Cherokee Rose

by Judy Alter

  I undressed quietly and crawled carefully into my side of the bed, prepared to lie still even though my thoughts were tossing and turning. But a hand reached gently for me, turning me toward him, and Buck soon began to stroke my back, wordlessly. His hands became more insistent, moving to my stomach and my thighs, and I could not have kept myself from responding if I had wanted to. Trouble was, I wasn't sure I wanted anything else but Buck Dowling's hands on me.

  When we were spent, sweaty and panting in each other's arms, he said, "All I want is you, Cherokee. If we never have babies, so be it." Then with a chuckle in his voice, he added, "And if you never cook me a meal, I'll probably live to be an old man."

  Indignant, I squashed a pillow over his face. "I'm a good cook," I said. "I can make mayonnaise."

  "Who wants to eat mayonnaise every day?" he asked, now laughing aloud.

  And we made love again, our passion this time full of fun and lightness. For all that Buck and I had been through, that was one of our better nights together.

  * * *

  We were on the vaudeville circuit for fourteen months, from early 1912 to the spring of 1913, with a return to the Wild West show and outdoor performances during the summer months. But we played on stages in almost every town of any size in the Midwest, moving as far east as Ohio and as far west as Kansas, even once dipping down into Texas, which I fully expected to be a different land. It wasn't, but the people were louder and they bragged more. Still, they took us into their hearts, and I vowed to return to the Lone Star State someday.

  Buck and I were riding a seesaw during those vaudeville days. Sometimes we were lovers and friends, just as we'd started our marriage, but other times there was a tension between us—not the electricity of attraction but a tension that threatened at any moment to break into open warfare. We were professionals, and we knew we had to work together, so most of the time we kept it under control.

  Oh, there were momentary flashes, and then we'd see the troupe watching us warily, trying not to stare and yet curious to see if we could perform the opening rope trick without killing each other. Usually one or the other of us took the proverbial bull by the horns and made the first advance, and we patched it up, whether we'd quarreled about something that happened in the show or Buck's tendency to spend a lot of money or the sorry kind of a hotel I'd booked us into. We never quarreled about children, but the subject was always there, lurking beneath the surface.

  That second winter, we went to Oklahoma for the holidays. "No audience over Christmas," the colonel had wired, though he was quick to tell us when we arrived at the 101 that he had booked a New Year's Eve show in Oklahoma City. I figured to spend Christmas day with my parents, then go on to Guthrie and pick up the show in Oklahoma City.

  "You want to go?" I asked Buck.

  "Don't you think," he asked coldly, "you could have worked out your plans with me? I am half of this marriage, though sometimes it doesn't seem like it."

  I was stunned—and rightly taken to task. "You're right," I said, "and I apologize. Would you like to go with me?"

  "I'd like to spend Christmas here at the 101," he said, but his voice had a petulance about it that made me think he was deliberately being contrary. If I'd said I wanted to stay at the 101, he'd have been for Luckett's or even Guthrie.

  "Buck," I said gently, "my parents are getting on, and my mother is not well. It's important for me to spend the holiday with them."

  "She won't know you've been there."

  "No," I said patiently, "but I'll know."

  "And do we have to go to Guthrie?"

  Once, in one of our arguments, he had accused Louise of turning me against him, filling me with unworthy thoughts about being an independent woman. I had reminded him that Louise had always treated him with nothing but courtesy, but he carried a lingering feeling that she was the enemy.

  "You don't have to go to Guthrie," I told him. "I do." I wanted to add that he sounded suspiciously like he was whining.

  We went together, though at first I wished he'd stayed at the 101. I was afraid he'd be unpleasant around Papa, though I should have known better. They shared a kind of bond that I never could understand, let alone anticipate.

  Our visit went as well as could be expected. Papa, knowing in advance that we were coming, had cooked a big turkey dinner—wild turkey, of course—and had even decorated a small tree. Under the tree was a miniature rearing horse that he had carved for me out of maple he got who knows where—it was exquisite in every detail and much resembled Guthrie.

  "It's Guthrie," I breathed.

