Moses
YOU WOULD THINK with a lifetime of seeing the dead, I would hate cemeteries. But I didn’t. I liked them. They were quiet. They were peaceful. And the dead were tucked away in neat little rows beneath the soil. Tidy. Taken care of. At least their bodies were. The dead didn’t roam cemeteries. That’s not where their lives were. But they were drawn by their loved ones’ grief. By their loved ones’ misery. I’d seen the walking dead, trailing behind a wife or a daughter, a son or a father, many times before. But today, in the cemetery in Levan, there were no walking dead.
Today, I saw only one other person, and for a moment, my heart lurched as my eyes fell on her fair head and her slim figure crouched by a nearby grave. Then I realized it wasn’t Georgia. It couldn’t be Georgia. I’d seen the horse and heard Georgia say Calico, and I came straight here. Plus, the woman was a little smaller than Georgia, maybe a little older, and her blonde hair fell down in curls from a messy knot on her head. She left a little bouquet by a stone that said Janelle Pruitt Jensen in large letters and moved off toward a tall man waiting at the edge of the cemetery. When the woman reached him, he leaned down and kissed her, as if consoling her, which made me look away immediately. I hadn’t meant to stare. But they were a striking couple—darkness and light, softness and strength. I could paint them, easily.
The man’s skin was as dark as mine, but he didn’t look black to me. Maybe Native, tall and lean with a way about him that made me think military. The woman was slim and girlish in a pale pink skirt, a white blouse, and sandals, and as they turned toward the exit and I got a look at her profile, I realized I knew her.
When I was a little kid, Gigi had made me go to church whenever I visited. One Sunday, when I was about nine, a girl had played the organ. She was maybe only thirteen or fourteen at the time, but the way she played was something else. Her name was Josie.
Her name came to me in my grandmother’s voice and I smiled a little.
The music Josie had made was soul-stirring and beautiful. And best of all, it made me feel safe and calm. Gi picked up on that right away and we started walking to the church when Josie was practicing and we would listen in the back. Sometimes she would play the piano, often she would play the organ, but whatever it was, I would be still. I remembered Gi sighing and saying, “That Josie Jensen is a musical wonder.”
And then Gi had told me I was a wonder too. She whispered in my ear, with Josie’s music in the background, that I created music when I painted, just like Josie made music when she played. Both were gifts, both were special, and both should be cherished. I’d forgotten all about it. Until now. The woman’s name was Josie Jensen and the grave she visited must be her mother.
I watched the couple walk away, lost in the memory of her music when, at the last minute, Josie stopped and turned. She said something to the man with her, who then glanced back at me and nodded.
Then she walked back toward me, picking her way around the tombstones until she stood a few feet in front of me. She smiled sweetly and extended her hand in greeting. I took it and held it briefly before letting go.
“It’s Moses, right?”
“Yes. Josie Jensen, correct?” She smiled, obviously pleased that I had recognized her too. “I’m Josie Yates now. My husband, Samuel, doesn’t like cemeteries. It’s a Navajo thing. He comes with me, but waits under the trees.”
Navajo. I was right.
“I just wanted to tell you how much I liked your grandmother . . . your great grandmother, actually, yes?” I nodded as she continued. “Kathleen had a way about her that made you feel like everything was going to be okay. After my mom died when I was little, she was one of the ladies in the church who looked after my family, and she looked after me too, teaching me things and letting me hang out in her kitchen when I needed to figure out how to do this or that. She was wonderful.” Josie’s voice rang with sincerity and I nodded, agreeing.
“She was like that. She always made me feel that way too.” I swallowed and looked away awkwardly, realizing I was having an intimate moment with a stranger. “Thank you,” I said, meeting her eyes briefly. “That means a lot to me.”
She nodded once, smiled a sad little smile, and turned away again.
“Moses?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know who Edgar Allen Poe is?”
I raised my eyebrows, puzzled. I did. But it was an odd question. I nodded and she continued.
“He wrote something that I’ve never forgotten, and I love words. You can ask my husband. I buried him in words and music until he begged for mercy and married me.” She winked. “Edgar Allen Poe said many beautiful things—and many disturbing things—but they often go together, you know.”
