A Great and Boundless Realm
I:
Jude Doherty smelted the silver down, pressed it, and formed a small coin, nearly one inch in diameter, printed with the words “United States of America — Quarter Dollar” which surrounded a flare-winged and shielded bald eagle holding a three sprigged olive branch in one talon and three arrows in the other, peace and war combined as separably as life and death. Upon the other side, he pressed a design of his own making: a cosmically twisting tree that reached down with unending roots as well as up with naked and twisting branches, and from it, nearly imperceptible within the twisting boughs, the figure of a man hung from a noose. He picked up the coin, examined it, and dropped it into a purse with twenty-nine others. Jude Doherty rose from his stool, mounted his horse, and rode 170 miles out of Denver to the encampment of the Cheyenne Indians of the Plains.
II:
“Yes, he was both divine and of the earth,” Jude spoke to Black Kettle of the Cheyenne through an interpreter, a strong, young Indian by the name of Left Eye. They sat in a tipi of buffalo hide, and a fire burned beside them, the smoke lingering in their lungs and rising through the portal at the top of the tipi, up to the Great Spirit. Black Kettle smoked a pipe, and he seemed at ease in the presence of the white man.
Black Kettle spoke slowly and respectfully. Left Eye translated in good English, with a voice a note too high for his broad frame: “I have heard of this Jesus man before, from many others. We do not need him…”
“No.” Jude Doherty grabbed hold of Left Eye’s arm and the boy flinched, as though ready to defend himself. Doherty released him, afraid of the girl-voiced youth’s physical prowess. “Listen to me Left Eye!” he commanded. “Your chief must know this: I do not speak solely of Jesus the Christ as many have done so before. Tell him that now.” He pointed the boy to the chief in earnest, extolling him to share the news. “It is not Jesus I speak of,” he mouthed to the chief. “Left Eye, you must tell him that it is another I speak of,” and he drew out the purse of silver coins. He held one up, and pointed to the hanging corpse in the tree. “It is this man I speak of, Judas Iscariot,” he said. “There is not only the sacrifice upon the Cross, but also upon the tree. There is Judas Iscariot, the one who gave not only his body as Jesus did, but also his salvation. He sacrificed just as Jesus sacrificed, but he was the betrayer, the annihilator of the Lamb of God — he was Death itself.” Left Eye spoke calmly to Black Kettle, failing to translate any urgency of voice. But the old chief clearly understood from the distress of Jude Doherty that Left Eye’s words, despite their placidity, were of immense value to the strange white man before him.“And you can not have the Life without the Death also,” Jude finished.
He held up the purse of thirty coins and showed them the corpse hanging from the tree. “Does he understand this is the man I speak of? Judas?” Left Eye nodded. “Good, and tell him that after he betrayed Jesus, he took the thirty coins which he was paid, and laid it at the feet of the Pharisees, and said, ‘These thirty coins mean nothing. It is not for a price that I betrayed the Christ, but for my own damnation.’ And he went and hanged himself upon a tree. This is the role of the one called Judas, who is part of the Christ — he is the Death.” Left Eye translated to the old chief. For two minutes, the chief smoked his pipe, and closed his eyes. Jude sat still, sweating profusely in the smoke heated tipi, and he awaited a word from the chief.
“It is two parts that make one whole? Judas and Jesus? Like the life and death, the day and night, the sun and moon. I see this and I understand this,” Black Kettle said. He pulled from his pipe, and the whisperings of spirits rose through the moon hole at the top. “Two things that appear so different can come together in peace.”
“Yes, I know that they can. I pray that they will,” Jude whispered. He had convinced the chief of something significant about the workings of the world that was laid out before them: of reserved lands and frontier forts, of distrust and honor, of white men and red. “Somehow we will make peace, but I must warn you to beware the words that the soldiers speak to you: they may promise you money and safety, but in their stead, they may deliver death and hatred with guns and sabres.” He dropped the purse of silver coins into Left Eye’s hand. “These coins are a reminder of what matters. So long as you have these coins, you need not theirs. Take their words with respect, but make no promises.” He rose to go, and he bowed awkwardly upon standing, unsure of what custom would be appropriate. “Somehow we will make a peace that is lasting. Should the soldiers come and demand your food and weapons, hide them. If they come for them, you will surely need them. But should they demand the thirty silver coins, hand them over, tell them they are worthless, and then tell them that you got them from me.”
