Storm's Thunder (6 page)

He separates the tariff in two pieces and slides one half through the bars. I look at the scribbling and hold it up for him to read. “What's that say there?”

The clerk swallows again, the bitterness lingering. “Says H. Two-Trees.”

“That so hard?” I say, collecting the papers as I turn away. “Use that dollar toward some gumdrops. That ought wash out that taste of bitter's got you all pinched up.” I let the door bang hard as I leave.

* * *

It was the better part of an hour ago that I deposited Storm into the care of the finest livery stable Santa Fe had to offer—this according to its proprietor, J. M. Halvorson, who spent three minutes admiring Storm and then, after passing the stallion off to the stable hand, another thirty recounting the story of how he had survived Sherman's fiery March to the Sea as a Georgia militiaman, only to later lose an eye, an ear and his left arm below the elbow in a Comanche ambush passing through Texas after the war.

“The way you sit atop your mount,” he said, fixing his one good eye on me, “I had you pegged for Injun.” The crooked brim of his hat did its best to cover the patch over the other. “You always ride in that fashion?”

“Only when I want to get somewhere.”

He fired a line of tobacco juice on the ground and seemed to accept my answer with a shrug, offering only, “Still makes the hairs on my neck stand up, I see a body grip a horse that way.”

Halvorson's supervision of Storm's sponge bath mostly involved vague instruction to the stable hand and, the more he combed that eye over me, a budding interest in my affairs, from which I found no easy way to take my leave. The conversation, one-sided as it was, kept drifting closer to who I was and what my business in town might be, questions I was not sure how I would answer.

“Looking to head out on the Santa Fe, I reckon.”

“That mean, you'll be selling the stallion?”

“No. He's coming with me.”

“Well, I know better than to come between a young man and his horse.” Halvorson jams his hands in his pockets and looks off to the west. “Used to be, every fella with a hair on his crotch wanted to make his way out to New Mexico. Now, even the West ain't west enough. Boys nowadays too young to remember the Gold Rush and every busted dream that went along with it.” Halvorson spits again and waits for me to fill the silence until he can't wait any longer. “Another train'll be heading out next day or two. Rail agent in town will sort you out.”

“All right then.”

“That don't directly address your more pressing needs, though, do it? Young buck like you, I reckon is in need of whiskey, hot grub and a piece of pussy.” A wheezing bout of high-pitched donkey laughter overcame him, then he added, “And not in that order.”

Women. The thought of curves and softness burst, uninvited, into my head like the full sun of daybreak. If I had, during my recent time in the wild, ignored the thirst that told me to drink water, or the hunger pains that compelled me to eat, as much as I had forsaken the natural needs of companionship that every man feels, I would have perished in the elements months ago. Could it be that I had not lain with a girl since Maria? That was last fall. The tragedy of her murder still haunts me. And the invading memory of That Other Woman, the blue-eyed temptress, whose fate—alone up in the Sangres—well deserved as it was, had squelched any remnants of lustful thinking. But the dawn of spring will thrust incorrigible growth into the barren landscape. The seeds of the reawaking trace back to this morning—to Xenia, Garber's negro girl—when I could smell the sex on her. As much as I hated to validate the crass ramblings of the livery owner, I felt the flickering embers of desire begin to warm inside me after a long, frozen winter.

The swirling awakening inside me manifested as little more than a muttered phrase. “Girls. Huh.” But it was enough to give Halvorson license to continue.

“White, brown, red, black or yellow?” The rainbow of colors staggered me. Here I am the son of a prostitute and have still never seen a working girl of any shade beyond the first three. Madame Brandywine had always attracted a steady stream of Mexican girls to the Bend's only brothel while managing to hold on to a sporting corps of white veterans. There were no negro women at all, and the only Chinese I'd ever encountered were a raggedy crew of overworked Coolies busting down cross ties when the first stretch of track came through. Still I didn't need a one-eyed gadfly making me feel anymore like a boy than I already did.

“Whichever is the most expensive.”

“That would be the Chi-nee,” Halvorson said. “Them uppity chink whores won't even give me time of day. Same with the white cunt. The niggra gals a sporting bunch though, keep me up to my eyeball in pussy.”

I glanced back toward the paddock where the Mexican stable boy had worked Storm's hindquarters into a soapy lather. For all his orneriness, that stallion would give pony rides at a church fair if there were the promise of a warm bath at the end of it. He seemed no more cut up by our impending separation than a napping house cat.

