Meeting Cousin Frank at the train station was an obligation that Al Richards reluctantly fulfilled.  What trouble would his cousin get him into this time? He chuckled, remembering all the times Frank’s crazy ideas got them held down for a strapping, either by Frank’s father, the rabbi, or Al’s step-father, the neighborhood kosher butcher.

“From Omaha on 3:12,” the telegram had said. “Need shaman and your help.”

Standing on the platform at the on the edge of Grass, a town founded by a German family 30 years ago, at the end of the Civil War, Al watched the man who jumped from a third class passenger car, a cardboard suitcase held shut by cloth straps, cap off when he waved.  Prematurely bald at age 30, Frank had grown from a skinny kid into a husky brawler. Two years in a boy’s reformatory could do that, Al guessed.

 “You got taller,” Al said.

“You got fatter.”

Al laughed. True, Nearly 15 years in tiny Grass at the southwestern tip of Nebraska had been hard at first, but diligence and a willingness to work had paid off. Al had gone from lean boy to well-fed adult.

They walked together into the sprawling town. None of the streets were paved, but there were plans for that. New buildings, most of them just wooden frames, stood on both sides of Main Street. Buggy traffic brought in shoppers from the farms and ranches miles out of town, and many of those farmwives directed their drivers to pull up at Al’s store.

Frank stopped, pointed at a big sign when Al pointed out his store. “Who’s Al?”

 “Me. Al’s Big Store.” He admired the three story shopping emporium he’d built.

“What happened to Ari?” Frank asked.

“When was the last time you used your real name?”

“With a name like Elkie, I would’ve been killed in that reformatory.”

“Well, I’m in business, Frank. I don’t advertise I’m a Jew.”

“You got a synagogue here?”

“No. No rabbi, either. A few of us get together to say prayers on Saturday, but we don’t have a minion. There’s just eight of us.”

 “You live here?” Frank asked, pointing at the store.

“No, I’ve got a house on the other side of Grass,” Al said, not meaning to sound defensive, but what did this guy from his youth know about anything? From what his uncle once said in the only letter he’d ever gotten from the rabbi, Frank was still wild and impulsive, apt to land in a real jail, as though the reformatory taught him nothing.

“Good,” Frank said. “You did good, Ari… Al.” He shivered and pulled his threadbare suit coat close. “Is it yet far to go?”

“My house is just over there, past the stable. Rose is excited to meet you.”

“Rose? You’re married?”

Al nodded. “We’ve got a spare room, so you’ll stay with us.”

“I didn’t think I’d be staying at a hotel.”

#

 The house, separated from the last building in town by a flower-filled field, stood far enough away from the nearest cattle ranch that the sounds and smells of the beasts rarely penetrated. A wrap-around porch enclosed the structure, its railings and roof like a cocoon. It once belonged to a member of the Grass family, town’s founders. Al picked it up at auction for back taxes. The Grasses no longer ruled the town, and had been reduced to running a cartage service and buggy rental.

Al walked up to the porch and pulled open the screen door. A gentle push on the paneled inner door took him into the living room. Its pot bellied Franklin Stove embedded in the brick fireplace warmed the space, and he shrugged off his long wool coat and hung it on a hook in the wall. With an apologetic look, Frank pulled off his suit coat. His white shirt had no sleeves and his vest had no back except for a strip of cloth.

Rose, wiping her hands on a towel, her flower-print apron over a form-fitting dark dress, entered from the kitchen, her black hair done up in two braids that graced the front of her shoulders.

Al introduced her to his gawking cousin.

“She’s an Indian,” Frank said. “You married an Indian?”

“I married the woman I love,” Al said.

Frank continued to stare.

“Welcome to our home,” Rose said, her voice just a bit more than a whisper. “I have hot tea ready. Or sarsaparilla, if you prefer.”

“Tea for me, please,” Al said, and kissed his wife’s cheek. “Frank?”

Frank shook his head. He hastily removed his hat, as if suddenly remembering he had one. His bald pate glistened in the soft gas light thrown by the overhead chandelier. When Al invited him to sit, he plopped down into the closest easy chair, his suitcase on his lap.

“Supper will be later,” Rose said, and left the room.

“You want to go upstairs to the guest room? It’s barely four. We eat at six, so you can rest until – “

“I keep kosher. I imagine you don’t. Considering.” Frank nodded in the direction of the kitchen.

“Frank, you’re my cousin, but you don’t have license to be insulting.”

“I’m not insulting anyone.”

“I don’t want to hear anything more about Rose being an Indian. Otherwise, you can walk back into town and stay in the hotel.”

“Sorry. It took me by surprise. You should’ve warned me.”

Al told himself not to react. “So what’s the help you need? Why are you asking about that shaman?”

 “You remember our great-grandfather?” Frank asked.

“How could I? How could you? He died way before we – “

“But you remember hearing about him,” Frank insisted.

Al shrugged. If his father had lived, maybe young Al would’ve been told stories about the old country and grandfathers and other distant relatives, but Isaac Rachman had died of Typhoid when Al was barely a year old.

“You mentioned an Indian medicine man.”

 “That was in a letter to my mother.”

“Aunt Stella reads all your letters to the family.”

Al didn’t know that. He’d always written for an audience of one, not for the cousins and uncles and whoever else – including his step-father – happened to be around. But it brought a smile to think of his stout mom standing at the head of her dining room table reading his missives, possibly dramatizing parts, holding her listeners mesmerized, in spite of her limited English and his abuse of grammar and spelling.

“What do you want with the shaman?” Al asked.

“Our great-grandfather was a great rebbe, a thinker, a philosopher.”

Al sighed, impatient to get to the part about the shaman, but remembering how Frank liked to spin a yarn or go detail by detail over some plan in his head.

“He’s in a box,” Frank finally said. “Well, not exactly him, but his essence, his spirit. You understand, yes?”

“You’ve got the dybbuk box?” Al asked, alarmed. The tiny velvet lined wooden box, more like a case for an engagement ring than an evil spirit’s prison, was something Frank had wanted to steal from his father even when they were kids.

