The Rock Child (4 page)

Suddenly the door flap opened. Tarim came in with rice, a few spoonfuls of vegetables, and tea.
No, no, he won’t starve me to death,
she thought appraisingly.
I am a valuable property
.

She looked at him sharply. He grunted something, set the bowl and cup down, and retreated. She reached for the food. Stopped.
What would I not give for some
tsampa
in tea?
It was roasted barley flour. She took thought and placed the bowl back on the floor. She turned her consciousness inward and breathed deeply. She felt the breath come in, felt it go out.
First the spirit,
she thought,
then the body. Then war
.

The celestial heathen gave a copper with one hand and took silver coins with the other. The coppers were cent pieces, used to copper bets. Porter Rockwell looked around the room at men who reeked of greed and lust. He could taste it, foul as brackish water. Damned Chinee. Celestial? Bear’s ass.

Fourteen men, as Rockwell counted them.
Thirteen drunk,
all but himself. All were white, though half of the population of Hard Rock City was yellow. And the sheriff, Conlan, was among them, come to debauch a nun. It confirmed Rockwell’s opinion of American lawmen.

A corner of his mouth lifted in a bitter, one-quarter smile, as much
as he’d permitted himself in near twenty years, since that day at the Carthage jail when the best friend he ever had was murdered by a mob. The friend was Joseph Smith. Porter Rockwell had been the Prophet’s protector, and he failed Joseph that day. He hadn’t smiled since, not really.

Drunk or sober didn’t matter. He was smarter than most of them either way, quicker of hand, and especially meaner. He’d found that mean made all the difference.

It surely helped in his line of work. Porter Rockwell was an avenger. The Destroying Angel, the gentiles called him. The apostates called him the same. If the powers judged someone a threat to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, especially a fallen-away Mormon, one of a group of destroying angels, the Danites, got rid of the trouble. Rockwell was a Danite leader, and his solutions tended to be permanent. If he was an embarrassment to some of his people now that Mormons were better established, he didn’t give a damn. If he occasionally got other work, like delivering gold coin to Hard Rock City, Idaho, he was glad.

It was done. He wasn’t worried about this Conlan for a moment, or any other lawman. Now he wanted a woman.

Rockwell paid his dollar and took the copper from the heathen’s palm. He eyed the Chinee hard. Rockwell knew his impact on people. He was taller than most, well formed, strongly built. His hair hung wild and stringy below his shoulders—Joseph had prophesied that he would always be safe if he did as Samson should have done, leave his hair uncut. His eyes, he knew, looked halfway between cunning and mad. Which, Porter Rockwell sometimes thought, might be the truth.

I could almost gag on the booze and lust
. Fourteen men wanting the nun, gambling for the chance to mount her, inflamed by the thought of violating sacredness. Rockwell didn’t give a fig for their sacredness.

The room breathed like a panting toad. He didn’t like crowds. He didn’t like gentiles. Sometimes he didn’t even like Saints.

He himself didn’t need to pant. His need was colder than that. He was going to win.

Everyone said the woman was beautiful. She’d been on display this afternoon riding through town on the wagon. Everyone had heard—a nun whore coming!—and ninety percent of the town was male.

Rockwell had watched from behind the lined-up mob. He didn’t judge her beautiful. She was off-color. Rockwell preferred white and
delightsome. She had an air about her that snagged his interest, though, something in her carriage or in her eye—she felt untouchable.

Tonight Rockwell would touch her, and she would never forget it. Once he’d banged into a whore and banged and banged, deliberately, insatiably, not stopping even when she threw up on him. It made him feel powerful.

This whore was floating on opium, the Chinee said, but Rockwell would wake her up. She would make him feel his juices flow.

It was a stiff price, a dollar just to gamble for a chance to top a woman. It would be the first time any man mounted this woman, said the Chinee, but you couldn’t trust him—no telling what heathen had been at her on the other side of the world or the long trip here. And Poly-damnesians and white men, too, for that matter. Rockwell didn’t care. The one she’d never be able to forget was him.

“Ready, everybody ready,” called the Chinee. His body poised like a banty rooster, head cocked high, eye bright. Each man perched his copper on his thumb, ready to flip. “Throw your prayers and coppers into the air. When the coppers come down, may the prayers go up.” The heathen flipped his queer little noisemaker to a crazy climax. “Now!” Fourteen coins spun high in the air. At the top of the spin the Chinee called heads or tails. Then fourteen coins landed in palms (three drunks dropped theirs but picked them up), fourteen hands slapped them over onto the back of the other arm, and thirteen mouths smiled or frowned.

