Heart of a Dove

by Abbie Williams

  “Here it comes!” Deirdre said with excitement in her tone, a gift I cherished. Excitement was something that was dead within me. The closest I came to experiencing it was through proximity to Deirdre.

  As we watched, the stage came rattling to a halt in a billow of dust and the clatter of sixteen hooves. The driver I favored was perched high atop, and he bellowed, “Whoa there, you flap-jawed sonsabitchin’ scourges!” and I nearly smiled.

  “Such a variety of language!” came an imperious voice from the interior of the coach, as a gloved hand gracefully negotiated the small door. Moments later a woman descended with no assistance, flicking open a parasol gaudy enough for a turn around Hossiter’s main floor at full evening swing. She wore a towering hat of shimmering silver and a dress to match, which fit her the way its skin fit an apple. Deirdre and I shamelessly gaped as she took stock of the town. Behind her, three others stepped down and the crowd at the Grand swirled around them in welcome and chattering speculation.

  I couldn’t look away from the silver woman, who must have felt the intensity of my gaze, as her own spied Deirdre and me leaning on the fence like little girls, obviously staring. When she tipped her head at us and then swept our way with a determined stride, I tugged at Deirdre’s arm, suddenly wishing for nothing more than to disappear. Deirdre, however, was not to be led away and instead offered this glittering stranger her sweetest smile.

  “Good afternoon, ladies,” the woman said.

  She was much older than I would have suspected from across the street, though yet lovely and with blue eyes direct as arrows in flight. Silver hair was wound beneath her hat and she studied us with a frank curiosity; I sensed no overt judgment in her eyes, though she looked deeply into mine and then Deirdre’s. I could not look away. I realized belatedly that we’d not responded to her greeting and said, “And to you, as well.”

  Something came over her face then; I could not have articulated exactly what changed, as her features remained fixed, but I felt a shudder flash up the middle of my back. She reached out as though to shake my hand, shifting her parasol, and I placed mine within hers. Her palm was warm through the glove that covered her skin. Her fingers tightened over my own as she peered into my eyes and said in a voice hushed and yet intense, “The woodcutter.”

  I blinked in surprise, another chill skimming its fingers along my spine. And then she touched Deirdre’s cheek and said in the same tone, “A red moon. I’m so sorry, my dear.”

  Before either of us could react, she’d turned and walked away, the afternoon sun sending spangles of light all along her silver dress, as though to blind us.

  “What in the world?” Deirdre whispered. I looked away from the silver woman and to my friend’s face; her pale cheeks appeared peaked even in the glaring afternoon sunshine. I took her elbow against my side. She whispered, “I had such a chill when she spoke. What did she mean, ‘a red moon?’”

  The woodcutter.

  It was nonsensical, though I too had a lingering sense of strangeness about my gut. For Deirdre’s sake, I said firmly, “Don’t pay her mind. It’s a parlor trick, or some such.”

  “Perhaps she’s a fortune teller,” Deirdre speculated, her imagination being given free rein. “I’m going to ask her, Li, right now.”

  I clutched her arm more tightly and said, “No, you mustn’t. She’s gone, as it is, into the Grand. Do you truly want to chase her in there?”

  “One of her whores making a scene in the hotel. Ginny would whip me, for certain,” Deirdre said then, her shoulders sinking a little.

  “I don’t know that people would exactly throw stones at you, but you never know,” I added darkly, eyeing the crowd that was jamming the double doors of the Grand, seeking entrance into its lobby. The silver woman had disappeared. “Come along, perhaps there’s a slice or two of cake left.”

  I could rarely sleep at night, even during nights I was not expected to service customers, too accustomed to spending the dark hours working. Yet it was just at dusk that same evening that I drifted into a doze, and dreamed. I had never been prone to nightmares before my mother died; directly after, I’d been too exhausted to allow for much more than sleep when I was fortunate enough. During my first month at Ginny’s I had dreamed of Mama often, hearing her calling for me in the early hours of a new day, and waking to find her gone hurt as terribly as if I’d just been robbed of her, every time.

