by John Larison
I looked up from my eating.
“Ain’t your fault. There’s only three stories in this whole wide world. But see? You ain’t nothing I ain’t seen a hundred times before. Here now, gone tomorrow. Nothing changes. The creeks still run and snows still come and another boy like you is going to tell me he’s a bounty hunter.”
He looked up at the stars. He howled. He offered me the bottle again. “Last chance to be sociable before I depart.”
I didn’t take the bottle.
The man stretched his back. “Well. Figure I’ll get on anyhow. Long day tomorrow and you ain’t good company.” He stood. “Hey, whatever happened to the rest of your party? A party of bounty hunters? All of you?”
I didn’t answer.
He took down the last of the liquor and looked down the barrel of that bottle and tossed it in the creek. “Well, night to you anyhow. Good luck and all. Thanks for the dead bird.”
I was so relieved he was departing I said, “Luck to you, mister.”
He turned and walked away into the night. I stood to watch him go, and when his footsteps fell away to the darkness I took my first full breath since I seen him on the bank.
I half turned to put a hand to Ingrid, to comfort her. I patted her neck. I knuckled the itchy spot between her brows. I saw it first in the startle of her eyes.
The man was on me before I knew. We both hit the earth hard. I was on the ground and his weight was crushing me.
“You ain’t nothing!” he spat in my face. “Dumb and soft and stupid! You’ll die and no one will know and no one will care. Don’t you get it? I own you!”
His knees got on my arms, all his weight pressed on my ribs and I couldn’t get a breath. He was slapping my face and laughing and there wasn’t nothing I could do.
Ingrid was stomping the earth and whinnying. Her feet was so close. Kick him, I willed. Kill him, girl!
His fist collided into my nose and I fell through the dream.
Ringing ears and blood so thick I can’t get a straight breath. He is strangling me and licking my face. Him everywhere and not a breath to be had and stars come down from the sky and into my eyes and I look out into the gaps between and beg my brother to come, and the gaps grow until there ain’t nothing left but their calamitous darkness and I have no brother and I am no different than the dirt about me and I don’t want nothing no more but stillness.
When I come to, his weight was off me. He was going through my pockets.
I didn’t think, I just done. Pa’s counsel like a whisper in my ear: Steady is quick.
My fingers found the first thing. A burned sharp stick.
I sat up and drove the stick through the bottom of the bastard’s chin. There come the crackle of wood against bone. The warmth of his skin against my hand. The release of his bastard heat down my arm. I feel yet his blood running through my sleeve.
He ripped to the side and staggered to his feet. He couldn’t make no sensible sound on account the wood was through his tongue and he was choking on the blood. The stick had popped one eye and left a cavern in its place. His other eye searched about him but could not settle upon me.
He tripped over my legs and then stumbled through the fire. His pants caught flame, and then he wheeled and I saw the Dragoon in his hand. Fire barked from its barrel, fire clawed up his legs. He went backward to the ground and the Dragoon sent a geyser of sparks toward the heavens.
I stood and found my hat and put it on my head, and then I looked on that man still writhing, and that’s when the shaking started, the wondering, the worry.
All at once I thought of the fire luring the man’s kin, showing light on what I done. I drove my hat into the creek and filled it and ran past the gagging man to dump the water onto the flames. I did this twice and the fire only steamed.
Right away I knew I should’ve saved the flames until I was packed on account of the light. I threw together my belongings by the dim moon. I thought of his gun and kicked it free of him and then picked it up and tucked it in my belt. His smell was all about now. He had shat himself, and his flesh was smoldering, and his gags come slower now, almost at random. I had put him there.
I heaved and upchuck splattered my boots.
“Girl?” I whispered toward the dark. Ingrid had run off. “Goddammit, girl!”
I rolled the Sharps in my bedding and tied it quick to the saddle.
I remembered Pa’s Colt. My holster was empty. On my hands and knees I set about searching for it. I felt the earth with my bare hands.
The Colt had landed under the boughs of a nearby spruce. My fingers found it by touch.
His gagging had stopped, my shaking had turned to something else.
Steps behind me. Ingrid walked into the moonlight and I ran to her. I wrapped my arms around her neck. I tested the words against my only friend, “I killed that man.”
* * *
—
We rode through the night at a gallop. I was blind to the world and so trusted entire in Ingrid’s eyes to guide us. Her body extended and contracted and I could hear the long moments when we took flight over the earthly terrain.
I’d been a girl hiding as a boy. I had deepened my voice and learned to walk with a male swagger. But that bastard hadn’t come at the boy or the girl, he had come at me.
* * *
—
When we reached the town of Scarletville I was in awful need of a rest behind a locked door. Before we entered I smeared charcoal to my face and hands to better conceal my age.
At the livery I paid to give Ingrid a stall and all the feed she could eat. It was a little boy working the door, and I tipped him a penny to make sure Ingrid got his best.
The only hotel in town had rooms available, and I paid extra for one with a locking door. I was studying every table for the relative of the man with the Dragoon. The mistress asked if I wanted a bath. She was three times my age and plump and the sun had turned the skin of her chest to something like dust. She leaned on the bar. “You look like you could use a bath,” she said to me. I could tell from her eyes what was meant, and I told her no, I wasn’t interested in no bath.
