OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel)

by Jocks, Yvonne

  Had I ever seen sideburns like that in my life? Without laughing, anyway?

  I stepped forward and offered him my hand. "Excuse me, Major; may I have a moment of your time?"

  He stopped dead, lip curling as if I'd spit on his feet—and his hand remained at his side.

  Mine extended just a little farther, encouraging—handshake, see? You people do shake hands, don't you?

  His hand didn't move, so I dropped mine to my side as well. "I'm hoping you can assist me," I tried again.

  And he said, "What are you women doing here?"

  Belle folded her arms and narrowed her eyes, flirty like. "If you don't know, you haven't been to town lately, Major. Now are these boys off duty, or not?"

  This was bad. If I could fully place why it was bad—other than the ook factor of a teenager flirting with a man clearly in his forties—I could maybe deal with it. But as things stood I could only punt. "Shall I wait until you have a moment?" I offered hopefully.

  Major FurFace flushed, turned to the privates, and said, "Escort them off the post and make sure they do not return. Now."

  Then he turned spiffily on his heel and began to walk away.

  And I'd thought Garrison was rude?

  "Excuse me?" I called after him. The private Belle had labeled as Fitz took each of my friends by an arm and said, "Sorry 'bout this, girls. Someone let on." The one I assumed was Charlie took my elbow.

  Like hell—I'd just gotten here! I took my elbow right back and hurried after the retreating form of Major FurFace. "Major, I believe there's been some mistake. I have business here!"

  He spun smartly—damn, he was good at those spins—and said, "Not any longer you do not. Privates!"

  This time Fitz, scrambling after me, took my arm. "It would be easier if you would just go back to Dodge with the other girls, miss."

  I yanked my arm back. "Touch me again, Private, and you'll lose a hand!"

  His eyes widened and he didn't touch me again. I continued, unimpeded, to FurFace.

  "Major," I said. I was proud of myself for sounding so calm and businesslike. "My friends tell me that you are currently the man in charge. Is that right?"

  His face was turning a remarkable shade of red under those whiskers, but he at least had the decency to answer. "That is for all intents and purposes correct."

  Behave, warned my conscience, in an annoyingly familiar drawl. "Then I may be here to see you, Major. Now, if you want me to make an appointment for later, I will happily make an appointment for later. If there are some special procedures I'm supposed to follow, then please direct me to your secretary or whomever and I will happily follow those procedures. You name it, I'll do it. But I will not be thrown off base without taking care of the business I came for in the first place. I worked too d—darn hard to get here."

  There. Firm enough to appease the strong, independent woman I hoped I was, but well-enough behaved that surely even Garrison would approve.

  Major Fairchild's sideburns were beginning to quiver where they curved over his jaws. "You refuse to leave?"

  "Until I get some assistance, yes. I refuse to leave."

  He said, "Private FitzHugh, Private Crump, take these women to the stockade and hold them there."

  "You're joking," I said, my voice flat with incredulity. Belle and Dixie just groaned.

  Private Charlie, the one I hadn't threatened, touched me gently on the back to ease me ahead. "Uh, this way, ma'am."

  "You can't arrest me. I haven't done anything!"

  "That," snarled FurFace, passing red for maroon, "is where you are mistaken. Orders have been posted for over a year. The commander does not want any more of your kind at this fort for any reason. There are families here!"

  "My kind? What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Women?

  He reached purple, and it occurred to me that hell was a swear word and at the very least disrespectful. But...damn! Respect seemed to be in short supply all around, lately!

  FurFace didn't even address me. "I want them held until someone from town collects them. It's time we make our displeasure known to the businessmen who can do something about these parasites."

  "But I don't know what you're talking abou—"

  "Silence!" he roared into my face, complete with flying spittle, which really did shut me up for a moment.

  "But sir, the stockade...?" began Charlie, and the Major turned on him. I had to give Charlie kudos for not flinching like I had.

  "The stockade, Private. I do not trust them around the men, and we cannot expose the officers' families to this element. That is all!"

  "Like hell it is!" Okay, so the Boss's lesson this morning hadn't stuck. I set my heels against the pressure Charlie was applying on my back. "You can't do this. I have my rights!"