  Within this evening dream I was walking along a Tennessee road, red-dirt, mid-summer, heavy, humid air scented thickly with honeysuckle, cardinal flowers glinting scarlet in the ditch, the pawpaw trees in full maroon bloom above my head.

  Home, I thought, shivers of joy rioting through me.

  Surely if I hurried I would be at my daddy’s ranch within minutes. The sunlight filtering through the towering spruces indicated late-day, near to evening now, and I would need to hasten along.

  The woodcutter, I heard the woman in silver whisper.

  Where he was I did not know; I only understood to the depths of my soul I needed to find him. Intensity flared in my blood, quickened my heart. I lifted the edges of my skirts knee-high and ran over the path that suddenly twisted deeper into the forest. Brambles scratched at my bare feet and I had to drop my skirt to push low-hanging branches away from my eyes, but I moved forward with determination bordering on desperation, sensing that he was near.

  A clearing then, and I stopped abruptly as I realized I had come upon a small cemetery. Heart thundering within my ears, I looked about wildly.

  Too late, you’re too late, my mind screamed.

  Rough-hewn stones marked these graves, the names carved upon each indistinct. And then, not yards from me, I saw him, lying sprawled amongst the dead. In the shadowy background, a gorgeous paint mare pawed the ground and nickered, as though standing guard over her master. I scrambled forward, crying out as my knees, my elbows, scraped on the edges of grave markers, losing blood. I had to reach him, everything within me knew this. He was mine. My breathing was ragged and I was so close, so very close…

  Dear God, please let me see him…let me see his face…dear God…let me touch him…

  The need for him swelled within me until I thought I would die if I couldn’t reach him…

  I was nearly there…

  And then I woke and the dream was gone, snapped back into the lockbox within my mind, irretrievable. In the graying light of advancing nightfall, I curled around myself and wept, and wept.

  “Lila, he’s here,” Ramie said the following Saturday, popping into my room and easing the door three-quarters closed. With my back to her, leaning into my oval mirror to apply a last dab of rouge, I felt my heart sink like a drop of blood in a bucket of water. My fingers trembled, poised over my right cheek, as I regarded my own panicked eyes in the mirror. Ramie appeared behind me then, and said, “Remember, sugar, it’s probably all lies. He doesn’t look too terrible, does he?”

  I tried to draw a full breath and nodded for her, in attempt to likewise calm myself. I had stalled an extra day, dragging as long as I dared, even though I was no longer bleeding; it had been five days, and I was expected below or Ginny would be suspicious.

  “He’s likely cast his eye upon Eva by now,” Ramie added, trying to tease, though I knew that Eva would simply refuse to turn a trick for him; she was the only one who dared to do so and risk Ginny’s subsequent fury. “Come on, sugar, let’s go down.”

  I had lit the bedside lamp and the basin containing the butter douche was beneath my bed. Near the wall under the window was a stack of flannel pads which would line the mattress with each subsequent customer, atop my rose-patterned blankets; by night’s end, the basket at the end of the hall would be stuffed with these, ready for Betsy to launder. I checked my egg timer; most men paid the cost-effective dollar-a-minute rate as very few lasted more than ten or twelve. Occasionally a man desired more time, an
d then Ginny would show her teeth in her smile and charge by the half-hour.

  I had earned more than my share of half-hours since last October. Ginny praised me and Eva’s eyes followed me with a murderous glint.

  On the main floor the crowd was swirling already, the mood made boisterous by the pleasant sunny weather, the long summer evening pouring its golden light into Hossiter’s. Horace, who manned the bar along with two other men on rotating shifts, was also Ginny’s top enforcer; he was menacing, slow of speech, utterly subservient to Ginny. He nodded at Ramie and me as we made our descent. Within minutes I had my first customer, a regular named Charles Grey. I led him upstairs with his fingertips caught lightly within my own, drawing him into my room, closing the door and undressing him first, then letting him take down the straps of my bodice. Some of the men preferred to perform this step themselves, while others liked me to disrobe myself; I had learned to gauge their preferences as accurately as their moods.