Frank grinned. “I don’t want to open it without a holy man to help me.”

“You shouldn’t open it at all,” Al cautioned.

“You always said you didn’t believe any of that.”

Al didn’t, though vestiges of superstition lingered and he often heard his mother exclaim, “Don’t give it a kenahora.” The evil eye. She said it whenever Al brought home a good report card and beamed with pride, pointing out the A’s he got in math and civics.

“Will you help me? The rebbe doesn’t belong there. He wasn’t an evil spirit.”

Al knew he shouldn’t be afraid. There was no evil eye. There were no ghosts or spirits, evil or good. No golem could be fashioned from dirt. No dybbuk could wreak havoc.

“Just go out to the mountains. It’s an hour’s drive in a mule cart,” Al said. “You’ll find him. He’s a real character. Give him some money or food and he’ll drive off your evil spirits.” Al finished with a laugh.

“I need an interpreter. He doesn’t speak English, does he?”

“You can pantomime what you want.”

“Can you help me? You always helped me before.”

Not when I ran off, Al thought, leaving you to get caught robbing Jacobs’ jewelry store.

“I’ll think about it.”

“What’s there to think?”

“The guest room is up those stairs,” Al said to change the subject. “Turn left, last room on the right.”

“Is the meat kosher? I’m not insulting you. I just need to know.”

“Rose favors vegetables, so I imagine she’s making a meal out of whatever she bought at market this morning.”

Frank opened his suitcase, the cloth straps dangling between his knees, and pulled out a thin book. “His teachings,” he said, handing the book to Al.

“I don’t read Yiddish.”

“This is a German translation.”

“Or German.”  

Frank returned the book to his suitcase. He put it under his arm, leaving the straps dangling, and started up the stairs. He stopped halfway. “And your … “

“Outhouse in the back, through the kitchen. There’s a washtub and a pump for water.”

Sitting in the armchair Frank just vacated, Al pulled off his boots and took in a deep breath. The sooner he helped Frank with this ridiculous notion of freeing the spirit trapped in that box, the sooner he’d put Frank on a train out of town.

#

Al kept the rented buggy he’d in the middle of the dirt track to keep the aged horse from dawdling at the edges and eating the weeds and munch on the flowers.

 “Your wife speaks good English,” Frank said. “I’m impressed.”

Of course Rose – White Flower, she once said, explaining that Rose was the name given her by the school – spoke well. English had been pounded into her, replacing her native Meskwaki, the language of the Fox, after the authorities took five-year-old White Flower away from her parents. Ten years ago, when she was 15 or perhaps 14, she graduated, only to be forced into servitude for an immigrant family establishing a homestead on the prairie.

Al bought her from the family for two ten-dollar gold pieces when they abandoned their mud brick home and failed farm. They went further west, and were happy to leave Rose behind.

 “She could convert, you know,” Frank muttered.

The mountains loomed not too far off, brown and green and slate colored behind the morning mist. The early September air, crisp and chilling, promised a cold autumn and another wind-swept snowy winter.

“Me and Rose have a happy life together.” Al swallowed. They’d never been legally married, but everyone recognized them as husband and wife. Al often wondered how many of the townsfolk who saw him walking on the wooden sidewalks with Rose at his side said things like, “There’s the Jew and his squaw.”

No one ever spoke like that to his face, but he saw it in their eyes when he brought her into his store so she could pick from the latest shipment of calico for a new dress; or when he accompanied her to market for produce and flour and eggs.

Al guided the horse off the trail and close to the rocks at the edge of the mountain pass that led to the shaman’s cave. He tied the end of the reins to some scrub brush and secured it with several hefty hand-sized rocks.  Then he pulled a bag of corn cobs and squash out from under the buggy’s cushioned front seat.

He lifted his stained Stetson and ran a hand through his coarse curly black hair. He buttoned his jacket to ward off the morning chill and with a “follow me” glance at his cousin he started up the gentle incline into the mountain.  Behind him, Frank’s labored breathing provided a rhythmic beat, like a drumstick hitting a drumhead.

The path leveled off and led to an open area of scrub brush and skinny knobby trees with tiny leaves. The mouth of the shaman’s cave, like a yawning giant’s maw, lay just beyond a circular fire pit in ground, where hot coals smoldered, some still fiery red.

Al looked back and motioned Frank forward, but got a shake of the head in response. When the shaman emerged from his cave, chest bare, a brief loincloth between his dirt-encrusted legs, Frank’s face went white, his dark eyes opened wide.

“Nothing to be afraid of,” Al said. “Come on. Get over here.”

The shaman squatted at his dwindling fire. He rooted through a leather pouch hanging from a strap across one shoulder. Like his face, the pouch was worn and cracked. Head raised, the shaman’s eyes, all whites, it seemed, his pupils tiny black dots, shifted from left to right, as though it took great effort to focus.

Al put the sack of food he’d brought on the ground and unlaced the top. He stretched the opening and let a few ears of corn fall out.

The shaman nodded. His grin like a jack o’lantern’s smile lit by a candle’s yellow light, his incisors long and pointed. He pulled a turtle shell rattle from his pouch, stood on scrawny shaky legs and swayed back and forth, rattling in time with his movements, guttural sound from his throat blending in to make an odd song to accompany his dance.

“We need something,” Al said, and again motioned Frank forward.

Frank approached and stood next to his cousin. He extracted the dybbuk box from his front pocket and showed it to the shaman, who continued to dance, as though every visitor he ever saw wanted only that much from him.

Al held up his hand. The shaman stopped, thrust his head forward and shook the rattle above his head, his straggly white-streaked black hair falling across his sunken chest as well as down his narrow back.

“Your blessing,” Frank croaked. He tapped the box.

The shaman snatched it out of his hand.

“No,” Frank yelled. “No, no. It’s mine.” He reached to retrieve the box, but the shaman bounced backwards on the balls of his bare feet and grinned.

Al pantomimed opening box. He looked to Frank and said, “That’s what you want, isn’t it? To let the spirit out?”

