The First Book of the Pure (19 page)

Goyahkla carried his grown son to the
basement, and laid his body on a weight bench he cleaned off and
put in a closet. He checked the wound. It had stopped bleeding
already, which was a good sign that perhaps his son had inherited
his abilities. He’d never felt a need to find out before now. He
realized too late what an oversight that had been! This wound would
not have put Geronimo down, but it certainly would have been
painful and taken time to heal well. He arranged his son carefully,
and slid the door into place to conceal the bench with Elihas on
it, still losing blood. He sat for a moment and pulled long,
bloodied wood fragments out of his own side, imbedded there with
the first gunshots through the living room. Then he made a stop in
his bedroom to bid farewell to his wife. He held her scorched body
in his arms and cried freely, horrified that this had happened to
her. He rocked her for awhile, and then laid her body down in the
bed gently, with great care, as if she were just injured.

He stood and went to the basement once again.
He checked on his son, whose breathing was very shallow, and then
opened a box and took out two eight inch blades. With these he had
taken many lives. With these knives he would avenge his family.
With these Goyahkla stepped into the shadows, and Geronimo
returned.

He went to the street and talked with some of
the people gathered there because of the shooting and explosion.
His neighbors were relieved to see him, and saddened when he told
them Ohma had been killed. His desire was to know who was behind
this, and who had actually done the deed. Facts were thin, and what
he could find out was that it was most likely a hit by the
Pelegrinis, the crime family claiming this portion of the city.
That was enough. If he was wrong it would still be just, to put an
end to those people. They may have hit his house by mistake, or
perhaps he’d spoken out once too often about the crime and the
“fees” he was often told to pay to stay in business. Perhaps this
was his fault, for not paying off the Pelegrini family. No matter,
someone had chosen to do this, and he would now choose his own
course: one they would regret. As he walked, he tied his hair back
under a headband, knotting it at the back.

***

He was a shadow, this tracker and hunter from
long ago. His world had been prairies, and his prey in good times
was deer and buffalo. In bad times, his prey was enemy soldiers.
Tonight his prey was once again men, and he would deal with them as
Geronimo, War Leader of the Apache. He watched the house the crime
family held: an estate with walls and gates, guards at each
entrance. He heard the men laughing and talking about the size of
the explosion and the point it must have made. He heard one laugh
and say, “Stupid Indians should have stayed on the reservation.”
That was enough evidence for him. He wanted nothing more from them
except their lives.

He crept silently toward the gate, stopping
just a few steps from it, listening to the man there. He was
smoking and not paying very close attention to anything, feeling
secure in his station. That secure feeling was ill-fated. Geronimo
slipped in behind him and clamped his left hand over the man’s
mouth, jerking him backwards and off balance, driving his knife
between the man’s right ribs, striking directly into the heart
protected there. The guard collapsed like a marionette with its
strings cut, straight down, no sound at all. As his body pumped out
blood, Geronimo touched an index finger to it, and made a red
stripe on each of his cheeks.

Through the gate Geronimo boldly walked, no
longer a shadow, but an avenging angel, or more accurately a demon,
both knives held close. Three men were near the house, loitering
near a car, very likely the same ones who had just returned from
killing his family. With an Apache war cry that chilled the blood,
he leapt at them, his knives remembering their patterns from days
long past. First one throat was opened, and then another knife sank
in and out of a chest so fast the third man didn’t know what was
happening. Geronimo finally spoke to the man lifting a gun toward
him. “Did you shoot into the house on Barnett Street tonight? Did
you throw the bomb?”