  "Close as I could come," he said with satisfaction. Since Papa had to stay home so much with Mama, he'd taken up whittling and gotten right good at it. For Buck, there was a handsome plaid flannel shirt and a new band for his Stetson. He was obviously pleased.

  We'd brought Papa a smoking jacket, which he declared far too grand to ever be worn, but I assured him back east men wore them around the house. It was velvet and elegant, and I thought Papa deserved a touch of elegance in that tiny ranch house that now bounded his life. For Mama, I brought a warm afghan—she had plenty of blankets, but I wanted her to have one that would remind her of me when she wrapped it about her.

  Mama had failed a great deal since my last visit—isn't that how people say it? "She's failing fast." I didn't want to hear it, and I didn't want to think about it, but the clear picture was before me. In three days, she recognized me just twice, both times with great joy and exclamations that clearly indicated she thought I was about twelve years old. The whole visit she assumed Buck was Papa's hired hand and gave him peremptory orders to which he always replied with appropriate subservience, so that she thought he really would go muck out the barn when she told him it needed doing and Mr. Burns should not have to do it.

  "Sometimes," Papa said, "she has trouble breathing at night. I—I don't know what I'll do if something happens in the middle of the night."

  I squeezed his hand and said, "You'll do whatever you can, Papa. The Lord's will be done." The words were trite unless they revealed a deeper religious conviction than I had, but I meant them nonetheless. I figured Mama was in the Lord's hands, and it was only a matter of time. No doubt she would be happier when he called her home, and she was already beyond thinking of the effect on those of us left behind.

  When we left, I knew I would not see Mama again, and that the next time I saw Papa, we would bury Mama. I held her tight and stroked her hair and left with tears in my eyes. Papa said nothing but gave me a strong hug.

  If anybody had asked me when I was growing up, I'd have said that I would be close to my mother all my life and never reach any kind of closeness to my father. "A daughter is a daughter, all of her life." Funny how things turn out.

  Our visit in Guthrie was more strained—Buck and Louise danced around each other like sparring partners in the boxing ring, and Louise and I never did get a private visit. We shopped some, with Buck ostentatiously buying me a new hat with a feather in the hatband and a wonderful buttery-soft silk shirt. But his largesse did little to impress Louise. She could sense the rift between us, and she had no sympathy for Buck.

  The last morning we were there, we sat late at the breakfast table, though I knew Louise itched to be up and about, doing the dishes, starting the noonday meal. Still, she was the one who lingered, when I would have risen to help out.

  "You seen Bo?" she asked with sudden directness.

  "No, you know I haven't."

  She ignored that. "His wife is not well. Doing poorly, as they say. I suspect she won't live long. She had a pregnancy, but the baby died. I don't know what went wrong, but something."

  I was thunderstruck. I'd carried this vision of Bo living happily ever after with this person he'd married, whoever she was. "I—I don't know what to do."

  "I don't think you should do anything. I sure don't think you should go out there. That would upset Ruth. She knows pretty much about you."

  Ruth, I thought. Was she as plain as
her name? "Tell him," I said, "that I asked about him."

  She nodded, and only then, having said what she wanted, did she get up to do the dishes. I helped her, while Buck sat in the parlor and practiced new songs on his guitar. He'd never said a word about Bo, though he knew full well who Bo was and what he'd meant to me.

  "Gosh," he said as we rode south from Guthrie, "am I glad to be away from all your family! Sorry, Cherokee, but that's an honest statement. I feel like I have to watch my every step with all of them. Makes me tighter than a drum. I'm feelin' better already."

  What could I possibly have said in reply to that? I simply spurred my horse and raced him down the road.

  As we neared Oklahoma City, we realized that we were out of date. There were few horses on the road and many, far too many automobiles. One driver honked indignantly at us, spooking Buck's horse until it took off through a pasture. Buck hung on for dear life, sawed on the reins, and yelled angrily. When he finally had the horse under control and rode back to where I waited, he was visibly angry.

  "Damn fool! Doesn't he know horses had the roads first? It just ain't right for automobiles to be taking over everything!"