  “You can leave your hair up, Li,” he told me almost companionably, bare naked and more than ready for me, as I moved to unclasp my barrettes. “That’s right as rain by me.”

  The absurdity of such a conversation still struck at me like the knuckles of curled fists. He was standing near my bed and beckoned to me; I went to him and knelt on the mattress, letting him kiss me before he took my hips in hand and turned me around, to hands and knees, lifting my skirt. Within five minutes he was done and dressed, kissing me once more before clicking closed my door and leaving me alone. I bent low over the basin beneath the bed to give myself a quick cleaning, carried the first of the flannel pads to the basket of soiled ones, straightened my costume, reapplied color to my lips, unable to meet my own eyes; I refused to look at myself until morning, when the last customer had left.

  Back on the floor minutes later, after depositing his payment into the wooden lockbox with its narrow top slit, along with my signature, I eyed the crowd and determined where to best position myself; Jola and Eva were allowed the first picks, and to circulate. My usual place was near the faro tables and I moved that direction now, attempting to pretend that I didn’t notice Sam Rainey at the bar, leaning against his lower spine, facing away from the rows of glass bottles, his eyes on me.

  Keep busy, I reminded myself. Keep busy and he’ll get bored with waiting.

  Three hours passed and I tossed twelve more flannel pads into the laundry. The pace of the night had slowed considerably by my thirteenth descent of the staircase, and I allowed myself to breathe a hair lighter as I observed that Rainey was no longer at the bar. Johnny was tinkling out “Down the River Lived a Maiden,” which was a melancholy tune; if I wasn’t on guard, my eyes would prickle with tears at its melody. I stepped down to the main floor and felt my shoulders relax a fraction; it was at that moment that a hand wrapped around my upper arm, from behind.

  “Lila, is it?” asked a voice near my ear, and I hunched my shoulders before I knew I’d moved; his voice, deceptively light and cajoling, could not fully conceal some indefinable darkness.

  I turned and forced upon my face a smile, despite the sudden trembling of my lips. I swallowed as I observed his dark eyes much nearer than I’d thought; he was bending down to put his face at a level with mine. I could smell whiskey on his breath and it took a great deal of willpower not to cringe away from him.

  “It is, yes,” I said, and my voice was pitched higher than normal.

  “You free?” he asked me. My eyes moved at once to Horace, who was watching us from behind the bar, unblinking.

  I nodded, unable to speak; Ginny was sitting at the bar, closer to George, the other bartender, smoking a paper tobacco roll from a slender wooden holder; she too was studying us. I gulped and then turned to take Rainey’s hand in mine. As we made our way up the steps, I found myself climbing a tread at a time to accommodate his limp. He wore his Federal trousers yet, faded though they were; once in my room I was slightly emboldened, imagining that if he tried anything, surely I could outrun him.

  I clicked the door closed and found him regarding me silently. Upon closer inspection I realized he wasn’t more than perhaps five and twenty, though life had not tread lightly upon his face.

  “You’re a pretty thing,” he said.

  “Thank you kindly,” I responded instantly, and I was about to invite him to the bed, determined to finish this as soon as humanly possible, when something changed in his eyes. I caught the flash of it, fleeting in their depths, and my bowels tightened with instinctive, undiluted fear, as prey before a certain predator.

  Before I noticed his hand moving, he had my chin in his fingers, holding my head immobile, tipping his own to one side as his gaze remained unwavering. My heart crashed against my ribs in horror, sensing what had shifted in the dark pools of his eyes.

  “Where are you from?” he whispered, his voice rough and halting. I stared into those eyes and knew at once that every story about him was true.

  A breath lodged in my throat and huffed out in a whimper, and his fingers squeezed my flesh brutally; I could feel his fingertips against my teeth.

  “Where?” he repeated, leaning closer.

  “Te…” The word sliced in half around a gasp, but more afraid to refuse him than speak, I whispered, “Tennessee.”