“You betcha, buddy, and now you’re gonna join
them schmucks!” The man’s voice held great bravado. Looking at the
hair band, the red “paint” on his face, he seemed somehow shaken.
“You dumb Indian; you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.” He shot
at Geronimo several times, hitting him once, which knocked the
Apache backwards. The man stepped closer and Geronimo sprang to his
feet and stepped inside the man’s reach, the gun no longer of help
to him, and essentially useless. Bleeding profusely from the bullet
wound, he opened the man’s arm and watched him drop his gun as he
screamed in pain. Then he slashed the other arm, and blood
fountained from the wounds. “You can’t kill me, fool,” he spat at
the gunman. “Every life in this place is forfeit because of your
actions this night. I’m a full blooded Apache. Some advice for you,
never bring a gun to a knife fight.” With that and a vicious grin
he back-slashed the throat in front of him, and had moved past the
body before it began to collapse.

Inside the shots had been heard, and while it
wasn’t that unusual in this compound to hear a gunshot, it still
caught everyone’s attention. Out they came, like bees flying out of
a nest that had been kicked. Toward him they ran, not knowing what
was going on, but all armed and full of themselves. Geronimo waded
in, knives flashing, a dark wraith among sheep, slitting and
gutting men as fast as they could come. Again he was shot. The man
who hit him knew it, and looked confounded. With a twenty-foot
throw he sank one blade deep in the surprised gangster’s chest,
driving his other up into the ribs of the last man outside.
Bleeding but feeling no pain, either from shock or the old habit of
not allowing the pain to stop him, Geronimo retrieved his second
knife as he burst through the doorway into the house. He threw his
knife again almost at once, embedding it deeply in the thick neck
of an overly large man in a dark suit. The man dropped onto the
beautiful, expensive Persian rug, surprise on his face. As his life
gurgled away, spreading a red stain on the once beautiful rug,
Geronimo ran through the house, hacking and hewing when anyone
appeared in his path. When he was done and it was quiet he had no
idea how many he’d killed. But it was done. His family was avenged,
again. He was sorry for the two women in the house, arrogant as
they seemed, and was truly grateful there had been no children
there.

His sorrow was deep, and his pain was now
acute as the adrenaline rush subsided. Twice he’d been shot, and
struck by various things as the thugs had fought back. But he was
no ordinary foe; he was Geronimo, and his knives had once again
found the enemies of his people, and of his family. He realized
that he had much more to do. Without a backward glance at the
carnage he’d wrought, he walked purposefully away from the gruesome
scene, back to his home. He was an Apache on the warpath, bloodied
and bruised, but victorious. He wiped at the rid stripes on his
cheeks as he walked, making them ore like he was flushed than
bloodied.

When he neared his home he saw some neighbors
still lingering about. Some policemen were there as well, and when
they saw him they brought up their weapons and ordered him to
surrender. He looked at them and said, “They killed my family, they
took me, and I fought free. They’re at the great, walled house on
Murdock Avenue, the Pelegrini family. Please hurry; they have my
son.” The police huddled, then entered their cars and left, going
in the general direction he had indicated. Whether they would
actually try to confront the family was anybody’s guess. His
neighbors gathered around him and asked so many questions it was
just noise to him.

“Friends. Let me care for my family. I’ve
dealt with the ones who did this.”

“What do you mean…how did you…who was
it...are you okay?” All these questions were hurled at him together
and felt like a physical blow. He shrugged them off and entered his
smoking house. As the crowd remained at the front of the house, he
slipped out the back with his son bundled up. The lie he told the
police should give him enough time for what he had to do. He
carried his son as if his weight was nothing. He carried him on and
on for what seemed miles to the wounded Apache, to a great cemetery
with large markers and some old family mausoleums. Into one of
these he took his son, and placed him carefully on a stone ledge
built to hold a casket. Several of his very old gold coins had been
sold to pay for this mausoleum, and his family knew nothing of it.
He had a huge internal slide bolt installed so it could be locked
from the inside. He shoved it now into the locked position. He
thought about a casket, but decided against it. If his son revived
he must not wake up in such a thing; it would be terrifying.

