How the Stars did Fall (15 page)

“Yes? Oh, it’s you. Are you leaving?”

“I should.”

“And where will you go, child? Have you any money?”

“None. I think I need to go back. To my parents.”

“Perhaps that is the best course. Unless you truly are fleeing some crime or injustice—then you ought go on. Where is it you intended to go?”

“I’m not sure. But I’ve always wanted to see the ocean.”

“That is a difficult thing. To set out and not know where to go.”

“And it must be difficult to sleep in the day and labor at night. I’ve never known anyone to do that.”

“Well, you’ve never known a grown man like me, either, I’m sure. But necessity drives all men and if I were to roam this land in the morning, then sure as the rising sun other men would come and kill me, for they hate my strangeness and they envy my possessions.”

Lynch stepped aside and plunged his arms into a pail of water and tossed the water onto his head and into his mouth. Then he parted the covering of a basket and pulled from it a gray morsel of something stale and nearly rotten. What had once been a fruit. He ate it gladly. And taking from a drawer a little mirror, he adjusted his hair and then pushed aside the piece of furniture, revealing another basket recessed in the wood behind it, this one filled with gold coins.

“I have a bit of gold.”

“How did you ever come across such riches?”

“There are as many ways to produce gold as can be dreamt of. Can you believe that?”

“Perhaps I can.”

“Now take it. Take all of the gold.”

“I can’t take that. I mean, I could barely carry it.”

“But you can. See.” He took the bucket filled with gold and threw it at Olivia. She recoiled but still extended her arms, trying to stop its fall. To her surprise, she was able to catch it and hold it. With one hand.

“How is this possible?” Olivia asked.

“If you can dream it…” Lynch began before trailing off and finding in one of his drawers a map. He touched Olivia on the arm and handed it to her. “That should be of help. You ought to buy a horse and a revolver. A girl by herself out there. It’s not safe.”

Olivia took the gold and set out, walking all that day and reaching one of the towns marked on the map by evening. There she purchased a pony, and from another store she bought a wide-brimmed hat. Then she found a tanner and had him fit a saddle for her pony and bought from him a pair of leather packs with enough space to carry all of her food and possessions. She rode out back the way she had come to find Lynch and show him all of the things she had purchased. But he had not marked his own cabin on the map so Olivia tried to find it by memory. Instead she found several massive granite boulders resting amidst the trees like gray molars, their unnatural girth transplanted from some distant quarry. How, Olivia could not imagine. She kept going around, trying to find the cabin, but she failed.

So she took to the road again, the pony striding forth, stamping its feet. Then a carriage emerged on the horizon, speeding forward with a cloud of dust following behind it. As the carriage approached, Olivia pulled on the reins, slowing the pony. The carriage slowed as well until it stopped completely. From within, a woman poked her head out. Her face was equine, her vestments velvety and fine, the livery of a duchess or countess. Sweet perfume escaped through the window. The woman studied Olivia’s face for a moment.

“Dear girl, are you mad?”

“Pardon?”

“How is it you are traveling alone on this road? Do you not fear death or worse? At the very least you should produce a better disguise.”

Olivia looked down at her feet.

“Do you have a weapon on you?” she said.

A pause to consider the question.

“Yes. I’ve got a gun. Bought it not one day ago.”

“You know how to use it?”

“I can show you, if you wish.”

“No need for that. Just a friendly stop out of worry. The stories you hear. The atrocities. Especially against women and children. By God, they’ll chill you straight to the bone.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Of course.”

The head retreated back into the carriage and the thing began to move again. Olivia waited until she could no longer see the carriage before moving herself. Her hands were shaking.

Just as night arrived, Olivia returned to the town where she had bought the pony. Lynch had said she would be able to find shelter there and she did. A dusty hotel welcomed her, nearly empty but for a trio of traveling Argonauts sitting together in front of the fire. The innkeeper carried Olivia’s packs up to the second floor. Before he left to saddle her pony, Olivia pulled him to the side.

“Do you know where I could purchase a weapon?”

“A weapon? Like a sword?”

“A revolver.”

“Ah, I’ll bet you could get one from Antonio, but his shop’s closed now.”

