Romance: The Campus Player: A College Romance

by Caroline Lake

  “I know you better than they do, anyway,” Solomon said quietly, picking his nails with his small knife. “I know that you’re not this – this – temping sort of woman you pretend to be.”

  “Ha!” Alma sank down next to him in the hay. “A temptress, you mean. Oh, Solomon, I am a temptress. Just look at you. Instead of resting for your early rise tomorrow, here you are, in the hay with me. Why are you here, if I have not tempted you?”

  “I am here because I want to be here.”

  “Ha! Men never know what they want. They think they want something and then, magically, they want something different. You’ll discard me soon. Or else they want unnatural things, like Father, and they force the women around them to adapt. Do you imagine I was born this way, Solomon?” She took his hand, ran her thumb along the ridges, the calloused fingertips. “Do you imagine I was born with a bonfire in my belly? I was quiet, meek, womanly, once.”

  “I can’t imagine that,” Solomon said, squeezing her hand. “If your fire disappeared I think I’d be mighty scared.”

  “So would I, now,” Alma said. “But it wasn’t always like that.”

  She took a deep breath and went on: “When I was younger my father tortured me. I tried to think of different words to describe it for a long time, but it was torture, Solomon. Rape, if you insist on being explicit. For a long time, I mean . . . for a hellishly long time. Day after day, and my mother knew, and she did nothing. Once, my mother tried to kill me with a broom handle. Out of jealousy, I think. She was an ugly woman. I ran away, and ran and ran, and seduced and yes – once – I killed a man, a man who tried to rape me. He was on top of me and fumbling at his britches and instead of just letting it happen I reached and I found a bottle and I smashed it on his head and he fell and I hit him over and over and he bled and he died.” She breathed through her teeth. “I met his wife, you know, and she thanked me. Thanked me! And now I am here. My name is Rebecca Hardy, but I have had many names since then. Today I am Alma.”

  She knew she was ranting. She had no clue why she told Solomon. She thought he could be trusted, but she had thought the same before only to be betrayed. Something warm and wet was on her cheeks. She lifted her hand, brushed away tears. “Say something,” she urged.

  Solomon kissed her on the lips. When they moved away from each other, he smiled softly. “Do you imagine this changes anything, Alma, Rebecca?” His smile grew wider. “I killed a man once, too. A white man who called me nigger and tried to make me shine his shoe. Out on the road, in the middle of nowhere, this man thought it was a good idea to stop and ask me to shine his boot. And when I said no he fought me—and I won.”

  “Here we are, then, just two devils.”

  “Here we are,” Solomon agreed.

  “If I win, Solomon, I’m taking you with me.”

  He nodded, and kissed her again.

  Chapter 8

  They had given Alma her own ‘office’ on the lower level of the building, at the back, in a room that smelled suspiciously of whisky.

  Feeling like a spare part, she looked at the piles and piles of documents on the table before her. The Silver King Mining Corporation was woefully disorganized. Alma could not find any kind of order in the documents. They had just been thrown together, into a cupboard, ‘to be dealt with later’. Now, ‘later’ had come. For the first half of the morning Alma simply looked at them, fidgeted with her fingers, and wondered how in God’s name she would bring order to them. Wallace, she knew, was out there right now. Roach, she also knew, poor girl, was in the stables. And Alma was here, useless.

  There was no reason for her to actually sort through the documents. This was, after all, just busy work. Nobody would care whether or not she did it. But there was something about their disorder that bothered her. How could rich men be so sloppy? she thought. How can they be allowed to be rich when this is how they treat their business?

  She found she was gripping the edge of the desk, her fingernails digging into the wood. She started to think something along the lines of bad people get everything, whilst good people only suffer . . . but then reminded herself: I’m a bad person, and I’ve suffered plenty.

  She sighed. Head down, she got on with the work.

