It seemed as though time stood still for an instant as shock froze Sylvia’s body in place. It seemed for a moment as though her mind would deny what her eyes had seen. This couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t. She wouldn’t let it happen.
The thought spurred her into motion. Sylvia ran across the open ground toward the barn. Sticks, rocks, and the burrs that grew so commonly in that region dug into the soles of her bare feet, and vaguely Sylvia realized that she hadn’t really dressed in her haste to tell Vincent about the fire. But she couldn’t stop now. Vincent.
She did stop, when she reached what had been the entrance to the barn. The heat seared her skin. It felt as though surely the hair was being singed from her scalp. Fear froze her to the spot where she stood as she gazed into the flames that engulfed the entire building.
Then she saw him. A beam had fallen on Vincent’s leg. He didn’t cry out, but he was struggling to pull it from beneath the wood. It hadn’t caught fire fully yet, thank goodness. If it had he would be lost for sure. Lost….Vincent couldn’t be lost.
Sylvia took a deep breath and then started forward. Every step seemed to get hotter and soon she was afraid to take deep breaths. It felt as though the heat would sear her lungs away to nothing. Determination propelled her forward. One step at a time she moved forward. When she was almost to him Vincent looked up and met her eyes.
“Sylvia? Get out of here! Go!”
She didn’t answer. How could she, when she could hardly breathe? Rather than answer she let her actions speak for themselves. She continued moving toward him, one step after another. Only the knowledge that pausing between steps would leave her in the flames even longer kept her pace fast.
Fear showed in Vincent’s eyes, and understandably so. Sylvia’s first attempt to lift the beam failed. Though it wasn’t burning it was still unbearably hot to the touch and Sylvia instinctively pulled her hands back. Smoke burned her eyes, causing them to tear up…although some of the tears might have been born of fear and pain. She couldn’t stop though. Not while Vincent was still trapped. She quickly took off her dressing robe and used it to shield her hands from the worst of the wood’s heat.
Sylvia tried to lift the board first, but it quickly became apparent that it wouldn’t budge. Finally she began to push it. It would rake against Vincent’s leg this way, but that seemed like the least of his worries at this point.
Soon coughs wracked Sylvia’s small frame and a ring of white formed around her vision. Dizziness caused the world to waver before her, and she realized that if she were going to get Vincent out of here it would have to be now. Any longer and she would pass out. Then they would both perish.
With one final, desperate burst of strength Sylvia shoved the board. She felt a second’s relief as the board seemed to give way. Before she could free Vincent’s leg, though, the world went black. A brief feeling of dread filled her as she realized she’d failed before that too was lost to unconsciousness.
“Her name was Sophie, but you already knew that, didn’t you? She was…not beautiful. Not quite. She was…fragile, delicate. I think half the reason I fell in love with her was because I wanted to protect her.”
“She was sick…even in childhood she always fell ill, and it only got worse with age. Looking back it was obvious that she wasn’t destined for a long life. At the time I was younger, and convinced that death would never touch us. It did, of course. You know that part to, Sylvia.”
“Afterward I didn’t blame anyone but I…withdrew. I thought that if I just stayed alone then I wouldn’t feel that kind of pain again.”
The words penetrated the fog that had taken over Sylvia’s brain. It was Vincent’s voice, to be sure. And if she was hearing it then she must have survived…somehow. The last thing she remembered was being unable to save him. Then she fell. With an effort she opened her eyes. She struggled to sit up and felt Vincent’s strong hand at her back.
He gently helped her up and gave her a sip of water, pausing only for a moment as he arranged the cushions that he used to prop her up. Sylvia’s head throbbed a bit at the change in position but other than that, surprisingly, she seemed no worse for the wear. Once she was settled he kept speaking as though he hadn’t stopped to help her.
“I was wrong Sylvia. Being alone didn’t save me from pain. When you lost consciousness, when I thought that you would die in that fire…What were you thinking? You could have died!”
Sylvia replied, though the answer was obvious. “I was thinking that you were stuck in that same fire. At least I went into the blaze to save my husband. You, on the other hand…What would you have saved? A horse, perhaps?” Her voice was raw from the smoke she’d inhaled, but there was no mistaking the teasing tone in her voice.
“Well…yes. A horse. Only it turned out the animal had made it out the back at some point before the building collapsed.”
“I’m certainly glad that someone had some sense. Remind me to give my compliments to the horse.”
Vincent chuckled softly before he continued. “I think that I didn’t give you a fair shake Sylvia. Sophie was fragile, sickly…But you aren’t her. You proved your strength last night. And even if you were the weakest little slip of a think ever to exist…well…not wanting love didn’t keep me from loving you. It only kept me from enjoying it fully.”
“When I thought you would die in that fire with me…That was the only thing that gave me the strength to push that beam the rest of the way off my leg, Sugar. Loving you doesn’t make me weaker. It makes me…more.”
Tears formed in Sylvia’s eyes as her husband dropped to one knee before her. “Will you be my wife, Sylvia?”
“My darling husband,” she whispered softly, “I thought you’d never ask.”
