Faith: A Historical Western Romance (A Merry Mail Order Bride Romance Series Book 2)

by Amy Field

  Curiosity got the better of her. She didn’t even know the name of the man in front of her. Yet, it seemed that he was willing to answer her questions while she greatly wished to ask them. She said, “What did you do all your life if no one ever did anything good for you then?”

  He shrugged, as though the answer did not matter to him. She could see that it did. He said, “Been up to Coxsackie for a five-year stretch. B&E, Aggravated, you know the drill. When I got out, they put me in this damned halfway. Wasn’t much different, just didn’t have no iron bars. Couldn’t have no cell phone, couldn’t step off the porch, couldn’t make my own money. Could hardly do nothing without permission. So I said fuck that and left. That was six or seven years ago, seems like. I ever step foot in New York State again, somebody gonna put the handcuffs on me.”

  The references to New York made her confused. She lived in Concord, New Hampshire. The bookstore she entered was a locally owned and operated business run by a handful of people- two women and one man- who had decided that the old business model of selling books alone was not good enough to make a profit. They sold cookies, subs, sandwiches, bowls of soup, coffee, T-shirts, audio books, mugs, and vintage books that she thought were overpriced. She returned to the bookstore every Saturday because she wanted to try and make an effort at living in the real world. Even if it meant sweating nervously in front of a group of strangers that she knew didn’t care about her one way or the other, she wanted to try. She had to try, or else her life would devolve into passing time from waking to sleeping. In between, there would be nothing. If there was nothing, she was sure that she would one day kill herself out of boredom.

  She had been just on the point of ordering a cup of hot chocolate when she saw the man enter the bookstore. She had been presented with a choice: she could ignore him or follow him. She had not even ordered a cup of hot chocolate before she decided to follow the man.

  She was on the point of asking him what he was doing in New Hampshire when she checked herself. That, she thought, would be taking it one step too far. Instead, she said, “What’s your name?”

  “Shoot, girl. What do you want to know my name for? Names don’t matter. Only numbers. We all numbers in the system. Some of them eight numbers, some of them five numbers, some of them more. We’re just, what you call it, random bits of mathematics floating through the world. That’s all we is. My name? Huh. Might as well ask me my shoe size.”

  “I’m not asking you what your shoe size is. I’m asking you what your name is. People attach great importance to their names. You take pride in hearing your name spoken in a compliment. You get angry when someone uses your name to insult you. Your name is who you are. No one can take that away from you, if you don’t want them to.”

  The man crossed his arms over his chest. That only made his chest appear even more muscular than she thought it was. He said, “You ain’t got no idea, do you?”

  She said, “No, I don’t. So why don’t you tell me?”

  He waved a hand at her in a gesture of dismissal. He said, “Girl, you crazy. I don’t know why I’m talking to you.”

  He turned away from her. Before he could walk away, an impulse shot through Laura’s body. She didn’t understand then what it was that caused both her hands to reach out, or what caused her fingers to close around his wrist.

  The man reacted as if bitten by a snake. He pulled his arm back, holding his wrist. He said, “Don’t touch me. Don’t you touch me.”

  “Will you tell me what your name is?”

  He let out another sigh. That one was less pronounced than the first. He said, “Look, you don’t know what you’re getting into here. I can’t be trying to be friendly with anyone. It always turns out bad. People in my life, they get hurt.”

  “Is that any reason not to try?”

  And then again there it was- that flicker of change across his face. It happened in an instant and was gone. Laura was not entirely sure at that moment that she saw things correctly. She hoped that she didn't see what she wanted to see- what she hoped to see.

  He said, “Why don’t we sit down and talk about this.”

  Laura thought that was the best idea that she had heard in some time.

  Chapter 2

  The bookstore had once been two separate properties with a wall between them. When he bought the store, the owner had knocked down the wall that stood between what was now the reading area and the upper level where the store kept all its literature and literary criticism. A large red book that must have been seven hundred pages long bore the title, “Feminisms.” The titles of other books could not even be discerned. Some books were so valuable that a bookmark with the price printed on it stuck out from the pages. There were old books and new books alike. There were books of so many different colors that they all blended to create a cornucopia of musty white paper bound together between hardback and paperback covers.

  A set of tables had been arranged in a row down a terrace that overlooked the reading area. One of the tables was occupied. A young woman with blonde hair that cascaded down over her shoulder relaxed in a tall chair. She held a book in front of her face. A steaming cup of tea sat on the table in front of her. Notebooks and papers of all sorts were splayed out in front of her. A black graphite pencil lay tucked behind her ear. She looked up when Laura passed her. Then she pretended not to notice the man with tattoos all over his arms.

  Laura sat down at the table farthest away from everyone else. The man sat down across from her. That was a positive sign. He had another chance to run away from her while she was leading him up a set of stairs and down a narrow walkway. He had not run. He had kept following her. She held out hope that she might get the bottom of why it was that she found herself attracted to him. There had to be a reason for it. She wanted to know what that reason was.