He waited with him for two days while Elihas
continued to breathe shallowly, then more deeply.
The bullet did
much damage as it exited
.
Risky to move him soon
. Just
then Elihas stirred, and his father stepped close. “My son, hear
me.” Elihas nodded, almost imperceptibly, unable to move more.
“Breathe with me, my son, and rest deeply. Breathe in, and out, and
in, and out, let the tension go, let your mind rest and step
outside of your body. Rest my son, rest. I will be here, and
nothing can happen to you.” He continued along those lines until it
seemed that the tall Indian lying on the stone ledge had stopped
breathing altogether. Taking a lock from his pocket, he closed and
locked the door from the outside, going out to finish some very
personal business and put some other things in place. Then he, too,
would rest.

He moved through the deep night quietly and
smoothly, the wounds he’d suffered no longer significantly
bothering him. He walked through the finest of shopping areas and
plotted his course through two stores. Both had gemstones and
jewelry, neither of which had ever meant much to him. But now he
had need for his son’s future. In the first shop he managed to
finagle the lock and enter quickly, taking just the gems from the
cabinets into the worn leather pouch on his belt. He never gave up
carrying such, even after his many years in the white man’s world,
as he still thought of it. The second store’s lock was more
stubborn, and he gave up and smashed the door in, grabbing what he
could from the shelves there. His pouch was full to bursting and
out he ran, right into the police. Two officers were checking on
the noise they’d heard on their beat, and he ran smack into them,
nearly knocking them down. “Hey now, what’re you doing?” one yelled
out as they collided. Geronimo broke that one’s jaw with his fist,
and lifted the other and threw him into the side of the building
he’d just exited so rapidly. Both men lay on the ground moaning. He
had no quarrel with them, so he decided to let them live, and made
his escape.

He went to his home, which was now vacant,
with the door open and windows broken out. He searched, but his
wife’s body was no longer there. He used his bathroom to clean up;
he showered, making sure the blood on his face and covering his
arms was washed away, changed clothes, and made his way back to the
mausoleum. He left the gemstones there and went in search of the
local morgue. He found it easily enough by asking a cop, who
pointed him in the right direction. He arrived, identified himself,
and was shown into a small, white room. On the table in the center
of the room was a body covered with a sheet-like piece of cloth.
Under it, the two men working that late night shift told him, was
the body of his wife. They had a lot of questions for him about
where he had been, and the episode at the Pelegrinis’ house that
left a pile of bodies that were still coming into the morgue. They
never got to ask their questions. He silenced the men who worked
the night shift at the morgue quickly with an economy of motion,
then lifted the light burden of his wife’s still form, and walked
away.

He took his time burying her in the cemetery
near the mausoleum. He dug under some large untrimmed bushes so
that the disturbed earth wouldn’t be noticed, and spread some
gravel on the grave after he flattened it as much as he could. In
true death he believed one should return to the earth. He was
fairly sure his wife’s remains would never be found. The mausoleum
had never been meant for burial. He procured it as a secure place
in case he would again need that long sleep he’d taken in the
desert.

After that, he walked the city for hours
before returning to the mausoleum to be with his son. The body of
Elihas was undisturbed. Geronimo knew he should wake first, so he
determined to make this a short skip. He set a mental clock, lay on
a shelf across from his son, and willed himself to stop
breathing.

Elihas, Son of Geronimo

The Mausoleum was still as death itself, dank
but intact. Goyahkla stirred for the first time in twenty years.
His eyes opened, and he thought about where he was. He immediately
looked over at Elihas, who looked good.
Ah, not dead, my
son
, thought Goyahkla. “People who have been dead for years
don’t look as good as you, boy.” He spoke aloud in a joking manner,
like he was talking to Elihas and expected Elihas could hear
him.

He levered himself up, walked over to his
son, and straightened his boy’s hair in the way that parents do, no
matter the age of their children.

He shook Elihas gently, speaking to him all
the while. He didn’t know how to go about this; he’d never done it
before. “Wake up, my son, wake up,” he urged. When there was no
response after several minutes, his father struck his cheek, as one
might do to someone caught up in hysteria. Again he smacked him,
and again, beginning to get worried.