Rides a Stranger

by Bill Brooks

  His truth became her own. She ordered the copper tub brought up the room and filled with hot water and soap and towels.

  “I want to wash you,” she said to the man who should have been her husband. She did not know if he legally still was, but in her heart he still was.

  He stripped, and she could see how pale his skin was, how thin he’d become, the ridge of bone in the center of his back as he bent to get into the tub. She took the bar of the soap into her hands and delicately began to wash him, his back and shoulders and neck. He closed his eyes. She washed his hair and rinsed it and he sat there with his eyes closed. For her it was like washing away their sins, past and present.

  “I heard you married Johnny Waco,” he said, his eyes still closed.

  She told him why she had. He asked if she was happy.

  “Do you think I would be here if I was?”

  He reached up across his chest and laid his hand on her damp wrist and held it there on his shoulder.

  “There is someone I’ve met,” he said.

  “I don’t want to know who it is.”

  He told her the woman’s name was Nora Hancock. She worked in the dry goods store. “She’s a widow,” he said.

  She knew who the woman was, had seen her often when she’d shopped at the mercantile. A rather plain woman of quiet disposition. She tried not to compare herself with this Nora, this widow.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said.

  “It does.”

  Then for the first time in three years they kissed, and it was like the very first time they kissed, as though nothing had been forgotten or left out. Certain things do not change.

  Later they lay on the bed together. The room quiet except for a man coughing next door.

  She knew then she’d been changed, that he had put new life into her. She did not say this; it was a secret she would keep for a little while longer until she was sure. She kissed his rough hands.

  “Are you sorry?” she asked.

  “I think I’ve dishonored us both.”

  “No, you haven’t. I came because I wanted to see you. I wanted to erase the past, to start again. I hated you after I saw you the other day. I’ve hated you for three years. I told myself I could never not hate you. But it isn’t true, Chalk. No matter what you might do to me, I can’t hate you.”

  He didn’t know how to tell her he’d changed, that his love for her had changed.

  “I’m not the same man,” is what he said, hoping she’d read into it the truth of who he was now.

  Someone knocked on the door. They lay together silently. The knock came again, followed by a woman’s voice asking if he was in there. He looked at her but did not answer. Then they heard footsteps fading.

  “That was her,” he said. “That was Nora.”

  “You could have answered it,” she said.

  “No, I couldn’t have.”

  “You’re ashamed of me?”

  “No. I just wouldn’t want to shame her.”

  She wasn’t sure of where she stood with him now. It would take time, she told herself, to make things back to where they once were. She would ask for a divorce. She knew what she wanted. But something warned her not to be too hasty. Something in his voice, his not answering the knock at the door, warned her against rushing to a decision.

  And then weeks later when she broke the news she was pregnant and saw the look in his eyes, the near sadness, she understood that he would not marry her.

  It was like someone slamming shut a door suddenly in the middle of the night, a sound that both startles and has finality.

  “You have to understand,” he said. “I’ve given my love to Nora. She has been good and kind to me, she has saved me from maybe killing myself. I couldn’t let her down by leaving her…”

  “Yes,” she said magnanimously, even though her chest felt crushed. “Of course you couldn’t.”

  “I’ll do what’s necessary, of course,” he said. “As far as the baby is concerned.”

  “No. There is no need to trouble yourself with it,” she said, and left and went back to the ranch of her husband and found his liquor and drank it until she couldn’t stand.

  Every day after was like that, and Johnny Waco would find her in bed late in the afternoons. He thought she had a sickness until he discovered the hidden empty bottles. He assigned Maria to watch after her, to keep her away from the liquor. But by then she’d become quite clever in getting it and hiding it.

  A fall caused her to begin bleeding.

  Dr. Flax declared she had a miscarriage.

  “Your husband should be here with you,” he said.

  “No, he doesn’t know,” she said. “And I’d ask that you not tell him.”

  “Of course, of course.”

  She went and packed a few things and left the following day. If she was to be what she thought herself as, a whorish person, there was only one man in town who could make her such. Pink Huston.

  They worked out an agreement over a pipe of opium. He called it “chasing the dragon.”

  He said, “You have lovely breasts, Antonia.”

  She closed her eyes as his hands sought her out.

  “This is the first test,” she remembered him saying.

  After that it no longer mattered.

  Chapter Six

  I told her to think about it, that I planned on taking a room at the hotel and if she was agreeable to come see me in the morning. She looked at me like I was asking for a line of credit.

  “Just think about it before you say no,” I said.

  “What about the other thing?”

  “You mean what I paid for? I didn’t pay for it, you were a gift.”

  I saw the look in her eyes, that of being used to the lowest level, and knew I’d driven in a wedge to pry her loose from this place, the pimp out in the other room.

  “Come see me in the morning, unless you like being treated like this.”

  As I walked out and past the parlor, Pink Huston called, “Well, laddie, how was it?”