Frank swallowed, his Adam’s apple in sync with the sound of his gulp.

With a yellow-toothy grin, the shaman opened the box, pulling the lid gently back on its tiny brass hinges. Then he dropped it. Into the dying fire. Frank fell to his knees and grabbed it.

A strong scent filled the air. It smelled like human waste one moment, lavender the next. It wafted into Al’s nose and burned his nostrils. Frank held a hand to his face, covering his mouth.

“What is that?” Frank asked. “Do you smell it?”

The lavender disappeared. Decay dominated. Fingers of flame shot up from the fire pit, the smoldering coals springing back to life. The shaman let loose a string of undecipherable sounds, most likely curses, Al thought. Screaming curses directed into the wind, up to the sky, and then at the flames.

Frank moaned. He dropped the box. Al picked it up to look inside. Within a space only big enough for a small ring lay a curled shank of white hair wrapped with black thread. Al dug it out, but the moment he took it from inside the box, the hair disintegrated, becoming dust that rained down on the dancing flames in the fire pit. Seconds later, the fire died.

The shaman darted for the bag of food Al brought, stuffed the corn cobs that had fallen out back inside, laced up the top and then scampered into his cave.

Al sniffed the air.  The scent of rot had returned stronger than before.  “You can go home now,” he said, anxious to see the back of his cousin. He pocketed the dybbuk box, shutting the lid with a snap.  

“Home? Hell, I’m going to make my fortune. Just like you.” Frank turned and stumbled down the path. “Come on, Al. I’ve got things to do.”

#

“Where’d you get the money?” Al asked. He swept the two room suite with his eyes, taking in the French doors leading onto a narrow balcony that looked down on Main Street from the height of three stories. The tallest building in town, the Harrison hotel provided drink in its massive barroom on the first floor, offered women on the second, and four well-appointed rooms, including this suite, on the third.

“I told you,” Frank said, his legs crossed as he leaned backwards in his chair, lifting its front two legs off the plush red carpet. Remnants of his breakfast lay on a plate in the middle of the table.

“All this? From your savings?” Al shook his head in dismay as well as disbelief. When he’d entered the room, his cousin was sitting at the table devouring a huge meal of eggs and bacon and sausage, while a woman lounged in a bed in the next room. The disjointed scene shocked him. A woman in bed and treft – pork products definitely not kosher – filling Frank’s expanding belly.

“Gambling,” Frank said. His grin expanded across his round face. Combined with his bald head, he resembled a childish imp in a big man’s body. He waved his hands at his surroundings. “My winnings.”

When Frank took off just a few days after the incident with the shaman, Al had hoped that was the last he’d see of his cousin for a long time. He’d hoped Frank went home, back to face whatever retribution his father might exact for the crime of taking the dybbuk box.

“After I cleaned out all the swells in Omaha,” Frank said with a triumphant gleam in his eye, “I moved on to some of the other towns, and then down to Kansas City. That little nest egg from my bank at home just grew and grew. Grew, in fact, to the point where – “ He stopped and gestured at the large two room suite, with a wink towards the woman still lounging in bed in the next room. “I own this now. The hotel, the bar. The back room card tables. All mine. I own the Harrison now.”

“Does the rabbi know – “

“My father? He doesn’t need to know. I’m not under his thumb anymore, Cousin.”

 Al stepped to the door. “What happened to you, Frank?” he asked, turning to look across the room at his cousin.

“Something you don’t like about my ambition? Too afraid of the competition? Hell, Al, maybe I’ll buy you out and you can get out of town instead of me.”

Al left the room. He slowly made his way to his store and his office, his comfortable world of commerce. There was no fathoming Frank. He was still wild and eager to dance with danger, just like he did when they were kids.

Only now the stakes were bigger. He didn’t think Frank could win so steadily without cheating. What tricks of the game did he learn in that reformatory? And if he got caught, he’d find himself tarred and feathered and dragged down the middle of the street to the edge of town, or shot.

Sitting in his office, pondering what Frank might do or what predicament he’d get himself into. Al didn’t foresee Frank buying up the empty lot behind the hotel and expanding the Harrison with a huge room that dwarfed the saloon and its backroom card tables.

Al didn’t imagine his cousin would build a casino and turn Grass into a drawing card for every gambler west of Omaha. He didn’t foresee any of this, and certainly didn’t think it could happen so quickly, Frank acting with the speed and ferocity of a man possessed.

#

Kids on their hands and knees crowded the wooden sidewalk outside the swinging doors to the Grass Emporium, as Frank had renamed the Harrison Hotel after two months of operations. The rear extension, a two-story structure hastily erected, sported gaming of various ilk: card tables, roulette wheels, a wheel of fortune, and crap tables. Al had never been inside, he only read about his cousin’s venture in the newspaper articles that railed against the “immoral  enterprise.”

Wrapped in a long woolen coat to fight the icy wind, Al stopped to look at the gawkers on the sidewalk, the kids, some of them barefoot even on a cold December day, and a few with no more than a coarse blanket covering their bodies, peeked under the swinging doors. A bevy of new women had arrived, ready to fill the upper floor of Frank’s back lot building. Gambling on the first floor, the Grass Tribune exclaimed in large print. Then, under that, “whores on the second.”

Head bowed, his knitted cap pulled down over his ears, Al hurried to the sheriff’s office in answer to having been summoned. This would be the third time he’d been called in, as if he had something to do with his cousin’s audacious enterprise.

“I know how you people stick together,” Sheriff Harris once told him. “So, let me ask, Mr. Richards, are you backing this fellow? Financially, I mean.”

Al truthfully denied that.

“They said,” the sheriff continued one other time, “he’s kin to you.”

Al didn’t want to admit it, but he did.

This time when he walked into the sheriff’s office, he had to stand at the railing running across the width of the room while Harris, boots up on the edge of his paper-cluttered desk, waved the front page of the Tribune at him.

“You have to do something about your kinsman,” the sheriff rasped. “Gambling and whores. In my town.” He blushed, his thick neck as red as his cheeks.

