by Rod Miller
“I don’t know, Althea. You’ll be losing a customer. At your age you can’t afford to be losing customers, can you?”
If I could reach him through these bars, his demise might come at my hands after all. But I swallow the impulse, determined to remain calm. But it is not easy, given his observation.
It is all too true, sad to say. I have reached “a certain age.” In my line, that age comes earlier than it would, say, for a bank clerk. (Which, incidentally, is a career about which I made inquiries upon the death of Calvin, the clerk killed by Harlow Mackelprang three weeks ago and for which he hangs in the morning. Despite my patronage of the bank over the years and the sizable nature of my deposits there, Tueller, the manager, rejected my entreaties. He did not believe the good people of Los Santos would accept the presence, in a place of legitimate business, of a woman with my reputation.)
Much of my clientele is regular and loyal and, given the lack of competition, likely to remain so. But I will not have the wiles to attract the younger element as I once did. A young man will ride a goodly number of miles for the company of a young woman, even if it is a commercial proposition.
In my time, though, young men were as a moth to my flame.
I was blessed with a luxuriant black mane, so thick and rich and lustrous in its color that it reflected highlights of red and blue. My skin, by contrast, is a radiant milky white, smooth and silky and free from blemish. Dark brows frame large eyes with a tempting catlike slant and irises that sparkle and dance with a deep, glowing shade of green.
These gifts—and gifts they are, for they are not of my making—have necessarily faded some with the years, but are still with me in sufficient quantities to attract the admiring glances of men and the appraising, envious looks of women. Women, even, of fewer years than mine.
My appearance, if modesty allows, remains striking. And whatever I have lost with age is more than compensated for by the increase in confidence and grace that comes with experience. In sum, I am as yet more than qualified for this work in every possible sense of the word.
But, as I indicated earlier, I did not come to this work by choice. It was thrust upon me in an hour of desperation while I was in a depressed state of mind. I was but seventeen years old; newly married and recently widowed and far, far from the security of my childhood home and the protection of my family.
Mine had been a privileged existence, daughter of a wealthy Crescent City merchant. My introduction to society at the coming-out age of sixteen was a round of balls and parties, with eligible bachelors from the best families pursuing me.
But I scorned their advances and, much to the displeasure of my parents, became enamored with a young man of the West.
He, like my father, was a merchant. Except that Owen was engaged in the grimy business of overland trade to the settlements in the Southwest, rather than the more genteel world of overseas shipping in which my father labored.
He was a customer of my father, and that is how I met Owen. Much to my family’s chagrin, I abandoned the promise of Crescent City society and ran off in the night with Owen. My father, of course, knew Owen’s route and destination and itinerary and could have located us and attempted to force my return. But the shock and hurt, I think, combined with the blow to their pride, would not allow it. So, I was convinced, they simply wrote me off as a bad investment.
Our “honeymoon” was an idyllic journey through the countryside. Owen had come alone to Crescent City, preceding his wagon train of trade goods from the West to establish markets for his wares and bargain for merchandise for the return trip. My first encounter with Owen was at our dinner table. Father had been in negotiations with him that day, and invited him to dine at our home so discussions could continue into the evening.
It was a tumultuous occasion. Never had another human being aroused such strange and confusing feelings. None of the eligible bachelors who crowded my social calendar that summer were memorable or particularly attractive.
But from the moment I laid eyes on Owen, I knew I had found my man. Much to my satisfaction, the feeling was mutual.
I am aware that my account sounds like breathless entries in a schoolgirl’s diary. I do not mean to make it so. And the fact that my parents discouraged us only encourages comparison to storybook romances recounted in purple prose.
But the fact is, Mother and Father were less than sanguine at the prospect of a daughter doomed to life on the frontier in the company of a man who was little more than a mule skinner or bull whacker. So, after a week of near-continuous companionship, we were denied further contact.
We were not to be denied, however, and as I said, stole away in the night.
We camped in the woods, late each afternoon locating a likely location well off the roads. Owen was a master at rough living, and had all the accoutrements required for making the experience as comfortable as possible. We retired early and arose late, lingering over simple meals and traveling unhurried in a westward direction with no schedule to keep. Our passion for one another did not diminish, but rather grew until we became insatiable.
But after a mere two weeks of bliss and serenity, I was sucked into a bloody maelstrom of murder, rape, and abduction.
The men came from nowhere. Three of them rode out of the dark forest into the glow of our fire. We had finished a simple dinner and were preparing for bed. I will remind you that we were but two weeks man and wife. And we considered the seclusion of our campsite sufficient cover for our immodesty. We were mistaken.
Owen stood to greet our visitors when, without word or warning, all three riders revealed pistols and shot him down.
To make a long and painful story short, the men took their turns with me repeatedly through the night. In the light of dawn, they plundered our supplies for what they found useful, broke up the light wagon, and heaped our discarded goods into a funeral pyre for my Owen.
