The Outsider

by Penelope Williamson

  "Might be," the outsider said, "that they were so glad to see the back of him, they decided to commemorate the event."

  Rachel laughed. Their gazes met and lingered, and parted. He gathered up the reins and started them on their way again.

  Alongside the creek some tame Blackfeet lived in tipis made of antelope hides. As they drove by, Rachel saw smoke puffing from one of the tipis, and her smile faded. She thought of that Indian, poor Mia-Wa, who'd failed at everything he'd tried to do. To be banished from your home and family, to be ripped up by the roots from the very earth of your life, was a fate too horrible to be borne.

  They passed the cemetery next, where a pair of boots dangled from a freshly hewn cross. Then came a two-story gray clapboard house that was encircled by a double gallery, and had a red locomotive lantern hanging from a hook next to the front door. Three women in silk wrappers and hair papers sat perched on the upper balcony rail like a flock of bright-colored finches.

  "Th-that's the house where all the Jezebels live," Benjo declared, loud enough for the Jezebels to hear, and to laugh.

  Rachel hauled her son's pointing finger back into the wagon. "If you're going to flap at something, make it those flies that are feasting on my cheese."

  Benjo twisted around to pick up the bundle of willow branches that lay in the wagon bed. He waved the makeshift fan over the crocks of clotted cheese that Rachel hoped to trade to defray the cost of their monthly supplies.

  As for Rachel, she kept her eyes carefully on the road ahead and off that house of sin. Keeping her mind from wandering inside was more difficult. In that house were beds. She could imagine those beds, with goose-down comforters deep and white and soft as fresh snowbanks. There'd be lace edging on the pillow slips and sheets so silky they'd whisper under a woman's bare skin. There'd be a piano playing in the parlor below. A mahogany piano. A piano below, and above a man and woman lying on a bed in a hot and shadowy room, clasped together, moving together, and the music from below pulsing over them and through them....

  "You going to roost up there all day?"

  Rachel looked from the outsider's raised hand to his upturned face. He stood in the road, in the middle of Miawa City, waiting to help her climb out the wagon, and he didn't look at all like he'd been thinking of bare legs entwined on feather beds in houses of sin. He only looked hot.

  Her fingers were curled around the edge of the seat beside her thighs, and she couldn't seem to loosen them. Her face burned like a stoked fire. She hadn't known it was in her to conjure up such wicked imaginings.

  He took a step closer and clasped her around the waist, swinging her out of the wagon and all the way onto the warped boardwalk. She gasped aloud and clung to his shoulders like a child.

  "You don't want to be getting your feet wet," he said.

  It had been a polite thing to do, nothing more. Yet she had been so aware of the hard strength of his hand and arm pressing into her back, of the way her skirts had whispered as they brushed against his leg. Of how, just for an instant, their faces had been close enough for his lips to have touched hers.

  "Wet?" she said. And then she realized that Mr. Beaker had just stepped out of his barber shop to empty a bathtub. Gray sudsy water flowed through the shallow trough that passed for a gutter in the road.

  She didn't notice how the barber had stopped to stare, how the few people who were about on such a hot morning had all stopped to stare, not so much at her and Benjo this time as at the infamous shootist Johnny Cain. She looked around her, feeling disoriented, as if she'd never seen Tulle's Mercantile, Wang's Chop House, the Slick As a Whistle Barber and Bath, the town's four honky-tonks and dance halls. A covered jerky clipped past them, throwing up a cloud of dust and dung flies. She let the dust settle over her without even blinking.

  "We better get those crocks out of the hot sun," Cain said to her son. "How about you handing them down to me?"

  Tulle's Mercantile sported a ratty green-and-white-striped awning over its bay window. Cain set a couple of the cheese crocks beneath the awning's dubious shade, and as he straightened up she saw him grimace and press a hand to his side. The day after the cattle stampede she'd come upon him shirtless, scrubbing himself at the yard pump trough. His whole torso was a purpled mass of weals and welts and bruises.

  "Since Doc Henry's going to be cutting that surgeon's plaster off your arm this morning," she said, "you ought to go ahead and have him take a look at those ribs."

