Riverworld and Other Stories

  His plan seemed wild to them, though mainly because it was unheard of. But it offered escape of a sort which once would not have been regarded as such. It was better than just sitting there like sick sheep waiting to be slain. Their tired eyes took on some life; their exhausted and abused bodies lost their shrunken appearance, swelling up with hope.

  Only Yeshua demurred.

  “I cannot take a human life.”

  Tom said, in an exasperated tone, “You won’t be doing that! Not in the sense we knew on Earth! You’ll be giving your man his life! And saving him from torture!”

  A man said, “He doesn’t have to take anybody’s life. He can volunteer to be one of those that’ll die.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Tom said. “How about it, Yeshua?”

  “No. That would make me a collaborator in murder, hence, a murderer, even if the one murdered was myself. Besides, that would be suicide, and I cannot kill myself. That, too, would be a sin, against …”

  He bit his lower lip.

  “Look!” Tom said. “We don’t have time to argue. The guards are getting mighty curious now. First thing you know, they’ll be storming in here.”

  “That is what you want,” Yeshua said.

  Angrily, Tom cried out, “I don’t know what you did or where you were when you were on Earth, but whatever it was or whoever you were, you really haven’t changed! I’ve heard you say you’ve lost your religion, yet you act like you haven’t lost a shred of it! You don’t believe in God anymore, yet you were just about to spout off about not going against God! Are you crazy, man?”

  “I think I’ve been crazy all my life,” Yeshua said. “But there are some things I will not do. They are against my principles, even though I no longer believe in The Principle.”

  By then the captain of the guards was shouting at the prisoners, demanding to know what they were up to.

  “Forget the mad Jew,” a woman said. “Let’s get this over with before they get here.”

  “Line up then,” Mix said.

  All except Yeshua got into one of two lines in which each person faced another. That was just as well since they were, without him, even-numbered. Opposite Mix was a woman, a brunette whom he vaguely remembered seeing in New Albion. She was pale and trembling but game enough.

  He lifted the chamberpot by its rim and said, “You call it.”

  He swung the brown pot up, loosed it, and watched it turn over and over. Sixty-two pairs of eyes were fastened upon it.

  “Open end!” the woman called out loudly but shakily.

  The container, turning, fell. It landed on its bottom and cracked in two.

  “Don’t hesitate!” Tom shouted. “We don’t have much time, and you might lose your nerve!”

  The woman closed her eyes as Tom stepped up to her and gripped her throat. For a few seconds she held her arms out at right angles to her body. She was attempting to put up no resistance, to make the job easier for him and quicker for her. The will to live was, however, too strong for her. She grabbed his wrists and tried to break his grip. Her eyes opened wide as if she were pleading with him. He squeezed her throat more tightly. She writhed and kicked, driving her knee up between his legs. He bent away though not swiftly enough to avoid getting the knee in the belly.

  “Hell, this ain’t going to work!” he said.

  He released her. Her face was blue by then, and she was gasping. He hit her in the chin, and she dropped onto the ground. Before she could regain consciousness, he was choking her again. It only took a few seconds to still her breath. Wanting to make sure, he held on a little longer.

  “You’re the lucky one, sister,” he said, and he rose.

  The people in his line, which had won the toss or lost it, depending upon the viewpoint, were having the same trouble he’d had. Though the other line had agreed beforehand not to fight against their stranglers, most of them had been unable to keep their promise. Some had torn loose and were slugging it out with their would-be killers. A few were running away, pursued. Some were dead, and some were now trying to choke their chokers.

  He looked at the big gate. It was swinging open. Behind it was a horde of guards, all armed with spears.

  “Stop it!” he roared. “It’s too late now! Attack the guards!”

  Without waiting to see how many had heard him, he ran toward the first of the spearmen. He yelled to give himself courage and to startle the guards into self-defense. But what did they have to fear from an unarmed, naked, and enfeebled man?

  The guards nearest him did, however, raise their spears.

  Good! He’d hurl himself onto the points, arms out, catching some in his belly and some in his chest.

  But the captain bellowed out an order, and they reversed their weapons. The shafts would be used as clubs.