One mule from our team was designated a pack animal and I was forced to mount the other. I was an accomplished equestrienne, but prior to that day, when I was forced to ride astride, my experience on horseback was confined to a sidesaddle on gentle, well-trained, blooded horses. Of intransigent, rough-gaited mules I was ignorant.
Residual pain and soreness from the night, combined with the unaccustomed means of riding, resulted in a most uncomfortable day that stretched into a week.
My captors rode aimlessly, it appeared, throughout the land. Their mood was celebratory, due to their newfound wealth at Owen’s expense.
A seemingly endless supply of strong drink, replenished by one of the men riding out periodically to visit whatever community was convenient, heightened their delight in their excesses and contributed to my misery from same.
Eventually, they tired of me.
I was dumped unceremoniously early one evening into a fetid alley behind a gilded palace of shame in the city (so called) of Rio Mal. I was not found until morning, when stumbled upon by a drunkard who had sequestered himself in the alley the night before to sleep it off.
There was not much of me to find. The ordeal had left me a mere husk of myself. Hungry, thirsty, bruised, bleeding, smeared with filth inside and out, I was carried to a room in the brothel.
I wish I could say a kindly, good-hearted madam nursed me back to health and helped me get my life back in order. Instead, the woman who owned the place grudgingly fed me and allowed the use of the room until I was up and about, then demanded back payment of rent. Knowing I was penniless, she fully expected repayment through trade, and thus her stable grew by one.
I was an attractive addition, I might add, increasing the popularity of the place and fattening madam’s purse. By the time my debt was satisfied, she offered—begged actually—to keep me.
It was a dilemma I did not care to face. As the Bard of Avon wrote, there’s small choice in rotten apples.
But still, a choice was required of me.
So, did I return to Crescent City, a widow and fallen woman at seventeen, to throw myself on the
mercy of my parents and society? Or did I accept the offer of a lucrative career in Rio Mal, trading used, damaged goods for any coin offered?
My state of mind at the time—disgusted, disgraced, damaged, depressed—led me, almost by default, to the latter choice.
And so my life was set on a course not of my choosing, albeit by my choice. For nearly a quarter of a century now I have been, in the parlance of our time, a painted lady.
The road I have taken since Rio Mal has led to cow towns and mining camps, railheads and river landings, cities being born and towns in their death throes. I have, as I said, known more men than I could (or would care to) count. I have performed acts that would make you blush and have done distasteful, disgusting, revolting, and abhorrent things.
I located in Los Santos some ten years ago, drawn by the mining activity in the distant hills and the presence of the railroad. The location of Los Santos is such that it is assured of commercial activity so long as the trains run, the mines are profitable, and people have a taste for beef.
While it is not likely to flourish, it is likewise unlikely to founder. I opted to abandon the boom-and-bust nature of the communities in which I had normally plied my trade for the relative stability and quieter environs available here.
In the process of my work in Los Santos as well as my earlier relocations, I have accumulated, as I hinted earlier, a good deal of money—I tell you that not in my defense but only in explanation.
But, I should add, not all my wealth has come from my work. Having been raised with money and privilege, I was not entirely ignorant of the workings of the capital markets. Thus, my investments have proved lucrative. As I said before, my holdings in the Los Santos bank are sizable enough to set the bank manager’s spectacles spinning.
He doesn’t know the half of it. Or even a tenth.
Since my age will soon necessitate the cessation of my trade, my wealth will provide a more than comfortable retirement. But the idea of inactivity is unattractive. (More, even, than working—if you can imagine.) I cannot envision pulling up stakes to settle elsewhere as a “respectable widow,” which is the usual fate of women in my position.
But employment in Los Santos seems out of the question. One thing I have always enjoyed about life in the West is the willingness of people to ignore the past and accept people for what they are or claim to be. But when a sizable portion of your past has been lived out right under their noses in their own community, it cannot be overlooked.
So I suspect I shall have to leave Los Santos soon and seek work elsewhere. That my employment needn’t be gainful, and I require only that it be interesting, may prove an advantage.
The idea of banking, as I said, intrigues me. Perhaps I could read for the law and practice in the legal profession. If a worthy community could be located, I fancy that I might even establish and operate a lending library or bookshop.
I have not decided, and I need not decide today. The only thing I must decide at present is how to put Harlow Mackelprang in his place and extricate myself from this unpleasant situation with pride and dignity intact.
Which became exponentially more difficult when I realized that while I was lost in thought, he had come to stand at the cell door and mere inches separated us. Worse still, one of his filthy hands had slipped through the bars and was toying with the lace at my throat.
“Harlow Mackelprang, remove your squalid paw from me this instant!” I shout, simultaneously shoving the offending appendage aside with all the violence I can muster.
The tender part of his wrist strikes the iron bar with some force, prompting an outcry of pain and an attempt to withdraw the hand. But the slim distance between the bars and the resulting lack of mobility it creates makes my puny strength sufficient to hold him there, the wrist bound between the pressure of the bars and my hand.
I lean on it vigorously, plying sufficient leverage to cause the coward to snivel and squirm.
