Heart of a Dove

by Abbie Williams

  Ramie was across from me then, also on her knees, her brown eyes wide with fright. She demanded, “Deirdre, who’s hurt you, who’s done this?”

  My heart was so loud it roared within my ears. I put my hands on her face and curled near her, pleading, “What should I do, what should I do?”

  Deirdre’s dark eyes were no more than slits and between my palms her skin felt afire. She had dragged herself into the hallway; there was a trail of blood on the floor behind her, more covering her pale-yellow dressing gown. And then I saw the shape upon her, near her pelvis, where blood had flowed and left upon the material an almost perfect crescent moon, bright red. I began sobbing, unable to prevent myself from falling to broken shards.

  “What’s happening, Lila?” Ramie asked, frantic.

  “Get Ginny, get a doctor!” I screamed. “Run!”

  Heads were popping from nearby doors, men tugging britches over their hips and lifting suspenders into place, curious about the racket. We were joined shortly by Lisette and Mary, both white-faced beneath their make-up. It was like a carnival featuring an atrocious new attraction, and I did my best to block her from their gazes.

  One of the men knelt as though to look more closely and I screamed at him, “Get away, you son of a bitch!”

  “Well shit,” he said, sounding startled, though he only afforded me a momentary glance before his eyes went back to Deirdre, sprawled on the floor. I could tell she was trying to curl around her midsection. If I had been strong enough, I would have lifted her and carried her from sight. I shielded her head as well as I could, my voice shaking as I repeated, tipping near her ear, brushing back her dark hair, “It will be all right, it will be all right.”

  “She’s losing a child,” said Eva’s voice from her own doorway.

  I looked at her instantly, rage broiling in my blood. She was lounging against one shoulder, smoking from a slender tobacco holder, observing as though witnessing something slightly dull and not quite worth her time.

  Later I would be unable to remember exactly what happened. One moment I was kneeling and the next I leaped upon her, noticing as her eyes went wide and shone with sincere astonishment before my weight, meager though it was, knocked her to the floor. Her burning tobacco went flying. I grabbed her hair in one fist even as she fought back; she was tall and wiry, surely tougher than me, though I had the strength of fury.

  She shrieked and yelped, “Get off me, you bitch!”

  My other hand slid over her painted face, seeking a hold; I longed to smash her head against the boards of the floor. She clawed at my arms and there was so much shouting and bustling in the hallway that I could hardly hear the growling sounds coming from my throat. I was yanked from her body and shaken until my teeth clattered together. I fought the new arms, screaming now, and someone, Horace probably, as it was a hard blow, struck me across the side of the head.

  When I regained consciousness, I was alone in my bed. The rectangle of visible sky was silvering with the approach of dawn. My mind swam in dizzy waves as I blinked and then blinked again, as everything came rushing back, blindsiding me. I sat and moaned in pain, tipping inadvertently forward. But I was determined to know what had happened and forced aside the aching within my skull, creeping over the floor on bare feet. The hallway was empty but a lantern was yet lit on the main floor, and I crept to the top of the staircase to see who remained awake below.

  Ginny was seated at the bar, smoking. From above I studied her with unveiled loathing; perhaps she sensed the weight, the heat of my hatred, as her eyes lifted to mine. Though I should have known better, I couldn’t smooth the emotion from my face.

  “Lila,” she said. As there was not a soul stirring other than the two of us, the quiet word seemed to echo through the space.

  “Where is she?” I asked her, and my voice was hoarse.

  Ginny let her gaze fall back to the air before her face, drawing long on her rolled tobacco.

  “Where?” I demanded, and her fearsome eyes flashed back to mine at the defiance in my tone. Even with the yards separating us, fear seeped into my gut at the expression.

  “They took her body away,” she said at last, and I sank to the top step to bury my face into my hands. Perhaps it was selfish, but all I could think of was how I was alone, so very alone. There was no one left in the world who loved me, who I could love back. And the fear that I kept desperately coiled deep inside, the terrible and oily darkness in my soul, came surging upwards. I gasped and ran down the steps, frantic to be outside, away from this place. Through the hinged doors I bolted, into the dawning day.

