“Damn it!” He placed the bolt of cloth on a shelf then turned to see Mildred behind him. The bowtie tightened around his neck.
“Apologies, Mildred. Didn’t see you there. How can I help you?”
Gus had a kind face that suited him well. He was a pudgy man who wore circular glasses that were always slipping down his nose, and when he talked his stubby little finger would constantly have to readjust them to get the blur to disappear. He liked his work and catering to people in town and knew no enemies, for he went out of his way to be amicable. Whereas Satchel’s telegraph office brought gossip into it freely, Gus’s store rarely harbored more than a few sentences passed along from customers to him. He tended to curb things from getting out of hand, with rare exceptions (of which this day was one), and he was frazzled by all the commotion. But, like Mildred, it was his habit to keep his insides to himself.
Mildred took in the mess splattered over the floor. “Take a minute to clean that up so you don’t go and hurt yourself. I’ll just take a look around.” She was glad she had a minute to catch her breath, to distract her attention from how she was feeling. She went to the display of canned goods, spices, and coffee. She took hold of a canister of tea, then walked over to take a look at the new crockery, pots and pans Gus must have received since her last visit to town.
A crowd began to gather around the noticeboard at the end of the aisle where Gus posted the latest news, including telegrams, for the town to read. When Mildred moved into range she heard the same commotion going on, mainly women chattering, that she had heard at the telegraph office just a short while before. She quickly moved back to where Gus was after he had all but cleaned up. She put the canister of tea and several other items she had chosen from the shelves down on the counter.
“I think I got it all now. Thanks for your patience, Mildred.” Gus looked at her and then to the crowd. “That poor guy met a bad lot.”
Mildred drew in a slow breath through her nostrils, noting what she thought was a tone of sympathy in Gus’s voice.
“Will this be all for you, Mildred?”
“Yes.” She hesitated a moment then decided to comment on why she came in.
“That horse medicine you ordered, the wrong one arrived.”
“Oh no, I’m sorry, Mildred. I don’t know how that could have happened.”
The din of the crowd rose. “If that guy would’ve been churchgoing, he wouldn’t have sunk to such evil!”
“Perversion!”
“It’s a mockery of God. I tell you it’s a slap in the face of the Lord.”
Gus noticed Mildred’s distraction. “They’ll be going at it for weeks over this one.” He was trying to say he was sorry that there wasn’t much he could do about it and wished she didn’t have to hear it.
Although Gus smiled at Mildred, it did nothing to calm the feeling of nausea rising in her belly. She paid for the items she’d gathered and made her way out of the store. The crowd’s words rang in her mind: churchgoing…violating the Lord…church…along with surfacing images of her beloved deceased father Max. Even though she never understood or questioned the wisdom of her father’s aversion to going to church, Mildred had worshiped him. Her mother Sadie had spent years pleading with her husband to go until, with utter hopelessness, she gave up and let him be. Although Mildred never cared for attending church, she did continue her mother’s tradition of making generous annual contributions. Josie rumored that it must be hush money. While Max was alive there were whispers around town because he did not attend but no one dared say as much to his face. After his and Sadie’s death, Josie Purdue stopped being careful with her talk, persecuting Mildred at every opportunity. While Mildred was generous in helping people financially when need arose, it did not stop them from joining Josie in the shunning, ridicule, and mean-spirited gossip. No one dare butt up against Josie’s forceful personality to gain an understanding of why she had such a strong distaste for Mildred, which ran deeper than jealousy, nor did they chance her wrath by disagreeing.
As she left, Mildred noted that Josie was now at the public notice-board loudly voicing her opinion. “Homosexuality is officially illegal. We didn’t need England to tell us it’s a vile criminal act! Shooting is too good for him.”