III:
Jude Doherty rode to Fort Lyon, and requested audience with Colonel John Shivers of the US Army. Shivers was a former minister of the Lutheran Church, and he and Doherty had occasionally crossed paths during their time in the Kansas Territory, when Jude Doherty himself was a minister of the Lutheran Church. Doherty straightened his tie, and stepped into the office of the colonel, unsure of what changes fifteen years had brought upon him. The colonel was more rotund than Jude remembered, and he wore a beard upon his face where once had been puffy and childish cheeks. His jaw was square, and the light of once loving eyes seemed to burn with the more malignant flame than that of God.
“Colonel Shivers.”
“Yes, and how can I help you?”
“My name is Jude Doherty, formerly of the Lutheran Church of Kansas, where we had crossed paths some fifteen years ago.” He waited for the glint of recognition, but none came across his face. “I come here seeking help with regard to the people of Black Kettle, the Cheyenne.”
Shivers said nothing, he leaned back in his chair, signed a document, then leaned forward again, his bulky forearms meeting the desktop squarely, as though ready to charge the heretic priest.
“And what business does a former minister have in this place? I know of only one honorable way for a man to leave the church, and that is through war. It appears to me that you are no soldier.”
“I come seeking support in the protection of the Cheyenne from federal forces, and despite the peace treaty signed in Denver in September, I feel that there are further agreements to be made in order to safeguard the Cheyenne way of life while yet allowing them access to the Lord our God, and access into the American way of life.”
Shivers was glad to have silence. It clung to him and he absorbed its energy, and the air between the two men reverberated with a tension both felt, but each desired to control. Jude’s heart palpitated and his hands became sweaty. A nerve in his leg fired, and the knee clutched outward, yet he held the tension secure. At the desk, Colonel Shivers’ lip quivered. He held the tension until it reached his forehead, and that too quivered and danced, and he desired to outdo the former minister before him. Shivers broke: he picked up the pen from his desk, then slammed it down and with a tenaciousness unseen in the camps of the Cheyenne or the chapels of the Lord, and he cried out, “Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! I will not have a former minister speak to me of the life of the Indian. I suggest that you keep clear of any contact with the heathens, and I suggest that you halt all attempts to convert them to whatever God you call your own. Damn any man!”
Jude Doherty felt the anger rise and wash away in an instant, the tension cleansed by the spirit within him, and he was left with a coolness under his collar like a stream’s waters washed down the back. “I see that your beliefs are not those you held back in Kansas. It appears the martial life has twisted the holy life, and drawn out a demon in you that I long suspected, yet long prayed would never find itself loosed in the world.”
“I have heard of your changes too, Jude Doherty, and I do remember you. You tampered with Satan’s texts and sought redemption and grace in that which deserves none. I see you continue that today, seeking it in heathen red men who deserve nothing but the bullet and the blade.” Veins popped from his head, and he failed to contain the urges in him that spilled out: “Stay far from the Cheyenne. You have no authorization to deal with foreign enemies. If you do so, there will be retribution. I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s heaven to kill Indians. Kill and scalp all, big and little. Nits make lice!”
Jude Doherty spun on his heel and left the office of Colonel Shivers. He mounted his horse, and made straight for Denver, where he spent the next seven days in prayer and thought, beseeching God himself to throw a tipi of protection over the red people. He danced a dance of salvation, sweat drops of blood, and mortified his flesh in the hopes that his blood would be enough to balance the unholy ledgers of Colonel Shivers. “This I solemnly swear, to give my life for that of the people of Black Kettle to live. To give not only my life, but the memory of myself. That the United States may burn my reputation as that of a traitor, hang my corpse high in the gallows, and let the craven pluck my heart from my chest. This is my sacrifice for the Cheyenne. If it be in Your honor, let it be enough to hold at bay the gears of history, let it be enough to sanctify the bit of land that has been given to the Cheyenne. Let it be enough.”
