Sweeter Savage Love

by Sandra Hill

  Later that evening on the late-night Amtrak Superliner to New Orleans, Harriet lay bleary eyed and exhausted, fighting sleep. She tried to ignore the entrancing cadence of the train wheels clicking on steel rails—metronomic sounds that lured her to succumb. To sleep. And to the blasted, unwanted dreams.

  Clackety-clack, clackety-clack, clackety-clack…

  You have to get some sleep.

  No, I can’t fall asleep. Harriet grimaced as the two sides of her brain waged a silent battle.

  Clackety-clack, clackety-clack, clackety-clack…

  Maybe the dream won’t come tonight.

  Maybe it will.

  After all, I’ve only had the dreams for a few weeks. No doubt they’ll stop as abruptly as they commenced.

  Dream on, girl.

  Harriet rolled over for about the fiftieth time on her narrow mattress. The deluxe bedroom accommodation had an upper berth, which she’d chosen not to fold down from the wall, and a long bench seat that pulled out into a bed.

  Clackety-clack, clackety-clack, clackety-clack…

  It’s only a dream.

  Hah! She hitched down the hem of her leopard-print silk nightie, which she’d donned because of the stifling atmosphere in her compartment, unrelieved by the low-humming air conditioner. Perhaps she should get up and take an aspirin. Or read. Her silver pill box and paperwork were in her briefcase on the opposite seat. She could even take a shower in the minuscule bathroom. But her limbs felt heavy, weighing her down.

  Clackety-clack, clackety-clack, clackety-clack…

  You can’t avoid the dream forever.

  I can try.

  Clackety-clack, clackety-clack, clackety-clack…

  You’re behaving worse than one of your phobic clients.

  I know.

  You need a therapist.

  I am a therapist.

  Physician, heal thyself.

  This “physician” is going bonkers.

  Clackety-clack, clackety-clack, clackety-clack…

  What’s so wrong with the dream anyhow? You told Oprah that forceful seduction fantasies are all right.

  For other women. Not me.

  Oh, so you’re smarter than the average woman? Stronger?

  I should be.

  Clackety-clack, clackety-clack, clackety-clack…

  Lighten up, girl. And live a little.

  No! I’m thirty-four years old. I’ve worked too hard for my professional reputation and success. If I give in to this…weakness, I might give in to others. It could undermine all my goals.

  You’re still obsessing over your mother.

  Of course I obsess over my mother. I learned my lesson good and well from Mama. Five husbands. Codependency. Her financial and emotional well-being always tied to the latest man in residence. My sisters and I never knowing from one day to the next if we’d be playing tennis at the country club, or begging for food stamps. Whether Mom would be elated when we got home from school, or in a deep depression. Never, never, never will I let the need for a man control my life that way.

  Well, golly, I didn’t ask for a lecture.

  Go away!

  Clackety-clack, clackety-clack, clackety-clack…

  Come on, close your eyes. You feel so sleepy.

  Stop tempting me. I should have taken a plane. Damn that air-traffic controllers’ strike. I’m going to look like a bloodshot rag doll for my speech at the Louisiana Women’s Convention tomorrow night. And it’s all his fault.

  Hey, don’t blame me, sweetheart, a familiar, masculine voice intruded in her thoughts. Forceful seduction is your dream, not mine.

  “Oh, no!” Harriet groaned.

  Oh, yes! he said with a silky growl of promise.

  He was back.

  Flipping his black, flat-crowned, cowboy-style hat off his head and to the left, where it landed on her briefcase, Steve eased himself down beside her on the narrow railway bed with bold aggression. His spurs jingled in counterpoint to the clicking rails.

  And with a sigh, Harriet surrendered once again. To slumber, and her nighttime lover.

  Harriet awakened abruptly, hours later, to a loud screeching noise and a violent lurch of the railway car, which caused her to fall to the floor. She was alone.

  Of course I’m alone. It’s not as if my dream tormentor is a real person.

  As she scrambled to her feet in the darkness, she heard the squeal of air brakes, and tried to keep her balance despite the bumpy ride of the train.