Even though Mildred knew Josie’s comment wasn’t directed at her, unlike earlier times when Josie accused her of being sinful for not attending church, she felt the sting. She had never worried about an escalation to something dangerous before, but after all she’d heard this morning, she was no longer sure. She knew Josie could no longer be ignored. As she rode back to her place soaked in sweat from worry, she tried to think of what she could do were things to get out of hand. When she passed the Whitmore’s ranch, a couple of miles from her place, she had an idea. By the time she arrived home, it had percolated into a plan she was sure would work. It took her a couple of hours to convince Edra.
“Charity creates a multitude of sins.” OSCAR WILDE
2
While the town was still abuzz with the Wilde commotion, a singular room in Red River Pass was silent—a quiet that was interrupted by deep, growling, irregular breathing coming from Emma Milpass. She lay in a semi-comatose state, just days from death’s door. Her husband Charley refused to accept the fact that Emma’s cancer had spread to her brain. She would never return to answer his prayers. And he was not about to let her go.
Charley sat vigil at Emma’s bedside, neglecting to bathe or feed himself. He washed away the sweat from her forehead and changed the rag of a diaper she wore even though it was barely soiled from the lack of fluids in her body. She was barely recognizable.
Just a few months back, they had been quite the couple, the lookers, he with his rugged handsome tanned face, blondish hair turning gray, angular nose and brown penetrating eyes, and she a natural beauty all her life. He was so worn from grief and worry he looked twice his age. He couldn’t bear to watch her physical deterioration, part by part, each change representing a loss of the love of his life. It started back last winter when he noticed a yellow tinge in her eyes. It wasn’t so much that he saw this change but how it made him feel, scared inside, that no matter how hard he tried to pretend it was nothing, deep down he knew differently. Week by week, what he never wanted to live through, his worst fears were reinforced as the changes screamed at him, your wife is dying.
While he tended to her every need, he neglected his own, forcing his brother-in-law Frank Whitmore to rally the town to help. “He needs us to go feed him,” Frank told his wife Helene. “Town folk are starting to complain that body of his smells something awful. This has to stop or he’ll be a mess on our hands when Emma’s time comes.” That was forty-eight hours before the Wilde telegram hit the town, shifting gossip away from Charley. Frank assembled close friends to bring meals and try to get Charley to take a break to bathe. The day after the Wilde news broke, Mildred offered to help. By joining in with the efforts to assist Charley, she wanted to create an impression of interest in him to divert any suspicion that might arise about her and Edra.
Doc Nichols made his way into the bedroom where Charley stood vigil. “It’s a blessing it made its way to her brain,” he said under his breath. Two weeks earlier when Emma started to slur her speech, he knew the cancer had migrated to her brain where it would continue to grow until she lapsed into a coma, a peaceful sleep into death.
“Nonsense! What the hell are you talking about? What damn kind of blessing is that!” Charley said, without turning around to face the doctor.
“She’s peaceful, Charley. It’s better than medicine. She’ll just sleep now till…”
Charley stood, kicking his chair back. “I think you’d better be going. I can see we don’t need any of your help here!” he screamed. “Blessing, my ass!”
Nichols put a hand on Charley’s shoulder. “She’s out of her misery. Be thankful for that.”
Charley pulled back. “I don’t want her to be peaceful. I want her to be alive! Like it was. Like it was.
” He broke down in tears.
“Go on, Charley. Let it out.”
Charley sank back into the chair, put his head down on Emma’s chest, and let out the grief that could not find its way to daylight while she was still conscious. Nichols felt Charley tense when he put a hand on his back.
“If you was a real doctor, you could save her,” Charley moaned, referring to the fact that Nichols lacked medical schooling. The only professional training he had was apprenticing with a doctor in Saint Louis where he grew up.
Nichols felt a familiar sorrow that his parents could not afford to properly educate him. He knew Charley was talking out of his grief. “Try and get a little rest now. I’ll be back later.”
The bell hanging over the front door clanged, waking Charley from a deep sleep. Disoriented, he looked around to get his bearings, when he noticed Emma breathing very shallowly. He reached over to touch her limp hand with absolutely no response from her. The bell clanged again. “Go away!” he screamed.