I waited, wondering what this woman wanted me to hear.
“Poe said, ‘There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.’” Josie tipped her head to the side and looked back at her husband who hadn’t moved at all. Then she murmured, “I think your work is strange and beautiful, Moses. Like a discordant melody that resolves itself as you listen. I just wanted you to know that.”
I was a little speechless, wondering where and when she’d seen my work, flabbergasted that she knew of me at all, and still wasn’t afraid to approach me. Of course, her husband stood fifty feet away, and I highly doubted anyone messed with Josie Jensen on his watch.
Then they were gone, and no one remained but me. Levan Cemetery had the feel of a well-maintained pioneer cemetery—not very big, but big enough and constantly getting bigger as the town grew and buried their dead. It faced west, sitting above the rest of the valley on a rise beneath Tuckaway Hill, looking out over farmland and pasture. From where I stood I could see the old highway, a long silver strip, cutting through fields as far as the eye could see. The view was serene and peaceful, and I liked that Gi’s remains were here.
I walked down rows of stones, past Josie’s mother, until I reached a long line of Wrights, generations of them, four at least. I stopped for a moment at Gigi’s stone, laid a reverent hand on her name, but then moved on, searching for the reason I came. New stones, old stones, stones that were glossy, stones that were flat. Flowers and pinwheels and wreaths and candles decorated many graves. I wondered why people did that. Their dead didn’t need crap covering their names. But like anything, that was mostly about the living. The living needed to prove to themselves and to others that they hadn’t forgotten. And, in a small town like this there was always a little competition going on at the cemetery. It was a mentality that said, “I love the most, I’m suffering the most, and so I’m going to create a huge display every time I come so everyone knows and feels sorry for me.” I knew I was a cynic. I was definitely a bastard. But I didn’t like it. And I didn’t especially think the dead needed it.
I found a long row of Shepherds and almost laughed at the name of one. Warlock Shepherd. What a name. Warlock Wright—maybe that’s what they should have named me. I’d been called a witch before. I studied the stones, and I realized there were five generations of Shepherd grandfathers buried there as well, their wives buried at their sides. I found the first Georgia Shepherd and remembered the day I teased Georgia about her name. Georgie Porgie.
And then there it was, another generation, though it had skipped the one in between. A stone about two feet high and two feet wide, simple and well-tended, stood at the very end of the row, an empty patch of grass on either side, as if saving space for those who would come after.
Eli Martin Shepherd. Born July 27, 2007, Died October 25, 2011 was all it said.
A horse was etched in the stone, a horse that looked like his hind quarters were dappled in color. The Paint. A fat bouquet of wildflowers in a bright yellow vase sat beside the headstone and the song the woman had sung in Eli’s memory, “You are my sunshine . . .” caught in my thoughts, and I found myself saying the words. Georgia’s name wasn’t printed on the stone, but I knew with a clarity both sick and shocking that she was Eli’s mother. She had to be.
I counted backwards just to be sure. Nine months before July of 2007 would have been October of 2006.
Georgia was Eli’s mother. And I was Eli’s father. I had to be.
Georgia
I GAVE BIRTH TO ELI on July 27, 2007, a month before I turned eighteen. No one knew I was pregnant until I was three months along. I would have waited longer, but the snug Wranglers I wore every day wouldn’t button and my flat stomach and trim hips were no longer flat enough or trim enough to wedge into tight, unforgiving denim. The horror of my predicament wasn’t just the pregnancy. It was that Moses was the father, and Moses’s name had become a hiss and a curse word everywhere I turned.
My parents and I talked about adoption, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do that to Moses. It made what had been between us meaningless. And for me, it never had been and it never would be. Moses might never know about his child, and he might be forever alone in the world, but his child would not be. And even though I hated him sometimes, even though I’d made him the faceless man, even though I didn’t know where he was or what he was doing now, I couldn’t give his child away. I couldn’t do it.
But the day Eli was born, it was no longer about me, or Moses, or about being strong or being weak. Suddenly it was all about Eli, a boy conceived in turmoil, a boy who looked so much like his father that when I gazed down into his tiny face, I loved him with a fervor that made the regret of his conception quake and crack and then crumble into dust—powerless to hurt us, paper against the flame of devotion that welled in my heart and set my child’s precious face in stone, no longer faceless, no longer feared.
