose from the earth like giant sculptures. The land was spotted with small bushes that looked dry and dead. It went on forever it seemed. The little Model-T chugged on, hour after hot miserable hour. 

Ruby sat unrestrained between Caleb and Ester Huette. The gaping vastness of the Utah desert was all the rope and gag they needed to keep their young captive at hand. Each mile the overloaded Model-T chugged further into the desert, she knew she was further lost from Billy or a chance of escape.

The expectation of seeing her brother had slipped from a hope to a hint of doubt. Would she ever see him again? No matter how hard she threw it away, the nagging thought returned to her like a boomerang, again and again.

They nearly missed the small wooden sign read “Heaven” in faded white paint. Caleb turned off the dirt highway onto a set a tracks that snaked off into the horizon. The rough road caused two flat tires in the next hours. One more and they would have to stop for the night while Caleb built a fire to vulcanize an inner tube, there were no more spares.

Even for Ruby it was a welcome thing to finally see the compound, at first a set of white specks in a sprawling valley. It slowly came into focus, not quite a town, a dozen or so plain buildings in two rows forming a short street with a larger structure at the end.

All the buildings looked like a construction collage assembled from various abandoned houses and barns. At the end of the rows the street dead-ended at a larger house. Ruby thought maybe it was a church. It was as plain and ugly as the others, just biggerand in a position of prominence, like a father at the end of a dining table.

The Model-T rattled and snorted between the houses. A woman tending a sorry-looking garden, a toddler sitting in the dirt nearby, two women lugging a huge basket of laundry, a group a children playing behind the houses, several men talking in a circle; all stopped and stared at the new arrivals.

There were no smiles.

Caleb shut off the engine to a hollow silence. A door opened to the large building they had stopped in front of. A fat balding man wearing a white robe walked down the steps towards them.

“Brother Caleb I trust,” the man said.

“Brother Tobias!” Caleb kneeled and bowed his head. Brother Tobias placed his hands on Caleb's head and said something Ruby couldn't hear. Caleb returned to his feet.

“You must be tired and hungry.” Brother Tobias said. “You're just in time for our evening meal.”

The main floor of the big house was a large room. Mismatched chairs were arranged in rows like a church. Women and girls were moving them, bringing in tables and arranging the chairs at them. Only one chair, a large heavy one of carved wood and faded velvet, was set at the end of a table.

Caleb was given a place of honor near the head of the table where Brother Tobias sat in his velvet thrown. Other men, Deacons of some sort flanked him directly.

The man spoke like he was reading aloud from a book about himself. The deacons nodded more than spoke. Caleb was like a small child meeting Santa Claus.

There was little mention of God, no one at all spoke of Jesus.

The food was plain and colorless. Limp greens and a yellow meal mush served with glasses of cloudy water. Ruby looked around to see if anyone shared her expression of disgust, no one, except Ester, did.

Children sat at a separated table. Their relative silence was disconcerting. Women were mostly silent as well. As Ruby looked around the room she noticed there weren't no boys or men from her age to 'bout the age of thirty.

“You did not mentioned that you had a daughter.” Brother Tobias said.

“She's not a daughter. She joined us along the way. A bit willful, but I think, with some corrective teaching, she will make a fine wife.”

“She's very lovely. With some instruction she will do very nicely. Is she pure?”

Ruby turned bright red with anger and embarrassment.

“Yes, I had my wife examine her.”

“Spendid, splendid!”

Brother Tobias rose from his half eaten meal. Everyone in the room stood quickly as if a general had entered the room. Caleb rose as soon as he realized, Ester followed soon after. Ruby looked around at the glaring eyes and got up from her chair.

“Ah, it would seem we do have some work ahead of us.” Tobias walked around behind Ruby and placed his hands on her shoulders. It made her shudder. She resisted the strong urge to shrug off or bat away his touch. “Don't worry dear, you'll soon get the hang of things.”

“Brother Caleb I am so glad to finally meet you and have you in our congregation. I can tell you will soon be a man of great standing here. Your contribution has already impressed me greatly.

His hands squeezed her shoulders on the word “contribution”. Ruby's mouth went dry.

Caleb looked pale. “Ah, um Brother Tobias,” he stammered, “I did not mean for... that is to say the young lady I intended for my... You see I...”

“Brother Caleb? You seem a bit lost, but that's why you're here isn't, to find what is lost in your spirit?”

“Y-yess, yes Brother Tobias, I am grateful and blessed to be among your followers to be here as a humble servant... I just thought...”

“Thinking: a instrument of doubt, a lack of faith. You don't have a lack of faith do you? You don't have a lack of fatih in me?”

No one spoke or moved a muscle. A child coughed from an unseen corner of the room.

“No, no Brother Tobias, my faith is not lacking.” Caleb's head lowered.

Ruby couldn't help but but smile. The bastard finally got a beating himself. Her delight was short lived though.

“You are new, so we will forgive your misunderstanding. I'm sure my letters to you were very clear I'm sure.” Brother Tobias glared at the deacon to his right.