“Your stallion'll be just fine. Two dollars a day will keep him in fresh oats and dry hay till you've sorted your stick out.”

“Okay, then.” I nodded to Halverson and turned to take my leave.

“You know where you're headed?” he asked.

“Reckon the town ain't that big.”

“Walk east till you hit the smell of garlic and the funny writing on the windows.”

I found some words forming in my throat, but decided to remain them as thought.

CHAPTER SIX

I keep the sun in front of me and cut a diagonal course through town, where sheets of threaded chili peppers, drying bloodred in the rising heat, dangle by the doorways of each passing adobe like the city's second official flag. It is no secret, in an unfamiliar town, to finding the house where a man can lay in the soft company of welcoming arms: at every turn, opt for the narrower road. After several minutes, the chili peppers have faded into memory, replaced by strange and rooty vegetables hanging from baskets and the smell of sizzling pork, quick-fried in peanut oil.

The Chinese move with downcast eyes in straight, purposeful lines, and the ones I pass show little interest in, but a keen awareness of, my presence. A bad feeling rises up my spine.
The guns.
I am too heavily armed for the city. The Spencer weighs on my shoulder, countered with every step by the jangle of the pistols. Atop a horse and away from town, such weapons might be in any man's possession. But here, walking the streets, I forge a statement of aggression that ill-suits my intention. I flip the Spencer barrel-down and hitch the strap tight into the crook of my arm, making the rifle as unassuming as I can. The pistols I dump into the saddlebag across my back. If trouble calls, I will make do with the thirty-two riding my pocket.

I walk until the alley dead-ends and only a cramped passageway breeches the last two huts where bright paper lanterns disappear down an alley that even sunlight dares not enter. Stepping into the darkness, my shoulders scrape the encroaching walls and I have to turn sideways. Every sense of reason and propriety says to turn back, so I forge on. I duck my head below another set of lanterns while stepping over a woven hutch housing some sort of animal. The toe of my boot catches the edge and the screeching from within tells me it is chickens. Any shred of stealth vanishes in a din of clucks and fluttering feathers. I might as well beat my arrival on a drum. A few paces on, the alley opens up and I find myself in a small courtyard. A miniature fountain babbles in the corner and next to it sits a low stone bench, obscured from the view of the only door by a paper screen depicting what must be a muted Oriental sunrise. Delicate handkerchiefs of blue silk cover the lanterns, bathing the plazita in a seductive twilight, augmented only by a single shaft of clear midday sun from an opening above that beckons the bougainvillea upward along the wall.

I move toward the bench, drawn by the serenity of the setting that scarcely undercuts the genius of its practicality. How many dusty cowpokes have waited shyly behind the screen for their turn, or, having completed their business, been silently grateful for the fountain's constant din when recombobulating a belt buckle or depositing a fistful of coins into fair, yellow fingers? It is under such cover of sound that the Ears of a Buck fail me. I catch her scent before I hear her. I have hardly lowered myself into the seat when a soft voice acknowledges my existence. Turning toward the door, now opened, my first thought is not the woman standing there, but the door's hinges, so flawlessly oiled to negate even the faintest whisper of a creak. I have crossed into a world both erotic and carefully engineered, down to the splash of jasmine perfume that reaches me before I have finished turning. The Nose of a Wolf—after so many nights in the bush—misses nothing.

“Hiii.” She drags out the word as her ruby-red lips curl into a smile against the powdery alabaster of her skin. Everything about her face is painted. A pair of lacquered sticks, tipped with gold and no bigger than pencils, poke from her black hair drawn tight into a severe bun. A silk robe, splotched with warring factions of bright colors, stretches over the curves of her ample frame. My hat finds its way into my hands as I nod to her.

“Ma'am.”

She glides toward me, the smile unwavering, tiny embroidered slippers shuffling beneath the robe as she arrives with an outstretched hand that slips into mine. Her palm betrays the illusion of the rest of her. The woman in my grasp is at least forty, maybe fifty. Before I can protest she leads me back into the dimness of a receiving room, where her words and wrinkles can avoid suspicion. “Yes, yes, come in. You want pretty lady, okay?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, okay. Pretty lady, five dollar, fifteen minute.” In the low light, she turns to face me.

“Pretty lady,” I say.