  Fairchild did another nifty spin and strode off.

  "You sonuvabitch!" I yelled after him. If we hadn't had enough of an audience, that pretty much cinched it. The whole yard fell silent. If anything, the officer's back went stiffer, but this time he kept on walking.

  Belle and Dixie were walking off with Fitz. Charlie tugged me in the same direction. "Come with me, ma'am."

  "But I haven't done anything wrong," I protested, pulling back. "Let me go, damn it! I'll leave, okay? But I haven't done—" He grabbed both my wrists, and wouldn't let go, which is when I really began to panic. My body remembered things my mind still hadn't let me know about, and part of it had to do with being restrained. I kicked him in the shin, and in only moments, three more blue-uniformed soldiers surrounded me, helping to tug. When I fought them too—kicking, twisting, struggling—they pinned my arms and legs and carried me. In retrospect, I think they were trying to be gentle; one of them could have just clubbed me senseless and been done with it, but nobody did. Still, I couldn't just let them take me like that. I wouldn't be helpless again. I wouldn't!

  Not again. Not again. Not again.

  At least, that's what I kept telling myself, while I kicked and twisted and bit, until they'd shoved the three of us into a room with the square footage of a mattress, in a tiny building that turned out to be the post stockade. Did I say shoved? Me, they threw. I landed on my hip, wrenched my knee, and hit my head on the wall. Trying to catch myself, I almost stuck my hand down a nasty-smelling hole cut into the wooden floor in the back corner.

  Ears ringing, world swimming, I stayed there on my hands and knees and stared at the dirty plank floor while the soldiers shut and locked the barred door at the front of our narrow little cell.

  I was in jail. I'd reached civilization, and in under fifteen minutes I was in jail. How did I do this?

  Dixie huffed, tossed a pretty golden curl over her shoulder and said, "Well... shit!"

  At least I wasn't the only woman with that kind of vocabulary.

  It was a remarkably barren, ugly cell. No cot. No chair. No toilet. Nothing but a grated window the size of a large book cut too high in the back wall, the barred door, and the hole.

  Correction. That was the toilet.

  "Honey, are you all right?" Dark-haired Belle's the one who kneeled beside me.

  I stared up at her, too confused, too beaten to even try speaking. Civilization was what I'd wanted for days, now. I'd worked so hard to get here! What had gone wrong?

  "Oh baby," she said, and put her arms around me—and that's all it took. All my miseries of the past week rose up in me and spilled out in an almost ultrasonic wail that slowly deepened into wordless, wracking sobs.

  I hurt, and not just from being carried and thrown. My hands were blistered from reins, and my face was sunburned. I'd been kneed in the ribs by a calf this morning, and my inner thighs still hadn't completely healed from riding without pants that first day.

  I was wearing a stupid hat and ugly shoes, and somehow I'd found myself lost on the Planet of Male Chauvinist Pigs. The Peaves men had wanted to marry me, and Seth had said I wasn't a lady, and Romero had been beaten, and Garrison had threatened to kill Patches and to wash my mouth out
with soap and was glad to be shed of me.

  I didn't know who I was. I didn't know who I'd been. I didn't know where I belonged. But it sure as fuck wasn't here! I wanted a bed. I wanted a full-body bath. I wanted a name of my own.

  Not that Belle knew any of this. She just held me and rocked me as I sobbed and made "Shhh, shhh," sounds, as if she were older than me instead of vice versa.

  Dixie called, "See what you boys did? You made her cry!"

  "We can't really keep them in there," I heard one of the soldiers in the front area say; he sounded panicked.

  "Orders," said another, less concerned. "They ain't truly under arrest. Just bein' held until Thompson comes and gets 'em."

  I couldn't cry forever. We'd been rationing water over the last four days. But I continued to whimper, my eyes closed, for a long, long time. Maybe I was pretending that Belle was someone else—my mother, my sister, my best friend, someone precious that if I just reached out a little further with my mind I could remember—

  But no, don't go there! Something awful had happened.

  No shit. It was still happening.