  * * *

  A few hours later, Wallace marched into her office. He was grinning from ear to ear and when he entered, he stood over the desk and turned his grin at her. It was a paternal grin, a grin that said: How cute. Look how hard she is working for me! Alma plastered a smile onto her face and turned it up at him, like a sword riposting his smile. “Hello,” she said. “How was the ride?”

  “Oh, good,” Wallace said. “Regular. The mines are operating as expected. The men – I have to say, if you will excuse me – seemed relieved at your absence.”

  Insults, yes, how I have missed you. Kind face, kind face. Her smile did not falter. “I suppose it can be jarring for them, to be overseen by a woman.”

  “Yes, yes.” He waved a hand at the documents. “How is this coming along? We businessmen hate this sort of thing, you know. We like the nature, and the struggle, not the paperwork. Just looking at it makes my eyes ache!”

  “You are so right,” Alma said. “It is woman’s work, without a doubt.” Sometimes, the things she said were so opposite to what she felt she thought she might laugh aloud.

  Wallace nodded like this was an absolute fact, which, for him, it was. “You must be hungry. Let’s go for dinner.”

  Alma followed him to Beryl’s where, as another cosmic joke, Solomon served them. He kept his eyes averted from Alma. Alma had to clamp her hand on her knee, lest she reach and touch his chin and tell him that yes, he could look at her; he could more than look at her. Wallace referred to Solomon as boy, though Solomon and he were around the same age, and snapped his fingers at him when he didn’t hurry with the food and drinks. Alma could have kicked him in the groin.

  “Finally!” Wallace exclaimed, when their food was brought out.

  He shoveled his food down, bits of it sticking in his beard, and chugged his ale. Alma found herself becoming more and more repulsed by this man: this man with whom she had shared perfectly fine sex. But she could not let her repulsion affect her in any way. She had to be as brainless, as automated, as a train, steaming onward despite whatever lay at her sides. She smiled widely when he burped. Oh, how charming, her face said. What a lovely burp.

  * * *

  She and Wallace emerged from her hotel room, Alma wondering how she could still enjoy their rutting even when the man did not attract her any longer, Wallace adjusting his britches.

  After he left, Alma sat in the bar. There were a few miners who drank too much and would regret it tomorrow, whores who moved between tables, and Beryl and Solomon. Beryl came over to her and they chatted for a while about this and that, mostly about Beryl’s bad knee, about which the woman could talk for hours if necessary. Solomon cast her glances every so often which Alma tried and failed to decipher. Somehow she thought they wouldn’t be meeting in the stables tonight.

  Then somebody tapped her shoulder. Alma turned and saw Elise, serpentine tongue flickering over an almost toothless mouth. “Yes?” Alma said.

  “Have you seen the night’s sky?” Elise said, all but winking.

  “No, is it beautiful?”

  “It is,” Elise said. “Come with me. We’ll look at it together.”

  Under this pretense they left the bar and went out into the warm night air. They walked to the edge of the town, near the closed general store, down an alley where nobody could see them. They had to walk slowly because Elise limped and wobbled with each step. Finally, they came to the alleyway, Elise panting so hard Alma wondered how she performed her duties for DeBell, let alone extracted information from him.

  “You have something for me?” Alma said.

  Elise’s lips twisted into a gummy grin. “Oh, I have something,” she said. Her eyes seemed to shimmer in the darkness. “I have something sweet and ripe, I do. Let me tell you. So, we
had just finished, and I was in his arms. Sometimes he likes to hold me, you know,” she added, proudly. “I got to talking about my past, this and that, my home, what I did before the war – before you were born, I reckon – with the aim of drawing him out. I talked about my first love. And he did the same.”

  Alma gestured go on with her hand.

  Elise nodded, rubbed her hands together. “He told me about his first love. Her name was Bethany Hanford, she was from New York, where he met her in ’71. He spoke for a long time – an awful long time – about how they had fallen in love and had lain together and had planned to marry, but this woman, this Bethany, liked other men, too. She had been with many other men, even when she and DeBell were together. DeBell found out, you see. He strangled the girl to death.”