Cries of joy and agony. The fools were getting very worked up. Not Rockwell. He would win this round and every round by a simple stratagem. He was dexterous with his hands. He could make a coin appear in an empty palm faster than anyone’s eye could detect. He could stick an empty hand to your nose and make a playing card pop out. He could juggle seven balls. He could make a knife dance through the air and between your ribs. With either hand he could shoot a hole in a high-spun coin. For Porter Rockwell making a copper appear right side up was child’s play, and this was a fool’s game.

Actually, it was too bad no one would see him cheating and accuse him of it. Rockwell would enjoy punishing that impertinence, especially in front of Sheriff Conlan.

The heathen whirred his noisemaker. A roar rose with the mounting clamor. The six men who survived the first flip spun their coins into the dingy light. Porter Rockwell concealed a second copper between his fingers and gave a nasty one-quarter smile.

In the dreamy world people were moving around her, and the voices made a low, low rumble. She was naked in the dream, maybe—somehow she couldn’t open her eyes to see herself or move her hands to touch herself. But the moving, rumbling people were looking at her naked and pointing, leering, and laughing at her. She couldn’t make out the dreamworld words, but the talk sounded ugly, threatening—the sound the earth would make, she imagined, before a landslide. Her body quivered
.

From a distance she heard thunder, low. It was going to rain. She writhed. She was afraid of being naked and cold in the rain. Somehow the rain would be filthy, it would soil her, she had to get out of the rain
…

A rough hand touched her shoulder.

Trying to awake, she felt a curious floating sensation, like a boat sailing not on water but on mist.
Opium
. She remembered from her time with the bandits …
This is what opium feels like
.

Hands under her back and knees. She forced her eyes open and saw the hairy top of a white-man head. She could feel the air on her bare skin, bare all over, every inch. A dozen men’s faces leered at her. Her robes lay beneath her body, and every inch of her was exposed to the leers.

I call upon Mahakala
.

“Here we go, Polly,” said the American. He scooped her up in his arms.

Mahakala, destroyer goddess, eater of men, help me!

She screamed. With all her body and spirit she howled, shrieked, and screeched. She wriggled and fell. She thumped back onto the table where she’d lain. The white man looked at his empty hands. His mouth looked amused, his eyes angry.

Men’s voices laughed raucously.

The air felt cold between her legs, and almost hurt her nipples. She covered herself with her hands.
Mahakala, come to my aid
.

“Polly, you don’t want to cause trouble.” The white man had a bony face, wild eyes, the longest hair she’d ever seen on a man, and those awful eyes.
The eyes of a man with a spirit he has killed, the eyes of a destroyer of self and others
.

Behind him, peering faces, loud laughter. She thought about it.
Naked doesn’t matter
. She cocked her arm to hit him and felt her wrist grabbed by a cruel hand from behind. Both wrists.

“Now, Polly,” a mocking voice said, “this ain’t goin’ to hurt you none.”

Another voice put in, “It might be celestial!”

Men’s laughter lashed out.

“Name not Polly,” she said calmly. “Sun Moon.”

“Polly!” several voices snapped. “China Mary!” boomed others.

Long Hair reached out and pinched a nipple between thumb and forefinger.

She squirmed with pain. “No!” she yelled. She tried to slap him, but her hand was held firm.

“Polly don’t like us,” said a voice with mocking melody.

Long Hair looked her in the eye. She could feel his angry spirit now. Her attempt to slap him had been foolish, silly, childish, unworthy of the strength of Mahakala. Cold air and cold eyes caressed her
yoni
. He stretched a hand between her legs.

Goddess destroyer!
She kneed Long Hair hard in the face.

He snapped upward, holding his head.

Drinker of blood!
She kicked him in the nose, and his blood gushed.

Hands ripped her backward, some on her head, some on her shoulders and hips. One smashed her right breast. Another groped at her crotch.
Destroyer of worlds!
She kicked free of that hand, but was pinned on the table.

She spat at Long Hair’s face. Then she saw his eyes. Fear flickered in her like lightning.

“Stop! Now! Stop!” It was Tarim’s voice, yelling in English.