IV:
“The white men came and demanded of us all valuables. I offered him the food that he had already given us. I offered him our tipi, and the buffalo hides. I offered him our clothing, and our guns, and I offered him even our land. He said none of it was of value, and I told him that he knows not what value is.” They sat in Black Kettle’s tipi, and the old chief again smoked a pipe, the beautiful plumes of white smoke rising to the white clouds above, connecting with them somewhere in the elevations, becoming a part of the air, and the earth, and what is.
“Why did you not hide all of the valuables like I asked? Who was it that came?” Jude asked.
“Shivers. The colonel. Who is called The Uncontrolled by us. He knows not how to control the gift that is inside of him, and it fights out of him, and seeks to destroy others as well as himself. It will kill him in time.”
Black Kettle then fell silent. “He took that which had no value and declared that it did. You told me to hand it over, but I feared to, and I did not wish to show The Uncontrolled the coins. But he took the thirty silver coins that you gifted to us, and he said, ‘This is of value.’ And I told him that it was not. Yet I took up the purse of coin in my hand, and it jingled like the Great Spirit coming down from the skies, and with great pain in my heart, I gave it to The Uncontrolled, and I told him that he was blind to the world as it is, and as it should be. He worships metals that buy and metals that mutilate — it is only death that he supports — only the Judas. He does not worship the circle — both the Jesus and the Judas. I told him this. And he looked down at the coins, and he smiled, and he said your name: Jude Doherty. And he rode away.”
Jude Doherty set out for Denver, but was apprehended along the way by a patrol of US Cavalry sent out by Colonel Shivers. He was taken to Fort Lyon and held until arrangements in Denver were made by the US Army. Doherty was then transferred to Denver where he was tried by a kangaroo court headed by a man named Judge Horner. In civilian court, Colonel Shivers testified against Jude along with a corrupt government official whom Jude had never met nor seen in his life. Jude Doherty was found guilty of treason and counterfeiting with the intent to undermine federal interests in hostile lands and was condemned to the fate of hanging by the neck until dead.
V:
JudeDoherty stood before Father Kelly in the cell, the dampness visible underfoot and stuck to the walls in a grim mosaic: stone, mortar, moisture, and the occasional smattering of bodily fluid. The priest stood before him, and Doherty, thin faced, a slit standing where his mouth was, sat sleepily upon the bunk.
“…in company with Christ, Who died and now lives, may we rejoice in Your kingdom, where all our tears are wiped away. Unite us together again in one family, to sing Your praise forever and ever.
“Take Jude into your safekeeping, and may he live an eternal life in the kingdom of God. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
A whispered amen escaped from Doherty’s mouth, though he thought no so much about God as he did of the noose. The priest touched the mop of dirty blonde hair before him, then left the cell. A young lawman with a wad of tobacco in his lip told him rise, and they walked out the cell and out the door to the street, where a tall man in a brown longcoat stood, awaiting the prisoner. He had a shadow of a beard, and a twist of a mustache above his lip. The brown Stetson hat sat akilter his head, and at his waist was a single revolver, oiled oak handle sitting against his brown vest. All brown he appeared, like the muddied middle ground between river and bank. He was Arn Boone, the hangman of Oklahoma. He gave the lawman and Jude a slight dip of the head, and spoke a word to Judge Horner beside him. Then the processional started down the road.
They were headed toward the Devil’s Ink Pot, as the locals called it, the place where the Devil signed off on broken contracts of morality and took his due. It was a small enclosed courtyard where men went to hang for crimes they had committed in the world, where they were to be redeemed by acts of contrition with the help of a priest, or simply by the openness of their hearts given to the Lord in Heaven.
The sun began to sit low in the sky, and the buildings threw long shadows across the town, like the stabbing mountains of an obsidian sharp landscape. Each right angle of shadow seemed to be far more acute, capable of splitting a man wide open and exposing his soul to God or Devil according to his will, for the Devil takes pity on evil deeds, though he punishes just as thoroughly. Judge Horner paced the parade with a slow and steady gate as he led the procession. Doherty and his executioner followed behind, and Doherty was glad for the judge’s slow walk, for it gave him time to shuffle along in his leg shackles. Doherty and Boone were flanked by two other lawmen, one being the youngster with the tobacco lip, and the other a squat young man with a baby clean face. Father Kelly followed them, and behind this dreadful vanguard of the law trailed a caravan of corrupt public officials, esteemed local citizenry, and important commercial figures of the frontier town. The dirt rose with their feet, and a sun shimmering dusty haze held about them. The hangman looked down upon Doherty.