“Very clear,” said the deacon.

“The shepard watches over his flock. Unwed lambs need the closest and the most intimate of care.” His fleshy hands on her shoulders gripped Ruby and swayed her to and fro as he spoke. Fertile women are a gift Brother Caleb, and a privilege for only the worthiest of men. Strong seeds make a strong forest, weak seeds are of little use.

Because of the gift you have brought me, you will keep your own wife for now, unless your faith proves to be as weak in other matters as it seems to be in this one. Some who arrive are not so in my favor.”

A murmur rose throughout the room, but was silenced the moment Brother Tobias' looked up.

“Well Brother Caleb?”

“No, Brother Tobias my, my faith is strong, my faith in you, praise be O Lord,” Caleb said.

“Excellent! As you grow in your service to the shepard, you may become worthy. Your gift of this young bride to me is a tremendous gesture Brother Caleb. In Fact, her Tobian name will hereby be 'Kallah' in your honor.”

Ruby felt like a stone had just been dropped in her stomach.

Brother Bressel, see that Brother Huette and his wife are settled in and given proper clothes, Sister Anne see to Kallah, prepare her.” His head moved close to Ruby's side and he looked at her while still addressing the room. “She will be have the honor of being my tenth wife in one week's time.”

“What's the occasion?”

“What?” I said.

“You don't usually stick around after work,” said Robert.

He was right. It was the first time I had joined the nightly gathering a waiters, kitchen maids and bartenders after the country club had closed. I never understood it. At the mill no one in there right mind would spend an extra minute within the gates, yet here they spent hours at the bar every night talking and drinking until the wee hours of the morning.

“I have a job early in the morning,” I said, “before the street cars are running, no point in going home.”

“That's rough. You back at the mill?”

I didn't answer.

When the last chair had been put up and the lights had been turned off I cut across the links of the golf course through the dark and headed for the Millard estate. It was around 3AM. I found a tree across the street and leaned against it hoping my silhouette would not show in the street lights. I braced against the night cold of early spring and waited.

I did not mind the night without sleep. I did not mind the cold or the hours of boredom while I waited. I didn't know which window but I knew my Charlotte was asleep in the mansion across the street. My heart knew I was close and beat happily.

A bird's call jolted me awake. How long had I slept? The sky was deep blue and glowing to the East. I looked across the street at the estate. There was no one about. I cursed silently. How could I have fallen asleep? How could I tell Charlotte I'd failed our only chance for a month.

I heard the sound of a horse a wagon a few streets over, probably Olaf and his father on their milk route. Through the mist I saw a figure on the sidewalk on the other side of the street; tall, deliberate in his motion, his hands hung motionless at his sides. His feet made no sound on the slate sidewalk. I slid around the tree to remain hidden. I peered carefully around when I did not see him pass by the estate. He was headed up the long walk to the front door. Beside the house he reached down into a bush and pulled out an envelope, just like Olaf had said.

I ducked behind the tree again before he turned. Someone that moved so silently probably had the ears of an owl. I had to be careful, yessir.

He went back down the sidewalk the way he came. I moved tree to tree, trying hard to be swift and quiet, His long legged gate made it hard to keep up. On the bigger streets following was both easier and harder. There was a few people about and the odd wagon passing better covered the sound of my movement, but there were no longer any trees to hide behind.

I saw the man disappear into an alley. I followed. When I caught up he was gone. I had lost him!

I didn't know what hit me.

Darkness, strange dreams.

I was on the ground and my head hurt. It was light and the city was in full swing. I sat against a pallet with my head in my hands. I had failed. Not only had I lost track of him, I had scared him from his routine and I wouldn't be able to repeat a trail.

Then I saw it. Half in the mud. A silver thimble. I picked it up. It was polished to a perfect shine on the outside, but black with a sticky tar on the inside. I didn't know what it meant, but it was all I had.

In front of the hall the Huette's belongings had been unloaded from their truck arranged into a pile. The congregation picked through it and took various items to their huts for themselves. It was clear who the higher ranking members were. Some waited they turn to select a chair or carpet. A few minor tugs over some of the better items. One man was beaten down by another for trying to overstep his order in the queue.

Caleb watched his possessions go into the hands of strangers one by one. He knew better than to protest, or to take anything for himself until the last member had gone through the pile.

The truck itself was being pushed away by two teenage boys shaved bald and dressed in rags. A third was walking away with a gas can and a siphon hose towards a large tank and a generator.

He and Ester picked up what was left, just a box of photographs, a dented tea kettle and what was left of their suitcases. They walked to a barn-like dormitory behind the row of houses as they had been directed.

Caleb thought back to the day he had told her of his plan to leave St. Louis and live in Brother Tobias' fold, a place called “Heaven, Utah”.

“Listen, if we don't like it we can just pick up and move on to California,” he had told her.

It seemed there would be no leaving "Heaven".

Continued in episode 12