With the innkeeper’s permission, Olivia cooked her own meal in the kitchen and offered some of it to the Argonauts. They took it gladly and complimented her on her skill. Logs crackled in the fire. Several books lay opened before it, the pages warm. Another book rested lazily in the hands of one of the Argonauts, the eldest, and its contents escaped subtly from the breath of that Argonaut as the elder man mouthed the words one by one.

“Reckon I don’t see women traveling the road alone very often,” he said.

“I reckon I don’t see Argonauts reading very often either.”

“You’d be surprised. Some of us seek to plunder riches of a different sort.”

A few hours later in the morning Olivia went back down and asked the innkeeper to point out the shop he had spoken about the night before. It was a butcher’s shop. A buffalo’s skull decorated the door and inside a freshly killed sheep hung from the rafters over a tub, the blood draining, collecting, coagulating.

“Come on in,” Antonio called out from the other side of the room, his back to the door. In one of his hands he held a rump of meat and in the other a handful of saltpeter. And while Olivia told him what she was looking for, he did not for a moment turn away and instead kept rubbing the saltpeter into the meat, into the grooves and gaps.

“What use have you of a gun?” he said.

“My use is my concern. Will you sell or not?”

Now Antonio let go of the meat and turning stood over Olivia, his height nearly double hers. Like some cleaving Bunyan. He found a revolver and dismantled it over a table, then carefully put it back together and cocked it and released and blew into the muzzle and wiped it down with a linen handkerchief.

“Clean as a whistle,” he said. “Bullets are extra. You know how to use it?”

The man placed the weapon in Olivia’s hands and lined up his fingers with her fingers and together they cocked the piece and pulled the trigger.

“Simple as that.”

“How many bullets do I need?”

“To kill a man? Only one. But you should use two or three for peace of mind. Don’t want no one coming back from the dead, so to speak. Here. Take this box of thirty. That’ll do you good for a while. Keep ’em dry. There’s another thing.”

Antonio brought out a leather holster and handed it to Olivia. Taking it, she wrapped the belt around her waist and secured the clasp. Then she dipped the revolver into the holster, letting it rest there, feeling the new weight.

“Shouldn’t I keep it hidden?”

“Nah, let ’em see the gun. That’s half the battle.”

Olivia stowed the bullets safely and rode on. Many miles still lay ahead on the way west to the sea. Yet Olivia measured out her riding so that every night she stopped at some town or another and there took a bed, paying handsomely if she had to. More than once, a man approached her with evil intent visible in his manner, but the iron hanging from her waist dissuaded each one and they left her alone. Indeed, no one but those with whom she traded even got near her as if this girl alone with a gun must be the disguise of something dangerous. Some enemy to man’s spirit. The townspeople gave Olivia a wide berth.

Within a few days the road took Olivia into a dry and gravelly land, the brush thinning out and few trees growing. She came upon that land in the evening. And while she rode she felt that something followed her, though when she looked around she saw no one. But when she stopped for a moment to give the pony some water she saw a coyote some ways away, his head close to the ground. Instinctively, her hand dropped to the revolver. The rest of the way, until she reached another little town, Olivia constantly looked out for the coyote but she did not see him again.

In this next town, Olivia found that there was no inn. So instead she asked a woman tending a grocer if she knew of any homesteads in the area that could rent out a room for the night. There was one and Olivia brought out her map and let the woman point out the general direction she should follow and to whom she should speak.

Before riding out to that homestead, Olivia stopped at a saloon to eat. Inside, the patrons sat around a stage where a girl, no more than fourteen herself, sang. The bartender served Olivia a tall glass of milk. The girl on the stage entered a chorus and the men stood up in unison and clapped their hands and howled and the woman danced for them, their excitement rising until the girl lifted up her dress, for one brief moment revealing her undergarments. With that, the men sat back down again, satisfied. When the song ended, the girl came down from the stage and found one of the men. She took him by the hand and they disappeared behind the bar. Olivia drank her milk and ate some fresh bread. Then the girl returned from behind the bar, adjusting her disheveled dress. And she sat next to Olivia and placed two coins on the counter. The barkeeper took them without speaking and immediately brought from under the counter a plate of food. Sausage and biscuits and boiled ham. The girl ate with her hands, stuffing the food into her mouth. Desperate and starving.