“I’ve no control over him,” Al protested, refraining from telling Harris that there’d been both vices at the hotel before Frank took it over.

 “Half the town is up in arms over what he’s doing,” Harris said, his bushy eyebrows rising and falling.

Al spoke up, even though he knew he shouldn’t. “And half are watching the new girls at the bar. All the ranch hands from thirty miles around – “

“I care about the good people of Grass,” Harris snapped. “Not that riff-raff, not those saddle bums.” His white hair, thick around the sides of his head, curly and fluffy at the back, tingled with electricity.

“You’re the sheriff. If there’s anyone that can do something – “

“Richards…” Harris dropped the newspaper on his desk, pulled his boots off the edge and sat forward in his swivel chair. His light blue eyes took on a grandfatherly pose, and the harsh lines in his face softened.

Al waited. Harris was known for changing tactics in the middle of an argument. It served him well dealing with drunks on Main Street and outsiders looking for trouble.

“Richards, I like you. You don’t push in where you’re not welcome. Your prices are fare. You don’t gouge and cheat like some of them. If I had a law to use against this Houseman guy – “

Frank had adopted a more anglicized name

“– believe me, I would. He’d be back there.” The sheriff pointed his thumb at the barred door leading to the jail cells.

“Maybe there’s something I can do,” Al offered.

“You’re good people,” Harris opined. “I know that. Maybe others in our little town don’t, but I do. I’d hate to see all a good one blamed for one bad apple.”

“I understand,” Al said, bristling at the implied threat. Gone was that benevolent grandfatherly look; it had been replaced by a cold threatening stare.

The image of that stare stayed with Al after he left, and while he walked back to his store. It stayed with him through the afternoon and kept him from concentrating on business. Bills of lading, invoices for a recent shipment from Chicago, and anything else regarding the running of his store remained untouched.

When he walked home in the dark, past Frank’s galling enterprise, he crossed to the other side of Main Street, avoiding the kids loitering out front and the townswomen parading in a circle in the street holding signs of protest no one could read in the dark.

At home, he joined his wife in the kitchen, pecked her on the cheek, but otherwise ignored her. She didn’t complain. She never spoke up when he came home in a bad mood, or came home with worries that sucked the life out of him, or came home perplexed and bewildered by something he couldn’t articulate.

Later, after eating a little of the vegetable stew Rose had made, Al sequestered himself in the tiny room off the front parlor, his sanctuary where he wouldn’t be disturbed. This was the room where he’d smoke a cheroot, a vice he indulged in only a few times a year. This was the room where he’d sometimes pour shot after shot of the expensive whiskey he imported from Canada.

These hours, with Sheriff Harris’ eyes glaring at him from his memory, made him want to dig out that whiskey bottle from his desk drawer, and finish it off in a few gulps. But he knew he shouldn’t. He didn’t know what he could do to influence Frank, but as he thought about his cousin and recalled the things Harris had said, he realized there was one person who might help.

Actually, that one person would want to help if Al told him the truth, or what he suspected to be the truth. Something had happened when the dybbuk box was opened. Something took over Frank’s mind.

Admit it, Al told himself, though he didn’t want to believe in spirits, evil or benign. He didn’t want to succumb to superstition, but the Frank Houseman, proprietor of a gambling house, a brothel, and a hotel, was not the Frank Steinhaus who came to Grass a few short months ago.

With a blank sheet of coarse white paper gazing at him in the soft glow of kerosene lamps at either corner of his desk, Al toyed with a stubby lead pencil and mentally composed what he would write.

“Dear Rabbi,” it began, and after that Al sat back to think. He pictured his uncle, the rabbi, Frank’s father, summoning one of his students to read the letter to him. He saw the old man nodding, absorbing the thoughts Al put on paper in misspelled words and poor grammar, his plea for the help he needed to contend with Frank and the dybbuk  that escaped when the shaman opened that box.

#

The 3:10, the only daily train from Omaha, was late, and Al paced the length of the platform, looking east along the track, his mind conjuring a locomotive pushing through a snow bank to keep to the timetable.

“No worries, Mr. Richards,” the stationmaster boasted at 3:30, when he came out of his tiny office to broadcast the latest news through his megaphone.

“Your loved one will be along at any time now,” the stationmaster said to Al, his dark eyes sparkling.

Al nodded. The train would arrive. It always arrived, late or on time; but this was a Friday afternoon, and the rabbi, Uncle Moses, would be frantic if he remained on the train past sundown. Al could imagine the old man jumping off before dark so he didn’t violate Sabbat.

“Shabbat is holy,” Rabbi Steinhaus often told his students, Al among them. “Honor Shabbat. Shabbat shomer – guard the Sabbath.”

The train pulled in at 4 on the dot, according to the big clock on the tower in the middle of the station.

Al watched the passengers alight, most of them pouring out of the third-class carriage close to the tender, where smoke and grit from burning coal coated the train car’s windows.

The short compact man in black hat and long waistcoat, a thick overcoat draped over one arm, dropped to the platform, skipping the last two steps down from the door, obviously in a hurry to escape the carriage.

Al hurried over to him. “Uncle.”

Rabbi Steinhaus looked up, then down. He transferred his bulging leather suitcase from one hand to the other. Al relieved him of it. “I’ve a rig we’ll take to my home.”

The rabbi, hustling into his overcoat, glanced westward. “Hurry, boytchik. I thought I’d have to jump off that excuse for a railway carriage.” A thumb pointed back over his shoulder indicated the boxcar-like third class accommodations, where a family, with bundles and rags and boxes tied up with twine, poured from the open door.

The rabbi stopped and appraised the cart and scrawny donkey Al provided. That was the best he could get from the stables at either end of Main Street. The snow meant many of the horses and mules, as well as the carriages and wagons, rented out over the past few days hadn’t yet been returned. Grass had cleared its streets but the outskirts of town, and beyond, lay buried.

Slowly, Al drove along Main Street. He passed the large sign advertising his business, but didn’t comment. He passed Frank’s gambling establishment. Even with snow impeding travel on the roads, music and loud voices attested to the roar of good business.