“The hell kinda name is Jude?” the executioner asked the condemned.
The chain of Jude’s confinement rattled with each shackle stunted step. “It’s simply my name,” he said. Boone looked squarely at him without breaking stride. He pulled his Stetson low to block out the dropping sun.
“Yea, and what kind’a goddam name is it?” he said with a queer smile. They walked in silence for several moments. “Fine, don’t talk about your goddam name then, don’t matter to me. Just thought it was an interesting one for an Irishman to choose. Interesting profession too — heretic Lutheran minister. You don’t act like an Irishman one bit.”
Father Kelly whispered prayers beneath his breath. “That there priest is a good man,” Boone said. “Been out here for years, trying to convert the Indians, just like you were. He done saved a lot of red souls from Hell, I’m sure he could do you yours, just flip a switch and call it a day.” The hangman spit something thick from his mouth, then wiped his cracked lips, then licked them, wiped again. “But I know you don’t want that switch pulled.” He licked and spit. “So they got you for counterfeiting?”
The priest whispered petition to Heaven for the man before him. Doherty didn’t answer. He only twisted his wrists in the rope bindings, and scuffled along, kicking up the dry dust and sending out a metallic clinking from the shackles about his feet. They passed through the obsidian edged shadows, turned a corner, and were bathed in the darkness of the buildings blotting out the west-setting sun. “Render unto Caesar what is Ceasar’s; but unto God what is God’s,” Jude said.
“Ah, that’s a good one. I like that one. There’s another good one too: ‘Though we walk in the valley of death, I fear no evil.’” He turned back to look at Father Kelly. “Tell that one now Father, that’ll be a good one for right now.” Then he turned back to Doherty, wiped spittle from his lips, and said with splitting harshness, “So what the hell kind’a name is Jude?”
“It means ‘the praised one,’ a variation of Judas.”
Boone let out a little grunt, an acknowledgement of the odd coincidence of events that was Jude’s life: the thirty silver pieces and the counterfeited money, the hanging of a holy traitor and the hanging of a national traitor, the Potter’s Field and the Devil’s Ink Pot.
Before them rose the walls of the Devil’s Ink Pot, cracked black paint that vented a mosaic of colors underneath, hundreds of thin, vertical boards, ten feet high, meant to keep the general public from gawking at the corpse of a hanged man. Each board itself looked like a hanged corpse: the flashing colors that lie beneath like torn and ragged clothing, the bodies skinny, with arms slumped at their side, hangdog looking worn boards that held the sun heat and peeled away each day. Rust red, molded green, greyed white, showed through, and in little clumps at the foot of the fence lie peelings of the cheap black paint, like mounds of ashes, the incinerated bodies of the men gone to hang, their souls waiting to be sifted from the char.
The judge unlocked the gate, and they passed through single file, Judge Horner granting the condemned man the courtesy of entering the Devil’s Ink Pot first.
Boone mounted the gallows, thirteen steps to the top, and beckoned Jude follow. Here too, with the tall black boards about them, the shadows were complete, throwing a pall of darkness over the entire lot. No shadow was cast by the high squared arch of the uprights and crossbeam. There were three spots upon the platform, three hatches cut out, wide enough for the widest of men, and also the thinnest of them. The processional filed in, one by one, men of the law, men of the book, men of the money, and they watched with silent apprehension. In the corner opposite the gallows, Jude noticed a single tree unknown to him. Its flowers seemed to have folded in upon themselves, and they looked a pinkish red in color, burning hot against the dark foliage and against the black boards behind.
Boone’s hand went easily to Judas’ elbow, and he guided him with fatherly care toward the back of the gallows, where a single chair sat behind the middle hatch. Jude gave no resistance. He sat, and the tree in the corner held his gaze.