She looked at me cross. “You don’t even want a warm towel?”
I was dirty and I got to wondering if I’d misunderstood. “What good’s a towel?”
She laughed. She leaned lower, her bosom like a deep canyon. “One of the girls can towel you off, if you like.”
“Just a room.”
“Do you want a meal?”
“I don’t want no damn favors!”
“A meal is just a meal, Mr. Ornery. It’s beef stew with carrots and corn bread.”
I hadn’t eaten much. The toll of hunger had gotten past my mind and into my bones. “Two orders. One now. One toward evening.”
She sucked something from her teeth with a hiss. “Ain’t yet seen a buck your age turn down a towel.”
* * *
—
The room wasn’t much, but the bed did have two pillows. Which was good on account I needed one over my head to smother the grunts and bedsprings. There was a shared holehouse out the back door. I took my things when I used it.
When my stew arrived the girl who brought it sat down on my bed.
She was my age and she was smaller than me but plumper, and she told me her name was Lily Flower. Her face wore freckles over flushed cheeks. Her red hair was clean and brushed and it hung past her shoulders in wavy curls. There was a purple ribbon in it.
“I don’t want nothing. I just want to be alone with my stew.”
“You poor dear. I can see your hardship.” Without warning she put her hand to my groin and I jumped to my feet and the stew went every which way. I cursed.
She was looking at me different now. She was squinting at me like I was a sunset.
“I lost it,” I said quick.
&n
bsp; “All of it?”
“Just leave me be.” The stew was leaking away through the floor boards. There was a holler and cursing from the room below. I proceeded to collect the beef and carrots from the dirty wood and place them back in the bowl.
“You mean like stripped and snipped all of it?”
I didn’t answer. I wiped a piece of beef on my pants but it only got dirtier. I ate it anyhow, grit and all.
Lily Flower was sitting at the end of the bed. She was smiling and her eyes was warm on me now. She whispered, “You’re a girl, ain’t you?”
“I am not.”
“It’s okay.” Her hand appeared on my back like Noah’s used to when I was sick. “You ain’t the only man to pass through here who ain’t a man.”
“Don’t.”
“I promise I won’t tell a soul,” she whispered. “Not even the girls. Are you running from the law? It must be terrible risky.”
“I think it best you leave.”
My words deflated her. She looked to her lap. “I thought we was just talking. But okay, I’ll get on if you so desire. But if I leave,” her eyelashes fluttered, “I’ll be back to the floor. There’s a man down yonder waiting on me. He’s got a coarse manner about him. He comes here just to see me. I’m the youngest. The worst of them always want the youngest.” She was looking at me now in a manner that spoke to my deepest reserves. Her face was potent as song. “Please let me stay? I’m just so tired of being hurt on.”
She was playing me but I saw the old scar below her ear and the bruise on her wrist. My own hand touched my sore neck. Something let go inside me, like a dragrope busting free. “Why do they want the youngest?”
She touched my hand with hers. She smelled of spring and thunder. “Do you want to know my real name? I want to tell you my real name, since I know a secret about you. Nobody here knows my real name, not even the lady.”
We was sitting side by side on the bed now. Our shoulders touched. She brought her hand into the air like she was cradling something of value for me to see. “Elizabeth Annalee Montclair.” She let the name take flight about us. “It sound hard fancy, don’t it?”
“It do, some.”
She smiled but there was only sadness in it. I believed the name reminded her of a time she could no longer remember. “If you don’t like it here, why don’t you get on?” I asked.
“And go where? It’s the same in each place. I’ve traveled some, I know.” She smoothed her dress. “This here is a whorehouse. There are rules here. There ain’t no rules out yonder.
“I used to think someday a man would take me from here and make me his wife. I would be a good ma, I know it. But I’m old enough now to know some things ain’t never going to happen even though there ain’t no rules against them.”
Her eyes found mine. Her flush cheeks had gone pale and she looked built of paste. Her fingers rose to touch my neck. “He turned you black and blue.”
“Don’t.”
She didn’t take back her fingers but let them caress me. “What name did your people give you?”
I wanted to tell her. I did. We was the same age and I had never known a girl my age. “My ma called me Jessilyn.”
“That’s nice. What’s your middle name?”
“Ain’t got one.”
Excitement flushed her face. “Oh, you should make one up! How about ‘Daisy.’ Jessilyn Daisy. Got a bell to it, don’t it? Or ‘Anne.’ Sounds like you from a big city with lanterns lit all night and children rolling hoops and eating soft candy. I do enjoy naming. Ain’t it queer the Lord lets us assign names? So much we can’t touch in this life, and yet He give us the power to pick our name. Now that’s something.”
“I’m going by Jesse.”
“I’ll keep you safe, Jesse. Jesse. The name ain’t as pretty but I understand your thinking. You don’t want nobody knowing you’re pretty. You’re running. Can I see your arms?” She pulled back the sleeve of my shirt and she held my hand as she looked. “Strong for a girl. Strong for a boy. Don’t you miss people knowing you’re pretty?”