“I didn’t expect you’d want to come here,” Al said. “I really just need your advice.”

“Do you, Uri?” Rabbi Steinhaus said, using Al’s Hebrew name. “I take it that saloon back there is El’s place?”

“Yes.”

“And who is Houseman?”

A large sign had recently been hoisted atop the building.. “Houseman’s Emporium.” Another name change. From Harrison Hotel to Grass Emporium and now to Houseman’s.

“Frank’s new name,” Al said, expecting his uncle’s face to turn red under his wiry black beard. Instead, the rabbi merely nodded a few times, pulled earmuffs from a deep coat pocket, and donned them.

“So, you think advice is all you need?” the rabbi asked as Al pulled into the snow covered yard at the front of his house. “You should’ve asked for advice when my meshuganer son came out here in the first place.”

Al had no answer to that. He helped his uncle down, retrieved the heavy bulging leather bag from the back of the cart, and led the way along a snow-cleared pebbled path to the porch. Rose stood in the open doorway, an apron over her plain blue dress.

“And you must be Rose,” the rabbi said, stopping to nod his head in a semblance of a polite bow.

Rose curtsied.

“No need for that.” He waved her off with a smile. “Come on, take me inside. It’s warm in there, yes?”

Al followed. The rabbi took a seat on the short couch in the middle of the room, directly in line with the heat coming from the fireplace with its embedded Franklin Stove. He shuffled out of his heavy overcoat and slipped off his dark waistcoat, exposing a white shirt stained at the armpits.  He discarded his hat, revealing thick black curly hair. Though he had a high forehead, he hadn’t gone bald like his son. A small round kipah, held in place by a black pin, graced the back of his head. Fringes from the prayer shawl he wore under his shirt poked out from between the bottom buttons of his shirt.

“Jewish?” the rabbi asked Rose.

“Sac Indian,” Al explained. “White mother.”

“Is she a good person?” the rabbi asked Al.

“She is, Uncle. Very good.”

“Then that’s all that matters. A good person. Who knows, maybe religion will come later.” He chuckled. “If it does, I’ll arrange for a mikva and perform the ceremony myself.”

“I have dinner roasting,” Rose said, curtsied a bit, and turned away.

“It’s all vegetarian,” Al explained. “We don’t keep kosher.”

“I didn’t think you did. No worries. I brought my own plates and flatware, one set for meat and the other for dairy. Now, before anything else, where do you hold services? I saw three churches in town. Where is – “

“We don’t have a synagogue. We meet at our houses, sometimes mine and sometimes outside town at Gold’s ranch.”

“But with the snow… I guess not.”

“We don’t have a minion, either.”

The rabbi shook his head, but Al didn’t sense condemnation. Rather, a gentle sadness showed in the old man’s eyes. With a shrug and a mumbled word that Al didn’t catch, the rabbi leaned forward, opened his suitcase and took out a thin cloth-bound book.

“This is our key,” he said, and opened the book to two pages full of closely packed hand- printed lettering.

“I don’t read Hebrew anymore. Guess I’ve forgotten – “

“It’s not Hebrew. This is Aramaic, though written with Hebrew script.” The rabbi shut the book and pressed it to his breast. “It is the oldest of the old. From a scroll found in the Great Rabbi of Cracow’s library two–maybe three hundred years ago.”

Al cringed. Another example of blind superstition, based on a nameless religious leader referred to only as “The Great,” and imbued with the mysteries of the mystics.

“Do you have the box?” the rabbi asked.

Al retrieved it from his study.

The rabbi inspected it, turning it upside down, turning it around, then opening it and peering inside. He glanced sideways at the end table next to the sofa. “You have a copy of his book? My grandfather’s book?”

“Frank left it here.”

“And you read it?”

Al shook his head. “It’s in German.”

The rabbi nodded a few times. “Don’t bother reading. It’s gibberish. That’s why my grandfather was excommunicated. But then they realized he’d been taken over by an evil spirit, a dybbuk.  I was a boy, about ten, not even yet a bar-mitzvah.”

Curious, Al asked, “What’s in his book that’s so dangerous?”

The rabbi didn’t answer directly. “Once they expelled the demon and imprisoned it in this box,  my grandfather disavowed his wayward thinking, his claims that Adonai was dead, that man created all the gods of every nation to satisfy an inner need, and were not themselves the product of Adonai’s handiwork. He died peacefully then, cured of his sins.”

“And he says that in the book?” Al asked. “About God.”

The rabbi blanched. “About he who can’t be named? Yes. Outlandish claims. Claims the demon in him made, that dybbuk who’d taken over my grandfather, the rebbe.”

Frank nodded, accepting that what he heard was true, though he never would’ve believed it months ago.

“We’ll do it together, boytshik. Expel the demon and save my son.”

And the town, Al thought.

#

Al stayed home on Saturday out of deference to his uncle, who spent the morning praying alone and the afternoon lamenting the absence of a proper house of worship to visit. Most Saturdays, Al went to the store early in the morning, anxious to tally the Friday receipts because that was always the most profitable day of the week.

At the back porch, he smoked one of the cheroots he awarded himself a few times a year. Rose didn’t approve. His uncle disliked the practice as well, so he engaged in his vice out of the house where the smell wouldn’t be detected.

“And on Shabbat,” the rabbi complained, his lips smacking to make little sounds of disapproval.

“It’ll be dark soon,” Al said, indicating the sun low in the west. He guessed his uncle had seen him through the kitchen window.

“And you’re sure he’ll be at his gambling den tonight?”

“He’s got a suite on the top floor. If he’s not walking around greeting folks and inspecting things, he’ll be in that suite.” Hopefully without a woman.

“I think we should have an early supper.”

Once night descended, with the Sabbath over, Al drove his uncle into town in the rig he’d rented while his uncle visited. The aged mule, obviously annoyed to be in harness so late, balked and stamped its feet, which elicited chuckling from the rabbi.

