Heaven and Hell (32 page)

She thought a bit, gently caressing his beard. "I like early mornings.

I like the way my face feels after I scrub it. I like the sight of children sleeping, and I like the taste of wild berries. I like Edgar Poe's w

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verse and Shakespeare's comedians. Parades. The sea. And I'm shamelessly in love with standing on a stage while people applaud." She bent to kiss his brow. "I've just discovered I like sleeping with my arms around a man, though not just any man. As for things I don't like--

well, stupidity. Needless unkindness in a world already hard enough.

Pomposity. People with money who think that money alone makes a person worthy. But most of all--" another soft kiss--"I like you. I think I love you. There, I've let down the mask Pa taught me to keep in place so there'd be fewer wounds from life. I think I loved you the moment I saw you."

His eyes on the river, he said nothing. He felt as if he teetered on the edge of a vast abyss, about to fall.

They kissed, murmured things, fondled one another, till her sweet breath grew warm as the brilliant summer day. "Love me, Charles,"

she said, mouth on his ear. "This place, this moment."

"Willa, once is fairly safe, but--what if I got you with child?"

"What a strange man you are. So many wouldn't even worry.

There are far worse things. I'd not trap you with a baby." She saw his reaction. "That bothers you."

"Scares me. I couldn't stand to lose someone else I cared about.

Once was enough."

"So better not to care?"

"I didn't say that."

"Well, no guilt feelings. Whatever happens, happens just for the moment." Again she kissed him.

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Even as he bore her gently backward to the soft mat of browned grass and fallen sycamore leaves, he knew that they had gone too far for either of them to escape without hurt.

Except when she was rehearsing or performing, they spent every hour of the next four days together.

He related his experiences with the Jackson Trading Company; what he'd learned of the ways of the Southern Cheyennes; how he'd grown to respect them, and to admire leaders such as Black Kettle. She was pleased he'd moved away from the typical white man's truculence, 30 attitude born of greed, mistrust, and, she suspected, general ignorance of the Indians and their concerns.

"We always fear what we don't understand," she said.

They found a photographer's gallery and sat for a portrait. Willa g*ggled when the fussy man tightened her head clamp behind the velvet settee. "Look pleasant--pleasant!" the man cried from underneath the Wack camera drape.

Standing at her side, Charles rested his hand on

fe

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her shoulder and adopted a severe expression. Willa kept giggling, from nervousness and joy, and the photographer waited ten minutes until she calmed down.

She wanted to know what sort of man he was, what he liked.

Lying in bed with her after the Saturday night performance of Richard III, he thought a while and said:

"I like horses, good cigars, sunset with a glass of whiskey. The blue of the sky in South Carolina--no painter ever put such a blue on canvas. I like the clear air in Texas after a hard rain. In fact I like all of the West that I've seen.

"I like the strength you find in most black people. They're survivors, fighters. Yankees wouldn't believe a Southerner saying that.

"I love my family. I love my son. I love my best friend, Billy, who's gone to California with his wife, my cousin.

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"I hated the last two years of the war and what they did to people, me included. I hate the politicians and the parlor patriots who thumped the tub until the fighting started. They never had to live through days and nights of battle--the grimmest, most draining work I've ever done.

They never had to advance through an open meadow toward enemy entrenchments, watching their friends fall around them, and pissing their pants with fear--excuse me," he said, his voice all at once low and harsh.

She kissed the corner of his mouth. "It's all right. I'd like to meet your son. Would you let me visit Fort Leavenworth? I could come on a Missouri steamer, perhaps in August. August is a theater's worst month.

I'm sure Sam would let an understudy replace me."

Fearing the entanglement, he still said, "I'd like that."

The day after, he hugged and kissed her at the stage door, and then mounted Satan. America's Ace of Players appeared suddenly, shooing Willa inside so he could speak privately.

Trump stepped close to the frisky piebald. "What I have to say is quite simple, sir. You may have the idea that because I am a play actor, I am an effete weakling. To the contrary. I am but fifty, in my prime, and strong."

