In the little town of Colives, Oklahoma, in the fading light of a mid-summer day, the red ball of the sun slowly sunk behind the flat horizon, with the twelve-storied Colives Hotel’s black rectangle standing beside it like a piece from a broken frame. The frame’s gone, and the picture’s escaped, thought Chad Elphick. I heard of stranger things in my time, though!

The twin grandsons in his lap reclaimed his attention. Chad III had helped ease the boots off his feet, straddle-wise, while Grandpa Chad had helped him along by pushing his backside with the other foot. Grady Elphick, the other twin, had relieved Chad of his cowboy hat earlier, but now he plunked it back down on the old, bald head.

The old man sat on his wicker chair under the roof of the spherical gazebo, and stared out at the horizon. Aside from its fading sun and the abandoned motel, it was also marked by windmills and powerline towers jutting up like straw stubble against the darkening blue. He was gathering his wits. He knew what was coming when Grady put his hat back on him. That meant they were shifting gears into story-telling mode.

There’s worse ways to spend retirement, the old farrier told himself.

“Grandpa, can you tell us an old cowboy story?” Chad III had plucked up the gumption to ask the question tonight. Usually it was Grady that asked. Grady looked suitably miffed that Chad III had beat him to the punch this time.

“Well, I’ll tell you, son, I mean grandson…of mine,” the old man began at random. “My grandpa had somethin’ happen to him once. He was a farrier, too, like me and my pa, y’ know.

“Anyways, he was in San Francisco, lookin’ for work, ’cause he’d just lost his job at a ranch up north. Somethin’ about the owner thought he was tryin’ to be too friendly with the owner’s wife, or somethin’ like that.

“So, he runs into this fella in a Okie bar along the Barbary Coast part of Frisco, and this fella asks him what he does for a livin’. Grandpa, he tosses back a whiskey, like, an’ he tells him ’Well, I shoe horses and such-like. I got my rig close by.’

“He was careful not to say too much about his rig or where it was, as there’d be plenty of people that weren’t above stealin’ a wagon loaded down with the tools of the farrier’s trade in them days--the forge, the flue, the bellows, the tongs, anvil, spikes, nails, horseshoes, molds, dies, ingots of steel…”

“The fella looks all thunder-struck, and says, all excited-like, “Well, we been lookin’ for a farrier. How’d you like a steady job for the next three, four, maybe five years, an’ at twenty dollars week?!”

“Well, grandpa thinks about it, and says, ’Sounds real interestin’. What’s the job?”

“This guys says to him, ‘Got a offer from a Chinee fella, an’ he’s gotta lotta money, an’ says he already bought him a shipment of other stuff, stuff he’s keepin’ secret, and gonna ship it to China, and from there up to his customer in Tibet.’ The Chinee fella was bein’ middle-man for the fella in Tibet. “

“Oh yeah,” said Chad III. “I heard’a Tibet. It’s the place in China that people wanna help get free. I seen it on bumper stickers on some’a them cars by the university.”

“Yeah…I guess.” The old man paused, having momentarily lost the thread. “You were sayin’ the guy in the Okie bar offered him a job in Tibet, an’ sayin’ he had a shipment’a stuff for Tibet.” This was Grady prompting.

“Right,” said Elphick. “So, yeah, my great-great-grandpa takes him up on his offer.

“They set sail from Frisco on a big clipper ship, and got to Hong Kong in China, right before the monsoon season. The weather bein’ bad, they had to wait there three months. ‘Course, there was lots to kill time with. Gamblin,’ the women of Hong Kong…”


The boys’ mother, sitting on a wicker chair of her own, intervened for the first time. “Grandpa, let’s keep it G-rated. Little ears…” He couldn’t see her in the dark circle under the gazebo, but he knew the expression she’d have on her face right now. “Right!” he said quickly.

“Anyway, they killed time till the monsoon was over. Then they busted their humps getting’ across China and to the foothills of the Himalayas--you know, the tallest mountains on earth--before the next monsoon came, the followin’ year. They went by horse, by camel, by carriage, by rickshaw, by palanquin, them and their whole baggage train of stuff they shipped across the ocean, ‘cludin‘ Grandpa Elphick‘s farrier rig--and they got to the foothills and settled in for another monsoon season.