  "Aw, they ain't busted, Rachel. I should know."

  She looked away so he couldn't see her face. He'd called her Rachel. He did it sometimes now, when he forgot about keeping his distance.

  She wondered why he would know how busted ribs felt. The life he'd had before he'd come staggering across her wild hay meadow, the paths he'd followed before his had intersected with hers—it was all a source of constant, gnawing curiosity to her.

  Yet when she stole another glance at him, she had to laugh at the face he was pulling. "What is it about men and physicking? Wave a bottle of cod liver oil under your nose and you run like a prairie chicken. Then come winter let that same nose catch a rheum and to hear you moan, one'd think you were dying. And what are you snickering over, Benjo Yoder? You're the worst of the lot."

  Cain and her son rolled their eyes at each other, as if to say, "Women!"

  "After I'm done being tortured by the doc," Cain said to the boy, "I'm going to go buy me a horse. Want to help me pick it out?"

  Benjo looked like he'd just been given the moon.

  "A horse?" Rachel said.

  He granted as Benjo slapped another crock of clotted cheese into his hands. "Lady, if I ever do got to make a quick getaway, it sure ain't gonna be on that slug mare of yours."

  "Oh." Of course he would need a horse. After all, he wasn't going to stay forever. When he left he would certainly need a horse.

  "Horses are expensive."

  His face took on a look of pure astonishment. "You don't think I can afford one on my dollar a day? Well, shucks. Guess I'll have to hold up the stage, then. Or use some of this."

  Rachel didn't see where it came from. It was suddenly flying at Benjo and he snagged it out of the air. A man's leather boodle book.

  The boy popped the boodle book's button lock and spread open the flaps, his eyes going wide. It was stuffed fat with treasury notes and greenbacks. "Barmlich! Wuh... wuh... where did all this money come from?"

  "It was in my coat pocket all along. Back in the day when I had any pockets worth mentioning." She could hear the mischief in Cain's voice. But all she could think of was that he was buying a horse.

  "All those hours you kept me flat on my back and as good as naked," he said, his eyes on her now, "and I guess you never thought to look and see if I had a purse you could lift."

  "I would never!" she cried.

  His eyes laughed at her.

  She pulled her gaze away from him and resisted the urge to fan her face with her hand. "We were only wondering, Benjo and I, how you managed to come by so much?"

  "Monte winnings."

  A democrat wagon rolled by, its axle squealing loudly. Benjo clambered out of their wagon, the boodle book still clutched in his hand. At least, she thought, the man hadn't admitted to robbing a bank.

  "I assured my father that you didn't partake of the Devil's pastimes," she said stiffly.

  "Well, now, that depends on what the Devil does to pass his time." The laughter in his eyes was both teasing and knowing. "Shouting fire and making hell howl?"

  "Games of chance," she said. "For one thing. There are others."

  "Uh huh." He took off his hat to cuff the sweat off his forehead. He raked his hair back out of his eyes with his fingers. It was getting long, as long as any Plain man's.

  He dropped the hat back on his head and gave its brim that rakish slant. "I'll try not to do any misbehaving today, but I ain't promising." His arm settled over Benjo's thin shoulders. "Come along, partner."

  Rachel watched them walk
off down the boardwalk, feeling strangely left out. He was taking her son along with him to buy a horse that he would then use to leave them. Benjo got invited along, and all she'd gotten was a little nudge to his hat.

  "Do you really think you'll be needing a quick getaway, Mr. Cain?" she called after him.

  He cocked his head around and flashed his rascal's smile, the one she didn't trust. The one that belonged to Johnny Cain.

  "Don't you know, Mrs. Yoder? The guilty man runs even when no one's chasing him."

  "Spread your legs."

  Marilee shifted her hips on the black leather cushion, letting her knees fall apart. She hummed a breath out her tight lips and focused her eyes on the ceiling. As ceilings went, she supposed she'd looked at worse. At least this one was pocked with knotholes instead of bullet holes.

  "Wider," Lucas Henry said from between her legs. "And for God's sake, try to relax. One would think you'd be used to this, the practice you've had."