  Within minutes, the raucous noises and teeth-rattling shimmy of the train faded as it came to a full stop. A strange hush pervaded the air, soon followed by the babble of frightened voices in the corridor.

  “Everything’s okay, folks,” she heard a man—presumably the conductor—call out. “The train derailed just as we entered Cairo—a slight mishap, not an accident. We should be back on track in less than an hour. Nothin’ to fret about. Just you go back to sleep and we’ll be on our way again in no time.”

  Harriet fumbled her way back to bed, and despite the lack of electricity was able to put the delay to good use, silently practicing her speech, which was tailored specifically to her Southern audience: “Looking For Rhett in All the Wrong Places.” Then she mentally checked over her two-week book-tour schedule and even dictated some notes into her new mini—tape recorder, which she managed to blindly locate in her briefcase.

  The palm-size box was a spiffy, high-tech, solar-powered device her mother’s latest boyfriend, Riff Castanza, had given her last week to celebrate making the New York Times list once again. Riff worked for one of those Sharper Image—type companies. She’d been afraid he would give her the remote-control vibrator his company was selling this month on QVC.

  It was more like two hours before the train restarted. There was still plenty of time for Harriet to make her evening speaking engagement. Finally, Harriet yielded to sleep. Maybe the trick was to stop fighting. To go with the flow. Face her demon head-on.

  Demon? Lady, your insults are pushing my limits. Be careful, or you might find out what I can do with a fallen angel.

  Tennessee, 1870

  “I’m not going back to prison…ever,” Etienne declared vehemently to his two companions in the cramped railway car. “So no slipups. We follow the plan exactly. Is that clear?”

  “Yassuh, master,” Cain replied with an exaggerated subservient whine, nudging his twin brother, who slouched on the seat next to him. “Stop that damn humming, Abel. Master Baptiste is gonna regale us with his war stories. Praise be!”

  Abel mumbled something unintelligible and went back to scribbling on a piece of paper, humming, then trying a few notes on his faithful trumpet. The man could tune out all his surroundings when in the midst of composing. He was oblivious to their conversation as he sang softly and wrote down the words:

  “If you were a bird, my friend,

  And I a gun, my friend,

  I would kill you, my friend,

  Because I love you so…”

  “Does you want me to git you a mint julep, suh?” Cain persisted, ignoring his brother’s preoccupation. From the time he was a small boy, Abel was always off in his own world, where he claimed to hear music in his head.

  “Oh, shut up, you fool,” Etienne grumbled at Cain. The man held a medical degree from a Paris college, could speak four languages and only used a Negro dialect to annoy him. “Don’t start your sorry games, Cain. I’m not in the mood for—”

  Cain ripped out a foul expletive. “Dammit, Etienne, you’re never in the mood anymore…for anything. In fact, I reckon you lost your sense of humor back in Andersonville.”

  “I lost a hell of a lot more in that Reb prison than my sense of humor, as you well know,” Etienne lashed out.

  Cain stiffened, then relaxed with a visible effort. “Yes, I know,” he said softly, leaning forward to pat Etienne’s arm.

  “If you were a bayou, my friend

  And I a fish, my friend,

  I would swim in you, my friend,r />
  Because I love you so…”

  He and Cain both looked at Abel and shook their heads.

  But Cain wasn’t getting off the hook so easily. “Don’t patronize me,” Etienne warned. “Our situation is too dangerous for you to treat it so lightly. And I’m damned tired of you two sticking on my back like swamp suckers, watching my every move. Sacrebleu! I told you to stay at Bayou Noir this time.”

  “And let you take all the glory with President Grant? No sirree. I wants to get me a new medal, too. The womenfolk do like them shiny medals.”

  Etienne clenched his fists, counting silently to ten. Cain knew he detested that blasted Medal of Honor. He’d much rather have the back pay Congress owed him for all the war years, but refused to pay because he had no proof of service. Proof? Hell, he’d worked as a double agent for President Lincoln without paper credentials, as trusting as a bare-assed babe. Unfortunately, good ol’ Abe was no longer alive to support his claim.

