Williamson, Penelope

by The Outsider

  No, Lucas thought. If there is a God, He will have a care for a woman like Rachel Yoder. He will save her from the powers of darkness and a man like you. If there is a God... Ah, but if there were a God, He would have saved Lucas Henry's wife from Lucas Henry, wouldn't He?

  The thought was so painful it was like a sliver of glass in the eye. The sun beat down fiercely, and he could feel the sweat running off him. He smelled himself, smelled the whiskey that had been flowing through his veins for almost thirty years, and almost choked on his own disgust. Yet still, he wanted a drink.

  "So, isn't it too Christly hot a day to be clipping woollies?" he said.

  Cain's gaze swept over the pastures and the sheep. "I'm beginning to think we are all out of our minds." He sounded almost happy, and he had said "we." He had counted himself as one of them. Lucas wondered if he knew he'd done it.

  "How's the arm holding up?" Lucas said.

  Cain stretched out his right arm, his hand curling into a loose fist. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow. The exertion of shearing had made his veins stand out like slender ropes and sheened his muscular flesh with sweat.

  "You did a fine job of setting the bone, Doc. It feels no different than the other one. They're both about as weak as newborn lambs."

  "Uh, huh." Lucas took hold of Cain's wrist, turning it over. "And your hand's nothing but one big broken and bleeding blister. All in all you're in prime condition to perform your next killing."

  Cain's smile was easy, but a painful light flared behind his eyes. "You wouldn't happen to have some witch hazel ointment in that doctor's bag of yours?"

  Lucas went to his phaeton, not so much for the sake of Cain's blistered hand as for the opportunity to nip at the flask of Rose Bud he always carried in his medical bag. But as he lifted the flask to his mouth, his own words echoed in his head: All in all you're in prime condition to perform your next killing.

  He'd heard the tale told so often, he might as well have been there. How Johnny Cain had got the drop on the Hunters' stock inspector, that day in the Gilded Cage saloon, through the judicious use of a sarsaparilla bottle. And how Cain had then been distracted by the Plain woman and almost let the hired gun get the drop on him.

  Almost. Woodrow Wharton's body had lain on view in his coffin in the bay window of Tulle's Mercantile with a sign that said he was the twenty-ninth man shot and killed by the pistoleer Johnny Cain. Lucas had prepared the body. The man had been clutching tenaciously to his cocked revolver even in death—in the medical textbooks it was called a cadaveric spasm—and Lucas had left the gun there in the man's hand. He thought it was a nice touch of irony, not that anyone in town was likely to appreciate irony.

  Woodrow Wharton had lain in state in the bay window of Tulle's Mercantile for only an hour or two, though. After a while the flies and the stink got to be too much, even by Montana standards.

  And now they said Fergus Hunter had already hired himself a new "stock inspector."

  As Lucas started back with his medical bag, he saw that Cain had moved into the narrow shade cast by the barn and taken off his hat to wipe the sweat from his face. The wind blew his hair into his eyes. It was as long and ragged as any Plain man's.

  Lucas set his bag on an upturned nail keg, found the witch hazel cream, and rubbed it into Cain's blistered palm.

  As he gripped the man's wrist, he could feel that the pulse was fast, too fast.

  Lucas looked up to find that Cain's eyes were riveted on Rachel. She and a handful of other Plain women were passing out sandwiches to the men, filling up tin coffee mugs from a big blue speckled pot. The wind lifted a stray lock of her dark red hair and laid it across her cheek. Absently she coiled it and tucked it back beneath her prayer cap.

  As if he sensed that he was being watched, Cain replaced his hat, tilting it low. But his words startled Lucas, for they ran so close to his own thoughts. "I don't suppose you believe a man can find his God and himself through a woman?"

  "Plenty have tried, but it's probably about as likely as finding God and yourself in the bottom of a bottle of Rose Bud," Lucas said. He looked up at the heat-hazed sky. "I was married once myself, for a time. She was like a butterfly, my wife. Flitting from flower to flower, drinking of life. Wild and fragile, and so beautiful, I thought..."