She watched Long Hair’s eyes, the color of dirty ice. His dagger danced into the space between their faces. It oozed as the blood oozed down his face. It weaved back and forth like the head of a snake, bewitching. Her mind reached for the name of her goddess-protectress but could not find it.

For a moment the world stood outside of Time. As she watched the tip, the dagger struck, somehow swiftly and slowly at once.

The left side of her face burst into agony. The pain bubbled and boiled and spewed. She threw her hands to her face to hold her left eye in its socket.

Flashes of redness. The pain and heat, like falling into a volcano. The rushing darkness.
I will be blind
.

CHAPTER THREE

Porter Rockwell raised his Arkansas toothpick to eye level and regarded the blade, the cleanness of the shiny edge. With a finger he checked the stickiness of the blood.

Tarim trembled, watching him hulk over the unconscious woman’s body.
Her face will be ruined. No man will want her
.

Rockwell examined his coat and shirt. Bloody.
Will he kill her for the sake of his clothes?

Tarim found it too much to bear. He knew who the barbarian was, the bodyguard of the king of the Mormons in Salt Lake City, a killer. To strike at an enraged killer, giving away more than twelve inches and a hundred pounds, that would accomplish nothing. Especially not in a crowd of white men who would side with him, and the sheriff at hand.

A thousand dollars in go-o-old. We slapped the earth
.

Tarim stepped forward with his face under control. “Sir,” he said, “Rockwell, the whore belongs to me.” He gyrated his arms. Playing from weakness nearly drove him mad.
I must have the whore
.

A thousand dollars coming back at the highest price a Chinese whore ever got, no two bits, four bits, six bits, lookee, feelee, doee. Accumulating at a hundred dollars a week. He figured that he would get his entire investment back five times over
each year
.

Not now
. Tarim’s heart pounded. He felt gold coins slipping from his fingers.

“The whore is mine,” he repeated. Though his knees quaked, he forced himself to sound reasonable. He stepped forward between the barbarian and the whore, took off his American frock coat, and covered her nakedness with it. He looked at the crowd defiantly. His hand itched for a dagger, but he knew better.

Then he saw the eyes of the white men.
Mad,
he thought.
They stare at her
yoni
and hardly see her terrible wound. In their eyes Asians are not people
.

He dared look at Porter Rockwell. The barbarian shifted his stare from his blade to Tarim. He yearned to strike before the big man even sensed danger. He quivered.

“Give me a rag,” said Rockwell.

Tarim gestured to the barkeep, and out came the one used to wipe tables.

Rockwell held the dagger up and wiped the blood off. He took pains, getting the blood out of the corners of the guard and off the handle. He let the silence grow.

“I will pay for your clothes,” Tarim put in. “She did not hurt you.”

“Another rag.”

Tarim scurried and brought one. Rockwell wiped the blood off his face, mustache, beard, and neck carelessly, like it didn’t matter.

“All right, heathen,” he said, “the whore is yours. Property, property, almighty property.” He grinned madly at the crowd, then fixed Tarim with a terrible glare. “You tell her that if I ever see her again, anywhere, I’ll kill her. Got it? Simple. I’ll kill her.” He gave the watchers a look of grotesque companionship. “And ship the body back to you, of course—she’s your property.”

The watchers chuckled on cue.

He sheathed the dagger. “You tell her that, heathen.”

When Sun Moon swam up from the darkness and her consciousness awoke to the world again, the first thing she saw was Tarim, peering at her intently. Though his face changed after she opened her eyes, she was
too woozy to see his spirit. He held a teacup to her lips. Gratefully, she sipped. Then she realized it was not the Tibetan tea she grew up on and loved, salted and buttered, but one of those perfumed Chinese brews she disliked.

Tarim spoke brutally. “You acted the fool. The man you kicked was Porter Rockwell, a famous killer, the cruel right hand …”

She stopped listening. She knew a man with foul spirit when she saw one.
I kicked him in the nose. I brought blood
. A grim joy pumped in her veins.
I regret only the quaking fear I felt for my own flesh
.

“You are lucky,” Tarim went on. “Rockwell’s nose was not broken, so he was content to cut your face and disfigure you. The doctor doesn’t know about the sight in your eye yet.”

You talk about me like I was a prize yak
.

“Rockwell announced that if ever he sees you again, he will kill you.”

