A Town Called Fury

he managed to put two and two together.

They were all a bunch of Jews!

Which meant that Davis was one, too. Or had been.

It figured. He’d known there was something wrong with Davis right from the very start, hadn’t he? He wasn’t a religious man—far from it—but the term “Christ killer” rolled nicely on his tongue. And he’d never admit it, but he liked having somebody around he could feel morally superior to. He congratulated himself on his prescience, and ordered another beer. There was just enough time to drink it before he needed to be back at the boardinghouse. That was, if he wanted a share of that big turkey that he’d seen Mrs. Kendall put into the oven this morning.

His stomach rumbled at the thought of it!

That evening found Rachael in the jail, quietly attending to Davis’s body. It was dark and she was alone, so when she heard the door open she jumped.

“Solomon?” she said, scolding herself. But the next voice she heard didn’t belong to her husband.

“Mrs. Kendall told me you were preparing the body for burial,” said a female voice.

“Yes,” said Rachael, then, “Who’s there?”

“Sorry,” said the voice before its owner stepped into the feeble light of the solitary lantern Rachael had lit. Judith Strong peeled the light gloves from her hands and shrugged. “Ich, auch, bin Juden,” she said, indicating that she, too, was of the Jewish faith and heritage.

Rachael was so shocked and happy that she nearly fell to her knees and kissed the woman’s hem! After all this time, all these years, another Jewish woman!

Instead, she began sobbing. “Praise be to Jehovah!” she gasped through her tears.

“You mean it’s just us?” the woman asked, and when Rachael nodded, she shook her head. “No chverah kadisha, then?”

Rachael’s head shook, to indicate there was no sacred Jewish burial society. How could there be, when she and her family were—or had been—the only Jews in town?

“America,” the newcomer muttered, shaking her head as she went to the basin and began to wash her hands. “Small towns. My name’s Judith, by the way. Judith Strong.”

“R-Rachael Cohen.”

“I know. I’ve seen you before. Your husband, he owns the mercantile?”

Rachael sniffed. “Yes.”

“And you just had a baby, I hear?”

Rachael smiled, just a tad. “Yes. Little Sarah.”

Toweling her hands, Judith Strong nodded. “I heard she was very sickly. She’s better now?”

“Thank you, she’s much improved, knock wood.” Rachael had a grip on herself by this time, and wiped her eyes with her hankie. She accidentally glanced at Judith Strong’s hands, and saw the many tiny scabs covering her fingertips. She said, “You’re our new milliner and dressmaker?”

Judith smiled and said, “My hands give me away every time.”

“I’m sorry,” Rachael said self-consciously, and flushed. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

Judith’s smile widened and she put a hand on Rachael’s shoulder. “It’s all right, my dear. Do you have tachrichin?”

Rachael nodded, and pointed to a paper-wrapped package on the desk. She only had the tachrichin left from the long ago journey west, because she had been afraid that either she or her husband would die during the journey. She had wanted to be sure there was enough of the plain, white shroud—this one was hand-loomed from cotton, not linen—to wrap the body and bury it. And now it was going to wrap the body of a killer, the man who had murdered their friend Ward Wanamaker.

“Very good, then. And I know the prayers for each part of the ritual, if you don’t.”

Rachael said, “Please. Yes, you preside, please.” A small smile crossed her lips. Imagine, a woman knowing an “official” part of the preparation of the body! She added, “And then we will sit and be shomerim? Through the aninut?” she added, to make certain that she wouldn’t be left alone with him again until he was in the ground.

“Yes,” said Judith, curling her long arm about Rachael’s shoulders and directing her back toward the cell, and the body. “We will both stay to guard him. Sehr gut?”

Rachael’s head bobbed up and down. “Ja,” she said in her pidgen Deutsch, which Judith seemed to be speaking more than pure Yiddish. “Sehr gut.”

Very good.

Outside the town walls, Father Micah was burning the midnight oil, quite literally. Just south of where the wagon train had been parked, he sat on the ground with his lantern beside him, forming a mixture of Arizona’s plentiful caliche earth, plus straw, plus a mixture that Mr. Cohen had given him, into adobe bricks. He picked up another handful of mud and pressed it firmly into the wooden mold before him, then turned it out, upside down, besides the countless others he’d made during the day.

Well, he hadn’t actually made them alone. Several of his future parishioners had helped during the day. Mrs. Morelli, the most. What a kind woman! But when night had fallen, they had all retreated within the walls. It was suppertime, after all. But Mrs. Morelli had sent a plate out to him, bless her. He could still taste the delicious lasagna she’d made, and wondered if the whole town ate this well every night.

He had used up the last of the mud and was wondering whether it was worth it, in his exhausted state, to make another, when he heard sounds to the south. Riders?

He pulled himself up to his feet and peered into the distance. Then, like a jackrabbit, he sprinted for the gate!