Olivia stared at the girl’s face. Matted red hair covered her head, and up close the woman’s dress looked years old, the edges of it brown and filthy. A single rip across her bosom revealed her smooth white skin.

“Have you lost something?” the girl said.

“Me? No, nothing.” Olivia looked away.

The girl let go of the piece of sausage she held and wiped her hand on her dress before holding it out for Olivia to shake. “My name’s Molly.”

“Olivia.”

“You goin’ someplace?”

“San Francisco.”

“By yourself?”

“Yeah.”

Molly looked back at her plate and bit a piece off of a biscuit and chewed. Most of the men had left the saloon by now, only a couple of stragglers still at their tables drinking beer or whiskey. The bartender stood over the fire, stoking it.

“Aren’t you gonna ask me why I’m going to San Francisco?”

“Nah, that ain’t none of my business.”

“You sure are hungry.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I didn’t mean any offense. Why are you so hungry?”

Molly laughed. “Because I haven’t eaten in a while.”

“Why haven’t you eaten in a while?”

“Because I don’t have any money.”

“How about your family?”

“Got no family either.”

“Where do you live?”

“Wherever.”

Molly excused herself from the counter, taking her plate with her, clearly irritated. She sat by herself at one of the tables and finished her meal. Olivia stayed at the same spot in front of the counter for a while longer, curious to see what Molly would do next but trying not to look at the strange girl. The bartender brought Olivia water and a sweet cake and she paid him in gold. Eventually the last of the remaining customers left and the bartender told Olivia he’d be closing soon and that she should leave. And Olivia got up and as she walked out she overheard Molly arguing with the bartender.

Then just as Olivia readied her pony Molly came out, tears welling up in her eyes. Yet when Olivia asked what was wrong Molly smiled widely. “Nothing. Nothing at all,” she said and began to walk away. Little sunlight remained in the evening and nearly all of the shops had closed up their doors. A single patrolman stood holding up a lantern, tarrying in front of the sheriff’s office. Olivia mounted up and caught up to Molly.

“Pride will get you nowhere,” Olivia said.

“Pride? What are you talking about?”

“I know a place that can take us in for the night. I’ll pay.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. A homestead not far from this town.”

With Molly holding on to Olivia, they rode out. They took the road west, the oppressing dark steadily clouding the way in front of them. By the time Olivia forced the pony off the road it was too dark to see more than a few yards ahead, yet by some dumb luck they followed the path rightly and soon saw in the distance a few small dots of light. To these lights, Olivia oriented herself and the two women found themselves at the entrance to a gargantuan farming estate. The fields of maize stretched out for miles around them, the stalks as tall as men. And they kept riding towards the lights until they came upon the center of that estate, where a quaint brick manse stood to one side and two large houses to the other.

The manse waited cavernous in the darkness while nearly every window of the two houses had some candle or lantern burning behind it. Olivia picked one of the houses at random and knocked at the door. A boy answered, opening the door and looking up in mischief, but from behind him already came a gaunt citizen, clean-shaven and pale as a ghost. Father Silverman was his name and that estate belonged to him. He explained to Olivia and Molly that they could in fact sleep there that night at no expense provided they participated in prayer at the manse. So the girls took him up on the offer and other men came to unsaddle the pony and carry the girl’s things up to one of the rooms. A spare bedroom with only a bed and a few cabinets. But before Olivia and Molly could test the softness of the mattress they were summoned forth to the manse for prayer.

Father Silverman released the latch and let the wide double door to the manse open into the night and the people of the estate rushed in. They were farmers mostly and their families. Yet some were like Olivia and Molly, wanderers or refugees. Inside the manse tall candelabra were lit. The brick walls were cold to the touch and the benches hard and uncomfortable. They were not needed, because Father Silverman requested everyone remain standing and while people still filed into the manse he began his prayer with a grateful ode. He thanked the deity for the crops that yet grew just outside and for the harvest that lay in the future and the safety of his family and his friends and all those who had chosen that estate for shelter. Finally, he thanked the deity for the specific meal that awaited them that night and asked for a full night of sleep that they might be refreshed and ready for the next day.