  And then his lips curled and his teeth were bared. He breathed heavily and in his eyes was a hatred that flared like a stack of dry tinder struck by a bolt of lightning. “I knew it in your voice, you fucking whore, fucking southern-bred whore.” He leaned in close, his nose nearly coming into contact with mine, the fire of rage utterly unchecked within his eyes. He whispered, “I killed so many goddamn Tennessee Rebels in the War. What about you, girl? What about I fuck you first, fuck a worthless Tennessee Rebel whore?”

  Fury rises within a body, I had learned since last autumn. Hot, sudden and emboldening. In his eyes I saw the Federal soldiers who had killed my father, my brothers, so many of the people I had known in my old life. My family, ashes and bones and nothing more than the memories that would die with me, the last of them. In his eyes I saw the hatred that had ripped my life asunder, shredded to pieces everything I had ever known, leaving me ravaged as a beast on an empty field, surrounded by dead. And though Ginny might whip me, might flay my back for it, I knew what I must do just a fraction of a second before I did it, drawing back my elbows. I shoved him with the palms of both hands, calling upon every ounce of strength I possessed, aiming for the soft spot at the base of the chest and between the separate halves of the ribcage, as my brothers had once taught me, when they were still living. My teeth were clenched, my throat burning with the inarticulate sounds of loathing.

  Not expecting such a reaction, he stumbled backward and then fell heavily to the wooden floorboards. I remained poised above him with my fingers curled into claws, wishing I was brave enough to leap upon his person and scrape and tear at his face. I would have killed him for my brothers, for my father, for young Rafe Howell, who’d lived the next farm over and upon whom Mama had once cast a speculative eye as a potential future mate for me. For all of them, slain before their lives had begun, ghosts to haunt perhaps nothing more concrete than my memory. But I didn’t move; that was the first mistake.

  I underestimated him, feeling the momentary triumph as a sort of euphoria, a drug within my blood. And that was the second mistake.

  He lunged before I could blink, clutching my ankles, growling deep in his throat like a maddened dog. Before I could suck enough air to scream, he’d pulled my feet from under me and I was hard on my back, my vision narrowing to a black tunnel. He crawled awkwardly over me and when I saw that he’d pulled a thin-bladed knife, albeit a small one, something my father would have used to clean trout, I twisted and bucked my hips against him, breathing hard. He couldn’t hold me completely still with only one hand and we scrabbled over the bare floor, my head bumping into the peacock dressing screen and knocking it
backward with a crash that resounded like a gunshot. Later, I would realize that this was likely what saved me that night.

  Groaning deep in his chest, he clenched the blade of the knife between his teeth to free both hands, and at once he was back atop me, shoving me brutally to the floor, before grabbing back the weapon and pressing its cold point to the soft hollow beneath the tip of my chin. Instinct stilled all of my external movement. His breath was coming hard, wheezing against my forehead, his eyes fearsome as he traced the tip of that blade along my throat as though slitting it open, lightly, just skimming my skin. I could hear a whimpering sound, something a tortured animal might make, and knew it was mine. He made the same motion in the opposite direction, seemingly absorbed in the task, drawing the knife across my throat again, pressing just harder on this pass.

  I heard running footsteps coming down the hall, though I was angled away and could not see who banged through the door. Sam Rainey moaned then, looking over his shoulder. The second his hold loosened I twisted frantically away, and he turned back to me with the striking of a snake, slashing the blade viciously at me, catching a line along the skin just in front of my left ear; the blood that poured forth was shockingly hot against my neck. And then he was yanked away as I heard a piercing scream, and as though observing from a distance, knew the inhuman sound was mine.

  There were several practicing doctors in St. Louis who would condescend to pay a call to a whorehouse during prime business hours. I was still hidden away in my room, as Ginny refused to allow more of a scene to be created. Betsy had cleaned the cut with a linen dipped in a bowl of vinegar and water, her sympathetic eyes telling me far more than she would dare to speak aloud. Betsy then sat beside me on the mattress and held another cloth to my face; by the time the doctor had climbed the back steps of Ginny’s upper hallway, keeping him from direct public viewing on the main floor, there was little for him to do but pronounce that the wound was shallow and would heal without stitches, though I would scar. He recommended a cleansing with carbolic acid, and then left again, though surely he would charge Ginny for more than five minutes’ time.