  Upon the boardwalk, I stopped as though coming up against a glass wall and stared up at the sky, trying to breathe, the world reeling and rotating. I sank to my knees, vaguely aware that Ginny had come behind me, still smoking, observing me as one would perhaps a troublesome, wayward child.

  “Where in the hell are you going?” she asked me, as though reading my thoughts.

  “Away, I have to go away,” I cried, sobbing now, but in quiet, hoarse breaths, just a step away from outright panic.

  “Good luck with that,” she said remorselessly. “You’d only be back. Once you’ve worked as a whore, you’ll always be one. You can’t escape it.”

  “No,” I whispered, turning to face her, still on my knees and tears swarming over my face. “I don’t believe you.”

  She seemed genuinely puzzled, slightly unfocused, and I realized she was high on her opium. She looked hard at me and said with an odd tone of voice, “Your eyes have always struck me, Lila. They’re fascinating. It’s as though all of the pain of the world is within them.”

  “I hate you,” I told her then, not caring if she would indeed whip me for those words. She walked forward with deliberate steps and I forced myself not to cringe from her as she transferred her smoke to her mouth and caught my loose hair in both hands, stroking over its length.

  “You need me,” she said back, unconcerned. Her hands were wrapped into my hair and my stomach lurched with loathing. She added, “You would never survive out there, Lila, a little dove like you.”

  I turned back to look at the dusty street in the first shards of daylight, and then hid my face behind both palms, shuddering with sobs. Deirdre was gone, and I had purchased the tea that killed her. I had poured it for her.

  I thought of the paring knife hidden under my mattress, pictured its silver sharpness vividly.

  “Get back in here, Lila, before someone sees you,” Ginny said then, and her grip tightened upon my hair. I understood that I would be punished if I did not listen. Certainly I would be punished anyway, for my words. She would strike me, though her hands eased now as she saw that I was going to follow her orders.

  Slowly I stood and re-entered Hossiter’s, to face my purgatory.

  - 6 -

  Months later, I had not discovered where Deirdre had been buried. At the very least, it would have offered me a certain amount of comfort to know that she had been given the courtesy of a burial, a place where I might be allowed to visit and to sit with her from time to time, but I had never been offered this information, nor had I asked. In the months since her death I had retreated even more deeply into myself; it had been many years since I dared to pray, but when the dawn light came creeping and I was left blessedly alone, I begged with a prayer-like fervor for Deirdre’s forgiveness. I prayed that she had been restored to her Joshua, somewhere in the beyond.

  I longed so for death that it became almost constant, a shadowy specter that hovered near the back of my neck and at times came close to overtaking me; only one thought, strange and improbable, kept me from the dimly-lit abyss I could sense somewhere nearby, the emptiness towards which the death-specter would lead me with even the slightest hint of my acquiescence. This thought was borne of a dream which came to me near the turning of the new year, in the otherwise unrelieved bleakn
ess of mid-winter.

  In the dream I was momentarily delivered from the horror of my desire for death, for the absolution it may offer, and placed into the landscape of my youth, Tennessee in late summer. Along the red-dirt road I hurried, with bare feet and loose hair, and the dear, familiar sights and scents of Cumberland County were as a balm to my spirit. As before, in the dream I could sense him, my woodcutter, and the strength of my longing overrode all else, annihilated the death-specter, burned through my body with the need to live and to find him. I sensed in the dream, however improbably, that he was moving towards me.

  Perhaps it was nothing more than simple desperation, a parlor trick conjured by my mind, but after I woke that chilly, silver January mid-morning, I clung to this sense. I held tightly to the knowledge, gifted to me in a dream, that he was out there somewhere, headed my direction.

  On a June evening, months later, Johnny was playing “Buffalo Gals” with his usual enthusiasm as I skimmed my fingers lightly over the railing upon descent, as I’d learned long ago; every movement with its calculated potential to arouse a man. Ramie was already leading Joe Thomas, a regular, back up the stairs and her coffee-brown eyes glinted at me as she leaned close in passing and whispered, “Sugar, get a look-see at the three that just come in.”