“This time, they were stuck in a little village, with nothin’ to do but hang out with the locals--all ten of ‘em. All they did was gamble, drink butter tea, smoke opium--don’t ever do that, boys!--and try to cheat travelers outta their money--when they wasn‘t robbin‘ em. They kinda stayed on good behavior with the large, well-group o’ travelers in their midst, but they still bore watchin’.

“But there was another traveler with ‘em, a Tibetan monk name ‘a Blessed Lightning. Come to find out, he was goin’ to the same place they were goin,’ a place called Ganden. He thought they were goin’ there for the same reason he was goin’ there--to pay religious homage to a monk that was called the Ocean of Wisdom, and who was more or less the ruler of Tibet.

“Fact was, they were goin’ there to capture the Ocean of Wisdom, an’ take him to India with ’em, and hold him for a ransom in gold--the ransom to be paid to ‘em when they was in India, an’ ready to take a ship out of there, and back to Hong Kong, and then another one back to Frisco. This was what great-great grandpa Elphick had found out from the Chinee middleman durin’ the trip across China. The monk didn’t have no idea what they were up to.

“Come springtime, they were crossin’ the Himalayas. Durin’ a terrible snow-and-rain storm, a big bolt of lightning struck the spire of a temple way up on a hill as they were travelin’ in the valley almost directly below. The statue on top’a that spire was sheared clean off the spire, and tumbled down to the valley floor below, landin’ right in their path. Grandpa Elphick, the middleman, and Blessed Lightning the monk was all at the head of the column, and the narrow little trail was only about seven feet weed. The statue landed there and blocked their way. They took a good look at it--they didn’t have a choice!

“The monk, Blessed Lightning, he turned all terrible-pale, and started tremblin’ from head to felt-booted foot. They asked him what was wrong--had he been hit by fallin’ debris that missed them?

“ ’No,’ he said. ’You men are in terrible danger. The statue--look at it! Her hand is stretched out--and pointing at you!’ I was true. The statue was of a woman, wearin’ only swirlin’ skirts and big golden chains around her neck with large, gold-sculpted pendants, and gold circlets on arms and wrists and ankles. A massive, tiered gold crown sat on her head, on top of streaming black REAL hair. Her body was in a position of dancin’ wildly, poised on one foot with the other in the air, one arm pointed above her head--and the other pointed right at the Chinaman from where she lay on the ground now. An’ this is what had the Tibetan monk so scared and excited now.

“He was looking from the Chinee middleman to the statue and back again. ’This statue wasn’t that way when it was on the spire of the temple. It changed as it fell. The lightning bolt was no accident. A goddess--Palden Lhamo--is warning you away. SHE caused the lightning. SHE changed her statue’s shape. SHE caused it to point to you, because she knows you have evil aims in mind. SHE wants you to leave Tibet, and never return!’ “

“The Chinaman, who had acted friendly all durin’ the trip, now suddenly acted all hateful an’ haughty-like. He said ‘You superstitious Tibetan simpletons are all alike! Don’t be ridiculous! It was a bolt of lightning, and nothing more. Let’s push this thing out of the way, and be on our way.’ The monk looked horrified, then got all self-righteous and said, “I have passed by this temple dozens of times in my life. I KNOW what the statue looked like when it was on the spire. It was the goddess, but she was seated in the lotus position, not stretched out like a swimmer with a pointing hand outthrust! It changed shape, I tell you! It is an omen!’

“Now Grandpa Elphick spoke up, and said, ‘He’s lyin.’ That couldna’ happened. He’s probably tryin’ to slow us down for some kind of ambush. I had a Cree holy man try to pull the same stunt on me in Oklahoma once. Look around!’ Ever’body in the column looked around. The Chinaman, he had one of the Chinee porters open up a parcel on a yak’s back, and pulled out somethin’. What do y’ think it was?’ Chad Elphick paused for the first time, and invited a little audience participation here.

Chad III paused, and mused aloud, “I dunno. Ropes, to help pull the statue out of the road, maybe?”