THE END
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1
A yellowing sheet of paper had been posted in the local bar of Sawtooth, Nevada. An image of a thin woman with large hair and high heels had been printed on the paper. In large black letters, the paper read:
NOTICE!
Due to the increasing number of mail order brides and the over-hasty marriages that follow, several complaints have been lodged by no-longer happy grooms.
Let it be known therefore that any man who is seduced into marriage by the use of:
False Hair
Cosmetic Paint
Artificial Bosoms
Holstered Hips
Padded Lines
Without the man’s knowledge shall stand null and void if he so desires.
Jacob Renmyer took some time to read the notice. He wasn’t exactly sure what a “holstered hip” might be. He tried to imagine women stuffing cotton balls into their pants, but the image that came into his head did not match up with the picture on the paper. He rubbed his chin while he thought about the mail-order bride notice that he himself had put in three days before in both the Nevada Ledger and the Nevada Tribune. He had been told to cast as wide a net as possible by someone who had already done it.
His friend, the person he had come to Shaky’s Motel and Bar to see, had advised him that he could be sure of having his choice of women if he was willing to pay for a variety of advertisements. Thus far, that had not proven to be the case. He was beginning to wonder whether he had wasted his money sending in advertisements to the two newspapers. When he had first seen the advertisements, he had decided that he would give it two weeks. If he didn’t hear anything by then, he would take the rest of his money and head back east to Philadelphia, the city where he had been born and raised.
His leather boots thunked on the wooden floor of th
e bar as he pushed open the creaky saloon doors that every bar seemed to have. He suspected that the owner of the building made a point of not repairing the two swinging doors- each the size of a window pane- to ensure that he heard anyone who came and went.
Then, like clockwork, the overweight man with his large curly mustache and sideburns halfway across his chin made his appearance. He said, “Mr. Renmyer, you are early today aren’t you? I assume you are aware that the bar opens at five o’clock?”
Jacob kept track of the time by listening to the chiming of the bells in one of the town’s three churches. The Catholic Church, run by Father Flaherty, kept time so exact that Jacob sometimes wondered where the priest got his timepieces from. The last tolling he’d heard had declared the time to be one o’clock in the afternoon. First the bell chimed three times, then it chimed once, each one a solemn note offered to anyone who cared to hear. Since that had been what he felt to be half an hour ago, he put the time at 1:30 in the afternoon.
He said, “I am aware, Mr. Scribner. As it happens, I’ve come here to meet someone.”
Zebediah Scribner twirled his mustache and said, “That’s quite all right. You’re always welcome here. Make yourself at home.”
Jacob found himself an empty table, which wasn’t difficult. The bar on the ground floor of the hotel was empty. No one in town came into the bar except for Jacob and a few stragglers on a Friday afternoon. It just so happened that he had Fridays off, on account of how the man he worked for, Matthew Callahan, took Fridays off to get what feed, seed, and what fertilizer he could. He then used his Saturday to sell what product he had, or else do the odd chores around his seventy-acre property that needed doing.
Jacob had taken a job as a cowpuncher a year and a half ago for Matthew could not tend to his crop and his cattle at the same time. Jacob had moved across the country a month at a time, stopping here and there to get enough work in so that he could move on. He had intended to settle down somewhere in California’s Salinas Valley. He had made the journey across the country that way until he found a job he liked well enough to stick around for a while. As he put his feet up on the table, he supposed that there were worse things that being a cowpuncher in Nevada.
He had tried his hand at shucking wheat, and though that paid more than herding cattle, he had never been able to acclimate himself to a day’s work that wasn’t done on horseback. It didn’t feel natural to him. A full day in the wheat field left his feet throbbing and his stomach growling. On horseback, he had to use a different set of skills. He had to notice where the cows went for shelter. He had to notice rustlers waiting for the chance to make off with a wandering here or there. He had to notice whenever cattle with different brandings than that which Callahan used got themselves mixed up with the herd for which he was responsible. He had to have a sharp eye and a quick mind, or else he would quickly find himself out of a job. That he had been able to do the job through all kinds of weather had earned him some amount of trust in Sawtooth. People had come to know his name. They knew him as the man who rode on the back of a brown and white Spanish horse that had retained the fiery temperament of his ancestors.
After his work ended every day- and that was late enough at night to leave him little enough time to do anything else- he went home to eat what food he could. As often as not, that was a can of pork and beans held over the makeshift fireplace in the cabin he had built over the course of a year. He had not been able to bring himself to buy or install a proper stove for his cabin. Doing so would mean that he had committed himself to living in Sawtooth on a permanent basis. The fireplace was a reminder of that, and a reminder of all the days he had slept in a hammock he had strung between two trees while he built his cabin.
Now that he actually had time to himself to reflect, he felt restless. There was nothing further for him to do at the cabin, not unless he wanted to upgrade it to a permanent living space. He had patched up the roof, and mucked out the outhouse. That had been a chore that he had not relished doing, but which he needed doing nonetheless. The whole time, he had wondered why he had even bothered digging a latrine pit in the first place.
He let out a sigh of exasperation. He muttered under his breath, “Jake old man, you’re going to have to make your mind sooner or later.”