“Damn! Leggo my hand, Althea! You’re hurting me!”
“Do not presume to speak to me of hurt, you obnoxious swine.”
With that, I perform a most unladylike act—I clear my throat and expectorate explosively into his face.
His sniveling turns to surprise, then anger. He rises to his full height and thrusts his other arm through the bars in an attempt to grab me.
I avoid his grasp without much difficulty and continue grinding his pinioned wrist against the iron.
More by instinct than forethought, I jab my furled parasol between the bars and strike him in the groin, causing him to give up all fight and collapse to the floor. I release his hand, which slowly scrapes its way out of its bind, allowing him to complete his fall.
Seeing the villainous gunman lying there, writhing in pain and whimpering like a whipped dog, I experience a change of heart.
I will not attend the execution in the morning as I no longer care to see Harlow Mackelprang hang.
I prefer to remember him just as I see him now.
PREACHER
Harlow Mackelprang’s last supper, from the smell of things, was washed down with coffin varnish. Like brimstone raining down from on high, the stink of whiskey leaks out of his every pore.
The man is beyond redemption.
And judging from the fact that he mopped the plate clean of all but a few scraps, gluttony may be added to his lengthy list of sins.
Sloth as well. Just look at him laying there on that cot like he ain’t got a care in the world—and him with an appointment with the hangman come morning.
“Harlow Mackelprang, arise,” I command.
He stirs, casts an evil look my way with one half-open eye, then swings his feet over the edge of the cot and sits. After grinding the heels of his hands into his temples for a few seconds, he speaks.
“Good hell, preacher man. Can’t a man get any sleep around here?”
“Bridle your tongue. I have come to prepare you to meet your Maker.”
“You’re too late. Reverend Hangman’s already been by and done that.”
“He has his duty. I have mine. I see you had a big supper.”
He offered no reply.
“And I detect you have been at the devil’s brew, on this of all nights.”
“So what? Another few hours it ain’t gonna matter how much I ate or drank.”
“‘For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.’ Proverbs, Chapter Twenty-three.”
“What?”
“You are guilty of drunkenness, gluttony, and sloth, Harlow Mackelprang. All sins in the eyes of the Lord. For a man about to go before the judgment bar, I should think you would have tried to avoid further contamination of your soul.”
“Oh, that. I thought, from what you said, I oughta be worried about becoming poverty-stricken on account of my habits. I figure I can risk that for these few hours.”
“Do not quibble over the Lord’s words. It is your spirit that is poverty-stricken, your soul that is clothed in rags.”
“Whatever you say. You’re the Bible-thumper, not me,” he says.
“Do not scorn that which is holy. Familiarity with the Good Book might have turned you from a life of crime.”
“Yeah. Just like it did all them folks lined up in your pews of a Sabbath morning. They ain’t as pure as you think.”
“It is not them that I am here to discuss, Harlow Mackelprang. It is the fate of your immortal soul we should be concerned with, not theirs.”
Again, no response.
“Are you resigned to your fate?” I ask.
“You mean hangin’? I don’t guess I’ll be any less dead afterward than them I killed are. Oh, I’ll be killed all legal-like and proper, but I’ll be just as dead.”
“Such is the law. Both in the eyes of man and the eyes of God.”
“You know what he sees, do you, Preacher?”
“It is written. It is plain for all who have eyes to see. ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Book of Exodus, Chapter Twe
nty. You have violated that law. ‘And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.’ Leviticus, Chapter Twenty-four. So you see, God himself has declared that you must die.”
“Well, at least when I do, it’ll all be over with.”
“No, it will not. You will suffer for your sins. You will burn in hell for eternity for the evil you have done.”
Even that failed to evoke fear or trembling. He sat upon his cot slack-jawed and droopy-eyed. It called to mind his attitude those few times he came to church, bored and wishing nothing more than for it all to end.
I suppose it has been two decades since old Broom showed up in Los Santos with Harlow Mackelprang in tow. I made a pastoral visit once they were settled into the shack that was to be their home. Rather than making it a home, though, the two of them made it a hovel.
Broom’s story was that his wife, the boy’s mother, died of pneumonia a couple of years earlier. Then a mine injury rendered him incapable of work. He admitted to being in the grip of alcohol and unable to shake loose. I wrote him off on the spot as beyond redemption.
But I held out hope for Harlow Mackelprang.
He could not have been more than five or six years old at the time. For a few Sundays, I called faithfully at the shack to take the boy to services. He was neither willing nor unwilling; simply did as he was told.
His father was seldom in at the time, either swamping out the saloon or some other business. When he was present, he was all in a heap with his filthy blankets in his louse-infested bed sleeping off the effects of his chosen profession, that of drunkard.
The boy came along to services, as I said.
He had no clothing appropriate for worship. Not that fancy dress was the norm in Los Santos. Many in the congregation had only simple, well-worn attire, but it was generally laundered and fresh each Sabbath morning. The boy, however, had only rags, and filthy ones at that. None of the children would share a pew with him, and adults shied away as well.