“Not quite,” Grandpa Elphick responded. “It was a whole parcel’a Colt .45 six-shooters. An’ a box’a ammo, enough bullets to fill all six chambers for each pistol! That took a few minutes, ‘cause none of these Chinamen had handled a six-shooter before. They coulda been ambushed while they were fumblin’ around, droppin’ bullets off the side and jumpin’ ever’time one went ‘bang’ on the rocks below. But, finally, they had ‘em all loaded, and ready for the ambushers!

“Then the Chinee middle-man said, ‘We’re safe for now. Let’s throw this fool monk and this statue off the path and go on!’

“He started forward to do it, and several of the Chinee porters came forward to help. Grandpa Elphick held back for some reason, feelin’ uneasy about the whole thing, somehow. I think he was still thinkin’ about the Cree holy man, and the bad things that had happened to the people that killed HIM---but that’s a different story.

“Anyway, he hung back, an’ the others, they done it, throwin’ the statue and the monk off the narrow path, an’ the man an’ the statue bounced down the side of the mountain, end over end, the monk’s cries ceasin’ after the first collision with a boulder, the statue breakin’ up into dozens of fragments, which all burst into flame on their long trip to the bottom.

“The Chinaman stared himself for several moments, fascinated like everybody else when he saw that stone could burn. Then he pulled hisself together, and got ever’body movin’ again, to get their minds off it. He knew his own porters were superstitious, too, and didn’t want ‘em gettin’ cold feet and refusin’ to go on.

“Next thing you know, a woman come ridin’ around a bend in the trail, on a black and white horse with a death’s-head on his forehead, out from behind the far side of the mountain, holdin’ a Gatling gun openin’ up on the column. The Gatlin’ mowed down ever’body but Grandpa Elphick, an’ him standin’ there and starin’ in horror. Also, not one horse was harmed, not a-one scratched. They all stood there lookin’ all placid an’ dopey.

“The woman looked normal enough, except that the heavy-yarn coat she was wearin’ had eight arms instead’a two, but only two hands comin’ out of two sleeves. She came to a halt not five feet from him, blew the smoke away from the barrel of her Gatlin’ (or all eight barrels, I should say!), and spoke to Granpa Elphick. It was a voice like y’ might hear from a sawmill all made out of ice, with icy saw-blades cuttin’ through blocks of ice. It was a terrible sound, he said, but through it all he could hear words in English, unmistakable words. She said somethin’ like this:

“ ‘You! You know what just happened! You know I am Palden Lhamo, and I just killed the blasphemers! I knew all about your plans to kidnap the Ocean of Wisdom! I also know you are a farrier…Mr. Elphick!…AND I know you had a blue-tick hound named Lucas when you were ten! You had forgotten that yourself, didn’t you?!’ “

“Well, this had Grandpa Elphick as scared and as thoroughly convinced as any man that ever lived. He hadn’t mentioned Lucas to anybody durin’ this whole trip, hadn’t mentioned him to ANYBODY, ANYWHERE for years, hadn’t even thought about him, like the…goddess, yes that’s what she must be--like she had said. Her knowledge was supernatural, no way around it! An’ I think that goddess knew he was scared and convinced now, ‘cause now she got to the point of sparin’ him and talkin’ to him.

“ ‘You will all go on, and perform a different mission now…’ “

“ ‘How, lady?’ “ Grandpa Elphick said. “ ‘Y’ killed ever’body but me!’ “

“Then he looked around and saw all the dead risin’ back up, with blood rapidly-dryin’ up, with their faces all ghostly-white with a kinda green tinge to it, wearin’ new expressions, way-different than what the original men wore. These were, like, HER followers, just borrowin’ these men’s bodies. They was all lookin’ straight at Grandpa Elphick, an’ givin’ him these leerin’ smiles that just about made him crawl outta his skin. Tremblin’, he looked back at Palden Lhamo, She was wearin’ her own face now, one more horrible than the Gorgon in that Greek myth I toldjya the last time you was here. A face that looked like the cause of all the illness and insanity in the world, with room to spare!”

At this point, the boys’ mother intervened again. “Grandpa, they’re not gonna be able to sleep tonight! Tone it down a little, PLEASE?”