  He had thought he would do anything, give everything for his wife. But in the end he hadn't been able to do the one thing that would have saved her, saved them both. He hadn't been able to change what he was.

  "I thought I loved her so much that she could be my heaven on earth. But then one day my beautiful little butterfly of a wife..." He stopped.

  "She flew away?" Cain said.

  Lucas's mouth twisted into a hard and painful smile. "Oh no, she loved me far too much to leave me. So I killed her instead."

  If he had been either drunker or more sober, he would have laughed at the absurd high drama of it all. What was Can supposed to do in the face of that little disclosure? Ask for all the lurid details? Offer condolences along the lines of: I'm so sorry to hear about your wife, and to think you were the one to do her in.

  What he did do was look carefully away from Lucas's face and after a moment say, "I'll help you change that wheel now, if you like."

  Lucas heard, as if from a long way away, the rattle of wheels over the long bridge that spanned the creek. He turned and saw a little black shay with green trim and fringed cushions approaching. A voice, trilling as a meadowlark, sang out over the wind. "Luc, oh Luc! Gwendolene's baby is a-comin', and she's fit to bust a gut!"

  Lucas did laugh then, although even he could hear what a terrible sound it was. "Spare your poor blistered hand, Mr. Cain," he said. "I see my salvation coming in the form of a sweet little tart named Marilee."

  The shay lurched and bucked over the ruts in the sun-baked road. The wind-whipped dust stuck to Marilee's cheeks and stung her eyes. She had to clamp her lips tight against the bitter taste of it.

  She slid a glance over to the man sitting next to her. There was a tightness around Lucas Henry's mouth too, and a bleakness in his eyes. But then he'd probably been no more welcome at that Plain farm than her.

  She might not have even recognized Moses Weaver in the group of men with their drab clothes and big hats if he hadn't started toward her, for she'd never seen him dressed Plain before. But then an older man had said something sharp to him in that language they spoke. Mose's face had gone white, and he turned and walked away without a word of welcome—walked away and left her with a taste in her mouth as bitter as any dust the wind could whip up.

  It wasn't as if she'd had any intention in the first place of going up to him and saying howdy, let alone of trying to cozy up to his family and make herself to home. He knew what she was, and so did she. But the way he'd looked at her, in that instant before he'd turned his back...

  Of course the memory of the last time they were together was probably still as bitter for him as it was for her. Maybe he'd felt ashamed that he hadn't been able to stop what had happened, that he'd done nothing to make up for it since then. Well, she hardly expected a boy like him to go out and get himself shot defending her honor, especially when she hadn't any honor to defend in the first place. She didn't blame him for that, but he probably blamed himself, she guessed.

  The wind slapped at the road, lifting another cloud of dust into the air. The shay's iron tires crunched over the hard ground. She slanted another look at the man sitting silent beside her. She didn't care about that Moses Weaver anyway. Luc was the one she was after.

  She collected the reins some, slowing down so that she could talk to him over the rattle. "It's lucky, I guess, that I came after you when I did, what with your busted wheel and all, and Gwendolene's baby on the way. Imagine, Luc, two babies comin' on the same day. Next thing you know folk'll start complainin' about the Miawa gettin' crowded."

  She was pleased to see his mouth curve a little beneath the thick droop of his mustache. "We do seem to be having an epidemic of
squalling brats lately," he said. "But you shouldn't be gallivanting about. You'll pull your stitches."

  "I'm only a little sore, Luc," she assured him. She was pleased, though, that he cared enough to mention it.

  He fell silent again after that. Marilee thought up a dozen things to say that might start a conversation, but none of them made it past the end of her tongue. She was used to a mean Luc and a charming Luc, but this brooding Luc was a new one on her.

  They climbed the last rise before town, where a big box elder reached for the sky and the fingerboard pointed the way down the road. She pulled off into the leafy shade, wrapped the reins around the brake handle, and folded her hands over her trembly, jumpy stomach.

  Luc turned slightly on the shay's cushiony seat, making the leather squeak. When his eyes met hers, Marilee's stomach flipped right over.

  "Am I to assume," he said, "since we suddenly seem to be squatting here like a vulture on a fence post, that the arrival of Gwendolene's squalling brat is hardly imminent?"

