Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (44 page)

The place was shaping up to be a
fortress. The walls and the thick Sallyport gate under construction were
progressing, and inside, like a keep, the squat stone brick prison block
nestled like a bunker.

A row of open air cages lay to the
right of the main block, wherein a few haggard looking prisoners sulked in the
pounding sun, and far along the back, the Rider noticed more cells and
cave-like passages cut into the rock itself.

They hung a left across the stone
flags to a building marked Yard Office. The guard led the Rider inside, where a
bespectacled man in a uniform sat at a plain wood counter. He looked up in
surprise from a copy of a book he was reading, some trashy little dime novel
with a two gun dandy on the cover.

“Nobody told me we had new arrivals
comin’ today,” the man said, almost by way of an excuse, putting away his book
and rifling through the shelves beneath the counter.

“Relax, Martins,” said the guard. “This
is Mister Laird’s special guest. The one he told us about.”

“Really?” said Martins, pausing in
his search to stare at the Rider. “He don’t look like much.”

“Wait’ll we’re done with him,” said
the guard.

Martins snickered appreciatively and
produced a form of some kind and a stub of a pencil.

“Name?”

The Rider opened his mouth, but the
guard spoke first.

“Put down Michael Cashion.”

Martins did, and the Rider looked at
the guard. The guard returned the look impassively.

“Problem with that, Cashion?”

“That’s not my name.”

“It’ll do till we give you another
one.” He grinned, and gold teeth gleamed among the rest, which were yellow too,
but from tobacco. “What’s his name, Martins?”

“1748,” said Martins.

“There you see?” said the guard. “You
weren’t Cashion for long. Now you’re 1748. Don’t forget it.”

Martins stood up and came around the
corner with a tape measure. He stretched it from the Rider’s feet to his head
and around his middle and jotted down some numbers on the card he was filling
out.

“Alright, 1748,” said the guard,
when Martins was done. “Let’s go get you a clean shave and a bath, so you’re
respectable when you go to see Mister Laird.”

The Rider hesitated as the big guard
took a hold of his arm. The man’s yellow gold smile disappeared.

“Are you gonna be a problem, 1748?”

The Rider’s eyes went to the guard’s
rifle, and to the thick, callused hand that clutched it, the worn, scabbed over
knuckles.

“No sir,” he said.

The guard pulled him over to a
corner of the room and slung him into a rickety chair, where a skinny man with
bad teeth attacked his thick hair and beard with shears and a razor, starting
with his scared
payot
curls.

“This one’s sure got some pretty
locks, don’t he, O’Doyle?” said the barber.

“Ain’t they though?” O’Doyle
snickered.

The Rider watched years of curling
black hair fall away to the dusty floor between his feet. In his sect, it was
considered tantamount to sin to shave one’s beard away in this manner. The chin
hair was akin to holiness, and some said it could be offered to protect the
dead in
Sheol.
Shaving was only
permitted to atone for grievous sin. Well, perhaps he had sinned. He sinned in
his lust for Nehema, sinned in bringing so many innocents into the path of Adon
and Lilith’s evil, sinned in his own hubris and doubt of the Lord.

Despite the stifling air, he managed
to feel cool on his naked face and the skin of his shorn scalp, but he felt
more ashamed than if he had been stripped of his clothes.

Which of course, is what came next.

O’Doyle yanked him to his feet and
led him to a corner of the room where a rusty iron tub sat, and a skinny
convict waited nearby with three wooden buckets of water. The chains were
removed from his wrists. At gunpoint he was forced to shrug out of his boots
and trousers. He paused in his shirttails. Books had taken his pistol, knife,
and all his talismans upon his arrest, but he had not taken away his
tallit katan.

As he stood fingering one of the
blue and white
tzitzit
fringes, O’Doyle
cleared his throat.

“Don’t be bashful, 1748. You can’t
take no bath in your shirt.”

The Rider slowly undid his shirt and
stood only in the small, frayed prayer apron and undershirt now.

Some of the other guards and
officials sauntered over.

“Say Croc,” said one. “You been
strippin’ this one down for awhile now. We come over to make sure nothin’
lascivious is goin’ on.”

“He’s got more unmentionables than
the Queen of England,” said the yellow toothed Croc O’Doyle, spitting on the
floor through the gap in his two front teeth.

“What’s that little bib he’s wearin?”
said another.

“How’m I to know that, Murphy?” O’Doyle
said, shrugging. “There he stands. Ask ‘im yourself.”

But Murphy didn’t ask.

It was the four fringed prayer apron
his own mother had sewed for him as a boy. The 613 blue and white knots in each
of the four
tzitzit
tassels had been
woven together painstakingly by his father. It occurred to him now that since
the onager had departed with all his worldly goods strapped to the pack saddle,
this was all he had left of his parents. It was frayed and mended. Faded
bloodstains were still just barely visible, and the Rider himself had patched a
bullet hole in it. He had held onto the ragged thing long past its worth, but
it was all he had of them.

“Take that bib off, 1748,” Croc
ordered.

The Rider bent his head and kissed
each of the fringes. It was a ritual of his own devising. This was just linen
and wool. Nothing more. But he felt his eyes swell, along with something that
worked its way up from the middle of his chest to the back of his throat: a
sob, which he must not let these hard men perceive. He swallowed it, and slid
the little apron over his head. He didn’t drop it in the pile with the other
clothes, but folded it and laid it gently on top.

He slid the undershirt off then, and
stood naked. Some of them jeered and whistled, most in raucous humor, but a few
with something genuine and unsettling behind it.

“Well, he’s a Jew alright,” one of
them muttered.