  Lisette was mincing down just behind me, and she clutched at my shoulders, leaning over me to get a gander at the new customers. Her fingernails curved into my skin for a moment, as though in excitement, and she murmured, “Would you look at the one in the middle. Handsome as the devil. And wouldn’t you know, Eva already has her claws in him.”

  Despite her catty tone, I let my lips relax into a seductive smile, my eyelids drifting to half-mast in the practiced way we all knew, my gaze fluttering over the crowd from my vantage point. Good-looking new men always caused a stir; I could see immediately to whom Ramie and Lisette were referring, and that they had predictably attracted attention from the girls. All three men were standing at the bar and I silently made my own assessment from across the crowded room. They wore wide-brimmed hats, the kind the cowpunchers favored, though the tallest had set his atop the smooth surface of the bar; Eva was already teasing him, tugging at the long, fair hair he wore tied back low on his neck.

  He was listening to her in apparent absorption, his chin tipped to regard her as she teased him. He was tall and lean, yet with wide, powerful shoulders. Even in profile, I could see that he was indeed damnably good-looking. The man on his right was also facing away from me, leaning over the bar and smoking; he too was well-built, though slightly shorter and solidly stocky in contrast to the man Eva had clearly already pegged for the evening. The third, on the left, was facing the room. He met and held my gaze as I cleared the final step; though I’d performed this routine countless times, my heart quickened, flooding my face with the warmth of anxiety. Though I would never let a customer sense that.

  But Jola already had me beat; she appeared from the poker tables and slipped her arm across the third man’s midsection, redirecting his attention. I sighed internally, changing course towards the faro tables, though it wasn’t more than five minutes later that Ginny tugged my elbow and said, “Lila, there’s a gentleman wants your attention. Don’t disappoint him, you hear? He’s willing to pay for a half hour, he said.” She studied me with her calculating dark eyes as one might study breeding stock or horseflesh. She concluded with a sigh, “What men will do for the prettiest face.”

  Next she reached to draw a strand of hair from my loose top knot, draping it along my neck. I had learned long ago to restrain any instinctive urge to cringe away from her touch. The scent of her perfume was cloying, inescapable, and trickled into my nightmares. God willing, she would never know how often I fantasized about her death. Ginny ran her hands over my corseted waist and eyed the swell of my breasts with satisfaction.

  “You’ll show him what thirty minutes worth of gold pays for,” she said lightly, though I heard the unpolished edge of warning in her tone, and then turned me by an elbow. At my ear she whispered, her breath tinged with gin this evening, “That’s him, doll face.”

  To my surprise I realized it was the third man from the bar, the one that Jola had set her gaze upon. He’d requested me, leaving no room to decline; I despised this sort of situation for myriad reasons, the least of which being Jola’s resentment. I would be wary of her for days now.

  But years of practice guided my actions, and I swallowed away all misgivings, smiling in warm, flowing welcome at him as I approached, letting my breasts lead me, keeping my eyes upon his. He watched me draw nearer with no reciprocating smile, his eyes steady upon mine, his expression somber, almost severe. I felt a flash of trepidation lance through my stomach, but could not spare a moment to acknowledge it, realizing that a half an hour’s worth of gold dust was equivalent to thirty-five dollars. Half of which would be mine. I hadn’t earned so well with one trick in months.

  “Evening,” I purred to him. He stood alone at the bar now, his companions surely being shown a good time upstairs. He was older than I’d realized, perhaps more than forty years, with strong shoulders and narrow hips, clad in black trousers and a collared muslin shirt, embroidered with black thread. I found that my breath was lodged somewhere south of my throat, making it necessary to drop my gaze from his in order to draw an actual lungful. I ran my fingertip over his chest, forcing myself to look back up at him with composure and poise. I asked in a well-practiced teasing tone, “You care to join me?”

