Hart & Boot & Other Stories

by Pratt, Tim

  The guards led John Boot away. The warden later wrote that Boot looked distinctly relieved to be leaving his lover.

  Pearl went with the warden and his wife through an archway into a cramped corridor. Iron bars filled every opening, and the low ceiling made her want to duck, even though her head cleared it by a good margin. The hall smelled like sweat and urine.

  “Did you enjoy shooting those boys, Mrs. Warden? Feeling that big gun jump and buck in your hands?”

  “That’s enough, Hart,” the warden said. “Get in.” He pointed to an open cell door. Pearl could see the boltholes on the wall where the bunks had been removed. A curtain hung from the ceiling, blocking the open-pit latrine from view. She’d expected open-faced cells, like at the county jail, but these cells had real doors.

  “Cozy,” Pearl said, and sauntered in. Men hollered unintelligibly down the corridor.

  “We’re going to make every effort to guard your modesty,” the warden said. “You’ll never be alone with a man. My wife or a female attendant will accompany me and the guards if we ever need to see you privately.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much fun,” Pearl said. “Maybe just one man alone with me every couple days? You could hold a lottery, maybe.” She showed her teeth.

  The warden shut the door without a word.

  Pearl sat on the bunk for a while, thinking. The cell was tiny, with a narrow window set high in one rock wall. She’d roast all day and freeze all night, she knew. John Boot had better get her out soon.

  She got bored, and after a while she went to the door, looking out the iron grille set in the wood. “Hey boys!” she yelled. “I’m your new neighbor, Pearl!” Hoots and whistles came down the hall. “I bet you get lonely in here! How’d you like to pass some time with me?” She went on to talk as dirty as she knew how, which was considerable. She wondered if John Boot was in earshot. He liked it when she talked like this, though he always blushed.

  The men howled like coyotes, and the guards came shouting. Pearl sat down on the bunk again. She’d wait until the men quieted down, then start yelling again. That should get under the warden’s skin, and pass the time until John Boot came to set her free.

  ***

  Pearl woke when John Boot touched her shoulder. She sat up, brushing her hair away from her face. John Boot looked tense and dusty.

  “Are we on our way, then?” Pearl asked.

  He shook his head, sitting down beside her. “I don’t think I can get us out, Pearl.”

  “What do you mean? You got into my cell, so you can get us out.”

  “I can get myself out, sure.” He laughed forlornly. “Walls don’t take much notice of me, sometimes. But you’re different. Back in Tucson I had to cut you an opening.” He thumped his fist on the granite wall. “I can’t do that here.”

  “You could steal keys,” Pearl said, thinking furiously. “Take a guard prisoner, and...” She trailed off. There was the Gatling gun to think of, and fifty miles of desert, if they somehow did make it out. “What are we going to do?”

  “You’ve only got five years,” he said, “and you being a woman, if you behaved yourself—”

  “No! They ain’t winning. Or if they do win, I’ll make them miserable, so they can’t enjoy it. You keep looking, John Boot. Every place has holes. You find one we can slip out of, hear?”

  “I’ll try Pearl, but...” He shook his head. “Don’t expect too much.”

  “Long as you’re here,” Pearl said, unbuttoning her shirt.

  “No,” he said. “It’s tiring, Pearl, going in and out like this. It’s not hard to get dim, but it’s hard to come back. Look at me.” He held up his hand. It shook like a coach bouncing down a bumpy road.

  “You’re about as much good as bloomers in a whorehouse, John Boot,” she said. “Go on back to bed, then.” She watched him, curious to see how he moved in and out of impossible places.

  He stood, then cleared his throat. “I don’t think I can go with you watching me. I always feel more... all together... when you’re paying close attention to me.”

  Pearl turned away. “I thought only ladies were supposed to be modest.” She listened closely, but heard nothing except the distant coughs and moans of the other prisoners. She turned, and John Boot was gone, passed through her cell walls like a ghost.

  Hell, she thought, now I’m up, I won’t be able to fall back asleep. She took a deep breath, then loosed a stream of curses at the top of her lungs. The prisoners down the hall shouted back, angrily, and soon cacophony filled the granite depths of the prison.