  Nevertheless, he leaped, and he saw the butt end of the spear that would knock him senseless.

  12.

  When he awoke, he had two pains in his head, the new one far worse than the old. He also was suffering again from diplopia. He sat up and looked around at the blurred scene. There were bodies of the prisoners here and there. Some had been killed by the others, and some had been beaten to death by the guards. Three of the guards lay on the dirt, one dead, the others bleeding. Apparently, some prisoners had wrested the spears away from the guards and gotten some small revenge before being killed.

  Yeshua was standing away from the rest of the prisoners, his eyes closed and his mouth moving. He looked as if he were praying, but Mix doubted that he was.

  When he looked back, he saw about twenty spearmen marching through the compound gate. Kramer was leading them. Mix watched the short, fat youth with the dark-brown hair and very pale blue eyes walking toward him. His piggish face looked pleased. Probably, Mix thought, he was happy that Mix and Yeshua had not been slain.

  Kramer stopped a few feet from Mix. He looked ridiculous, though he must think he made a splendid figure. He wore a crown of oak wood each of the seven points of which sported a round button cut from mussel shells. His upper eyelids were painted blue, an affectation of the males of his land, an affectation which Mix thought was fruity. The upper ends of his black towel-cape were secured around his fat neck with a huge brooch made from copper, an exceedingly rare and expensive metal. On one plump finger was an oak ring in which was set an uncut emerald, also a scarce item. A black towel-kilt was around his paunch, and his knee-length boots were of black fish-leather. In his right hand he held a long shepherd’s crook, symbol that he was the protector of his sheep—his people. It also signified that he had been appointed by God for that role.

  Behind Kramer were two bloodied and bruised and naked prisoners, whom Mix had not seen before. They were short dark men with Levantine features.

  Mix squinted. He was wrong. He did know one of the two. He was Mattithayah, the little man who had mistaken Mix for Yeshua when they had first been Kramer’s prisoners.

  Kramer pointed at Yeshua and spoke in English.

  “Iss zat ze man?”

  Mattithayah broke into a storm of unintelligible but recognizable English. Kramer whirled and sent him staggering backward with a blow of his left fist against the jaw. Kramer said something to the other prisoner. This one answered in English as heavily accented as Kramer’s, but his native tongue was obviously different.

  Then he cried, “Yeshua! Rabbi! We have looked for you for many years! And now you are here, too!”

  He began to weep, and he opened his arms and walked toward Yeshua. A guard banged the butt of his spear on his back, over the kidney area, and the little man groaned and fell on his knees, his face twisted with pain.

  Yeshua had looked once at the two men and had groaned. Now he stood with downcast eyes.

  Kramer, scowling and muttering, strode up to Yeshua and seized his long hair. He jerked it, forcing Yeshua to raise his head.

  “Madman! Anti-Christ!” he shouted. “You’ll pay for your blasphemies! Yust ass your two crazedt friendss vill pay!”
r />   Yeshua closed his eyes. His lips moved soundlessly. Kramer struck him in the mouth with the back of his hand, rocking Yeshua’s head. Blood flowed from the right corner of Yeshua’s lips.

  Kramer screamed, “Shpeak, you filt! Do you indeedt claim to be Christ?”

  Yeshua opened his eyes, and spoke softly.

  “I claim only to be a man named Yeshua, just another son of man. If this Christ of yours did exist and if he were here, he would be horrified, driven to madness with despair, at what had happened on Earth to his teachings after he died.”

  Kramer, yelling, hit Yeshua alongside the head with his staff. Yeshua fell to his knees and then crumpled forward, his head hitting the earth with a soft thud. Kramer drove the toe of his boot against the fallen man’s ribs.

  “Renounce your blasphemiess! Recant your Satanic ravingks! You vill escape mush pain in zis worlt if you do, ant you may safe your zoul in the next!”

  Yeshua raised his head, but he said nothing until he had regained his breath.

  “Do what you will to me, you unclean Gentile.”

  Kramer snouted, “Shut your dirty mous, you inzane monshter!”

