Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (37 page)

“Not like you think. She did me a
favor once, that’s all. I’d heard she’d gotten married. She never seemed like
the marrying kind. I’m only here to see that she’s alright.”

“She is loved, Mister Rider,” said
Haddox. “Whether or not she reciprocates, I don’t know, but I assure you I take
good care of her. Do you mean to steal her away from me?”

The Rider was so surprised by the
question, he couldn’t help but answer truthfully.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Well,” he said. “I’ll always share
my table with an honest man, even an enemy. But you should know if your intent
is to take her from me, I will fight you for her.”

“How did you come to marry her?”

“She came to town about a year ago.
I found her down by the river one night. I was comin’ back from the wreck of my
boat with a load of scrap wood. I’ll tell you true, she was a ragged sight.
Looked to have been whipped and beat. She told me she’d walked out of the
desert, but wouldn’t say where she’d come from. After I took her home and she
was well again, she made it plain she had an interest in me. I was skeptical at
first. What woman wants a one-legged ex-riverboat captain with two motherless
children, much less a woman like that? I thought she was on the run from
something, and needed a man’s protection. It got though, so as I didn’t care
what the reason was, for I’d come to love her myself. I never thought after my
dear Alice died I would find another woman, but I asked her to marry me, and
she accepted, though I felt like maybe I had done her wrong in the asking
somehow.”

“What do you mean?” the Rider asked.

“I don’t know. She accepted readily,
like I said, but she acted like she was pained to do so. When I slipped a ring
on her finger, she almost flinched away, like from a hot stove. But she was a
dutiful bride and has been a fair enough wife. Not exactly loving, but she
tends to the chores and cooks, and she’s an even hand with the children.

Anyway, I told folks in town she was
a mail order bride, though they all talk behind their hands that she used to be
a whore. I guess I know that too, but she is a beauteous and cruel thing, and I
am a fool for her. Fool enough even to fight a killer like you if I have to. My
life was lonesome before she came, Rider, and I won’t go back to that
lonesomeness if I can help it.”

The Rider stared. Was this true? Had
she fled the ire of her mother and succubus sisters to the arms of this man?
But Lucifer had specifically told him she was
being
punished. Being, in the present tense, and he had directed
him to the Lady Pleasant, this man’s boat.

“She’s here all the time?”

“In my house? Yes, unless she is
with me in town. Why do you ask?”

“No one comes to see her?”

“You are her first visitor. My
children would’ve told me if there had been others.”

“Even at night?”

“She lies beside me,” said Haddox. “What
are you on about?”

“I don’t know,” said the Rider,
reaching into his coat pocket. “You seem like an even-tempered man, Haddox.”

“Age and a lack of industry have
calmed me some. Ten years ago I was a hell of a man. Life moves slower along a
river with no boats.”

The Rider took out his spectacle
case, and slid the lenses over his nose. Through the blue glass, Haddox stood
just the same as he was without them.

He shrugged and put the glasses
away. Haddox watched all this without a word, but his face showed confusion.

“I can’t tell you my intent yet,”
said the Rider. “I don’t know it myself. I believe what you’ve told me. But if
I’m wrong, if you’re keeping her against her will, I’ll kill you at your supper
table.”

“Well,” said Haddox, turning toward
the house. “Come on into to the house. I believe we’re having chicken.”

Haddox was right about the chicken.
He was right about everything.

As Nehema and Emory dished out the
food, the Rider watched them all interact. They were a normal family, but for
the presence of Nehema. She didn’t belong. She was a wild, exotic beauty among
plain folk, a tiger among house cats.

She was not affectionate with them,
but she was courteous and attentive. She passed the salt when asked, poured
buttermilk for Emory, even asked Robert if he wanted seconds. But she gave them
nothing extra. She was cold, and the Rider could sense a certain resentment in
her.

The little girl paid her back in
kind. Her only dark streak came out in exchanges with her foster mother. She
was glib, and her eyes went from her father to
Nemmy
and back again, disapproving of every perceivable slight she
visited upon the elder Haddox.

Nehema wasn’t outwardly cruel to the
man, but she didn’t love him, that was plain, and she seemed to only just
tolerate him, pursing her lips whenever he called her
dear
, and stiffening if he happened to brush against her in passing
the plates.

The boy, Robert, was another story.
His attention was solely on the Rider and Nehema, as if he watched for any
indiscretion between them. It was painfully obvious the boy pined for her. The
Rider caught him several times stealing a look. She was too attractive and
alien a thing to be always around a raging young boy of Robert’s sort, with his
sapling arm hairs and cracking voice. He was like a lustful young wolf in a
pack where he was not the leader, and the Rider was another challenge to his
inappropriate desire.

They did not say grace, he noted,
and when he bowed his head and said a short blessing before the meal, the
little girl Emory took a deep interest.

“What are you doing?” she asked,
when he’d finished.

“A prayer of thanks to the Lord, for
the meal,” the Rider explained.

She looked to her father, and Haddox
shrugged.

“We ain’t prayed much in this house
since the river took Alice,” he explained.

When they had mopped their plates
clean with biscuits, and Emory gathered them in a wavering stack to wash,
Haddox fell to mundane talk, asking the Rider about San Francisco.

As they spoke, Nehema watched the
Rider, and Robert watched her.

“Are you really my uncle?” Emory
asked then as she took his plate and fork.

The Rider held Haddox’s, then looked
to the girl.

“Yes, I guess I am.”

“I knew you didn’t come to buy the
yard,” she said. “Robert thought you did, but I had a feeling about you.”

“Is that right?”

“Only thing dumber than somebody
comin’ to buy this heap of firewood is us keepin’ it,” Robert said around a
mouthful of mashed potatoes.