  A pain stabbed at Marilee's belly, a pain that had more to do with the doctor's words than with his probing fingers, which were actually rather gentle. She'd certainly been given plenty of rougher pokes of one sort or another in her young life. And he was right—she'd had plenty of practice at spreading her legs. The words had hurt her, though, because Luc had been the man to say them. She'd been knocked around by a lot of hard words as well. Men never thought a whore had feelings. She was only a hole to put it into.

  "There ain't no call for you to be so mean," she said, and to her surprise the hurt she was feeling roughened her voice and stung her eyes. She was usually better at hiding her wounds.

  The room fell quiet. It was so hot she could practically hear the heat, as if the very air were panting and sweating. He straightened up, going to a white porcelain basin to wash his hands. "Marilee, my sweet Marilee," he said, weariness—or maybe just booze—slurring his voice. "That remark was uncalled for, and I do apologize."

  She lay there looking up at the ceiling, her bent knees still spread wide, even though the doctor appeared to be done with her. Sometimes he could go from behaving like a swine to being such a gentleman and then back again so fast he'd make her head spin. Yet she just went on loving him like crazy no matter what he did, no matter what cruel things he said. And she knew that made her a fool, because all she was to him was a fifteen-minute French Trick every other Saturday night.

  His face appeared upside down before her eyes. His spectacles winked at her, and a swatch of fair hair slid across his forehead. His mustache quirked up at one corner, surprising her into a smile. "You are, by the by," he said, "in an interesting condition."

  Her smile perished into a wail. "Aw, shit-fire!"

  She sat up. Her stomach lurched, flopped, and threatened to erupt. She folded her hands over her middle, swaying dizzily. She held her breath.

  He had taken a couple of steps back to lean against a glass-fronted cabinet filled with thick tomes, medicine bottles, and gruesome looking instruments. He had one arm folded across his chest, the other hanging loose with his spectacles dangling from his long fingers.

  "Do you need the pot?" he said.

  She pressed her lips harder together, shaking her head. Her belly churned, flopped, and settled; churned, flopped, and settled. When it seemed to have settled for good, she dared a breath, and then another.

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "This is all your fault, Lucas Henry, damn your miserable hide."

  He lifted one finely arched pale eyebrow. "My fault? What fascinating quirk of womanly logic has led you to—"

  "That female preventive you been givin' us girls up at the Red House didn't prevent nothin'. First Gwendolene and now me. Lord, Mother Jugs is gonna throw a pure hissy fit when I tell her."

  "Every occupation has its hazards and its failures." He unfolded his arms and pushed himself off the cabinet. "While you put your lovely gown back on, I'll put together an herbal infusion for your morning sickness."

  She twirled her finger in the air. "Whoopee. If it works as well as your preventive did, it'll likely have me pukin' clean into next year."

  He laughed, and the sound of it, deep and a bit ragged, made her chest ache sweetly. He wagged his finger at her. "Marilee, Marilee. Shame on you for your blasphemy. Don't you know we doctors are God?"

  As she slid off the tall, claw-footed examining couch, she could feel herself smiling at him. She did so love the way he said her name: Marilee, Marilee.

  She jerked on her petticoat and knotted the tapes. She sucked in her belly until it felt pressed against her backbone, so she could fasten the sateen buttons on the front of her corset without having to loosen the back laces. She tied on her crinoline bustle, giving her bottom a little wriggle so that it settled properly. It was so blasted hot, and her corset stays dug painfully into her ribs, cutting off her breath.

  She was already feeling fat and she wasn't even showing yet. In a few months she'd be wide as the back end of a cow and twice as ugly. She thought of Gwendolene: that chippy hadn't just swallowed a watermelon seed, it was the whole darned patch.

  Fear cramped in Marilee's belly, making her queasy again. She didn't want to lose her looks; they were all she had. Marilee had figured out early where all her blessings, and all her miseries, would come from in this life. She had a face sweet and pretty enough to break a man's heart and a body that made him want to howl at the moon. And she had beguiling ways. Someone had said that to her once, and she'd liked the sound of it. She'd liked it even more when she'd found out what it meant. And she practiced them, too, her beguiling ways. Even the other girls up at the Red House, who were all jealous bitches with each other, thought she was sweet as a sugar tit. But then her daddy, who himself was as mean as they came, always used to say that when his little Marilee called the tune, even the 'gators had to dance.