  I laughed aloud at him. "No, it's not, but I guess we're going to have to accept progress in whatever form." I remembered the car that had spooked my horse when I rode with Mrs. Roosevelt in Washington all those years ago, and I decided that Buck and I had been insulated against the changes taking place in the country. We'd gone from city to city by train and rarely ridden in automobiles, though by that year—1912—more and more of the darned things were appearing on the roads.

  That was nearly the last trip Buck and I ever took by horseback—and almost the last trip we ever took together.

  * * *

  The show went well in Oklahoma City—after all, weren't we on home territory? Weren't we the local stars? For a week we played to capacity audiences who stood and cheered for us after each performance. Papa even came down from Luckett's for one performance, having asked a neighboring ranch lady to stay with Mama, and he beamed with pride when he was introduced to the audience as my father. A photographer took a picture of Papa, Buck, and me, our arms around each other's shoulders, showing the world what a close happy family we were. So much for photography!

  From Oklahoma City, we went to Bartlesville, then on into Missouri, where we played Joplin, Springfield, Jefferson City, and finally Kansas City. Then we worked our way up into Iowa, playing Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Ames, and Sioux City. The plan was to work our way east then, across the top of Illinois, and close the show with a grand performance in Chicago.

  It was in Chicago that my marriage to Buck fell finally and utterly apart—though we stuck it out almost two years after that. The last night of the show, when we had closed in triumph, on a high note, the cowboys begged and cajoled until Buck agreed to celebrate with them.

  "You mind, Cherokee? I really think I ought to go." He was apologetic and charming.

  In truth, I did mind. There were no girls in the troupe for me to celebrate with, and since this was clearly a boys' night out, I would simply have to go back to the hotel room alone and pack our clothes so we could leave for Oklahoma the next day. But Buck didn't do that very often, and I decided I'd best be a good sport about it.

  "No, no," I said, "you go on. Just behave yourself." I added that almost as a joke, an afterthought, a way of teasing, but he shot me an alarmed look.

  "You don't have to tell me that," he said tightly.

  "Of course I don't, Buck, I was just teasing." I reached to kiss him lightly, but his utter lack of response told me I'd made a serious error. It was one of those times I wanted desperately to have a chance to replay the last three minutes of my life and to write a new script.

  Packed and organized, I finally went to sleep. Buck came in well after midnight, pounding on the door and shouting my name because he'd not taken a key.

  "Hush!" I said as I opened the door. "You'll wake everyone in the hotel."

  "Don't care if I do," he said belligerently, and I knew immediately he was drunk. It was a new experience for me—I had never ever in our years of marriage known Buck Dowling to drink too much. But there he was, weaving before me and talking far too loud.

  With a lurch, he reached for me. "C'mere, Cher'kee. You know what we're gonna do?"

  "I," I said coldly, "am going to sleep. You may do what you wish."

  "No, no, you aren't gonna sleep. You and me, we're gonna make some babies."

  My blood froze. No drunk, not even my husband, was going to make love to me. And the mention of babies—the topic that hadn't come up in months—alarmed me. Had the boys been teasing him about our childless state?

  "Buck," I said bluntly, "you're drunk."

  "Never been more in control," he said. "That's it, Cher'kee... control... I'm takin' control of our lives. It's 'bout time I acted like a man."

  Someone had sure planted a bad seed in his mind! "Buck, don't touch me!"

  "Now, Cher'kee, you can't tell me that. I'm your husban'."

  Buck Dowling had never laid a hand on me, never even been a rough lover, and I could not believe he would hurt me. Yet there was about him now something I didn't recognize, a look that frightened me. I glanced around the room quickly, looking for something with which to defend myself if it came to that, but I saw nothing, other than a lamp that was far too heavy for me to lift.

  He came toward me, weaving a little but obviously strong in his determination, pulling off his shirt as he came. "C'mon, Cher'kee, get out o' that nightgown."

  "Buck," I warned, backing away, "don't come any closer to me."

  He stopped, surprised at the strength in my voice. But then he seemed to recall his mission and moved forward.