  “He told you this?” Alma said uncertainly.

  “With a stern warning.” Elise nodded. “‘If you even tell anybody about this, I will do the same to you.’ I acted all scared, shivering, and he must have believed me.”

  “That’s very interesting,” Alma said. “But how exactly am I supposed to use that? If he’s gotten away with it for so long, I highly doubt that—” Then the idea hit her. It was cruel, insane, and quite brilliant. “Wait,” she said. “Elise, here is what I want you to do. I want you to found out as much about their time together as you can. Where they went, what they ate, what she wore . . . all of it. Details, Elise. That’s what I need. Details, my good woman!”

  * * *

  When she returned to the bar, it was empty apart from Beryl and Solomon. Alma took a seat at the bar and waited for Beryl to go to bed. Beryl knew what was happening between Solomon and Alma – Alma was sure of that – but so far she had not said anything. Her eyes said: I don’t agree with this, but it’s not my business. But Alma was aware that one day her eyes could change to: It’s my business now. This was perhaps reckless of Alma but she could not stop herself. Solomon was too attractive and interesting for her to ignore.

  When they were alone, Alma approached him. “Solomon,” she whispered.

  “‘Boy’, that’s what he calls me,” Solomon muttered under his breath. “‘Boy’, like I am some kind of dog. The problem is, people around here have never heard of Lincoln. That’s the problem. Don’t they know all that was supposed to have ended a long time ago? I thought it was over and here he comes and calls me ‘boy’ like them men called my Father ‘boy’ even though he was seventy years old, older than any of them.”

  “Solomon,” Alma said, and placed her hand on his shoulder. It was hot. His rage and indignation seared into his skin.

  “‘Boy’,” he laughed. “A man walks in with the woman I – I . . . and he calls me ‘boy’ and I have to serve him his supper and watch him drool all over the woman and after that I have to watch them go up those stairs together and make no mistake, I know what’s happening up there.”

  Alma squeezed his shoulder and tried to turn him, but he wouldn’t be turned. He kept on muttering, raging quietly, and eventually Alma gave up and went upstairs to her room.

  Her mind whirred. Sleep eluded her.

  She thought about Solomon and his pain and humiliation, and something she rarely felt struck her so hard it was like a knife sinking into her flesh: shame. But there were other concerns, too, like DeBell and his dirty little secret. She had a plan for that, oh yes, but she needed details. She needed more – and more and more – to make her plan believable. And then there was Bill, who she still had to topple. Considering his substantial size, that would be a difficult task indeed.

  Chapter 9

  Sitting in the office, dusty beams of sunlight tempting her with the outdoors, Alma made a serious start on the documents. She would impress Wallace with her ability to sort, catalogue, and organize. Never mind that sorting, cataloging, and organizing had never been her forte. Alma was a quick learner. First she arranged them chronologically. It became clear that the men had not even bothered to do that much. She imagined Bill Gaston’s belly knocking over piles of paper and then hastily telling an employee to put them back together, who did it, but who did not care if they were in order.

  The records themselves were sometimes scribbled in such small handwriting that she had to squint to see them. But slowly – after about a month – she began to see a pattern. Sitting in that forgotten room, something slowly began to become clear to her. Bill Gaston, here and there, was stealing from DeBell and the Savilles. The fat man was much slyer than he seemed. He would cheat them on inconsequential things, like shipping costs, which DeBell and Saville senior had clearly not paid attention to. But over the years it had added up to a sizable sum. Alma knew Wallace well enough to know that he would be outraged.

  But as she went through the records, she took out pages that incriminated Gaston and kept them for herself in a folder she found in the office, tucking the folder in her trousers every day and walking – bow-legged – back to the hotel before Wallace returned. By the end of the month she had organized the records and had stored every incriminating page in her hotel room, under her mattress with her wages.

  She had the ammunition for Bill Gaston now. The only thing she had to decide was how and when she would use it.