It was then when he sat reflecting on he should put down roots in Sawtooth or move on to somewhere else when the swinging doors of the bar pushed open. He looked from the table. Surprise came over his face when he saw who had entered.
2
A woman dressed like a bedraggled prostitute came in through the door. At some point, she had put makeup on her face and arranged her hair just so. She had put on fishnet stockings to go with her red dress that was slim at the waist and wide around the knees. She made no attempt to disguise the size of her bosom. A full third of her breasts showed, as white as new ivory. But for all her good intentions in trying to make herself as presentable as possible, something had gone wrong. Her stockings had torn in several places. Her makeup had run down her face until her cheeks were smears of black and red color. Her hair had come undone so that half of it fell over her shoulder while the other half sat against her back. She had flaming red hair that would have appeared attractive no matter how she arranged it. She had an expression of unbridled fury upon her face.
Before Scribner could say the first word of welcome to her, she spoke in a tetchy voice with a clear Irish accent. Jacob had met many Irishmen and Irish women during his time in Philadelphia. Hearing her accent was for him a reminder of days gone by. She said, “What are you looking at?”
Scribner stopped twirling his mustache. Instead, he made the best bow he could. Jacob was put in mind of the pictures of penguins he had once seen in books. Scribner said, “Why madam, nothing at all. There’s no call to be salty with me, for I’ve done nothing to you. Now just look, you only just came into my establishment. Why don’t you sit and rest somewhere? No doubt that shall improve your mood.”
She considered him with an icy glare that Jacob had not seen in many years. It was a look that he associated with a cheating husband getting his comeuppance at long last. She said, “I’ll not sit down until I find the rat that I came here to find.”
Scribner hesitated to respond. Yet, as the woman did not move away from him, he said, “And who might that be, madam?”
The woman pulled a paper from somewhere. She held it up before her, though it had been folded so many times that its contents could not be discerned at a glance. She said, “His name is Jacob Renmyer. Not a worse man have I ever known. Why, do you know he’s dragged me all the way out from Kansas just so I could marry him. Of all the nerve!”
Jacob put his hand on the edge of the table while he watched Scribner look around, trying to find anything to which he could cling. He looked like a man flung overboard into the sea. He took out a handkerchief and applied it to his sweating forehead. He said, “And how did that come to pass, pray tell madam?”
She sniffed in disdain, then said, “That is my affair. Do you know where I might find this man?”
Jacob stood up. He said, “I’m Jacob Renmyer. What is this you mean about being dragged out here?”
The woman put her hands on hips and advanced upon his table. She held the paper up to his face. She said, “Why, I’m your mail order bride. Don’t you know that? Or are you simple in addition to being a cad?”
Jacob forced himself to keep his equanimity, even though he wanted to give the woman a piece of his mind. That would get him nowhere, especially if she was the bridge that he had ordered through the mail. He said, “Very well, may I see your papers please?”
She pushed them against his chest. He unfolded the pages, then read what was written there. It was a copy of the ads that he put out in the newspaper. It often happened that, in order to fill up space, newspapers from all across the country accepted content from other publications. This was the case for the Topeka Star, who had reprinted every advertisement that he remembered seeing in the Ledger
. When people did not buy up enough advertising space in that space, they stayed in business by selling their space to other newspapers. This was called boilerplate.
He said, “Very well, so you’ve answered the ad. I won’t claim to know how you got so here so quickly when the ad appeared in the paper here three days ago. You’re here, and you have proof that what you say is true. Now then, shall we get married?”
The woman stomped her foot on the floor. She said, “Mr. Renmyer, all of the temerity! First you have me board a train, then you drag me through miles of wild country dressed like this! I must look quite a sight. How do you intend to take responsibility for this, sir?”
Jacob stood where he was, unmoved. He said, “Madam, I believe you must have me mistaken for someone else. I did not, as you say, drag you anywhere. The fact is that I have been here in Sawtooth for the last year and a half. I do not know who it was that you met along the road, but I am not he.”
She blinked at him. She said, “Well consarn it, I shouldn’t have let my spectacles get broken. When I got off the train, I showed my paper around asking if anyone knew you. Of course no one did. Then a man told me that he was Jacob Renmyer himself. He said that he had come looking for me, since he had heard I might be coming.”
“Madam, that is where you were deceived. It should be highly improbable for the mail to beat the passenger train here, even presuming that you wrote a letter to anyone in Sawtooth declaring your intent. Did you do so?”
She said, “Why- why no, as a matter of fact.”
“Then you have been practiced upon. I regret to tell you this, for I know it’s not something you may desire to hear. Yet it is the truth. There are men who wait at train stations looking for unsuspecting women to take advantage of. You must have a very strong mind to have escaped your predicament.”
“Aye, and that I do. My name is Rachel O’Leary, of the Irish O’Learys. Might be you’ve heard of us.”
AFRICAN AMERICAN URBAN FICTION: BWWM ROMANCE: Billionaire Baby Daddy (Billionaire Secret Baby Pregnancy Romance) (Multicultural & Interracial Romance Short Stories) Page 90