The old man laughed, and replied, “All right, Ella, I’ll edit things a little better. I promise. “ Then he looked to the boys for support. “Y’all wanna hear more?”

“YESSIR!” the boys declared in one voice.

“Okay,” today’s Grandpa Elphick said, and continued. “The goddess said that the new job that Grandpa Elphick and his new ‘co-workers’ had was to use their guns (includin’ the Gatling) to rob the monasteries and convents of the Red Hats. See, the Red Hats taught things that were different from what the Ocean of Wisdom and his followers taught. The Ocean of Wisdom and his followers were called the Yellow Hats.

“Grandpa Elphick told me that the difference between ’em didn’t amount to a hill of beans--that the color of their hats was probably the REAL reason they was feudin’--but anyway the goddess said that her pal, Strong Lightning, a god, was a guardian of the Ocean of Wisdom an’ the wisdom ’a the Yellow Hats, and that HE didn’t want the Yellow Hats to get misguided an’ start leanin’ too much on what the Red Hats taught, an’ he, Strong Lightnin’, the god who was friend to the goddess, HE thought that robbin’ the Red Hat monasteries of their gold was the way to do it. The gold could be used to build a whole new city, with a monastery bigger than any in the world, bigger ’n even the ones in the city of Rasa, The Place of Goats.

“SO, with Granpa Elphick in tow, this army’a the dead went to robbin’ all the Red Hat monasteries and the villages and cities nearby, and a-killin’ ever’body that stood in their way. They’d ride in, with some of the porters dismountin’ and goin’ to work on the doors of the monasteries with axes an’ dynamite, and once the doors was open, they’d run in with their six-shooters blazin’, or sometimes they’d even just ride in, in the bigger monasteries, the ones with the main street wide enough for six horses to ride abreast--ride in, shootin’ who ever got in their way, strippin’ gold from chapels and storerooms and vaults, desecratin’ idols with bullets and fire.

“They saved up bags an’ bags of gold, enough gold that it took a thousand horses to carry it all--horses that they stole from the Red Hat monasteries and the nearby towns an’ villages that supported ‘em. An’ then this army of dead men and horses, weighed down with gold and pluggin’ every’thing that moved with their .45s, they all came to the place where the goddess Palden Lhamo and the god Strong Lightning said they would build the new city with the biggest Yellow Hat monasteries of all.

“It was a lake, bigger’n the Great Salt Lake, one with islands scattered over it, and the biggest one, the one in the very middle o’ the lake, that was where the city would be built. It had a big natural harbor an’ fresh water streams that came down from springs in the island’s highest hills, and even land on the south side’a the island where you could grow barley and wheat.

“Anyway, when the army came to the shore of the lake, an’ saw this island, and Palden Lhamo announced her plans for it, she sent Grandpa Elphick and the zombie who used to be the Chinee middleman and four others in a canoe made of yak-hides across the water to see the place. The goddess herself went along for the ride, totin’ her Gatling with her.

“Well, who should they run into on the island, but the Tibetan who originally hired the Chinaman to kidnap the Ocean of Wisdom. See, he’d been followin’ the Chinaman and his army from afar, an’ he knew the Chinaman wasn’t after the Ocean of Wisdom anymore, and he’d been waitin’ for a place to ambush him, and the island was the perfect place, once he realized from his spies that there was where they was headin.’

“He and his people had muzzle-loaders an’ matchlocks instead’a six-shooters, but they had good position, an’ knew all the good places to shoot from, bein’ as they’d been to the island before, and used it to hole up in, since ever’body else was too superstitious about the place to go out there--till now! AN’ they had the advantage of numbers. There was only a handful of people with Grandpa Elphick and the Chinaman and the goddess in the canoe, remember.

“Others tried to come out to the island on other yak-hide canoes, but the robbers with the muzzle-loaders had the range on ‘em, and picked ‘em off from the high places in the rocks they’d hid out in. An’ they kept pourin’ fire down onto the beach, where Grandpa Elphick and his little party was hunkered down behind their canoe, and scarcely darin’ to raise up high enough to shoot their pistols, with their shorter ranges.

“Well, Palden Lhamo got sick and tired o’ this, but good, and decided she was gonna fight this thing HER way.