Tarim let the words sit. She studied his face. She had found that she could read people’s emotions in their faces easily, and sometimes that told her whether they were telling the truth or lying. Tarim was telling the truth.

“Simple as that—if he just sees you. You mustn’t even go out on the street!”

Ah! You want to keep your investment of precious gold close to home, in the closet. Right now your investment is ill. And unattractive
.

He looked at her speculatively. “I wonder, disfigured, what use you will be to me.”

She felt a burst of elation and a twist of agony.
Am I so ugly now that the white men won’t want me for a whore?

Tarim half smiled and left her.

Am I so ugly the white men won’t want me for a whore?

Her eye screamed at her. It raged in its socket. If she opened her eye, the light would stab her and kill her.

She rolled over. She thrashed. She rolled over and thrashed and rolled over and thrashed.

“Here,” said Tarim. “The doctor says to give you this for the pain.”

She held out her hands into the darkness. They received a cup. She sipped, and recognized the taste of laudanum. She drank.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. Not Tarim’s hand, a gentle touch.

“Who are you?”

“The doctor,” said a man’s voice, soft but firm.

She let the hand stay. It felt good.

“While you slept, I sewed the edges of your skin together.”

“My eye,” she said.

“Can’t tell about that yet. May heal, may not.”

“Will I be blind?”

She could feel the hesitation. “Three possibilities. One, it will hurt like hell for a couple of days and heal completely. Two, it will heal and you will be blind, or see nothing but light and shadows. Three, it will get infected and you will die.”

The word die stabbed her in the heart.
Mahakala, protector of women, help me live
.

“I’ll do my best for you,” the voice said.

She touched the hand with hers. The oddity of her own gesture thrilled her, and she took her hand away.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Drink this,” he said.

She drank, and swam back into the world of the opiate.

“Open your eyes,” the voice said.

She opened the good eye.

“Both of them.”

She quailed. Then she forced it open. The lid felt rusty.

Light. A picture
.

A hand covered her good eye.

“You see me,” the voice said.

“Yes.” And it was no longer just a voice. A man of middle age with a face that showed the bones beneath and a gray mustache. His eyes were deep with the sadness of living in the world, and with compassion.

“You see me clearly.”

“Yes.”

“The danger to your eye is past,” he said. “But there’s a new danger. Your face wound is infected.”

He touched her hand, and she did not take it away. “I’m sorry. I’ll do my best for you. Drink this.”

The infection brought her respite. Most of the time she slept. She asked Tarim to leave the door flap to her room open so the southern
sun would shaft through onto her legs. Sometimes she meditated. Lying flat on her back was not an ideal position, so she sat up when she could. Either way, her spine was straight, so energy could flow freely. With the return of her meditative practice, she felt her spirit a little stronger. She did not know about her face, or her body, and she barely cared. She could feel that her face was very swollen. If she sat up a few minutes, it got hot, and throbbed. The doctor admitted she might die. Often she fell into the waywardness of despair.

I have lost myself
. That was what had happened. Her abductors didn’t do that to her, or the men who took her like a carcass to Canton, or those who penned her up in the hold of the ship coming across the great ocean, or Ah Wan, or Jehu.
I did it to myself
. For the spirit is free. Only the human being it inhabits can sully the spirit.

After her abduction she failed to meditate every day, to find her own center, the hub of the wheel, and spend time there.
I did it to myself
.

Odd, how the white men did me a favor. Even your enemy is your teacher
.

A scratch at the open door flap. The doctor. Though she had mostly been half-conscious through his ministrations, now she looked forward to the kindness of his voice and touch.

“I’m glad to see you awake,” he said. “You’re getting stronger, Polly.”

“Not call me Polly.”

“What do you want me to call you?”

“Sun Moon.” Her voice scratched, unaccustomed to speech.

“Sun Moon,” repeated the doctor, chuckling.

Yes, she knew. Funny to white men. Daytime star and nighttime star. “Sun Moon,” she repeated.

“Sun Moon,” the doctor said formally, “I’m Harville Park. Call me Dr. Harville. I hear that your English is fairly good. If you don’t understand what I’m saying, stop me.”

“Understand.”

He touched her eyebrow very lightly. “The cut goes from here, through the upper lid, into the eye, and down the cheek.” He touched her just below the cheekbone. “I believe the infection is on the retreat.” He forced a smile. “You’ll have a piratical scar.”