  But President Grant had promised to lend his support in getting his rightful pay released, if he would complete this one last commission. Recover the gold shipment that some corrupt government employees had stolen from the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, and Etienne would be home free. His own man again. No obligations to anyone, North or South. Finally, he would be able to go home. Until then, it was serious, dangerous business.

  And Cain insisted on treating it as a lark.

  “Why don’t you go purge yourself, sawbones?” Etienne suggested. “Give yourself a thrill and stop entertaining yourself at my expense.”

  Cain just grinned at him, knowing full well that his needling was drawing blood.

  “If you were mud, my friend

  And I a pig, my friend,

  I would wallow in you, my friend,

  Because I love you so…”

  “Holy thunderation, Abel. Where did you get those ridiculous lyrics?” Cain exclaimed.

  “Mud-wallowing and love?” Etienne added.

  Abel finally peered up at them and blinked, as if seeing them for the first time. “Oh, these aren’t my words. I heard some cotton workers in Alabama chanting them one day. I’m just trying to fit the words to my music.”

  “At least he’s not singing the filthy lyrics he was last week,” Etienne pointed out to Cain. “‘All the whores like the way I ride.’”

  “Etienne is right, Abel; you are developing a nasty tongue, hanging with all those Nawleans street musicians. ‘Playing the dozens…’ isn’t that what you call that dirty-insults routine?”

  How did they get from President Grant and their assignment to cotton workers and low-down music? Etienne wondered.

  “Don’t try changing the subject on me, Cain. I don’t appreciate your implication that I enjoy talking about Andersonville Prison.”

  “Oh, hell, Etienne,” Cain sighed, no longer amused. “Can’t you take a little ribbing anymore? I know you suffered during the war. We all did. But it’s time to get over it and move on. If we can’t laugh at our pain, we might as well be dead.”

  “Merde! You might want to laugh yourself to death, but I’m not quite ready to meet my maker. This mission is very important to me, Cain. All the pieces of the puzzle are finally coming together. Soon it should all be over, Grâce à Dieu.”

  “Have you ever noticed that you slip into French whenever you get tense? Must be your high-strung, Creole heritage. Now…now, don’t get all in a dither. I’ll shut up now. Even if you say something really dumb, I won’t blink an eye.”

  Meanwhile, Cain crossed his long legs at the ankles and propped them on the upholstered seat opposite him, close to Etienne’s thigh.

  Etienne pressed the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger. It was a reflexive action when the dull throbbing began behind his eyes.

  “Do you need one of my headache powders?” Cain asked, immediately solicitous.

  Etienne shook his head. The debilitating headaches he’d suffered ever since prison occurred rarely now, and the pain was only mild tonight.

  Seeing that he was all right, Cain relaxed. Then his dark eyes twinkled with mischief as he nudged Etienne’s upper thigh slightly with the heel of one scruffy boot, just to irritate him. So much for his promise to behave.

  “Move those damn spurs.”

  “What? You skeered I’m gonna harm your precious rooster?” Cain teased, slipping back into his slave patois as he used their childhood name for their private parts. “You skeered the lady hens won’t cluck all over you no more?”

  “Hah! This rooster hasn’t seen any clucking in ages. He’s probably forgotten how to cock-a-doodle,” he said, palming his crotch. “Besides, you and Abel are the ones doing all the crowing these days. Good Lord! I can’t believe I caught the two of you in bed—together—with those whores last night at Clarice’s…rather, Madame Dubois’s Opera House. That is what she calls her place now, isn’t it?”

  “How was I to know there was no singing at that opera house?” Abel spoke up, setting aside his trumpet and papers. “Here I was expectin’ an aria or two. At least a libretto.” He grinned companionably at them.

  “You wouldn’t know an aria from a barroom ditty. The low-down music you play on that trumpet of yours is a far cry from hoity-toity opera,” Cain shot back.

  Cain was bluffing. Everyone, most of all Cain, was proud of Abel’s genius with his horn.

  “And you’re the one who talked me into that double pleasurin’ thing,” Cain rambled on. “I’m just a poor country doctor. I ain’t never heard of such goin’s on.”