He raised his fist and forearm at a right angle. Charles might have laughed but for the severity of the actor's expression. Trump grasped Satan's headstall and jutted his jaw.

"Willa fancies you, Mr. Main. A marble statue could see that.

Well and good. She's a splendid girl--and like my own daughter. So if you trifle with her--if you should in any way hurt her--as God is A Winter Count 205

my witness--" he exhibited his fist again--"I will grind you down, sir. I will find you and grind you down."

"I don't intend to hurt her, Mr. Trump."

The actor released the headstall. "Then a safe journey to you.

With my blessing."

But he would have to hurt her in some way, Charles realized as he cantered west from the city. He was in love with her, and confused about it; vaguely angry that he:d let it go so far, wanted it to go that
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far. But he had. So he had to undo it, and soon.

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When Charles reached Fort Leavenworth, Duncan told him that in late July, Johnson had signed a bill increasing the number of infantry regiments from ninteen to forty-rive and, of more pertinence on the Plains, where distances were vast, the number of cavalry regiments from six to ten.

The brigadier, who now wore the olive-green trim of the divisional paymaster's department, was excited about the news. "It means that by next year we'll be able to demonstrate in force against the hostiles."

Charles chewed an unlit cigar and said nothing. Like Sherman, Jack Duncan believed the tribes must inevitably be driven onto reservations if the West was to be made safe for white settlers and commerce.

Duncan saw nothing improper in this appropriation of Indian land, and Charles knew he couldn't change Duncan's mind, so he didn't try. Instead, he announced Willa's forthcoming visit.

"Ah," Duncan said, smiling.

"What does that mean--ah? She isn't coming just to see me. She wants to look over halls that the company could rent for a tour."

"Oh, of course," Duncan said soberly. He was delighted to see Charles react to teasing. Perhaps the young man was recovering from the despondency that had haunted him for so long.

Willa arrived in late August. She had already visited City of Kansas--

some were calling it Kansas City--on the opposite shore of the Missouri, and Leavenworth on the near side. She said Frank's Hall in City of Kansas was an ideal auditorium.

Duncan's frame residence on officers' row, on the north side of the parade ground, contained an extra room Maureen used. She kept little Gus there in a homemade rocker-crib. She invited Willa to share 206

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her bed and the young actress accepted without hesitation. Maureen approved of Willa's adaptability, and in fact she did fit in well. She chatted easily about Sam Trump and the playhouse, and listened attentively to talk of Army life and the Indian problem. She didn't conceal that she stood with the Indians against the great majority of settlers and Army professionals. It didn't nettle Duncan as badly as Charles had expected.

The brigadier argued with Willa, but clearly respected her as an intelligent adversary.

The first evening, after the women retired, Duncan poured two whiskeys in the parlor. The open window brought in strong, sweet yeast fumes from the post bakery nearby. For a few minutes, Duncan complained about the paymaster's department. It was thankless work; the officers who rode from fort to fort with soldiers' wages could never travel fast enough to please the men.

Presently he said, "That's a fine young woman. A bit freethinking, to be sure. But she'd make a splendid--"

"Friend," Charles said, and bit down on his cigar.

"Exactly." Duncan decided not to push Willa's cause further at the moment. Charles looked fierce. He might not be as ready to resume normal life as Duncan had thought.

Where oaks and cottonwoods shaded the bluff above the fort's steamboat landing, Charles and Willa went walking on the last day of her visit. Gus rode on his father's shoulder, happily surveying the world from his perch. Pleasant sounds drifted through the Sunday air: yells and cheers of soldiers playing baseball; the chug of the post steam engine pumping water.

Willa was nervous and a little unhappy. Here at the fort, Charles was less demonstrative than he'd been in St. Louis. She was in love with him--there was no escaping that--but she knew she'd better not say it too often. The bleak, exhausted look that showed in his eyes occasionally said he wasn't ready for an emotional commitment.

Still, she couldn't bring herself to pretend disinterest. So amid the dapple of sun and the shadows of reddening leaves stirring in the breeze, she took Charles's son in her arms. There he rested contentedly, gazing over her shoulder at squirrels racing along tree limbs or picking up decaying green hickory nuts that had fallen in midsummer.