As they traveled at a slow pace, the rig lit by a kerosene lantern dangling from a post above the front seat, Al took note of hee people on the wooden sidewalks staring in their direction. A bearded man in a black coat with a narrow brimmed black hat, earmuffs at the sides of his face, wasn’t a common sight. Al guessed they wondered if the old man was a relative come to visit.

With the mule tethered outside Frank’s place, the pair pushed their way through the kids hanging outside at the double doors, while the rabbi muttered his “Excuse us” entreaties until they were inside, in the hotel lobby.

Potted trees, somber paintings, luxurious green carpet, and plush armchairs and sofas, hallmarks of the Harrison’s bid for formality were all gone, everything now replaced by garish portraits of near-naked women and amateur landscapes depicting gladiatorial combat.

Music emanated from the bar. Women in gaudy outfits danced on a stage. Four bartenders handled the crowd, and two rough types sat on elevated stools so they got a clear view of everything.

“Where’s Houseman?” Al asked one of the guards. He got no answer, so he ventured to the bar to ask the same questions.

“Diddling upstairs,” came the answer.

The climb upstairs to the third floor made Al’s legs ache, while the alacrity with which his uncle took the steps surprised him. The old man didn’t even pause to catch his breath.

The door to the suite at the end of the hall stood open and Al rushed ahead, in case there was anything he’d need to prepare his uncle to see. But Frank was alone in the room, sitting at a small round table with a checkered cloth, a bowl of pasta and a boat of red sauce at hand. He sat with suspenders down, an undershirt over his torso, his thick arms bare.

“Got problems?” Frank asked without looking up.

“No, boytshik,” the rabbi said, following Al into the room and shutting the door.

“We gotta talk,” Al said.

“The two of you?” Frank laughed and shook his head. “Sorry, Father, but I’m not coming home.” He stood.

“You opened the box,” the rabbi growled, sounding much like the frightening entity that made Al quiver when he was a boy.

“You can leave now.”

“It’s what’s in you that must leave, not us,” the rabbi said. “If I could beat it out of you, I would.”

“I’m not a kid no more, old man. Take your belt off to me and I’ll wrap it around your neck.”

“Such a way to talk to your father?” the rabbi said.

Al stayed back from the squabble, trusting that the rabbi knew what he was doing.

Frank loomed over the old man like a troll intent on frightening trespassers from his bridge. Sweat burst from his forehead, filled the deep furrows across his brow and fell down the sides of his face. His eyes lit up, yellow in the pupils and fiery red where the whites should be.

The rabbi read a prayer from the book in his hand, which trembled the more his son glared at him. The words came in short melodious streams of sound, reminding Al of prayers he’d heard in his youth, though he knew, as the rabbi had said, that the ancient prayer was an Aramaic one.

Frank fumed, stumbling backwards, overturning the table, sending its contents splashing across the carpet. Black pus erupted from his nostrils. His ears spewed a red liquid thick like wax. He shook his fists at his father. He cursed him in a strange language that exploded from his mouth in sharp staccato beats. Tongue wagging, Frank – actually, the devil inside him – raged against the rabbi’s holy words invading his world.

Then the rabbi faltered. He turned a page in his book, stuttering when he tried to continue. With his son moving towards him, screaming incoherently, the rabbi trembled, visibly struggling not to crumble to the floor.

Al froze when his cousin turned his rage in his direction. He wanted to look away, knew he should, but couldn’t. He couldn’t dismiss the sight of the devil’s eyes he saw so blatant in his cousin’s own. He couldn’t not see the bloody wax pouring from Frank’s ears, the black bile streaming from his nostrils.

Escape. Move to the door. Al tried, but his feet seemed welded to the floor. The rabbi retreated, now stood at the door with his book shut, tears on his cheeks, soft weeping sounds drifting from deep in his throat.

Frank wiped his nose with his arm. The veins beneath the skin popped into view, traveling from shoulders to wrists, thick and dark blue, crowded together in places like loose threads in a sewing box.

“Out,” the devil in him roared with a voice like a thunderclap, a fierce and deafening noise that shook the room “This is mine, all mine. You don’t – you won’t and you can’t – take it away.”

The rabbi his black hat askew, turned, opened the door, and stumbled out of the room. Al followed.

A crowd stood in the hallway. Half-dressed women, men in red union underclothes, and several boys carrying trays of drinks huddled at the end of the corridor, near the stairs. The rabbi barged into the crowd.

With the devil’s roar at his back, Frank followed, also pushing through the gawkers. No one tried to stop them from escaping while the booming screams at their back turned into triumphant laughter.

#

Though he couldn’t hear it, Al spent the night imagining his cousin celebrating his victory, strutting about his luxurious suite or parading through the crowded and busy gaming room.

The rabbi cried when they drove back to the house. Afterwards, he sat dejected and glum as the night wore on, until he went to bed, still shaking his head and sobbing. He’d failed, he claimed. They failed together, Al told him.

In the morning, still miserable, Al wished he’d never helped to open the dybbuk box. The devil who took over  his cousin would ruin the town along with Frank’s own innate goodness. His cousin was never a studious young man. No one ever expected he’d settle down with a wife, find a good job, raise a family, and honor his father. But he’d never been this much of a rascal. He’d never gambled. He never frequented whores.

He’d just been confused about what that box held. As the rabbi said when Al and he sat together Sunday night, Frank thought the box held the spirit of his great-grandfather, not an evil monster’s

“It’s my fault,” the rabbi said, “for never explaining it to him in a way he could understand.”

“And now?” Al asked. “Now what?”

The rabbi shrugged. “I won’t give up, Uri. Excuse me, I can’t call you ‘Al.’ You’ll always be Uri to me.”

Al made an “It’s okay” gesture.

“Your father and I, we never gave up. Never stopped. When we were running from the Cossacks, we never stopped to cry our woes. We held each other up, pushed each other to keep going.”

Al nodded, remembering hearing the story of his 19-year-old father fleeing his village with Cossacks in pursuit. His younger brother, Moses, then just 16, went with him because, as Dad said, “We were close. Like brothers!” And he’d laugh at his little joke because they were, indeed, brothers.