“What are you going to name him, Georgia?” my mom had whispered, tears streaming down her face as she watched her child become a mother. She’d aged in the months since I had unburdened myself on her. But with the sweetness of new life making the hospital room a sacred place, she looked serene. I wondered if the same serenity marked my own expression. We were going to be okay. It was going to be okay.
“Eli.”
My mom smiled and shook her head. “Georgia Marie.” She laughed. “As in Eli Jackson, the bull rider?”
“As in Eli Jackson. I want him to take life by the horns and ride it for all it’s worth. And when he becomes the best bull rider that ever lived, better even than his namesake, everyone will chant Eli Shepherd instead.” I’d planned out my response, and it sounded pretty damn good because I was sincere. But it wasn’t for the bull rider that I named him Eli. That was just a lucky coincidence. I named him Eli for Moses. No one wanted to think about Moses. No one wanted to talk about him. Even me. But my child was his child. And I couldn’t pretend otherwise. I couldn’t completely blot him out.
I had thought long and hard about what I would name my baby. We got an ultrasound at twenty-one weeks and I knew it was a boy. I’d grown up reading Louis L’Amour and was convinced that I’d been born in the wrong time. If my child had been a girl I would have called her Annie. As in, Annie Oakley. As in, Annie get your damn gun. But it was a boy. And I couldn’t name him Moses.
I dug through the bible until I found the verse in Exodus where Moses talked about his sons and their names. The oldest was named Gershom. I winced at that. It might have been a popular name in Moses’s day—like Tyler or Ryan or Michael now—but I couldn’t do that to my child. The second son’s name was even worse. Eliezer. Moses said in the scripture that he was named Eliezer because, “The God of my father was my help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh.”
The baby book of names I bought and perused said Eliezer means “God of Help” or “God is my help.” I liked that. Moses had been saved from the sword of Jennifer Wright, I supposed. Maybe he’d been saved so my son could come into the world. I was young, how would I know? But the name seemed fitting, because I had no doubt I was going to need all the help—from God and everyone else—I could get. So I named him Eli.
Eli Martin Shepherd. Eli because he was the son of Moses, Martin for my dad, Shepherd because he was mine.
I had finished my senior year heavy with pregnancy and graduated with my class. I never answered questions, never talked about Moses. I let people talk and let my middle finger answer for me when a response was demanded. Eventually, people just got over it. But they all knew. You only had to look at Eli to know.
Eli had brown eyes, just like mine, and my mom said he had my smile, but the rest was Moses. His hair was a mass of black curls, and I wondered if Moses’s hair would have looked like that if he’d ever grown it out. It had always been cropped so short it was stubble. I wondered what Moses would think if he saw Eli, if he would recognize himself in our son. And then I would push those thoughts away and pretend I didn’t care, making Moses faceless once more so I couldn’t make comparisons.
But Eli was like me in other ways. He was full of energy and walked at ten months. I chased after him for the next three and a half years. He laughed and ran and would never hold still, except when he saw a horse, and then he’d be quiet and calm, just like I told him to do, and he would watch like there was nothing better in the world, nothing more beautiful, and no place he would rather be. Just like his mom. Other than the little kid drawings and the occasional food mess that he enjoyed smearing everywhere, he showed no inclination to paint.
I couldn’t stay home and take care of him though, not all the time. My mom watched Eli three days a week while I drove an hour north for school at Utah Valley University, which had been my plan, even before Eli changed my priorities. Dreams of following the rodeo circuit and being the top barrel racer in the world were laid by the wayside. I decided to follow in my parents footsteps. Horses and therapy. It made sense. I was good with animals, horses especially. I would be doing what I loved and maybe I would learn something along the way that would help me come to terms with my relationship with Moses. I settled into my life in Levan. I had no plans to leave. It was a good place to raise Eli, among people who loved him. My parents had both been born there, and their parents, with one grandmother tugged over the ridge and into our valley from Fountain Green on the other side of the hill. In the cemetery, five generations of Shepherd grandfathers lay beside their wives. Five greats. And I was certain I would one day lie there too.
But Eli beat me to it.