“You like?” I feel a languid finger trace down my chest and stop at my belly. She holds it there, expectant.

“Very pretty.” The finger draws a slow circle around my navel and hovers just above the belt line. “But today,” I say, placing two firm hands on her shoulders, “top girl.” I give her a little squeeze and watch her shoulders slump with a sigh. Growing up in the trade has its advantages. Mamma always respected the men who spoke their minds, and were clear about what they wanted, even when the slow-death of a thousand rejections had failed to lose its sting. And in any bordello, from Peking to Pittsburg,
top girl
means top girl. But the sheriff and the missus had engrained in me too much manners to be discourteous about it, at least what I can remember of it now. Besides, offending the madam can get a fella paired with the resident sasquatch.

The madam's smile purses, a tight, hard-nosed pucker. “Top girl, top dollar,” she says, her voice bottoming into the low alto of negotiation.

“Top dollar.” I open my palm, revealing a double-eagle that finds just enough of the light to close the deal. Plucking the twenty dollars from my hand, she half turns, barking out some assaultive string of vowels, that, after a moment's pause, earns a reply from a delicate voice in the next room.

“Pei-Pei, top girl,” the madam says, pointing behind me. I turn and from a second doorway appears a wispy, fair-skinned China doll, similarly attired as the madam, but devoid of the cakey cosmetics. The young girl's beauty needs little in the way of adornment, even the robe is too much. Deep inside me, blood begins to stir. I nod to her, but she allows only the faintest smile as she returns the gesture.

“Afternoon, miss.”

The madam's hand finds the small of my back, prodding me forward. Pei-Pei, turning toward a heavy, velvet curtain, fires off a few words in Chinese, which the madam chews up and spits back at her. There is some brief argument between them. “You soldier?”

“No soldier. Just a fella.” The madam relays my answer to Pei-Pei, who takes only slight comfort. Something still eats at her.

“You want bath?” the madam says, as we reach the curtain.

“Not much fussed either way.”

“You take bath.”

The missus Pardell once admonished me never to refuse a stick of Beeman's when it was offered. “Might just be it's you doing the kindness,” she told me one Sunday, walking home from preaching. I 'spect now, staring at my reflection in lukewarm water blackened by two hundred miles of dirt and soot, the same could be said for a hot bath. I lean back against the hard copper lip of the tub and watch as Pei-Pei lugs in a second empty tub from the hall and drops it next to mine. There is nothing sexy about the chore itself, yet her movements, lithe and graceful in a short dressing gown that stops above the knees, keep the embers aflame. She rattles off in her native tongue, and a second girl, plump and dressed more for scullery than sport, hustles in with a pair of sloshing water buckets. The way her face is painted up, I'd wager even the kitchen girl gets called upon to service them what can't put together more than a dollar or two. Pei-Pei empties a whistling kettle into the second tub and then tosses in a handful of greenish crystals from a little bottle she replaces on the vanity, where a lantern, glowing beneath a pink, satin scarf enhances the mood. The only other furniture is a high, thin bed—more like a table—in the center of the room. Heavy sheets of velveteen drape the walls as well as the low ceiling, which billows down like the inside of a carnival tent.

She gives the fresh bath a whirl with her arm while the round girl heaves in the cold well water. All this activity, I am grateful I have tarred up my bath with sufficient blackness to hide my man parts, but I would just as same prefer considerable less foot traffic buzzing about when I am sitting there with my preacher and choir flopping around. The madam's voice erupts from beyond the curtain, squawking some admonition or another that Pei-Pei relays with equal vigor on down the chain to the ears of the round girl, who hustles over to the pile of my discarded clothes and collects the bundle—union suit and all—and hurries out. My coat and saddlebag remain untouched in the corner, protected by the Spencer and the rest of the guns. There is more instruction from beyond the curtain and then the chubby girl returns with a glass containing a liquid—a libation I gather, as she crosses toward me and deposits it in my hand. Then the round girl goes out for good, closing the curtain tight behind her.