  The brothers smiled guilelessly at each other.

  “If Simone ever caught you with another woman, she’d turn that black hide of yours red,” Cain advised.

  “If Simone and I could marry, I wouldn’t be waving my black snake at every whore from here to Atchafalaya,” Abel answered.

  “God, you two are perverted,” Etienne said, shaking his head hopelessly.

  “Yes,” Cain and Abel said at the same time, smiling. Their ebony skin gleamed in the dim light of a lantern, showing off their handsome faces and muscled bodies, which attracted women of all colors and ages and classes, no matter where they went.

  Etienne’s heart expanded with warmth when he regarded the two brothers. He knew these good friends—his only friends, actually—were making a concerted effort to lift his dark mood with their banter. Hell, they told him often enough that he had to get over the past, start living again. Easier said than done, of course. But he was touched, nonetheless, by their concern.

  “Back to business,” Etienne reminded them in a voice choked with emotion. “Once we get the shipment off this train tomorrow in Memphis, the rest of the trip should run smoothly. Anything could go wrong, though. Pope’s network of grubby cohorts stretches across the country. We’ve got to be extremely careful.”

  Both men nodded.

  “Let’s get a few hours of shut-eye.” Etienne stood with a groan, his knees creaking in protest after sitting so long.

  “I know a sweet girl in Chattanooga who could get the kinks out of your tired old bones,” Abel suggested reflectively.

  “Old?” Etienne exclaimed. “I’m no older than you.” In fact, all three men were thirty-one years old, having been born the same year on the same Louisiana bayou sugar plantation.

  Abel ignored Etienne’s interruption and went on, with relish, “This girl has a trick where she slathers warm buttermilk all over a man from head to toe. When he’s naked, of course.”

  “Of course,” Etienne and Cain chimed in sarcastically, knowing there was no stopping Abel once he got rolling with one of his risqué tales.

  “Then she has the man hang by his feet from the low limb of a hickory tree in her courtyard while she proceeds to lick him clean. Somehow, all the kinks just disappear. Must have somethin’ to do with all that blood rushin’ to his head. What’s your medical opinion on that, brother?” Abel paused, waiting for Cain to bite. When he didn’t, he carried on, “Did I mention she has a tongue like a
cat, sort of rough and abrasive? Whoo-ee!”

  Etienne and Cain gaped at Abel in absolute awe. Then they both asked simultaneously, “Really?”

  “God, you two are dumber’n gator spit,” Abel hooted, slapping his knee appreciatively. “You’ll believe anything.”

  Etienne and Cain glanced at each other with mutual self-disgust. Abel had a particular talent for fooling them, and they fell for his bait every time. In truth, this camaraderie and the ability to find comedy in their own foibles was the only thing that had kept them sane during an insane war, not to mention the insanity that had dogged them since then, too.

  The engine jerked into motion suddenly and began to chug along. They all squinted out the train windows into the moonlit night, seeing nothing. There had been a problem with one of the tracks a short time ago, but apparently it had been corrected.

  “Well, I’ll see you two in the morning,” Etienne said, heading toward the door and his own compartment. “We should arrive in Memphis about ten.” He stared at each of them in turn. “Abel, you’ll get the wagon and have it ready at the far end of the station, and Cain, make sure you meet me in the freight car before the train stops.”

  Both men rolled their eyes, having heard these instructions a dozen times already tonight.

  Etienne yawned widely, then added over his shoulder, “Lord, I hope the coffins are still there.”

  Chapter Two

  Harriet had been asleep only a short time, or so it seemed, when she heard a jingle of spurs. She winced inwardly but wasn’t unduly anxious. As she’d told Oprah, it was the same old same old. And it was about time she handled this problem with maturity, instead of letting the problem handle her.

  Opening her eyes, she watched, by the light of a full moon, as her personal rogue closed the compartment door and locked it carefully, double-checking the knob to make sure it was secure. Harriet recognized the exact moment he sensed her presence. With a hiss of indrawn breath and a curse of “Hellfire!” Steve froze in place and immediately whipped a revolver from the holster at his side.