  Marilee flapped her hand like a palmetto fan. The man did have a way of talking fancy, using twenty notable words when three ordinary ones would have done the job. "Lord, that babe'll be hours yet in comin'. Gwendolene started yowlin' soon as she felt the first little pang, and Mother Jugs sent me to fetch you just to shut her up."

  They sat in more silence after that, taking in the view. A hawk hung still like a snagged kite in the heat-flattened sky. Dust tarnished the rolling grassland. The sage was blooming itself dizzy, though, the yellow blooms giving their tangy turpentine scent up to the wind.

  Luc reached inside his coat and pulled out a screw-top silver pocket flask. Showing off his fine Virginia manners, he offered it to her first. When she waved it away, he cocked a brow at her, and so she took it after all.

  The whiskey burned a raw path down her throat. It didn't do much to settle her jumpy stomach. She gave the flask back over to him, smearing the wetness off her lips with the back of her hand.

  "How did you know where to find me, anyway?" he said.

  "Oh!" The word gusted out of her, lifting her breasts. "I went out to the Triple Bar to fetch you, but they said you'd already headed back to town. So I was following along after, when I saw your buggy parked in those Plain People's farmyard."

  Back they fell into silence again. Marilee had splashed honeysuckle water all over herself before she left the house, but she could feel sweat pooling now between her breasts. Because she knew she would be seeing Luc, she had put on one of her prettiest dresses, a pale green linen cambric with lace flounces and a row of jade green ribbons down the front. In an effort to appear more modest, she'd pushed a white lace tucker into the bodice.

  Jugs had meanly offered to lend her a big old poke bonnet to cover up her ruined hair, saying she looked like a dead rat the day after the cats had been at it. Instead, Marilee had chosen a delicate little white linen hat with a yellow primrose posy on its stiffened brim. She wasn't going to go around acting shamed just because she had been shorn like a sheep. Of course for all the notice Luc as usual had taken of her, she might as well have stepped out wearing a tow sack. She sighed.

  Luc passed the flask over to her. "There sure was a world of sorrow in that sigh. Have some more whiskey, guaranteed to anesthetize the pain of heartbreak."

  She didn't take the flask this time, but looked up at him instead. "I am indeed mighty blue, Luc."

  "Poor sweet Marilee." He gave her knee a light squeeze. Luc being tender and sweet even when he was trying not to be. "The heart just takes longer to heal than the body sometimes."

  She shook her head, jarring loose a single tear that ran down her cheek. "It's more than that. I don't think I can be an upstairs girl no more, and I'm scared. 'Cause what other life is there for me?"

  She might have started out to work her beguiling ways on Luc, but suddenly the truth of what she'd said hit her. There was no other life for her. She was a strumpet, and she might as well have had a big S branded into her forehead, because to the world she was always going to be a strumpet.

  "You could marry yourself a cowboy," Luc was saying. "I'm sure more than a few of your regular callers are already halfway in love with you."

  "All men love their chippies a little bit. It ain't the same."

  He seemed to think seriously about that a moment, then he said, "Yes, I suppose all men do love their chippies a little, and no, it isn't the same. But still, I should think if you put your mind to it..." He leaned back to regard her out of whiskey-brightened eyes. "Well, perhaps not your mind. One should, after all, lead with one's strong suit. With those bosom-lifting sighs and dewy eyes of yours, you could probably trap yourself a poor innocent like that Moses Weaver in no time."

  "Hunh, a Plain boy! He won't ever, and you know it. And what do you always have to be talkin' so mean for anyway, Luc Henry? My heart might be the only part of me I ain't sold yet, but even a whore's got to draw the line somewheres. I don't want to be married to just any-old-body. I want to be in love."

  That last word had come out on a wail of feeling, feelings she hadn't meant to give away yet. Lord, she had to be careful of letting her tongue get ahead of itself. Luc had already stiffened all up like wet leather left in the sun, as if he expected what was coming and was bracing himself for it.

  "If you want love," he said, "get yourself a puppy."