  When I finally I opened my eyes, Belle wasn't my mother or my best friend—she was just a nice young lady who understood on an instinctive level how badly I was hurting. She pet back my hair and helped me sit up. When I winced at the stab of pain in my knee, she winced too. Dixie sat on the floor across from us, so that her feet were by us and ours by her. She was examining her nails, casual-like, as if she were used to being in jail.

  I didn't like what that implied.

  "So what's your name, Custer?" she asked.

  Wait a minute—I knew that name! Custer. General, right? He fought Indians like I'd fought against the soldiers—we both lost —and...oh what the hell did it matter. I let that jagged piece of memory fade away like all the others. "I go by Lillabit," I said dully, rubbing my leg. "It's not my real name."

  She laughed. "Like Dixie's mine!"

  "I didn't used to be Belle, neither," admitted Belle. "But the cowboys like girls with Southern names, so..." She shrugged, then frowned, confused. "Why would you choose Lillabit?"

  And just like that the clues clicked into place—not about me, but about them—and I knew. I fought the idea for a moment. They were so young. And they were dressed so...well, so old fashioned, yes, but respectably so, with no low necklines or high sleeves or feathers. But the world-weariness with which they greeted jail, and the way the Major had reacted to their presence....

  Our presence.

  Were they...? Could they be...?

  I did not want to be right, so instead of asking the obvious question, I asked, "Who is Thompson?"

  "Our 'landlord.' We work for him at the Star Boarding House." Belle yawned. "He'll be here for us before nightfall, less'n he wants to lose good business. Might be he could collect you too."

  Not be in jail? I liked the sound of being collected, except for that one small suspicion, and I might as well face it. As a certain trail boss had told me earlier today, at this point I didn't have the luxury of like and dislike.

  "We've been arrested for prostitution, haven't we?"

  Dixie's eyes went wide. "You didn't know? Honey! We just assumed when you walked right up and talked to us like we was decent folks—"

  "Oh, don't let her tease you, Dixie," chided Belle. "She maybe had me fooled, there at the start, but she said she was on a trail drive, didn't she? And look how brassy she was with the Major. And her language. She's a working girl too."

  And actually, the term "working girl" didn't sound foreign to me at all...though I suspected I liked working woman better.

  Oh no. No no no! Surely I wasn't in such deep denial I would block out that kind of past...was I?

  All I could do was ask questions. We had the time, anyway.

  Turns out, Belle and Dixie had gone become prosti—become "working girls" as a simple business decision, since they hadn't leaned toward housecleaning and didn't have either the education or reputation to teach school. They'd wanted to be independent.

  I wanted to be independent.

  Decent folks, they explained, wouldn't give "soiled doves" like them the time of day—though Belle let the word "whore" slip, Dixie corrected her with a euphemism. Still, they didn't care for decent folks, so what did that matter?

  I'd given them the time of day, I remembered, uneasy.

  There were expensive brothels, apparently called "boardinghouses," back East—perhaps as near as St. Louis and New Orleans—which employed educated women who could hold cultured conversations with the high-class customers, along with providing the expected services. But Belle and Dixie had heard that such houses' landlords would take their clothing so that the girls couldn't even go out on the street, making it more like a prison than a job. Out West, at least they had their days to themselves, and they earned far more than domestics.

  I was from the East, from someplace with telephones, and I had soft hands that had never plucked a turkey. I was educated. I'd been found without any clothes.

  Oh. My. God.

  "Girls," interrupted the young corporal in charge of the little, two-cell stockade. "Your landlord is here."

  Belle and Dixie stood. As soon as the soldier unlocked our door, they rushed out, talking over each other. I stood more slowly, and not just because of my sore hip and my throbbing knee.

  Was I really a prostitute?

  By the time I'd limped to the doorway, Dixie and Belle and the man who'd shown up for them stood on the wooden walk outside the cramped jail, and I could see a shiny buggy behind them. The man—Thompson, their so-called landlord, which I realized now mean pimp—looked at me and said, "She's a bit long in the tooth, isn't she?" He had a nasal, northern accent. A Yankee accent.