  After listening to that for a while, Pearl slept like a babe.

  ***

  Pearl gave up on John Boot after about a month, but she didn’t figure out a better idea for two years. The boredom nearly crushed her, sometimes, but the time passed. She got to see John Boot a lot, at least—he came to her almost every night, and seemed weaker every time.

  “The warden was in here the other day,” she said one night. John Boot sat against the wall, tired after his latest halfhearted search for an escape route. “Telling me what a model prisoner you are, how you never spit on the guards at bed check or raise a fuss in the middle of the night. They said you’re practically rehabilitated, and that you’d want me to behave myself.” She punched her thin mattress. “They still think I’m a helpless innocent, led astray by your wicked ways, even though I’ve done my damnedest to show them otherwise. Stupid bastards.”

  John Boot nodded. He’d heard all this before.

  Pearl, sitting on the edge of her bunk, leaned toward him. “I’m tired of being here, John Boot. Two years, and there’s only so much hell I can raise from inside a stone box. We have to leave this place.”

  “I don’t see how—”

  “Listen a minute. All my life I’ve hated being a woman—well, not hated being one, but hated the way people treated me, and expected me to act. It’s about time I used that against the bastards, don’t you think?”

  John Boot looked interested now. He hadn’t heard this before. “What do you mean?”

  She crossed her legs. “I mean it’s time for you to leave, John Boot. Go ghost on me, fade away, get as tired as you want. I think if you hadn’t been coming to see me every night, you’d have turned to smoke a long time ago.”

  His face betrayed equal parts confusion and hope. “But why? How will my leaving help?”

  She told him what she had in mind.

  “That might work,” he said. “But if it doesn’t...”

  “Then I’ll figure out something else. Don’t waste time, all right? I’m not up for a sentimental goodbye.”

  He put his hand on her knee. “One last?”

  She considered. Why not? “Just be sure to pull out. I don’t want to start my free life with a swelled-up belly.”

  After, he lay against her in the narrow bunk. “I’m a little nervous now,” he said. “I’ll miss you.”

  She stretched her arms over her head, comfortable. “I wouldn’t think it. You’ve seemed pretty eager to get away.”

  “Well... in a way. Don’t you ever want to go to sleep, and never have to wake up again?”

  “No,” she said truthfully. “I’ll sleep plenty when I’m dead.”

  He was quiet for a moment, and then said, “I don’t think I have a choice. About loving you.”

  Pearl touched his hair, letting her usual defenses slip a little. “I’ll miss you, too, John Boot. You’re the only man I could ever stand for more than a night at a time. But it’s time I let you go.”

  “Don’t look,” he said, getting out of bed.

  She closed her eyes.

  “Goodbye, Pearl,” he said, his voice faint. He went away.

  ***

  It took two days for anyone to notice that John Boot was gone—he’d been so unassuming that they overlooked his empty cell at the first bed check. When the warden and his wife came to tell Pearl that John Boot had escaped, she made a big show of breaking down and crying, saying, “He t
old me to stay strong, that we’d walk out of here together, that as long as I didn’t give in to you he wouldn’t leave me!” Weeping with her face in her hands, she could glimpse the warden and his wife through her fingers. They exchanged sympathetic looks—they believed it, the stupid bastards, they still believed that John Boot was the cause of Pearl’s bad behavior.

  Pearl’s behavior changed completely after that. In the following weeks she began wearing a dress, and having polite conversation with the warden’s wife, and even started writing poetry, the sappiest, most flowery stuff she could, all about babies and sunlight and flowers. The warden’s wife loved it, her tough exterior softening. “Pearl,” she said once, “I feel like you and I are much the same, underneath it all.” It was all Pearl could do to keep from laughing—talk like this, from the woman who’d once gunned down a yard full of convicts! That was no stranger than a stagecoach robber writing poems, maybe—Black Bart aside, of course—but with Pearl it was an act.