It took several minutes for the entourage to enter through the single door. The last spectator crossed the threshold into the field, and the door was shut and locked by the young potbellied lawman. The other lawman, tobacco mouthed, stood before the stairs of the gallows. He let the judge pass. He walked to the front of the gallows, and Boone escorted Doherty up beside him. The judge, broadcasting his voice to the crowd, spoke: “Jude Doherty, you are hereby condemned to death by hanging by the territory of Colorado. You are sentenced to execution for treason by the act of counterfeiting. You have been found guilty by a jury of your peers and are condemned to hanging from the neck until dead.”
The judge folded the warrant, and turned to Jude. “Do you wish to speak any last words?”
The condemned man spoke with a courage tinged with apprehensive fear. A slight hint of the brogue of his forefathers rang through, granting a poetic hum to the words: “Before the crucifixion of Jesus, Jesus said to Judas Iscariot, ‘But you are the one I trust most, and you will be remembered most though it be in vile revulsion, yet you will be held most dear to the Father because of your sacrifice. I have called upon you to annihilate the image of that which you love. Do this, in my name.’ And with that, Judas betrayed Jesus for the price of thirty silver coins. And after the death of Jesus, he prepared his noose for his own hanging, and Jesus, free of his earthly image, came to him and said, ‘Though they will cast you into Hell, and myself into Heaven, know that I have taught you the secrets that no person has ever seen. For there exists a great and boundless realm, whose extent no generation of angels has seen, in which there is a Great Invisible Spirit, which no eye of an angel has ever seen, no thought of the heart has ever comprehended, and it was never called by any name.’ And with that, Judas hanged himself from a tree. Now, I stand here in imitation of Judas Iscariot, seeking unity and peace in this world, despite the perception of plurality and war.”
Judge Horner nodded to Boone, and the hangman touched Judas upon the elbow and they walked to the center hatch. Boone bound Doherty’s ankles with a leather lash, and did the same just above the knee. Doherty whispered something to Boone.
“Did you hear me?”
“No, what is it you said? I was transfixed by your last words.” He placed the long black hood over his head and drew it down around his shoulders.
“I said to just make it easy, quick, painless.” Then he was silent. Boone crowned Jude with the noose, pushing it down over his forehead. Through the coarse sack, Boone could feel the nose bone push out against the cording before it slipped down over the neck.
Doherty whispered a prayer of compassion for his own soul and for the souls of the Cheyenne. He opened his eyes, and a deep blackness swam into them.
The hatch snapped open and the sandbag fell to the ground, ten feet below. Doherty plunged through the gate, and the noose went taught. Judas Doherty’s body was caught up by the quick snatch of the hangman’s thirteen knotted noose, a beautiful drop of six foot six inches that severed his spinal cord and brought his body to rest, twirling counter clockwise a few feet from the clay soil beneath. The Devil’s eloquent script signed off on the corpse, and it was thrown into the fire pits of Hell, turned to char, and spread about the border of the Devil’s Ink Pot. But the spirit went elsewhere, to a place which no eye has ever seen and no thought has ever comprehended.
VI:
Three months later, on November 29, 1864, Colonel Shivers and 800 drunken US soldiers attacked the reservation at Sand Creek, the promised sanctuary to Black Kettle and the Cheyenne people. Shivers annihilated most of the Cheyenne Indian tribe, including women, children, and the elderly. They poured forth in a rage that saw nothing beyond the divide they had created within themselves: they cut scalps from heads, genitalia from bodies, both men and women, clipped ears and attached the flesh to themselves as grotesque trophies as if they were a traveling circus show sent pandering unholy wares across the land, whooping and hollering and firing and slaughtering, burning tipis to the ground and removing unborn babies from the violated wombs of mothers and thrashing the children against rocks as the mother stood as witness — a rigid carnival of corpses and lust and hatred.
Black Kettle, when he left his lodge and saw the atrocity before him, felt the fallen angel of Jude Doherty come down and surround him in his final moments. The old chief folded his arms across his breast, and sang to the Great Invisible Spirit: “Nothing lives long. Only the earth and the mountains.”