“Piratical?”

“Like a robber.” He made a mean face.

If you only knew
. Her mind stampeded with pictures of her abductors.

He held up a mirror. “Do you want to see yourself?”

“No.”
For the rest of this incarnation I will not think of myself as I was, Dechen Tsering, of Zorgai Convent of the holy land of the Pöba, born Nima Lhamo, named by my parents Sun Goddess. Nor will I see myself as a whore scarred by rapists. I will become a holy warrior, a unity of violence and peace, life and death, Sun and Moon
.

The doctor looked at her inquiringly.

Why are you not telling me what’s important?
She asked him directly. “I will live?”

“Yes,” he said. “I expect so.”

“Be strong?”

“Yes.”

Her heart spun with fear.
So. Tarim will make me whore soon
. She swallowed hard. “Be whore then.”

“I guess so,” he said.

She declared softly, “I never be whore. I never be whore.”

He looked at her a long moment, then nodded. “I will help you if I can.”

Speaking made the cut hurt, and made her face puff until she thought it would burst. Talking was painful. But she wanted to talk to this healer.

“I will tell Tarim your life is in danger. I can protect you for a while.”

She looked beyond him at the weak sun low in the sky. The winter was going to be long, but maybe she would survive it. “You help me?”

“What do you want, Polly? … Sun Moon?”

“Incense,” she said.

Dr. Harville’s face quirked. “Incense?”

She nodded.

“All right. The Indians use cedar and sage. I’ll get you some.”

Then I can conduct my
puja.

“Anything else?”

“Speak English good,” she said. “Read English.”
Because it’s a long road home
.

When the doctor was gone, she felt gingerly of her face. Around the cut her flesh warm and tender—she imagined it red. The cut felt rough, jagged, wildly sore.
I am wounded
.

Tarim stood in the doorway, head and eyes immobile, face as petrified as his spirit.

Dr. Harville preempted his speech. “She’s not ready. She can keep walking a little, best outside. During the warm part of the day. I’ll go with her.” Dr. Harville actually rose to confront Tarim now. “But she’s not ready to do any work of any kind, and won’t be for weeks.”

Tarim cocked his head sideways around the doctor and pointed at her. “One month sick, one year more work,” he said, waving his hand like a blade.

Sun Moon didn’t care what he said.
I won’t be here one year, much less five or six
.

Tarim stalked away.

“Thank you,” she said. Often she thought she could get up and work. She wanted to. But even a short walk with Dr. Harville tired her out.

As they walked, and any time they were together, she was learning to speak English better and better. Sometimes he also read to her, and helped her puzzle out the sounds of the English alphabet one by one and put them into the strange words.

“You are a good student,” he said. “You work hard.”

She nodded.
I am becoming a good student of the ways of the warrior-goddess. What would you think if you knew my reason for learning to read?
She looked at him. No, she wouldn’t tell him. There was little he could do for her. Unnecessary risk.

Finally Dr. Harville let her help Tarim in the store, finding items for customers, counting their coins, or weighing their dust in payment. She stayed on her feet as long as she could—she was determined to learn about Tarim, his household, his businesses, his customers, both white and yellow. Even red.
I need to learn everything
.

Tarim’s tavern was a new business, she found out, but the store had operated for a year. “I am a trader,” he said from time to time. The white, black, red, and yellow customers peered at Sun Moon and whispered among themselves.

She learned to weigh things in the American scales. She learned to make change with the unfamiliar coins. She learned to take in gold dust, weigh it, and give credit. Once she dropped a few grains of gold dust between the scale and the jar. Tarim hissed while he swept it up.

She noticed then how carefully he swept the floor of the store and the tavern at night, checking the ordinary dust for flecks of yellow.

From the whispers she found out more. Tarim had arranged the grand opening of his tavern so that Sun Moon would be the main
attraction, the deflowering of the virgin nun. She had spoiled his grand opening. She smiled grimly.

Sun Moon watched for chances to walk through the store in the dark, when Tarim was gone. He lived in the store, and kept a Tibetan mastiff on guard besides. But sometimes he disappeared for an hour or two after the tavern closed, and Sun Moon heard that he went to a woman. She made tentative friends with the big dog, named Sonam, which seemed mean and stupid.
I will not be your second Tibetan lackey
.