“I ain’t never been pretty.”
She blew air from her lips like I was joking. “It’s just these clothes you done sewn yourself into. We should doll you up. Can I? Right now. Please? Oh Jesse, let’s! Let’s be Elizabeth and Jessilyn just this once.” She laced her fingers with mine and squeezed. “Let’s doll each other up!”
“Nah.”
“Come now, don’t be a hound. . . .”
I took back my hand. “Pretty brings trouble, don’t it?”
“How can you say that? Pretty ain’t nothing to fear! Pretty is all we got, girl. How you going to find yourself a mister without your pretty? Huh? Tell me that.” She commenced pinching my cheeks. “There. We’ll get your blush on yet.”
“Quit it.”
“I’m giving you some rouge, that’s all. Damn pretty if you want to be. You look like you was raised by timber wolves but I see your pretty fighting to get loose.” She rested her head on my shoulder. Then she rose again at once so I might see her face. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
Her eyes was half open, like her lips. “Yes. Terrible pretty.”
She rested her head again on my shoulder. “You probably think I’m a bad person. Do you? I didn’t make a decision to come here, if that’s what you’re thinking. I come into this too young to know of a choice.” She told me the story of losing her parents to fever on the trail. “The Lord spared my brother John and me. I ain’t never been sure why.”
When she finished she looked on me and I understood it was my turn. “I’m hunting the only kin I got remaining, a brother.”
“Thank the Lord for brothers,” she said. “I knew this about you. I could see it in your face. I seen it downstairs, right off, even before I seen them bruises on your neck.”
She smelled so clean. Her hand was upon mine. I asked, “How’d you end up in this place?”
She sighed. “We reach for the familiar drink when we run dry.”
There was a knock at the door. “Lily Flower? You have a special visitor.”
“Shucks!” Elizabeth Annalee Montclair stood in the middle of the room. She whispered, “That’s the lady. Make a man sound.”
I coughed like a man.
“Do a moan.”
I did my best.
“Lily Flower?”
“Yes, ma’am. A touch busy here.” She said it with a pant in her voice.
“You almost done? Your mister is waiting in the lobby.”
I said like I was mad because I was, “Enough already! This is my hour.”
The voice on the other side of the door was quiet a time. “Come downstairs when you’s done, Lily.” The floor creaked as the lady moved on.
Elizabeth Annalee Montclair sunk back to the bed. I thought she would be elated. “I shouldn’t have asked you to moan.”
“Why not? It worked.”
“Now I’m going to have to bring her money.”
“How much?”
“I could say it was a mouth job. That’s fifty cents.”
“Fifty cents.”
“If I tell her it was the whole thing, I can stay longer. The whole thing is a dollar.”
“What happens if you . . .”
“If I don’t bring her money?” She looked off in a way that wasn’t herself. I knew I was being played. I wondered if any of it was truthful.
I dug out the dollar. It was in my fingers. I looked on it and decided I did not want to ask if Elizabeth Annalee Montclair was her real name. I gave her the dollar. “How long can you stay?”
She giggled. “Oh, you’re so good to me! Oh, Jesse, we’re fast friends. I’m so glad you’re here!”
I was damned wore down. “I got a question for you, for that dollar.”
“Ask me just anything.”
“How do the bad ones pick? You know what I mean.”
She laughed like it was funny. “Most of them is kind. Some of them is downright tender. Afterward the sweet ones feel sad for me and that makes me feel sad, so I reckon sometimes I prefer the middle ones, not too sweet and not rough. The slow, fat ones usually.” She twirled her red hair about a finger. “The mean ones want the youngest. I don’t reckon they got any issue with me. I reckon they got issue with young.”
She passed her fingers through my hair. She was humming a song. No one had ever touched me like this.
“How much for the whole night?” I asked.
“From now until morning? Four dollars.”
“I don’t want to leave this room and I don’t want you to leave neither.”
She kissed the top of my head like a mother. “We won’t go nowheres, sweetheart. I promise. Just like this until morning, okay? Now why don’t you tell me what you’s running from.”
“No,” I said. “Tell me a story about your ma. Tell me the longest story you got.”
* * *
—
When I awoke I found Elizabeth Annalee had pulled the covers up around us and had dangled her arm around me. We was sharing a pillow. Her mouth was open and a track of drool ran from the corner of her lips. I smelled old booze on her breath. In the dawn light her teeth was browner than I recalled. Her skin was dry and flaking. She wasn’t as young as she looked in the lantern’s glow.
I left before she could wake and leave me.
I tipped the stable boy another penny out of my remaining monies, and Ingrid threw her head and kicked the wall she was so glad to see me. I had bought two dollars and twenty-two cents worth of provisions from the mercantile, and I slipped Ingrid the first of a dozen molasses candies I purchased for her. She chewed crooked and then her tongue come out to survey her lips for more. “You’s a funny eater,” I said and rubbed her face.
Her ear swiveled, then swiveled back.
I put my forehead to hers and said, “Only wish you could talk. You and me together till the end, girl. You and me forever.”