  She missed John Boot a little, but if his leaving could help get her get out of prison, it was worth it. The warden told Pearl that, with John Boot’s influence lifted, she was blossoming into a fine young woman. Two months after John Boot “escaped,” the warden and his wife came to visit Pearl again, both of them smiling like cowboys in a whorehouse. “The governor’s coming to inspect the prison soon, Pearl,” the warden said. “I’ve talked to him about your case, discussed the possibility of giving you a pardon and an early release... and he wants to meet with you.”

  “That would be just fine,” Pearl said demurely, thinking, Hot damn! About time!

  ***

  The governor came into her cell, middle-aged and serious. He wore a nice gray suit and boots with swirling patterns in the leather. The warden and his wife introduced him to Pearl, then stood off to the side, beaming at their new favorite prisoner. The governor looked at them, raised an eyebrow, and said, “Could I have a little time alone with Miss Hart, to discuss her situation?” The warden and his wife practically fell over themselves getting out the door. The governor stood up and closed the cell door. “A little privacy,” he said.

  “Sir, I’m so glad you decided to meet with me,” Pearl began. She’d been practicing this speech for days. It had loads of respect, repentance, and a fair bit about Jesus. If it didn’t get her a pardon, nothing would.

  “Yes, well,” he said, interrupting her. He took a pocket watch from his vest, looked at it, and frowned. Then he looked Pearl up and down, and grunted. “How bad do you want a pardon, girl?”

  Pearl kept smiling, though she didn’t like that look in his eyes. “Very much, Governor, I’ve learned my lesson, I —”

  “Listen, little girl, that’s enough talking. I don’t care how sorry you are for what you’ve done. You’re in the worst goddamn place in the whole desert, of course you’re sorry, even a rattlesnake would repent his sinful ways if he got locked up here. Now I don’t have a whole lot of time. There’s one way for you to get a pardon, and it doesn’t have anything to do with talking, if you see what I mean.”

  Pearl stared at him, her eyes narrowed.

  He looked at his watch again. “Look, you can just bend over your bunk there, you don’t even need to take off your dress, I’ll just lift it up.”

  “You go to hell, you bastard,” Pearl said, crossing her arms. If he tried to touch her, she’d put a hurt on him like he’d never felt before. She almost hoped he did touch her. The governor was just like all the others, like her husband, like all the men before she’d met John Boot. Boot seemed like just about the only good man in the whole world, and she’d pretty much had to make him up out of her own mind, hadn’t she?

  The governor went white in the face, then red. “You’re going to rot here, Miss Hart. You could’ve given me five minutes of your time, done what you’ve probably done with hundreds of filthy men, and been free. But instead—”

  “I may’ve done it with filthy men,” Pearl said, “but I’ve never done it yet with a nasty old pig like you.”

  The governor rapped on the door, and a guard came to let him out. He left without a word. The warden and his wife bustled in soon after and asked how it went. Pearl thought about telling them, but what was the use?

  “It went just fine,” she said.

  That night, for the first time in years, Pearl cried.

  ***

  Pearl dreamed of lying in her old bedroom in Canada, giving birth. The baby slid out painlessly, crying, and she picked it up, unsure how to hold it, wrinkling her nose in distaste. The baby looked like a miniature version of the governor, with piercing eyes and grim lines around his mouth. The baby’s tongue slid out, over its lips, and Pearl hurled the thing away in disgust. It hit the knotty pine wall and bounced. When it landed, its face had changed, and John Boot’s eyes regarded her sadly.

  Pearl sat up in the dark of her cell, shivering, but not because the dream disturbed her. She shivered with excitement, because she saw a possibility, a chance at a way out.

  She lay back down and thought fondly of John Boot, her wonderful John Boot, her lover, her companion, calling to him in her mind.

  Nothing happened, except for time passing, and Pearl’s frustration rising. Finally she fell asleep again, fists clenched tight enough to leave nail marks in her palms.

  ***

  “Pearl,” John Boot said.

  She opened her eyes, sitting up. It was still dark, but Pearl felt like dawn was near. John Boot was on the floor—no, in the floor, half in a hole, just like the first time she’d met him. “Am I dreaming?” she asked.

  “No, I’m really here. You felt... very angry, Pearl. It pulled me back.”