“So, she turned into a bag of wind, carryin’ the smallpox and the anthrax an’ the rabies an’ the cholera an’ the plague, and about six or seven other diseases, and the bag o’ wind had sword blades an’ spear blades an’ Gatling guns’ barrels stickin’ out from it like some flyin’ hedgehog, shootin’ and slashin’ and spreadin’ disease that killed men instantly, and all of a sudden it looked like the end for the robbers that wanted to kidnap the Ocean of Wisdom, and looked like victory for Grandpa Elphick’s bunch. Not that he was all that happy about it, y’ understand? Even if they won, he’d still be stuck with ‘em, and he couldn’t come home as long as he was in that goddess’s army.

“An’ Strong Lightnin’, the god-partner of Palden Lhamo, he was makin’ a hullaballoo, and ran across the water…”

“Oh, like Jesus and Peter?” prompted Chad III.

“Well…” the old man hesitated, then restated things. “That’s a little bit of an exaggeration, y’ understand. See, there was REALLY this bridge, made’a rainbows, that formed in front of Strong Lightning as he went across. An’ he got to the beach, and started throwin’ his gold hat in the air, and singin’ and dancin’ to beat the band.

“An’ the goddess Palden Lhamo said a long spell, in a sing-song way, an’ this city and a big temple in the middle of it, they appeared on top of the mountain, an’ the streams comin’ down from the spring were all of a sudden flowin’ with wine, and gold, and pearls. An’ Grandpa Elphick was gettin’ sadder an’ sadder, thinkin’ how he’d never get away, and never get back to his sweetheart--my great-great grandmother, and YOUR great-great-great-great grandmother, and that’s how things stood just then.

“All of a sudden, there was an earthquake, an’ the mountain fell apart in four peaces, one to each corner of the compass, an’ the city of Palden Lhamo with its great temple fell into the fissure that opened up inside the mountain, an’ a new mountain sprouted up, and on its peak was a church made of golden glass, sparklin’ in the noon-day sun, and from its main doors, a man in a black cassock came, an’ he walked on down the steps, like a thousand steps, in a stairway that reached all the way down to the beach. It took him awhile to get there, but nobody moved or got impatient. ‘Cause they were all riveted on this man, ever’body waitin’ to see what he would do or what he would say.

“He said to ‘em all, ‘Welcome. I am Prester John. This is my kingdom.”

“Well, with that, Palden Lhamo and the whole army of the dead, both on the island, and the ones still on the lakeshore on the other side of the water, they just all melted away in fear. Only Grandpa Elphick was left.

“Prester John, bein’ a priest, took his confession right then and there, then let him stay overnight in the city of gold glass, an’ fed him dinner off plates o’ pure gold, an’ wine that put Palden Lhamo’s river-wine to shame. An’ he gave him a couple of horses to pull his farrier‘s rig wagon, an’ several pounds’a gold, and food for a month, and a letter of safe-conduct that would get him to the coast in India.

“So, Grandpa Elphick rode south, and made the east coast of India, showin’ his letter where he had to, and buyin’ his passage with his gold. An’ when he got to Hong Kong, and bought his passage on a ship goin’ to Frisco, he went to look for the letter from Prester John, ‘cause he wanted to show it to the ship’s chaplain, a Anglican chaplain.”

“And what did the chaplain say about it?” Grady Elphick piped up.

“Nothin,’ “ said Chad Elphick. “The letter was gone, without a trace. An’ so was the rest of Grandpa Elphick’s gold. Like it had never been there. Same thing happened to the horses, once them an’ the rig was unloaded offa the ship in San Francisco.

“Now, off to bed with you boys. Story’s over.” Chad Elphick put his arms out for a hug, and the perplexed-looking boys gave him one, and filed back to the house and the waiting beds.

As they ambled back to the house with their father, Ella filled a glass with lemonade from a pitcher on a small side-table, and reached it across to Chad Elphick. “You must be parched after tellin’ a story like that, Chad. Here.”

Chad took it gratefully, and sipped. “Thanks, Ella…say, this is a nice-looking glass. Never saw one with this kinda gold glaze before…”


“

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 27.07.2010

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