  He sat down, then put his elbows on the table. He interlocked his fingers and looked down. He said, “My name’s Nathaniel Whitcomb. Like one of them proper English dudes with his tea and shit. Nobody never cared enough to ask me what my name was before.”

  She bit her bottom lip, wanting to tell him that she cared even while she knew that was a ridiculous thing to say. He would never believe that she cared anything for him, not after they had just spent a short time together. Instead, she said, “Nathaniel. It’s a really good name. It suits you.”

  “Oh yeah? Nobody thought so before. I don’t know if I feel some kind of way about that. It just doesn't seem quite right.”

  “It is right. At least to me.”

  He looked away from her. He said, “Yeah okay, you say so.”

  She decided to change the subject to keep him from being uncomfortable. She said, “How did you end up - how did you pronounce it - Coxie”

  “Coxsackie. Like I told you, it was B&E and aggravated assault. They were too separate incidents. For B&E, I would have just got two years seeing as how it was my first stretch of time served anywhere. Now it just so happened that I had an argument with somebody right around that same time. This was a violent argument. Some fightin' and such. Nothing too major, just what happens when you live in the hood. People destroy each other, much as they can. Onliest thing to do is get up on out of there.

  “Now the breaking and entering, that was me tryin' to get back something that got stolen from me. That was a little computer I picked up out of a pawnshop. I knew the man who took it from me. A dirty old bastid, he was. I never had any problem breaking into his crib to steal back what was mine. Just so happened that temptation got the better of me, and I stole some stuff that wasn’t mine. Least I tried to. He woke up and came charging out of his bedroom with a shotgun. I bolted right on out there with my computer in my hands. I dropped the television that I’d been trying to steal. That was a thirty-four-inch flat screen jawn. The screen broke open like an egg. They were glass and bits of stuff everywhere. This man who stole from me, his name was Jenorious, he started hollering like to raise the dead. I just got out of there fast as I could.

&n
bsp; “The poh-lice, they came for me some days later. Turned out, they was two criminal complaints against me. Now look at me, I’m a big black man. You think I stand a chance in a white man’s court? Hell no, I never would. So I plead guilty right on the spot. They dropped the destruction of property charged if I promised to serve the other two charges. There wasn’t really no choice. When a black man shows up in court, it don’t matter what he say. He’s guilty. He gone be found guilty even if he doesn’t say so. Best thing is, just take the reduced sentence and start counting the time until I can get out.

  “Now you might not believe me if I told you, but they decided I was some kinda security risk. Them court people, they don’t seem to understand that fightin' is just a thing people do in the hood. You walk down the street, any time of day or night, you always gone hear somebody arguing with somebody else at the top of they voice. Everybody out there is all wound up with tension. Some people just need to let it out once in a while, you feel me?”

  Laura listened with growing interest. She had never met anyone who lived through prison. All she knew about it was what she had seen on TV shows and read in books. She said, “I think I know what you mean.”

  He continued, “Okay. All right. So there I am on the prisoner bus chained up like some kind of slave or something. That there was a long ride. Coxsackie ain’t close to Harlem, not by a dog’s mile. That place was full of liars and cheats. Can’t trust nobody in the prison. Especially not them guards. They got what you call a free license to hit somebody with that nightstick at any time. That’s what they do. They shout and hit and punish. That’s all they know. Even if you obey all the rules, every so often, a spark of individuality gone come out of you. People can’t help it. Just the way we are. Leastways, that’s how I am.

  “Prison ain’t a place for individuals. Nor is the damn halfway house. In the future, when we make robots or some shit, we not gone keep them in our houses. We just gone throw them in prison. They be right at home there. Do this, do that, stand in a line, don’t do that, pay attention, whatever the fuck. I got tired of that life fast. Within the first two weeks, I got tired of it. All I could do was sit there and count the days till I got out. Then when I did get out, I found out some things. Let me tell how it is.

  “A man never really gets out of prison. You might think that criminal background check ain’t nothing when you ain’t got nothing on your record. But when you tryin' to get a job, put your life together and such, some private investigator somewhere has the power to literally keep you from doing that. It ain’t fair. It ain’t even close to being fair. If prison is paying your debt to society, how come I can’t do nothing when I get out? Why am I still stuck to my past? I already let all that go, long time ago. You tell me - why can’t I do nothin' or get nothin' but what somebody give me? It’s humiliating. I ain’t no invalid on Medicare. I’m a grown man. I wanna work for what I have, be responsible for myself. If that fool Jenorious hadn’t shown up in my life, I’d be just fine. Never would have known no different about prison or nothing. I guess in a society where people ain’t allowed to make their money, they just gotta get up and take it from wherever they can. I don’t know; it seems like a sad thing to me.”

  Laura wondered whether he really had left the past in the past. A twinge of queasiness in her stomach reminded her that doing so was not easy. She said, “I’ve never thought about it that way. What did you mean when you said you have to live on what other people I give you?”