  Maybe that’s where I went wrong, she thought. I tried to think sweet thoughts and call him that way, and he didn’t feel a thing, but when I got mad, like I was the first time, here he comes. “Pulled you back from where?”

  “Someplace where I was sleeping, sort of.”

  Pearl knelt on the hard granite floor and extended her hand. He took it warily, as if expecting her to try and break his fingers. “I’m not mad at you, John Boot,” she said. She wondered about the hole. It would no doubt close up when she wasn’t paying attention, as modest in its way as John Boot was himself.

  “Then what’s wrong?” he asked, letting her help him out of the hole. “Did your plan work, are you getting a pardon?” He sat cross-legged on the floor, naked again, except for his fine boots.

  She hesitated. She planned to use John Boot, no two ways about it. Pearl seldom shrank from saying hurtful things, but she hadn’t ever hurt John Boot on purpose, and he’d done a lot for her. A little lie to spare his feelings wouldn’t do any harm now.

  “That’s right, I’m getting pardoned,” she said. “The governor was very impressed with me. I’m just angry that I have to wait for the order to go through, that I’m stuck here for a few days more... and that I’m going to be alone out there, without you.”

  He lowered his head. “You want me to come back?”

  “I wouldn’t ask for that.” She put her hand on his bare knee. “But... I want something special to remember you by.”

  “What?”

  “Sleep with me, John Boot. And don’t pull out this time. I want to have your baby. We’ll do it as many times as we have to, tonight, tomorrow, as long as it takes.”

  “You mean it, Pearl?” he said, taking her hand. “Really?”

  “Yes.” She got on the bed. “I want your baby in the worst way.”

  He came to her.

  ***

  A little later, lying tight against him in the narrow bed, she said, “Let’s go again. We’ve got enough time before bed check.”

  “We can if you want,” he said sleepily. “But we don’t have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it took.”

  She pushed herself up on her elbow and looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “The baby. It took. You’re kindled.” He looked into her eyes. “I can feel it.
I felt it the other time, too, when you... lost it. I wish...” He shrugged. “But it’s all right now.”

  “Oh, John Boot. You’ve made me so happy.”

  “I should go.”

  “Wait until dawn? I want to see your face in the morning light one more time.”

  He held her. When the sun came, he kissed her cheek. “I have to go.”

  She nodded, then looked away, to give him his privacy.

  “No,” he said, touching her cheek. “You can look, this time.”

  She watched. He dissolved like the remnant of a dream, first his warmth fading, then his skin turning to smoke, until finally he disappeared all the way, leaving Pearl with nothing in her arms but emptiness, and a tiny spark of life in her belly.

  ***

  Pearl waited two months, still behaving herself. Each time she saw the warden she made a point of anxiously asking if he’d heard from the governor. They hadn’t, and the warden’s wife clucked her tongue and said everything would work out. Pearl had no doubt about that.

  After two months, Pearl asked to see a nurse. The woman examined her, and Pearl told her she’d missed two months in a row. The nurse blushed, but didn’t ask probing questions. She went to report her findings to the warden.

  Pearl’s pregnancy created a difficult situation. As far as anyone knew, only one man had been alone with Pearl during her years of incarceration, and that man was the governor. He would say he hadn’t slept with Pearl, of course, but she would say otherwise, and publicity like that wouldn’t do anybody any good. She knew the governor would take the obvious way out, and avoid the scandal.

  She didn’t have to wait long.

  “In light of your delicate circumstances,” the warden said two days later, not meeting her eyes, “the governor has decided to grant you a pardon.”

  “It’s about damn time,” Pearl said.

  On the day of her release a guard gave her a ride to the nearest train station. Pearl looked at the desert where she’d had her adventures, at the harsh ground that had birthed John Boot. She laced her hands over her belly, content.

  There were a lot of reporters at the train station. They’d gotten wind of her plans. Pearl had decided that life as an outlaw was all well and good, but it demanded too much sleeping rough and missing meals. She had a baby to think about, now. Originally she’d planned to get rid of the baby at the earliest opportunity, but she was having second thoughts.