  Panic rose in my throat for just a minute, but I was used to putting panic beside me and dealing with horses and cattle. Surely I could do it with my own husband. I'd seen enough fights in my day—cowboys behind the stands at the shows, mostly—that I knew what to do. I waited until he was close enough, and then I raised my knee hard. I didn't quite have the heart to hit him in the crotch—instead, I plowed my knee, with the full force of my body behind it, into his stomach, and when he doubled over, the air going out of him with a great "Ooomph!", I swung my fist upward. I meant to hit his chin, but my aim wasn't very good and I clipped his cheekbone, just beneath his eye, with more force than I intended. With one plaintive cry of "Cher'kee!" he wilted.

  I let him lie on the floor and went to bed, though I tossed and turned all night, listening for him to waken, wondering what he'd do. Maybe I should have fled, but I had nowhere to go. Surely, I thought, he'll be sober when he awakens and realize what he did.

  Although he moaned and groaned during the night, it was nearly daylight before he came to consciousness. I sensed more than heard him when he sat up, groaned, and tried to stand. In the dark, I saw that he was unsteady and holding his head.

  "You all right?" I asked. "Want the light?"

  "No! No light. I guess I'll live, but I must've been a damn fool last night." He wandered around the room for some time, then came to sit gingerly on the far side of the bed. "Cherokee, I—I'm not sure I remember everything... but did you hit me last night?"

  "You were going to force me," I said levelly. "Yes, I hit you—hard!"

  "I remember that," he said, shaking his head, "but I don't remember forcing myself on you."

  "You didn't get the chance," I said.

  It developed that Buck had no permanent damage, but he did have a tremendous headache and a dilly of a black eye. The shiner, I told him, was my fault; the headache, his.

  As we sorted out our emotions, it was clear to me, though Buck didn't realize it, that liquor had released in him some angers he'd been hiding—about my being the star, about babies. They were differences we probably couldn't ever reconcile, and I knew right then and there the marriage was over.

  But lots of times we put aside what we know, afraid to face it. And Buck was so contrit
e, so apologetic, so overwhelmed that he had been drunk and brutal—well, nearly so—that it hardly seemed right to say, "That's it, the marriage is over."

  Instead, I said, "Buck, we're going back to Oklahoma. We'll... let's just see what happens."

  He touched me very tentatively. "Cherokee, I love you."

  No, Buck, I thought, you don't. But I didn't tell him that.

  When we met the crew at the train, there was lots of catcalling and joking about his eye. "Walked into a door," he told them jauntily.

  And so we headed back to the 101.

  Chapter 11

  Back in Oklahoma, things seemed normal, almost. If there was a strained distance between Buck and me, we kept it in the privacy of our bedroom. With the Millers and all the others, we were just as we'd always been, working together, planning the next season's show.

  At night, lying stiff next to each other in bed, Buck and I were strangers, distantly polite, until at last one night he turned to me with almost a wail. "Ah, Cherokee, how long's this gonna go on?"

  "I don't know," I answered softly.

  Buck's hands were tentative, almost scared, as he reached for me. When I didn't pull away, he became surer of himself, and soon he had drawn me into his passion. But it was not the lovemaking of our early marriage, and I knew that things between us would never be the same again.

  * * *

  "Had a letter from Belle," Colonel Zack announced at dinner one night. "She's in California—Hollywood—making them new moving pictures "

  "That so?" Buck was instantly alert. "How'd she get to doing that'"

  "Don't know, but she says a lot of Wild West people are out there. Says it's pretty good money."

  Buck turned to look at me, the question obvious in his eyes.

  "Nope, Buck," I said, "I'm an Oklahoma girl. I'll travel where I have to, but I'm not going to California."

  He laughed, as though to put the subject aside with lightness. "That's my Cherokee, always ready for a new adventure."

  I could easily have gotten angry about it or indignant—after all, I considered myself adventuresome. Buck just didn't know how lucky he was—or what dull women he could have been married to. But I didn't think it was worth trying to tell him at that point.