"Gus is a wonderful boy," she said. "You and his mother brought a fine son into the world."

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"Thank you." Hands in pockets, Charles stared at the glinting Ver a hundred and fifty feet below them. Common sense told Willa s«e shouldn't press. But she loved him so much--

"This has been a grand visit. I hope I'll be invited again."

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"Certainly, if it's convenient for you."

Gus laid his head on Willa's shoulder and put his thumb in his mouth. His eyes closed and his face softened, blissful. Willa touched Charles's sleeve. "You're treating me as though we just met."

He frowned. "I don't mean to, Willa. It's just that I get the feeling Jack and Maureen are both--well--pushing us together. That's no good.

Week after next, I'm going out to meet Wooden Foot at Fort Riley. I've said it before: trading isn't the safest work, even though most of the Southern Cheyennes are my partner's friends. I don't want to get involved.

Suppose we went out one season and never came back. It wouldn't be fair to you."

Her blue eyes snapped. "Oh, come, Charles. Life's always full of risks like that. Who are you really sparing, me or yourself?"

He faced her. "All right. Myself. I don't want to go through what I went through before."

"You think I'm delicate? Sickly? That I'm going to collapse tomorrow, and you'll lose me? By the way, I'm not pregnant." Her use of that generally unmentionable word startled him. "I'll be around for a good long while yet. Your excuse won't wash."

"I can't help it."

"And I thought women were the fickle sex."

He turned away, staring upriver again. The cool breeze fluttered his beard. The low-slanting sun lit Willa's hair till it shone like fine white gold. "Charles, what in God's name did the war do to you?"

He didn't answer.

Undone by his stoniness, she found herself irked again. "We can be friends--casual lovers--but nothing else?"

He looked at her. "Yes."

"I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm not sure I like it. I'll tell
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you when you come back from this next trip. Now if you don't mind, I'd like to go back to the brigadier's quarters. It's gotten chilly." She lifted Gus and handed him to his father, and walked away.

She knew that a display of temper would probably drive him off.

Yet she couldn't do anything about it. She was angry at her untouchable enemy--the pain left in him by the death of the boy's mother. Reason, even affection, might never overcome something so deeply wounding.

How could she fight it? Only by hanging on. By demonstrating that Charles could love her without risk, though not without commitment.

She hated for the visit to end on a dismal note, but it did. When they parted at the steamer landing, he kissed her cheek, well away from her mouth. He said nothing about visiting St. Louis in the spring, only shanked her for coming. As she went aboard the stern wheeler, little Gus waved and waved.

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The steamer churned into the current and Willa watched man and boy grow smaller. Charles looked unhappy and confused. That was exactly how she felt.

But she couldn't deny that she was in love. So she wouldn't give up.

It was going to be a long winter.

As August dwindled away, Charles grew impatient to be moving.

He left a day early, and no regrets about it, except for Gus. The boy now called him Fa, and readily came to him for hugs or sympathy.

Charles was sad that the whole process of getting reacquainted would have to be repeated next spring. As for Willa, he tried to suppress his feelings for her, hopeful that he'd made it clear that any closer involvement was impossible.

He said goodbye to the brigadier and Maureen on a sunny afternoon.

Maureen's final word was a tart, "You ought to marry that girl, sir. She said there's no longer a Mr. Parker, and she's a grand person."

Rather abruptly, Charles said, "Traders don't make good family men."

He didn't get as far as he'd planned the first day. In midafternoon, passing through the Salt Creek Valley, Kickapoo Township, Satan threw
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a shoe. By the time a local blacksmith replaced it the sun was going down. Charles put up at the Golden Rule House, a place Duncan had talked about with enthusiasm:

"It's only been open a short time but it's already famous up and down the river. The proprietor's a generous young fellow. He'll cut the price of your meal and pour whiskey free if he's had a few himself. If he keeps on, he'll go bankrupt. But it's wonderful while it lasts."