  Yeshua grunted as Kramer’s boot toe drove into his side again, and he moaned for a little while thereafter.

  Kramer, his black cloak flapping after him, strode to Mattithayah and his companion.

  “Do you shtill maintain zat zis lunatic iss ze Blessedt Zon of Godt?”

  The two were pale beneath their dark skins, and their faces looked as if they were made of melting wax. Neither replied to Kramer.

  “Answer me, you svine!” he cried.

  He began to beat them with the shepherd’s staff. They backed away, their hands up to protect themselves, but they were seized by the guards and kept from retreating.

  Yeshua struggled to his feet. Loudly, he said, “He is so savage because he fears that they speak the truth!”

  Mix said, “What truth?”

  His double vision was increasing, and he felt as if he should vomit. He was beginning to lose interest in everything but himself. God, if only he could die before he was tied to the stake and the wood set afire!

  “I’ve heard that question before,” Yeshua said.

  Mix didn’t know for a moment what Yeshua meant. Then illumination flooded in. Yeshua had thought he’d said, “What is truth?”

  After Kramer had beaten Mattithayah and his friend into unconsciousness, they were dragged out through the gate by their legs, their heads bumping, their arms trailing along behind their heads. Kramer started to walk toward Yeshua, his staff lifted high as if he intended to give him the same treatment. Mix hoped that he would. Perhaps, in his rage, he’d kill Yeshua now and thus save him from the fire.

  The joke would certainly be on Kramer then.

  But a sweating panting man ran through the gate, and he cried out Kramer’s name. It was thirty seconds, though, before he caught his wind. He was the bearer of ill news.

  Apparently, there were two fleets approaching, one from up-River, one from down-River. Both were enormous. The states to the north of Kramer’s and the states to the south of the newly conquered territories had been galvanized into allied action against Kramer, and the Huns across from them had joined them. They finally realized that they must band together and attack Kramer before he moved against them.

  Kramer turned pale, and he struck the messenger over the head with his staff. The man fell without a sound.

  Kramer was in a bad way. Half of his own fleet had been destroyed in its victory, and the number of his soldiers had been considerably reduced. He wouldn’t be ready for a long time to launch another attack nor was he well fitted to withstand an invasion from such a huge force.

  He was doomed, and he knew it.

  Despite Mix’s pain and the knowledge of the fire waiting for him, he managed a smile. If Kramer were captured, he would undoubtedly be tortured and then burned alive. It was only just that he should be. Perhaps if Kramer himself felt the awful flames, he might not be so eager to subject others to them when he rose again.

  But Mix doubted that.

  Kramer shouted orders to his generals and admirals to prepare for the invasion. After they had left, he turned, panting, toward Yeshua. Mix called to him.

  “Kramer! If Yeshua is who those two men claim he is, and they’ve no reason to lie, then what about you? You’ve tortured and killed for nothing! And you’ve put your own soul in the gravest jeopardy!”

  Kramer reacted as Mix had hoped he would. Screaming, he ran at Mix with the staff raised. Mix saw it come down on him.

  Kramer must have pulled his punch. Mix awoke some time later, though not fully. He was upright and tied to a great bamboo stake. Below him was a pile of small bamboo logs and pine needles.

  Through the blur, he could see Kramer applying the torch. He hoped that the wind would not blow the smoke away from him. If it rose straight up, then he would die of asphyxiation and would never feel the flames on his feet.

  The wood crackled. His luck was not with him. The wind was blowing the smoke away from him. Suddenly, he began coughing. He looked to his right and saw, vaguely, that Yeshua was tied to another stake very near him. Upwind. Good, he thought. Poor old Yeshua will burn, but the smoke from his fire will kill me before I burn.

  He began coughing violently. The pains in his head struck him like fists. Vision faded entirely. He fell toward oblivion.

  But he heard Yeshua’s voice, distorted, far away, like thunder over a distant mountain.

  “Father, they do know what they’re doing!”

  J. C. on the Dude Ranch

  Foreword

  This story appears for the first time anywhere.