“Robert,” Nehema scolded.

“Business has been bad for you?” the
Rider asked, though it was plain.

“No business at all,” said Robert,
handing his dish to Emory, who then carried the whole rattling stack outside.

“The railroad bought out the
Colorado Steam Company in ’78,” Haddox said. “That pretty much killed the river
traffic. That bridge did the same for the crossing. We get a boat now and then,
but a lot of ‘em have switched to coal.”

“We still ran the Lady Pleasant for
a couple years after that, though,” Robert grumbled.

“Well, we Haddoxes got this thing
about not givin’ somethin’ up till its long past time, I guess,” said Haddox,
folding his hands under his chin.

“Ma’d still be alive if we didn’t.”

“Robert,” Haddox said finally. “Why
don’t you help your sister clean the plates?”

“That ain’t my job.”

“Your job is whatever job I give
you,” Haddox said.

“Why ain’t she doin’ it?” he said,
gesturing to Nehema. “It’s woman’s work.”

“It damn sure wasn’t woman’s work
all the time you and I done it.”

“There wasn’t no woman around then.”

Haddox slammed his palm on the
table, making Nehema jump. Did the man beat her? Was he a drunkard? Why on
earth did she stay here?

“Dammit, Robert! That’s enough. Don’t
make me treat you like a boy. You’re too old for it.”

Robert’s face reddened deeply and he
pushed back from the table so fast the chair tipped and he had to face the
added embarrassment of having to stoop and set it aright before storming out
into the dark, his fists balled at his sides.

Haddox shook his head.

“I don’t know what’s come over him
lately. There’s a devil in him, sure.”

A quick smile appeared in the corner
of Nehema’s ample lips, and she looked slyly sideways at the Rider, but Haddox
didn’t notice.

What did that mean?

“My first wife Alice, she helped run
the Lady Pleasant back then. We’d ship freight mostly, sometimes passengers.
Two years ago we got hung up in the rapids below Ogden Landing, and blew the
boiler tryin’ to get clear. We lost her, and the boilerman. My leg too,” he
added. “We keep the woodyard mostly for…I dunno, kindling now. Though at night
the assholes from town come and steal what they want anyhow. I used to keep a
dog, but he got bit by a snake and died. Alice and Emory loved that damned
mangy mutt.”

His voice and his look trailed off,
then he shrugged.

“Well, let’s get down to business,
here,” Haddox said. “I’ll tell you, my dear,” and he put an arm on Nehema’s
chair back. “I know Mister Rider here ain’t no kin to you.”

The Rider straightened in his chair,
expecting anything to happen. He was ready for Mazzamauriello to pop out of the
stove, or Lilith’s snaky locks to come smashing through the windows.

“He tells me you have a past
together, though he says it was not the sort I feared. Will you tell me how it
is you two know each other, straight up?”

“I knew him in a mining town called
Tip Top,” Nehema said quietly. “He visited a bordello I was working in, and he
got into some trouble. I helped him out of it. That’s all.”

“That’s the story he gave me, more
or less,” said Haddox, rubbing his bearded chin.

“And now,” the Rider said, “tell me.
How did you meet and marry?”

Nehema shrugged.

“After you left, Rider, it wasn’t
long before mother discovered I had helped you.”

“Your mother?” Haddox interrupted.

“Yes. But don’t take it on yourself
to try and patch things up between us, Harry. You wouldn’t like her. She drove me
out. Harry found me on the banks of the Gila River. He was…
good
to me. He
cared
for
me. When he proposed, I
had
to say
yes.”

Why the emphasis on
good
,
caring,
and
had
? Was she
even now trying to tell him something she didn’t dare say in front of Haddox?
Had he told her what to say? How could he get her alone?

“Then what I want to know is this,”
said Haddox. “What do you want, Nemmy?”

“What do you mean, Harry?” she asked
flatly, staring at the table.

“Only this. I been thinkin’ on it
through supper. If you’re carryin’ a torch for this man, then you two can
leave. No questions. I won’t have him comin’ betwixt us, alive or dead. You
take her, Mister Rider, and you take good care of her.”

At the last, his lips wrinkled and
his voice cracked, as though he were the younger Haddox man suddenly. He
quickly drained his coffee and cleared his throat. “But if you love me, you
stay with me and the kids. Again, no questions.”

The Rider blinked. Again, either the
man was an accomplished liar or a saint. He looked to Nehema. Had Lucifer lied
to him? It was to be expected of course. But to what end? What did the
Adversary stand to gain by sending him here?

They both looked expectantly at
Nehema. She folded her hands on the table, the plain gold wedding band prominent
on her finger. Her jaw worked behind her unblemished cheeks.

“You’re my husband, Harry,” she said
quietly, not looking at either of them. “My choice was made when I put on this
ring.”

Haddox smiled uncontrollably,
pressed the smile behind his lips, failed to contain it, and grinned again. He
leaned forward and took her head in his hands and kissed her.

“Darling, you’ve made me a happy old
boatman tonight.”

Again, she reacted little, except to
curl her lip once and go rigid. But Haddox was so happy he didn’t even notice.
He turned to the Rider.

“Well, that leaves you and me,
Mister Rider,” he said. “We gonna have it out?”

“No,” the Rider said, after a bit. “No,
I guess not.”

Haddox grinned even wider and put
out his hand, like a big dumb bear.

The Rider took it, and Haddox pumped
it vigorously.

“Alright,” he said. “Alright.”

Emory and Robert returned from the
river just then, and the boy being the tallest, went to the shelf and put the
clean dishes up.

“You look happy, daddy,” Emory
observed, bouncing up to him and leaping into his lap.

He kissed her ear.