“How did they get our great-grandfather into the box?” Al asked.

“See? You make the same mistake as your cousin. It was the bad spirit inside him that was imprisoned.”

“Sorry,” Al said.

“I was only ten. Maybe nine, not yet ten, so I wasn’t there. But the book! This book – “ and he held up the thin volume of ancient Aramaic prayer – “was the key. These prayers can chase the demon out.” He paused. “Or should.”

“It didn’t work on Frank.”

“Elkana ,” the rabbi said, using Frank’s Hebrew name, “isn’t strong. I suspect my grandfather had enough inner spirit to aid his own exorcism.”

Al ruminated on that. Wouldn’t Frank want to get his own self back? Maybe not.

“But I remember,” the rabbi continued, “my father telling my mother how they wrestled him into a room, a small room, where he was all by himself, away from his study and his writing desk where the dybbuk used his hands to write those terrible things he said about Adonai.”

Al took that in. He doubted he could wrestle Frank anywhere. The man was too big, made even stronger by the evil force now inside him.

“We’d need to get him out of his familiar surroundings,” the rabbi said, and suddenly his eyes sparkled. “That’s what we’ll do.” He slapped his leg. “It’s what we must do! I won’t give up, boytshik.”

Al couldn’t share his uncle’s enthusiasm. He’d helped Frank unleash the dybbuk, and now he couldn’t help his uncle beat it. Even after a night’s sleep, he didn’t rise on Monday morning full of and hope. He couldn’t share the rabbi’s cheerful good mornings.

Leaving his uncle to his prayers and mutterings, Al walked to town. He always enjoyed this long morning walk. Today he needed the time to think, to be alone, but before much time went by, he was on Grass’ outskirts, and he still didn’t know what to do about his cousin or how to help his uncle.

He stopped when he drew even with Frank’s gambling house across the street, lingered on the wooden sidewalk, and wondered: how did the rabbi expect to get Frank into a room by himself, away from his evil domain?

Al glanced at the sheriff’s office down the street, and an idea took root. With a renewed sense of purpose strode to the sheriff’s office.

Sheriff Harris shook his head when Al told him what he proposed. The deputy, sitting at a desk close by, laughed, but Al shot him a stern look and placed his hands on the railing that separated the desks from where visitors stood.

“I can’t just arrest the guy. We got no law against gambling and drinking.”

 “If we did,” the deputy put in, “the town’ll be up in arms.”

“Violating the Sabbath,” Al said. “He’s open on Sunday.”

“So’s the sheriff’s office. Either me or the deputy are here on Sunday. And the stables? There’s always a stable hand working.”

Al wet his lips. “The hotel closed its saloon on Sunday.”

Harris snorted. “There was still drinking and card playing going on in the back room.”

“But they didn’t throw it in your face. Hell, Sheriff, my cou – the guy runs the whorehouse 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

“We never enforce those laws.” Harris sounded a bit weak now, as though he needed to apologize for not upholding the law.

“Didn’t you ever arrest someone, but then had to release them because they had an alibi or you – “

“It ain’t the same thing, Mr. Richards.”

“You can arrest him, hold him, and release him the next day with an apology.”

“Why the should I?”

“Are you a superstitious man, Sheriff?” Al asked.

“I don’t walk under ladders, if that’s what you mean.”

“Do you believe in the devil?”

“Do you?”

Al stared hard at the Sheriff and said, “I didn’t until I saw what it did to my…my kinsman.”

“What’re you going to do?” the deputy asked with a grin. “Have a good old-fashioned exorcism?”

The Sheriff narrowed his eyes. “You and that Jewish priest think you can shout the devil out of him? Like those tent preachers that come through here every summer?”

“Yes, Sheriff. Something like that.”

#

“I got him and two of his henchmen back there,” Sheriff Harris said when Al and the rabbi walked into the office. Torn epaulettes and a jagged rip in his shirt where the five-star badge should be attested to a fight.

“The henchmen,” the rabbi said. “They need to be gone from back there.”

“I ain’t releasing them,” Harris scoffed. He pointed to his pimply-faced deputy. The boy sported a bruise on his cheek and blood on the cuff of his sleeve. “I got real charges now. For those two and your kin. Resisting arrest. Hitting agents of the law.”

“He needs to be alone in his cell,” Al explained.

“Your kin? Yeah, he is. The other two – “

“Alone back there where he can’t draw on anyone else’ energy,” the rabbi interjected.

“Hey, I get you’re a priest and all, but —  “

“Rabbi,” Al corrected.

“Please, Sheriff,” the rabbi said in a quiet and sincere voice. “We’re here to help, not to hinder, certainly not to tell you your duty.”

Harris shrugged, grabbed the steel ring of keys off his desk and went to the cells on the other side of the thick door behind him. The rabbi started to follow, but Al touch his coat sleeve and gave him a “We should wait” look.

“I let them out the back,” Harris said when he returned. “Said someone paid their bail. I doubt they’ll stick around Grass for trial.” He chuckled. “Go ahead. He’s all yours.”

“We need to be in his cell,” the rabbi said.

“In the cell?” An incredulous look crossed Harris’ face. He turned to Al for confirmation.

“We’ll be okay,” Al said.

Harris shook his head, but picked up the ring of keys again and led them to the cells. Seeing them, Frank stood at the bars, and yelled, “Why ain’t I released? I got bail money. Let me send someone to get it.”

“I’ll be right outside if things get out of hand,” Harris said, unlocking the cell door. With a last look around, another shake of his head, he retreated, shutting the thick door behind him, but sliding open the small window across the top so he could hear any cries for help.

“What do you want?” Frank snarled.

The rabbi stepped into the cell. Al followed, casting an eye at the three beds against the brick walls, the empty wash basin, and the bucket in the corner.

“Get me out of here,” Frank squealed.

It’s working, Al thought. Putting Frank in unfamiliar surroundings had sapped the devil of some of its strength. Maybe this wasn’t the small dark room where great-grandfather had been held while a rabbi read the sacred text that excised demons and vanquished dybbuks, but it would suffice.