“Not just any Jew,” Croc O’Doyle
said, almost admiringly. “Boys, this here is the Killer Jew of Varruga Tanks.”

“This one?”

“No other. A real son of Cain.”

“He don’t look like much.”

“He has been through the wringer a
few times,” said another. “Where’d you get all them marks?”

The Rider said nothing. His hands
and face were covered with miniscule scars, and his body was marred by old
knife and bullet wounds. He had suffered a good long while thanks to the forces
of Lilith having learned his true name and rendered his protective charms
useless for a time, but he had recovered some of his weight and muscle since
then. Still, bereft of his hair and clothing, he must’ve looked like a shorn
sheep to these men. Or a wet rat.

“Ain’t too talkative,” said the man
who had patiently waited for an answer to his question.

“He only needs to talk to Mister
Laird,” said O’Doyle. “Alright,” he said then, motioning with the barrel of his
rifle toward the tub as another prisoner came forward with a push broom and
began to gather the Rider’s hair. “Step into the tub.”

The Rider shuffled, covering his
privates with his hands, and stepped into the iron tub.

One of the officials tossed a bar of
lye at him and he caught it.

“You only get one bath a week, so
make it count,” said O’Doyle. He nodded, and a man picked up a bucket of water
and poured it over his head. It was frigid water from the stone tank no doubt,
and he shivered from the shock of it, but obediently worked the bar into a
lather and washed himself as best he could. He was treated to two more buckets
of water before he was ordered out of the tub. He stumbled, shivering and
wiping soap from his eyes.

“You’ll dry out quick enough out
there in a minute,” said O’Doyle.

Martins, the man from the counter,
ran over with a folded black and white striped cotton shirt and two pairs of
pants and underwear and pushed it all into the Rider’s hands. He pulled on the
undergarments, then slipped the shirt over his head and drew the trousers on.
He separated a bundle of black wool socks and drew them over his feet.

He looked for his cavalry boots, but
they were gone. The officials had picked through his clothes while he bathed.

A pair of cheap shoes sans laces
were thrown at him, and he stooped and pulled them on as well as he could
manage. They were too small and bunched up his toes.

Finally he was handed a shapeless
cap, two combs, two towels, two sheets, and two gray pillowcases.

“Alright, 1748,” said O’Doyle. “Let
me show you to your new accommodations.”

O’Doyle led him back out into the
yard. The sun scorched the crown of his bald head, and he set the cap on
against it. He was marched across the stones to a guarded iron gate leading
into the granite cellblock.

Two armed guards stood at the gate.
One unlocked the heavy door, and the other accompanied them inside, swinging a
ring of clinking keys as he walked.

It was cooler inside, and he blinked
to adjust his sun blinded eyes to the dimness here.

“Whatcha got here, Croc?”

“The Killer Jew of Varruga Tanks,”
said O’Doyle.

“The what of what?” the jailer
chuckled.

O’Doyle laughed.

The inner hallway was lined with
twenty or so crosshatched iron doors. Thin faces peered at him from the dark
depths of these as he walked by. He was stopped finally before one of the
cells, and the jailer fit a key into the lock and swung it open.

“I thought Mister Laird wanted to
see me?” the Rider said to O’Doyle.

“When he’s ready,” said O’Doyle,
motioning with the rifle for him to enter.

The Rider went inside, cockroaches
scurrying out of his path. A dank, outhouse smell met his nose.

He was not alone. There were two
sets of flaking green wooden bunks with tick mattresses stacked three high, and
five other men occupied them. The two on the bottom sat with their legs swung
out, apparently playing cards for cigarettes. Of the two in the middle bunks,
one, a Mexican, lay with his shaggy head propped on one elbow, watching the
game, and the other lay sleeping, as did the fifth man on the top bunk above
the Mexican.

All the conscious prisoners glanced
up as he entered, the dim light from the corridor sifting through the cage door
appearing as squares across their unshaven faces. He didn’t see how they could
possibly see enough to play cards.

The door slammed shut, and the two
guards walked off without a word.

The Rider stood as the two men went
back to their game, the cards slapping and sweeping across the floor stone
floor.

“
Buenas
dias
,” said the Mexican, his dark eyes glittering.

The Rider nodded.

“Shit up a stick,” one of the card
players cussed, as the other man laid down his hand and then began plucking the
rolled up cigarettes from the center of the floor.

The loser was skinnier and more
angular than the rest. He had dirty blonde hair and his cap was on his bony
knee. He stuck out his hand without looking at the Rider.

“Jim Tolliver,” he said. “Assault
and Seduction with the promise of marriage.”

“What?” said the Rider.

Tolliver looked at him, grinning.

“Eighty days for Assault and
Seduction with the promise of marriage. The assault was on her brother, though
I maintain he assaulted me first. How’s about yourself?”

“I killed a woman,” the Rider said
quietly, not taking the man’s hand.

Neither the crime nor the lack of a
handshake seemed to perturb Tolliver.

“You and Jaimenacho oughta get along
swimmingly. He’s killed three.”

The Rider looked at the Mexican.

“They was sisters,” said Jaimenacho,
by way of explanation.

“Parker here is servin’ time for
obstructin’ the railroad and manslaughterin.’”

The other cardplayer looked up from
sorting his winnings. He was an older man, his hair gray around the edges. He
was missing some teeth.

“Goddamn railroad,” was all he said
on the matter.

“My upstairs neighbor here,”
whispered Tolliver, nodding to the sleeping form above his head. “That’s Anson,
our resident burglar and robber. He drew a year for shootin’ a peace officer in
the elbow.”

“You talk too goddamn much,
Tolliver,” Anson mumbled into his pillow.

“What about him?” the Rider asked,
looking at the other sleeping man on the top bunk.