  He gestured behind him. The blonde woman with her book looked for a moment, then raised the book in front of her eyes. He said, “I’m staying at the mission up the road a piece. They got what you call a four-month program there. I had to go there on account of how nobody wants to hire a felon. Supposed to be, when you’re in the halfway house, you find a place to work, save up some money. It don’t really work that way. You can stay there forever, and you ain’t never gone find anything, not so long as you got branded as a criminal. Some people, alls they ever did was try to grow some plants in they garage. Poh-lice don’t care. They arrest people all the same. They merciless, girl. Really heartless bastids. I only ever survive by what other people give me. Sometimes clothes, most times food. I’m lucky if I get to drink some Gatorade. Usually, it’s bad coffee and undercooked chicken.”

  “There’s no way you can get out of it?”

  “Not without breaking the law, you can’t. I been circling the drain for a while, listenin' to people tell me this, that, and the third about God, Jesus, and whoever the fuck. If God is real, he’s a sadistic prick. I don’t like him none. But I gotta listen about him just the same. That’s the price of me staying there. It’s always the book of Matthew, the book of Corinthians, and the book of Genesis. Man gets tired of hearing the same message every day, all the time like that. I don’t need no message. I need a job where I can work and earn my own money. The way it looks like, I might end up selling loosies on the street.”

  Laura was not particularly religious herself. She had trouble imagining a situation where a person had nothing better to do with their time than to bible study. If Nathaniel wasn’t intensely interested in the subject- and it did not appear that he was- he would gain neither enjoyment nor edification from it. She did not envy him his situation.

  She said, “What are ‘loosies’?”

  “Loosies, you know, cigarettes. Rolled cigarettes from pouch tobacco, mostly. Every now and then, might be you can sell store-bought stuff. Like Newports. People in prison and people on the street aren’t too different in how they each like their cigarettes. It’s like a kind of money. If you got cigarettes, you can go a long way- long as you can keep people from stealing it.”

  “And they arrest you for doing that, selling loosies?”

  “Course they do. Those blue pigs, man, they’re like an army of people who don’t want nobody to have any kind of success in this world. Especially black people. They don’t like it none at all when someone tries to get out of poverty. That’s when the sirens and flashing lights start up. That’s when the handcuffs come out. You ever run into them, you just answer yes sir, do what they say, and get out of there. Onliest thing you can do, that situation.”

  As Laura listened to him talk, she found herself more enthralled than ever by his words. He peeled away the curtains for her to reveal a world that she had never dreamed about. It was a world of bad men with bad intentions. She wanted to learn more about that world. She wanted to keep learning more about him.

  She said, “What do you want to do when you get out of the shelter?”

  He shook his head. He said, “I don’t rightly know. I’d like to get me a place of my own, not with no roommates. Not one of them shared kitchen, shared bathroom jawns. Not none of that. Maybe- I don’t know.”

  He had been on the point of saying something. She said, “Maybe what?”

  “I don’t know. It’s stupid.”

  “No, what is it? Tell me.”

  He took a moment to collect himself. Then he said, “You seem like a friendly girl. I ain’t met a nice girl in a while. I was thinking, maybe you and I could get together sometime. You know, like do something together.”

  Laura’s heart almost stopped. She had not expected him to say anything of the sort, even while she had hoped for it- hoped for it without even realizing. She crossed her legs, then put her hands on her lap. She said, “That would be all right, I think. We’re together now, aren’t we?”

  “Sure we are. I just don’t know your name, mysterious girl. Don’t know how you managed that. You got me to say all that stuff, and here I don’t even know you name.”

  She said, “It’s Laura Halliston. Pleased to meet you.”

  He let out a derisive chuckle. “Laura and Nathaniel. Ain’t that some shit.”

  Chapter 3

  Most days, the secret that she kept from everyone she knew weighed down upon her. She experienced it as a headache and a burden upon her shoulders that caused her muscles to grow sore. After introducing herse
lf, she knew that she ought to tell him. She could not think of a way to broach the subject. She would have to let people know eventually. She could not keep it hidden forever. For the present, however, she was at a loss as to what she was going to do.

  He said, “Now that I told you so much, maybe you can tell me a little bit about yourself.”

  She gripped her pants with her fingernails. She did not want to bite her nails in front of him. She did not like the part of herself that became so nervous to the point where she put her fingers just in front of her teeth so that she could chew off her nails. She never let her nails grow. She always bit them until they became uneven and raw. She kept her hands hidden under the table for fear that he would see them.

  She decided to tell him then and there what her secret was. She braced herself internally for the blow-up that would follow. She said, “I’m... I’m pregnant.”

  She expected him to become angry. She expected him to shout, to scream, to flip the table over, and to slap her in the face. He did nothing of the sort. He sat where he was and looked at her with a contemplative expression. She found herself glad that he let down the tough guy mask that he had been wearing even while she felt apprehensive about the silence that followed. That was worse than the worst tirade he could have made.

  He said, “I see.”

  She wanted to shout at him: that’s it? She could not believe that he had so little to say about such an important revelation. She said, “Don’t you have anything to say about that?”

  “What do you want me to say? I don’t know anything about pregnancy. I ain’t got no vagina. Nobody never gonna put a baby in me. What am I supposed to say about that?”