  “Worth every penny,” I said. He laughed at the joke.

  “What about that job offer?”

  “I’ll let you know tomorrow.” Lorri was there with him, draped over him like a wounded angel. She and Pink both had dreamy looks. I’d seen that look in other eyes. There was an opium pipe there on the stand next to them and the room smelled sweet. I went out and rode back over the tracks under a night pinpricked with stars.

  I found Chalk still there at the Bison.

  “Well?” he said.

  “I might have a plan.”

  “You want to let me in on it?”

  “I won’t know for sure until tomorrow morning if it’s actually a plan that might work.”

  He ran his fingers through the threads of his hair.

  “And if your plan doesn’t work out?”

  “I’ve got a backup plan.”

  “I’d never have taken you for a planner.”

  “Looks can be deceiving.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “How sure are you about raising that five hundred?” I said.

  “Then you’re accepting my offer?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I can probably have it tomorrow. I need to talk to the city council.”

  “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll find you.”

  He stood and put on his derby and patted the crown, then strode out, leaving the doors swinging behind him. Nobody seemed to notice his departure. In fact everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. It seemed like just any other night in a bar with men drinking in it and I thought about the way people are before a bad storm they don’t know is coming, the kind of storm that brings a cyclone down on them and tears the shit out of everything in its path, killing people and animals, the guilty and innocent alike. They are always oblivious until it’s too late. I understood and respected Chalk Bronson for not panicking the townsfolk with his lament
.

  I went and found a hotel room at a place with the word Hotel painted on its face. Simple, the way I prefer it. Not the Coffin Flats Hotel, or anything pretentious, just Hotel.

  An old man under an eyeshade sitting behind the desk reading a book peered over his spectacles when I came in.

  “Need a room,” I said.

  “Front or back?”

  “Back,” I said.

  “Got none in the back. Give you one in the front.”

  “Okay, front then.”

  He pushed the register at me. “Sign your name, please.”

  “What are you reading?” I said, curious.

  “Don Quixote,” he said.

  I’d heard of it.

  “Crazy old bastard puts a piss pot on his head and thinks he’s a knight,” he cackled. “Damnedest story I ever read.”

  “Sounds interesting. How much for the room?”

  “How long you staying?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Two dollars a day or ten for a full week. Cheaper by the week, you break it down.”

  “Let’s just do a day at a time.”

  “Let me know by noon if you’re staying another day or if you’re not.”

  I put the money on the counter and he handed me a skeleton key.

  “You got a boy who can take my horse over to the livery and get him fed and watered down?”

  “He’ll be along soon. He’s over cross the tracks getting his wick wet. Boy’s plum pussy crazy. Ever time he gets a dollar he spends it on one of those crib whores. I tried to warn him he’s going to get the pox and go blind someday. You think a randy boy will listen to an old man like me?”

  I put another dollar on the desk.

  “Tell him to tell the liveryman I’ll settle up with him when I come to pick up my horse.”

  He looked at the name I’d written on the register.

  “Mr. Glass.” He looked at me. Grinned till his mouth looked like a row of shoe peg corn. “Shit, I know who you are,” he said.

  “I don’t see how, I’ve never been here before.”

  “I seen you once in a gunfight in El Paso,” he said.

  “It’s news to me. I never been in El Paso either.”

  “Yessir, Mr. Hardin,” he said. “Far as I’m concerned, you’re just Mr. Jim Glass, like it says here.”

  “Hardin?”

  “No sir, I didn’t mean nothing by it. Last thing I’d want to do is get on your bad side,” the clerk said.

  The only Hardin I knew was one called John Wesley—real bad son of a bitch if even half of what I heard about him was true.

  “That who you think I am, John Wesley Hardin?”

  He raised his hands in supplication.

  “No sir, you are whoever you say you are.” His raised hands trembled like a pair of leaves in a stiff wind.

  “Well, you just keep to your business and we’ll get along just fine,” I said.

  “Yessir.”

  “Where’s my room?”

  “Up them stairs, turn left, second door on your left.”

  When I got up there I set there on the bed and pulled off my boots and then my pants and shirt after setting my Henry rifle in the corner and hanging my gun rig on the bedpost above my pillow, then stretched out and it felt damn good.

  John Wesley Hardin. Hmmm. I wondered if the mistake would be any advantage to me or if it would simply inspire somebody to come up and stick a gun in my ear and pull the trigger.

  I thought about my plan. I never stole a woman before. Never even tried. Closed my eyes and went to sleep. The one thing I got from reading the Bible, which I did a time or two when I was younger and scared and feeling especially sinful, was that worrying didn’t change a hair on your head. I sleep like a dead man.

  Knocking at the door awakened me. Morning light fell into the room through a dirty window. I pulled on my pants and opened it. It was the woman, Antonia.

  “Come in,” I said.