“Charley, I brought you some food.”
A rush of anger welled up inside him. “Why can’t you just leave me alone? Stay away! I don’t want none of your food!”
Emma did not stir.
Mildred entered Charley’s living room and set down a tray with a pot of stew of meat, onions, carrots, potatoes and gravy. In a small tin were freshly baked biscuits soaked in melted butter. “I’ll bring a plate in to you,” she called.
Exasperated, Charley turned away from Emma. “Just leave it there and go!”
Mildred walked to the partially open door. “I’m not leaving till you come out and eat some. How are you going to take care of Emma if you lose your strength? I’m staying right here, Charley Mil…”
The bedroom door banged open, knocking Mildred’s left side. “Ouch.” She stepped back.
“If you’d have left when I asked you to, you wouldn’t be in my way. Now get.”
Mildred absorbed how worn he looked: sullen face, disheveled clothes, and the foul odor of his body. She could not tell if his brown eyes were red from lack of sleep or crying and almost felt sorry for him. She stepped back, letting him pass. “Here. I brought you some stew and biscuits. Eat and I’ll leave.” She rubbed the sore spot where the door had jammed into her.
Charley walked to the food without comment and lifted the stew pot lid, then slammed it down. “I’m not hungry. Go on now, Mildred, get!”
“I’m going nowhere till you stop acting like a child and sit down and eat a bit.” She put her hands on her hips and gave him a look that said she meant business.
“You folks coming over here are a pain in the butt. Can’t nobody be left alone?” He scooped a spoonful of stew and took a swallow. “There.”
“That’s a good start. If you’re that antsy to get rid of me, then eat some more and I’ll leave.” She pulled a chair to the table and motioned for him to sit down, patting the chair next to hers.
He sat, spooned out some stew, and began to eat while Mildred sat silently looking around. She noticed clothes thrown about over the couch in his living room, dirty dishes piled up in the kitchen, dust everywhere, cobwebs on a lamp, and to her disgust, a few rat droppings. The silence was suddenly interrupted by loud snoring noises coming from the bedroom. “Oh poor Emma,” Mildred whispered.
Charley pushed his chair back, dropping his spoon to the floor, and ran to his wife. Mildred tidied the place before leaving. He never noticed the doorbell clanging as she made her way out.
“What’s happening to you?” Charley took Emma’s ashen face in his hands. As he gazed at her, the last hint of pink blotches left her cheeks. Her breathing grew louder and more labored until the snoring was barely audible. Instinctively, he put the side of his head right next to her mouth. He felt his heart pounding while the last faint trace of air from her lungs gently grazed his face. When there was nothing warm hitting his cheek, panic set in. He grabbed her torso and shook her while he screamed, “No! No! No! Don’t leave me! Emma!”
Mildred was irritated as she rode back to her ranch. “How are we ever going to work this out, Lil?” she mumbled to her painted horse. “That man is not making this easy.”
She was annoyed with herself that she decided to help Charley but did not know what else to do. She hated drawing attention to herself and being subjected to ridicule. She looks and acts like a man. Look at that receding hairline; she’s going bald. She’s a fat pig. Even worse, she resented talk of her cousin, Edra. What a hermit. She’ll never get over what happened to her. This she could not forgive. She knew that in devising her plan she had to swallow all this and come across as credibly as she could in showing an interest in Charley. Compared to the alternative, of doing nothing and being found out, it was a small price to pay.
Lil jerked and sped forward, snapping Mildred’s attention from her frustration.
“Whoa, girl. Take it easy.”