  * * *

  Despite the progress she had made with Gaston, there was a hole in Alma’s life. Solomon had stopped meeting with her in the stables. Alma and Solomon had met so regularly that Alma had started to take it for granted that she could unload on him at the end of each day, that she did not have to hold the weight of her schemes alone. It was more than that, though. She missed the way he smelt after a long day of work and his rough hands on her body and his surprisingly soft lips on her cheek and neck. She missed the sound of his breath and the way it tickled her skin. She had never missed a man before – had never dream she was capable of missing a man – but she missed Solomon.

  Seeing him every day was the worst part. He cleaned the tables, poured the drinks, carried the food, all in the same building as Alma. Sometimes, at night, she would wake up to a creaking noise and assume it was Solomon creeping into her bedroom, but then she would hear a whore grunt and would mutter, “Damn it,” before rolling over and trying to get back to sleep.

  Once, she tried to talk to him. It was late at night, almost early morning, and he had fallen asleep at the bar, his head resting against the wood. He looked so peaceful when he slept, his lips curled into a small smile. She watched him for a long time – she didn’t know how long – and he must’ve sensed something in his dreams. Perhaps he had been dreaming of a wide open field, stretching to the horizon. Perhaps he had been dreaming of complete freedom. And then Alma’s face had entered his dream. His small smile vanished; his eyes opened.

  The look he gave her could have punctured her stone-clad heart: could have penetrated through years and years of hardening. It was a look loving and resentful, hateful and beckoning, soft and hard. It was unlike any expression she had seen or would ever see again. “You,” he whispered.

  “Me,” Alma said, the first words they had spoken to each other for a month. She floundered, then, because she had not planned what she was going to say. Alma Abrams, Grand Planner, Schemer of Everything, had neglected to plan or scheme. She watched him, waited for words to come, and when they didn’t she reached out her hand and tried to place it upon his, which rested on the bar.

  He moved his hand away. “Why do you do that?” he said. “Why do you try and be close to me? I respect you too much, Alma, to call you names. But I will say this. Why do you want me when you have so many others?”

  “I do not have anybody else,” she insisted, removing her hand from the bar. “I do not have them and they do not have me. I have a plan, Solomon, and I have trusted you enough to tell you that—”

  “I never asked for that trust!” Solomon growled, jumping from his seat. He paced up and down in front of her. “I never asked to enter your trust, did I? If I did, I am sorry for it, but I cannot remember a time I said, ‘Alma, please, tell me your secrets.
’ I never planned to feel this way about a woman, any woman, especially a white woman.” He stopped pacing, stared at her with his shoulders wide. “What do you want from me, Alma? Please, tell me that. I have nothing. Look.” He showed her the palms of his hands, which were calloused from working his entire life. “Go back to England. Find a lord or a duke or whatever they are called; find a man in a fine jacket and fine trousers and fine shoes who has never had to wake before sunrise to lift an axe. Find a place far away from here with trees and flowers and . . . gardens. I have nothing to offer you.”

  “You are wrong,” Alma croaked, real emotion cracking her voice, real tears sliding down her cheeks. “You are the only person in this town who can offer me anything real. One day, Solomon, you will see that.”

  She did not wait for his reply. It would be too painful if he rebuked her. Instead, she pushed past him, into the street, and into the dark.

  She walked until her legs ached, and then slumped down in the sand. She emptied her mind, completely emptied it, like a jug of dirty water pouring down a drain. Part of her wished she could push Solomon away, could end her affection for him, but he was the only man in a long, long time who had showed her aught but lust or hatred or both. Even when he was angry with her, at least it was real. At least it wasn’t make-believe.

  But she had to stay focused. Alma Abrams, Rebecca Hardy, Charlotte Hart, Isabella Stock—whoever she was, she had to stay focused. She had fought her entire life. She would keep fighting.

  She picked up a bunch of sand and let it trickled through her fingers. This would be hers. The whole thing would be hers.