  Its genesis lies in an exchange by letter between Bob Bloch and me. I asked him if he’d ever read the novel. Tom Mix Died for Your Sins by Darryl Ponicsan. He wrote back saying that he had not. And he added, “I’ve never read Jesus Christ on the 101 Ranch, either.”

  Things like that flow from his lips night and day. He can’t help it, and millions are glad that he can’t.

  But when I read that, I thought. Wow, what a great title for a story! So I wrote him, saying so, and asked him if he intended to write a short story based on that title. If he didn’t want to write it, then I’d be happy to do so. He replied that he had no such intention and gave his permission for me to tackle it.

  The result is before you. I changed his title because not too many readers nowadays might know about the once very famous 101 Ranch or that Tom Mix once worked there as a cowboy. But to give Bob circuitous credit for the title and for the final line, I put in a character named Bob Blotch.

  This story has a different slant on Jesus from that which appears in the preceding story.

  Thanks for the drink, stranger. Name’s Soapy Waters. Maybe you read about my grandpa, the famous Texas outlaw, Rough Waters. He always carried a Shakespeare and a Bible in his saddlebag, and he was fond of quoting or maybe misquoting them.

  He was the one said, “All the world’s a stage coach, and it should be robbed.”

  That had nothing to do with the morning I was in Big Wash picking up supplies for the XR Dude Ranch. But he did say something I should of paid mind to. “Once,” he said, “not knowing the sissy-looking hombre was Wild Bill Hickok, I tried to hold him up. Instead, I got arrested. So judge not by appearances, lest ye be jugged.”

  If I’d of knowed then what was going to happen when this tall handsome stranger wearing the white ten-gallon hat rode into town under that Arizona sun, I would of quit right then and there. It was some mess me and some others got into because we was going by appearances.

  The stranger was driving a battered old pickup pulling a trailer with a white horse. The way he started to tie the truck to a hitching post before he remembered he wasn’t on a horse told me he was more used to forking a cayuse than driving. Or maybe he just had a lot on his mind. I introduced myself, and close-up I could see he was about thirty-three and had big brown eyes that looked
like they seen too much.

  J.C. Marison was not only good-looking, even with that long black beard of his’n, the crotch of his levis seemed bigger’n a cow’s udder. He was a natural for the XR. He said, yes, he was looking for a job. So I told him how to get to McGiddow’s Hill and to tell old man Rich I sent him.

  “It’s not only a dude ranch,” I said, “it’s a working ranch. Some of them women guests like to work the cowboys, too.”

  His eyes didn’t light up like they should of. Nowadays you can’t be too sure, so I said, “You do like women?”

  He said they was his favorite kind of people, so I felt maybe I wasn’t making a mistake. After he drove off, I banged on the door of Nab’s Grocery and Feed until he came down.

  “What the hell you doing here so early?” he growled.

  “Your sign says any time,” I said.

  “Yeah, but we was up to two drinking,” he said. “I figured you’d be snoring in Swede’s bed until noon.”

  I didn’t tell him I was so loaded I couldn’t get my feet up the stairs to her room let alone get anything else up. When I woke up on the pool table, Mary the Swede’s mangy old St. Bernard was chewing on my boots. That dog’s like its owner. It’ll eat anything.

  When I’d finished loading, it was time for a hair of the dog that bit me. I ambled over to the Last Chance, and somehow by the time I left it was ten. But my hangover was gone.

  I see another stranger ride in pushing a big black Cadillac. After he’d parked it in front of the jail and got out I seen he was as big and handsome as J.C. But he wore a black Stetson and a black suit that looked like he was going to an expensive funeral, maybe for a Wall Street banker. His hair was red as my eyeballs was then, and his light blue eyes was what Gramps called “killer lamps.” The bulge in his crotch was as big as J.C.’s, which was saying something.

  After he went into the sheriff’s office I hung onto the door handle of my pickup trying to make the peaks of the Superstitious Mountains thirty miles away quit being double. It must of been more than a few minutes before I suceeded. By then the stranger and Sheriff Reverend Bob Blotch come out from the jail. They traded a few words, and then the stranger drove off to the Wild Horse Motel.