  She stared at him. He looked so fine in his gentleman's suit and clean white shirt with its starched linen collar. The other men she knew were simple in their natures, mostly just a collection of appetites. But there were complexities to Doctor Lucas Henry that she just couldn't seem to puzzle out. He had gentle hands, and a tongue on him that could slice a girl's heart into ribbons. He was wealthy and educated, but he drank too much sometimes and consorted with chippies. He seemed to despise most people, and that she could surely understand. But she wondered what he had ever done to make him despise himself so much.

  "A cowboy did give me a puppy once," she said sadly. "Mother Jugs had her Chinaman drown it 'cause it woke her up come mornin's, yippin'."

  Actually this had really happened to one of the other girls, but she'd counted on the tale to make him feel bad, and she could see that it did. Poor Luc. He worked so hard at being the tough, mean man, and underneath his heart was pure mush.

  She decided to try another story on him, this one true. "You men don't like to think about it, but most of us upstairs girls don't start out our lives in a place like the Red House. I had a home, Luc, and a family. A mother and three baby sisters and two big brothers. And a daddy... Why, when I was little, my daddy used to love me up so. He'd give me pretty things like hair ribbons, and once he gave me a pair of pantalets that had crocheted lace around the ankles, and he never beat me like he did my mother. He'd have himself a snootful of his corn squeezin's sometimes, you see, and then he'd let go of his temper and it would wind up connectin' with my mother's face. She was a pretty woman, was my mother, when she was younger."

  She hadn't meant to get into that particular territory, and for a moment the memories were so sharp they took her breath away. She had watched her mother's face be shaped into misery and ugliness over the years by her father's fists, yet it was her mother she'd ended up hating the most; for letting him do it, for making him do it....

  "But I'd barely started growin' tits," she went on in a rush, "when my daddy and my brothers started fightin' over which of them was goin' to use me which night. So you can bet I lit out of there as soon as I could, and the first bawdy house I come across I moved right in. I figured if I was gonna get poked every night I might as well be gettin' paid for it. It's just that since then I've had me more men than a chicken's got lice, and I'm feelin' tired, Luc, tired and old and ugly. Then I remember back to when I was a little girl and I think I might have had me some dreams once. Some dreams and some hope."

  He had been leaning over, studying the hands he had clasped between his spread knees, but now he raised his eyes to hers. "I've noticed how old
and ugly you're looking," he said with a teasing smile that held just a wisp of sadness at its edges. "I doubt even a horsefly would look at you twice." He reached up and rubbed his thumb under her chin. "Just look at this. Flapping like a turkey's wattle."

  The laugh that came out of her didn't sound like herself at all. She'd done it again, started out to beguile him and wound up dealing herself a roundhouse punch with the truth. Sometimes she did feel old and ugly, and so deathly tired and full of misery that she wondered if there was any getting over it.

  "Luc? Will you prove to me that I'm not old and ugly yet? Will you kiss me?"

  He went utterly still, and she could have sworn he was going to tell her that he didn't kiss whores. She held herself ready for it, the way her mother had waited mute and dead-eyed for her daddy's fist.

  But then his face softened, and a tenderness came into his eyes. He leaned into her, tilting his head, and his mouth came down onto hers. His lips were warm, his mustache gently tickling. He kissed her with such sweetness it was almost unbearable. She closed her eyes and trembled.

  He touched her nowhere else, just with his mouth, lips pressing against lips. And when he pulled away he left her lips feeling naked, and lonely. She looked up at him through eyes blurred by real tears. She figured she probably wore an expression of pained love on her face, but she couldn't have held it back any more than she could have held back her next breath.

  He looked away from her, out into the prairie. She wanted to touch him, but she didn't dare.

  "Luc? What I was only goin' to say was that—"

  "I won't ever marry you, girl, so you'd better put mat thought right out of your head, right now."

  She tried to breathe, but her throat hurt too much. "I never said... I was only... Is it because I'm a chippy?"

  A ragged laugh tore out of him. "No, sweet Marilee. It's because I am a drunk."

  Her breath gusted out of her with such force it left her feeling dizzy. "Well, sure you imbibe a bit too much on occasion, but—"