  He nodded silently, prompting me to offer my most sultry smile, taking his hand into mine and leading him up the stairs. Once facing away, the expression dropped instantly from my face and I tried to breathe deeply enough to chase the trembles from my stomach. I was startled by the jangling of my nerves, feeling his hand within mine; my face was unusually hot. We passed Eva’s room, Lisette’s, Ramie’s, all the doors tightly closed, though the intermingled sounds of laughter, groans and gasps could be clearly discerned throughout the hallway. I angled to the left, easing open the door to my own room. I was terribly unsettled, almost fearful, but again forced those feelings away. I could not disappoint him or Ginny would make me pay.

  Just the threat of that strengthened my resolve tenfold.

  It’s not Rainey, this man is not Sam Rainey.

  I knew it, and sensed nothing similar in this situation. Perhaps my disquiet was because I discerned immediately that this man was a different sort. He exuded an intelligence, a capability that went far beyond my usual customer. I clicked shut the door while he moved at once to the bed and sank with masculine grace upon the edge of the mattress, regarding me with a dark gaze that was almost stern in its appraisal, censuring as a school master’s, as though the fact that he had paid in gold for a half hour’s time with a prostitute had slipped from his mind.

  He was also handsome.

  Long ago I had schooled myself not to look too closely, not to notice such things. It was a matter of survival. Yet here I stood, observing as though from a distance, just outside of my physical body. He was strongly built, with powerful arms. He possessed dark, waving hair, threaded with silver, which fell to his shoulders, a solid jaw, and black brows arched over eyes that were both direct and, I dared to hope, kind.

  “Your eyes are gray,” I heard myself say, and to my ears, my voice was uncharacteristically solemn. It held no hint of invitation, nor the affectation of warmth.

  The eyes in question narrowed slightly, as though uncertain what to make of my observation.

  “They are indeed,” he responded at last. His voice was low-pitched and increased my unease, though I sensed no intent of harm.

  “What is your name?” he asked me then, leaning forward and bracing his forearms on his thighs.

  At this point after entry into my room I usually had them half-undressed. Yet I remained with my back against the closed door while he regarded me from ten feet away.


  “Lila,” I told him, studying his eyes.

  “Your real name,” he insisted, and I realized that I recognized the cadence of his words; he was of Tennessee.

  My heart panged as though struck by a blacksmith’s hammer.

  “My name is Lila,” I repeated after a moment.

  He let my lie sink in for the space of several heartbeats, at last saying, “Lila, my name is Angus Warfield.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I whispered. Inexplicably, though again I sensed no threat emanating from him, my throat felt as though a hand hovered just above, ready to close around my windpipe.

  “How old are you?” he asked me next. His eyes were unforgiving. And quite captivating, the shade of an anvil cloud, a thunderhead burdened with a storm. I wondered what burdens this man carried like so much rain. Still I hadn’t moved a step towards him, terribly disconcerted. No one ever asked questions of me. Though if he chose to take up his time with conversation that was certainly his business.

  “I’ve never seen gray eyes,” I said in response, without thinking.

  “Nor I any so blue-green,” he responded without a pause.

  He stood abruptly and I drew in a breath, remembering my place with the suddenness of scalding water against bare flesh. I crossed the floorboards at once, my hands going to his trousers with motions as practiced as a horseman’s on the reins of his steed. When he grasped my fingers with his own, tightly, my chin lifted again, this time in surprise. He was looking at me with his eyebrows slightly knitted, as though frustration quickened his blood, or consternation.

  “May I kiss you?” he asked me, his voice polite but slightly hoarse, and again my heart, normally a prisoner in solitary confinement behind my ribs, a broken and pitiful thing within my body, tightened in surprise like a fisted hand.

  I nodded, unable to reply. He cupped the back of my neck and brought my mouth to his. He knew how to kiss a woman. His lips were at first gentle and I slipped my arms around his neck. His curved around my waist and I was pressed tightly to his chest as his head slanted over mine and he kissed me deeply. His fingers were busy at the laces of my corset, unfastening the silken ties.