  She was dressed in trousers and a coat and had her hair twisted into a braid. She looked wasted, like a puncher home from a three day drunk, but you could still see her former beauty lurking somewhere behind the weary eyes, the hollow cheeks, the grim mouth.

  “How do I know I can trust you?” she said after I closed the door. “How do I know you won’t just hand me over to him and leave?”

  “You ran away once, you can do it again if that’s the case.”

  “Like I said, that’s your plan?”

  “No, I told you what my plan was.”

  “He’ll kill me,” she said.

  “If that’s his intent, he’ll do it anyway if he comes for you. I think all he wants to do is rub Bronson’s face in it and drag his name through the mud, show him who’s the boss dog.”

  “He wants to humiliate me just as much.”

  “You want to do this or not?”

  “I could use a drink.”

  “No, that’s the last thing you need.”

  She looked at me. “The hell you know what I need?”

  “You’re right, I don’t.”

  “The way I see this is I’m the sacrificial lamb to save this town of do-gooders. Let me tell you something, mister. They’re not all good. Half the big shots here have paid me and the other whores Saturday night visits while their wives wait for them at home and then go stand in church Sunday morning like saints. They’re no better than those dirty punchers. Why should I care if they get burned out?”

  “Maybe not them, but their wives and kids,” I said.

  I could see how that affected her—the mention of kids.

  “Chalk tell you about me and him?”

  “He did.”

  “About our child?”

  “Yeah, that too.”

  For the first time I saw a moment of softness in her eyes.

  “You know, there’s another way out of this,” she said.

  “If it’s a better plan than mine, I’m all ears.”

  “I could just kill myself.”

  “Shit, I never thought of that.”

  “Don’t be a wise ass.”

  “I’m not. But I figure if you did that, it would just piss this Waco off and he’d probably blame it on Chalk like he has everything else, maybe more, and what do you think he’d do then?”

  “I guess it wouldn’t matter—at least to me it wouldn’t if I was dead.”

  “Give my way a shot and if that don’t work I’ll loan you my gun.”

  “You’re a hard son of a bitch,” she said.

  “Yeah, so I’ve been told.”

  “We’ll see how hard when it comes to Johnny Waco.”

  “Wait here, I’ve got to go see Chalk about the money.”

  “Two hundred and fifty, isn’t that what you said?”

  “Half of five, yes.”

  “Not a hell of a lot for a fresh start somewhere.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “Maybe you could get him to squeeze these paper collar saints for more—a thousand or two.”

  “That’s an idea.”

  Something akin to a smile played at the corner of her mouth.

  “We’re no different, you and me,” she said.

  “How so?”

  “We’re both whores—that’s our nature.”

  “Because we do things for money?”

  “Isn’t that what being a whore is—selling yourself for money?”

  “I guess I never thought of it that way or I’d have charged more along the way.”

  “Yeah, like anyone would have paid.”

  “Now who’s being a wise ass?”

  “Go on before I change my mind.”

  “See you in a while.”

  “Yeah,” she said, and sat on the bed looking glum.

  As I was going past the desk I saw a young fellow with carrot red hair sitting in a chair with his eyes half closed.

  “Hey,” I said. His eyes went up like sprung window shades.

  “Are you the one who
took care of my horse last night?”

  “Yessir, if you’re him.”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Hardin…er, I mean Mr. Glass.”

  “I am. I just wanted to make sure you took care of my animal.”

  He nodded, looked scared.

  “Don’t wet yourself, son.”

  “You got anything else you want me to do for you, sir?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and put two dollars on the desk. “Go and get a breakfast and take it to the woman up in my room.”

  He had front teeth like a rabbit when he grinned.

  “She’s one of those high-priced ones, ain’t she?” he said. “I seen her once or twice coming out of Pink Huston’s hog farm.”

  “She’s a guest of mine,” I said, “treat her with respect.”

  “Yes sir.”

  I walked over to the jail and saw Chalk through the window sitting there at his desk with a cup of coffee looking like he hadn’t slept. I opened the door and went in.

  “I’ll need a thousand instead of five hundred to make your troubles go away,” I said.

  “Yeah, and I need to be twenty-one again and have all my hair back but that’s not going to happen either.”

  “How do you know—about the thousand, not the hair, I mean—unless you ask?”

  “I know these old boys are businessmen, not fools,” he said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Why the extra?”

  “Need half for her.”

  “Antonia?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  So I told him the plan.

  “You call that a plan?” he said.

  “Funny, but that’s the same thing she said.”

  “Take her back and then steal her?”

  “Yeah, simple, but sometimes simple is better.”

  “It’s a fucking joke.”

  “Maybe. But what’s he want? He wants you to bring her to him so he can make you look bad, like he owns you. But what do you care if you can save this town yourself? You have to ask yourself is it worth it—to look bad in front of her and to drag your reputation through the mud. He’s checking your pride, Marshal. Figures once he’s ruined your reputation you’ll quit and leave. Pride’s killed as many men as guns.”

  I could see the lines deepen in his face.