Lil had, on her own, turned up the dirt road of the ranch through the double row of pinyon pines that had been planted by Mildred’s father to give privacy to the Dunlap’s homestead. Clouds of dust rose to the height of the buggy seat, and Mildred wondered what was beneath all that flying dirt. It had only been two days since she had come across a rattlesnake den in a gully, just feet from where Lil was trotting. She wondered if Lil remembered this, and the other time when a rattler grabbed onto Chessie, the family’s blue merle Australian Shepherd. Lil had watched that dog go down in a painful squirming death. Mildred was so distraught over the loss that she refused to get another dog. Edra, traumatized from watching it also, refused to walk anywhere near the site for weeks. Mildred reached to feel the rifle at her side and was glad that she had learned to sharp-shoot at an early age, along with Edra. It’s for protection, girls, she recalled her father telling her and Edra while he trained them to do everything young men could do, so that they would be able to fend for themselves when the time came.
Mildred saw a dim light coming from the master bedroom window as she climbed out of the buggy and tied Lil to the hitching post outside the front door. Once inside her place, she saw a freshly baked apple pie on the dining room table, which quelled the aggravation caused by Charley’s stubbornness.
“Hey Edra, you there?” she called to the bedroom.
“What took you so long? That pie is getting cold,” Edra called out as she entered the living room.
Mildred saw Edra’s beautiful face and shiny brown hair, dark with natural curls that fell from the tie that held it back off her neck, contrasting with her radiant green eyes. Edra’s shapely figure was shown well in her Sears & Roebuck gingham dress and the simple brown lace-up shoes. “I’m glad this day’s over.” Mildred moved closer to her.
“Come, sit down. Let’s have some pie and you can tell me about it.”
“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” OSCAR WILDE
3
Swirls of dusty heat rose to meet Helene Whitmore’s cool glass of brewed sage flower as she sat outside in the setting sun. She delighted in the mildly bitter flavor when mixed with a little honey, which helped to quiet her nerves. Doc Nichols told her, “The Indians have been using sage flower as medicine for decades, to calm and relax…” She needed something to help her dark moods and preferred this to hard liquor. First time booze touched her lips at the age of twelve when she started womanhood, it was from drool spilling from her father’s mouth as he was having his way with her. He didn’t go after her because of how she looked; she was a plain thin girl, with no outstanding features. She never understood why it happened and endured years of humiliation, hiding at home to avoid others seeing her bruises, without the protection of her mother and siblings who were also victims. As Helene aged, so did her father’s violence so that by the time she was fifteen, she married the first man who showed an interest in her. Frank, also ordinary in countenance, was more interested in work than physicality.
The Whitmore children were asleep, and while the
faint trace of daylight lingered, Frank Whitmore made his way to the barn to check on one of his pregnant cows. Helene welcomed the time alone, which she knew would end once Emma died.
Emma, very close to her brother Frank, begged him to take care of Charley when her time came. “I know he’s strong-willed, Frank. I know it, but you have to promise me. I don’t have long,” she had cried to her brother. “He’s a stubborn man. Keeps everything in till he’s ready to explode. You got to promise me, on your strongest word.” Frank had taken his sister’s hand and nodded his agreement.
As the sun was setting, stealing away the last moments of daylight, Frank returned. “The heifer’s holding her own. But if the other one don’t spring soon, we might be in trouble. You going to head out to check on Emma now?”
Helene couldn’t ignore his parched wrinkled face from years of working the field, prematurely graying hair, slouched posture, and baggy coveralls. “This is really getting to you.”
“Charley’s a mess.” He paused and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “We’ll work it out. You tell my sister I can’t make it tonight.”
“I don’t think we need to be worrying about telling Emma anything. She won’t know the difference.” Helene sipped her drink.
He gave her a disgusted look. “You tell her!”
She shrunk back into herself. “Okay, settle down. I didn’t mean nothing by that.”
“If the calf come out alright, I’ll make it there tomorrow.”
When Helene arrived, she found Charley in the bedroom with Emma. It took her a moment to understand what was happening. “Oh dear Lord!”
Charley’s head was on Emma’s lifeless chest, his arms around her cold limbs, the only motion his sobbing.
The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap Page 2