While the rabbi read the prayer, his voice loud and as melodious as before, Frank dropped to the narrow cot at the back of the cell, just below the small barred window. Blood seeped from his eyes, the whites turning yellow, and the pupils blazing red. Pus filled his ears. Black bile dripped from his nostrils. Yellow foam bubbled from the corners of his mouth.

He tore off his waistcoat. He pulled at his tie and his collar burst from around his neck. Snorting and growling, Frank — the devil in him — ripped off his shirt to expose a bare and hairless chest streaked with thick blue veins.

The devil in Frank screamed in protest. It slammed Frank’s body into one brick wall, then swung around and slammed it into another. He rushed the rabbi, coming within inches of the book of Aramaic prayers. The rabbi touched Frank’s forehead, bringing a snarl from Frank’s mouth, the dybbuk inside him making the body shake, arms and legs and torso all trembling, violently so.

Frank covered his bleeding eyes. He stamped his feet and screamed.

That brought the sheriff, his deputy behind them. They came only a foot or two into the cellblock. Al warned them with a hand signal to stay back. The rabbi persisted in the face of his son’s – the dybbuk’s – fury. He uttering short snappy phrases that lashed Frank like a strap, virtually striking him until he fell to his knees.

Closing the book, reciting the final prayers from memory, repeating the last two lines over and over, the rabbi pulled the box from his trouser’s front pocket. He held it open and approached Frank, bent over him—

Frank shrank away. He lifted himself slightly, then turned and sank onto the cot.

The rabbi snapped the box shut and returned it to his pocket.

Frank sat with his face in his hands, weeping. The rabbi sat beside him, and uttered soothing words in a mix of Yiddish and English. Al withdrew, to leave father and son to mend the rip in the spirit that bound them.

“He’ll probably go to sleep,” Al said to the sheriff. “I think his father will want to stay with him. Comfort him.”

“I didn’t realize the priest – the whatcha say, the rabbi? – was his father. They all kin to you?”

Al nodded. “There won’t be anymore gambling emporium after today. Or whorehouse.”

“Guess not. Good. My wife was getting on my nerves about that. She’s one of those ladies that’s been out there picketing.”

“Yeah, well, it’ll all get shut down,” Al muttered.

“You’re really are one of the good ones, Richards,” the sheriff said. “Thanks.”

#

Al steered the buckboard, which was dressed up to resemble a coach with four upholstered seats in the bed, and room for luggage just behind the driver’s bench, to one side of the train station. He’d rented it so he could take his uncle and cousin to the train station in some semblance of style, returning the aged mule and the cart with little regret.

When he jumped out, he went around to the right side and helped Rose down, watching that she used the metal steps and didn’t just leap – giggling — like she sometimes did. The rabbi climbed out the back and ordered Frank to handle their baggage.

On the platform, Frank stood sullen and detached. He resembled the boy Al well-remembered, one who bemoaned his fate after a scolding or a hiding when they were young.

Some in the sparse crowd cast dubious glances at them, at where they huddled away from everyone else  Al ignored them. He tried not to think what he knew they were saying to themselves and one another. Frank’s fall – the evil spirit’s expulsion – had filled the town’s gossip circles like water overflowing a tub, flinging mud everywhere it splashed.

The rabbi checked his watch. Frank, his cardboard suitcase under one arm, paced to the middle of the platform, then back to where the rabbi stood. The 10:05 morning train to Omaha stopped in Grass only on Wednesday.

“We’re a little early,” Al said. The clock face on the tower above the stationmaster’s office showed 10:03.

“Elkana,” the rabbi called to Frank. “Just stay here with us. Stop walking around like you’re lost.”

Frank obeyed, head bent.

The rabbi hugged Rose and kissed her cheek. He did the same to Al. The stationmaster, megaphone in hand, announced the imminent arrival of the 10:05.

“You did a mitzvah,” the rabbi said to Al. “But, only after that aveira.”

Taken aback, Al gave his uncle a quizzical look.

The rabbi chuckled slightly. “What else would you call helping my son get himself in trouble?” He shook his head, muttering, “You kids, you kids.”

The train pulled in. Al helped the rabbi walk the length of the platform to the third-class carriage up front, behind the second tender loaded with coal.

Others on the platform streamed into the second- and first-class coaches. The conductor, his voice deep with a mix of authority and impatience, stood out on the step of the rear carriage, hand on a vertical railing, urging the passengers to hurry, reminding them that there was a schedule to keep.

Al and his uncle hugged once more. Obeying a nod from his father, Frank picked up the rabbi’s bulging leather suitcase in one hand, tightened his hold on the small case under his arm, and boarded.

“Come visit maybe?” the rabbi said.

“Maybe,” Al said, and watched his uncle, his heavy black overcoat suddenly billowing in the cold breeze that swept the platform, disappear into the carriage’s dim interior.

The train pulled away. Al watched it, and hugged Rose’ shoulders. “I’ll take you home and return the buckboard.”

“Then go to the store?”

He nodded. He hadn’t been there in several days, not since last Friday morning, before his uncle arrived. But he’d left the store in the hands of two trusted clerks, who could handle anything.

“Maybe I won’t go today,” he said as he helped his wife up to front bench of the buckboard. Touching her hips, feeling her warmth through her wool coat, stirred a feeling of care and love within him.

Rose said nothing. She sat with her hands inside a muff she’d knitted herself, but still shivered when another cold wind hit her.

“Maybe we should have a picnic,” Al said.

“In the cold? I don’t think so.”

“Guess not.”

“We could have it in the front room. On a blanket on the floor.”

Al grinned at her. Excellent idea. He told her so, and then drove along Main Street towards home, passing his huge store with its three floors crammed with merchandise, and then coming alongside Frank’s gambling den, now shut down and awaiting redecorating.

A sign, the letters not yet painted in but the outlines clear, advertised the building’s next incarnation: Richards’ Travelers Inn. It made Al smile, pleased with the prosperity his new acquisition represented.

Perhaps he’d build a synagogue in the future.

The End