  I tried not to take it personally. It wasn't like I was interviewing for a job, right? Even if I was a working woman, that didn't mean I couldn't find new career opportunities.

  "All I need is a ride to town," I told him. There had to be some kind of authorities in Dodge City, right? There had to be a police station, or a church group, or a hospital, or maybe a really competent marshal—someone who could help me. Anyone who could help me.

  Thompson took his time looking me up and down—long in the tooth, was I? I squared my shoulders and looked back. His long coat was clean-pressed, his boots were shiny, his hair was neatly oiled and his long, golden moustache was waxed. He was the best dressed man I'd run into yet, outside of Major FurFace. Boardinghouses must do good business.

  He gave me the creeps. But I wanted to leave.

  I really really really wanted to leave.

  I hoped I'd learned not to antagonize the natives by now. "Please," I said, my voice steady. "May I have a ride into town?"

  The private who'd brought Thompson in said, "She doesn't work for you?" He of course said it to Thompson.

  Thompson said, "She might." Then he looked at me, eyes gleeful, and finished his little knot of control: "Rides aren't free."

  And there he had me—stay in jail, or indebt myself to him. Except...suddenly, like a burst of sunlight, I remembered the bandana shoved in my pocket. Bless those sweet, sweet cowboys! "I've got money!" I offered, reaching for it in my pocket. It was there—I hadn't lost it! "Well, change, anyway. It's something."

  "It's not enough," he said, without even seeing how much I had. Which meant he wasn't after money at all. Not my money.

  He glanced over his shoulder, at the women who'd climbed into the buggy to wait for me, and he said "We'll try her out tonight; Virginia's room is empty." Then he jerked his chin at me and said, "Come along."

  I could see the sky, past him; it had a golden sort of light. I hadn't spent days in the open, grassy wilderness not to be able to read its color and slant; sunset was approaching, and fast. Lighting around here sucked. If I didn't find a way to Dodge now, I would probably spend the night here. In jail.

  But if he gave me a ride, then he would win. I no longer trusted that I could escape. I sure
couldn't trust that people would be nice. So odds were, he would win. If I had the strength to do nothing else with my wreck of a self, I wouldn't allow anyone else victimize me. Not again.

  I would victimize myself, before I'd let that happen.

  I turned around and limped back into the cell.

  I heard Thompson snarl the word, "Ingrate!" and then the thud of his footsteps on the wooden walk outside.

  Belle's voice called, "Good luck, Lillabit!"

  The corporal in the front room leaned in the cell doorway in amazement. Real security conscious, this guy. If I were a desperado I could jump him, steal his pistol...

  And do what, shoot him? He wasn't one of the men who'd thrown me in, and even they hadn't threatened my life. I didn't want to shoot him. My knee hurt. My hip hurt. I'd already tried fighting and—big surprise—I sucked at it. So I gave up. I slid down the wall, onto the filthy floor, and I just gave up.

  "Doesn't she want to go?" asked the private, and the corporal asked, "Don't you want to go?"

  "Can I go?" I didn't bother to look up, sure that he couldn't really mean it. That would mean things working out for me.

  "I could run out and catch him," offered the private. See? They hadn't meant I could go free, just that I could go with Thompson. I shook my head.

  "I'm not going with him. I don't work for him."

  The soldier looked honestly flustered. "I'm sorry, ma'am. We just assumed.... What house do you work at?"

  I looked up at the high, barred window at the back of the cell—almost nightfall.

  "Ma'am?"

  "I don't work at any boardinghouses."

  "Maybe one of the saloons—The Lady Gay?" prompted the corporal, obviously not believing me. "The Green Front?" He glanced nervously over his shoulder, at where the private shrugged, unable to contribute. "The Commie-Cue Theater?"

  "I don't work in town," I insisted, bothered by how thin and scared my voice came out. "I tried to tell your Major; I'm new here. I'm not like those other women. I'm not a hooker." Not now, anyway. "So what happens when nobody comes for me?"

  "Now ma'am, surely somebody will come! It doesn't have to be your employer," insisted the corporal. "Do you have a father? A brother? A husband?"