  And everybody danced, except for Doctor Lucas Henry. She'd tried everything she could think of to beguile him. She'd even tried being herself, and a risk that was, what with him being an educated Virginia gentleman and her being pure ignorant trash from the Florida swamp.

  But then, it didn't take a lot of fancy words and genteel manners to make a good whore. When Lucas Henry, gentleman physician of Virginia, came to the Red House, he always picked her. She was the best at giving the French Trick, and everybody in the Miawa country knew it. He came to satisfy his carnal urgings, nothing more. She was the fool who'd fallen in love.

  Oddly, it had only been lately, when she'd started just being herself around him, that they seemed to have progressed as far as being friends, or at least friends of a sort.

  They'd actually shared laughter, and had conversations outside the purview of their sexual transactions. And, once, he'd come upon her on one of her prairie walks and he'd given her a ride back to town in his buggy.

  Marilee thought of that buggy ride with a smile as she carefully pulled her pink foulard dress over her head. She'd worn this dress for him. He must have noticed, for he'd called it lovely, and she smiled again to think of that. She loved the feel of the silk as it settled over her bare shoulders and arms. It put her in mind of standing naked in a soft summer swamp rain, which was how she and her sisters had bathed when they were young, since the only tub of any sort they'd owned had been used by their pa to brew his corn squeezin's.

  She'd come far since those days, thank the Lord, but not nearly as far as she intended. Luc had called her gown lovely and it was, for she believed in investing her earnings in herself. But then, he appreciated fine things, and he seemed to have plenty of East Coast money to spend on his appreciation. If he married her... Marilee went still, her smile turning into a soft hum as she became lost in the dream of being Mrs. Lucas Henry. If he married her, they wouldn't live in this godforsaken bit of nowhere. She'd beguile him into taking her to a big city, San Francisco maybe, or Chicago. They would live in a grand house, and she would have a dozen wardrobes full of lovely gowns. And a built-in enameled bathtub with hot-water taps so that she'd never h
ave to bathe in the rain again.

  Luc's prodding at her insides with his fingers had left her feeling like she had to pee. She peeked behind the lacquered peacock screen that filled one corner of the room and was pleased to see he had one of those newfangled patent toilets, with a china bowl and an oak water tank. She lifted her skirts and squatted with a soft sigh, thinking that a patent toilet was one luxury she would surely enjoy as Luc's wife. She finished and stood up, but then bit her lip in indecision over whether to pull the chain or not, since she'd never actually used a patent toilet before.

  She gave the chain a jerk. Water gushed into the bowl so loudly that it sounded like a hundred geysers going off at once.

  Marilee pressed her hands to her fiery cheeks, as the noise echoed and echoed. She listened, breath held, for some sound of him in the next room, but all she heard was a close, heavy silence. She crept out from behind the screen, feeling hot and shaky, but she also had to laugh at her own foolishness. To think the noise of a patent toilet could make her blush after the kind of intimacies that had passed between her and Luc—both acting in their professional capacities, of course.

  Her fingers still trembled, though, as she put on her English straw bonnet, anchoring it to her pouf of curls with a faux pearl pin. She fastened her chatelaine pocket to the hook at her waist. She tiptoed to the door, slowly eased it open, and poked her head out into the parlor. It was empty.

  She straightened her back and glided into the room with her head held high, pretending for the moment that she lived here and was entertaining company for tea. It was a small house, consisting of only four rooms: this parlor, the room he did his doctoring in, his bedroom, and a kitchen. But the parlor was filled with so many fine and pretty things, it seemed to Marilee like a house from a picture in one of those mail-order wishbooks.

  She trailed her hand along the back of a brown leather wing chair. She picked up a crystal pen holder, marveling at its weight. She caught her reflection in a glass-fronted cabinet packed tightly with row after row of books. The books frightened her because she sensed they were filled with things she ought to know and never would, and that this lack of knowledge would someday be her undoing.