As if on cue, Pei-Pei's movements lose their utilitarian urgency and she smiles at me—a shy little smile that sends her eyes back to the floor just the same. She passes behind me and graces a finger along my shoulder. Her touch against my bare skin sends my willy to full and immediate attention. I hear her strike a match, flashing a glow of orange as she steps back into my vision, dragging deep from a thin cigarillo. Holding the smoke in her lungs like a shaman, she proffers the lighted butt my way as she exhales. Tobacco smell permeates the room, but there is something with it, a sweet, sticky scent that tinges the vapor with cloying blueness. I take the cigarillo and bring it to my mouth, pulling gentle and slow until—all at once—a fire explodes from my lungs and a racking cough overcomes me. The ceiling spins, the floor lolling in in undulating waves. A cozy warmth blooms inside like a hundred downy quilts. “Oh . . . my,” I say.

Pei-Pei just nods, adding a sly grin of profound understanding. Moving toward the second tub, she steps out of her slippers and taps the copper lip. Whatever she dumped in the water got it more frothed up than the head of a beer. She sticks her hand in to check the temperature and, satisfied with the result, points to the water and taps the edge of the copper. When I do not move she taps again, pointing more adamant and offering up some Chinese encouragement that I do not understand. But her intent is clear. A second bath. Makes perfect sense if you got the manpower and a preponderance of tubs lying about. I consider ruminating further on the notion for however long it takes for my stiffy to subside, but can see plain from Pei-Pei's tone that she won't be taking no for an answer. So instead I make a little circle motion and say: “Would you, uh . . .”

Pei-Pei turns around and I down the drink in one swallow. Taking encouragement from the fruity, medicinal paint that spreads warm inside me, I stand up, gray water dripping loud from my body in an embarrassing drumroll. I bring my leg out and dip it into the new bath. For an indelicate moment I straddle the two tubs, only to glance up and spy the curious head of the mamma-san poking through the curtain. Catching her eye with my most unwelcoming scowl, the floating head disappears in a hasty poof. I lower myself down into the foam confection—an all-together foreign, but not unpleasant, sensation. Beneath the bubbles, the water is warm and inviting. It feels good. She turns her head just enough to confirm my descent and then unties her sash. The dressing gown falls to the ground and she stands there, her backside in full view—two perfect pears perched between her waist and unblemished thighs. Reaching between her legs, she grabs the lip of the tub and steps backward into the water, her innermost recesses peeking out among her curves. She sinks below the surface—all the way up to her shoulders—and finally spins to face me. As she comes to a stop, a little girl's giggle jumps from her lips, bringing forth a boyish laugh of my own at the comic sweetness of our proximity. Two peas in a pod.

“Well, hello there,” I say. Pei-Pei responds by pawing beneath the bubbles for my leg, which she finds and brings above the surface. She rests my ankle on her shoulder and sets about caressing my calf and knee. Bringing a handful of the foamy confection to my skin, she begins to rub it in and I realize its purpose. “Soap. How 'bout that?”

Her soft touch drains away the troubles of the day in an instant. I lean back against the tub and let her fingers work down my ankle toward the heel. “You don't speak a word, do you?” The deep, circular motions send a charge up my leg while serving a greater purpose of removing any fugitive dirt. “That's all right by me. Heard more talking today than any man ought have to suffer in a lifetime. And I'll be jimmed if it don't leave me puzzled with more questions than what I started with. You ever been on a train?” She lays into my toes, working with meticulous precision until it is clear beyond all doubt that no part of my person has ever been so clean. Yet to punctuate the thoroughness of her handiwork, she spreads my toes with her fingers and slides one of them into her mouth. I melt into the water. So numbing is the sensation that the room goes dark as my eyes roll back into my head. She suckles as if each toe was a member all its own, only moving on to the next after such time that any man would have found satisfaction. As the double-barrel blow of her touch and the dizzying liquor take root, anesthetizing my brain into submission, I start up babbling again without the slightest care who overhears me.

“See, I find myself uncertain as to the proper comportment when it comes to high-hat travel. Should my name be required during the course of whatever all is they do, I am not convinced it would be in my interest, or that of my stallion, to offer it. The redness of my skin, what there is that can be detected, along with the knee-jerk response triggered by my last name, have, this day, caused me nothing but grief. I cannot wonder but would it be more prudent to travel free of such a burden. Although I am discomforted by how such a ruse would make me feel about my history, of which I bear no such shame or embarrassment.” She slides my right leg back into the water and fishes below the surface for my left, kneading her fingers along the ankle and back behind the heel. Then her mouth finds my toes again, attending to all five soldiers with equal enthusiasm. “Still, now is not the time to let pride stand for foolishness. I have a need to press westward without delay. What do you call this drink, by the way? It has a powerful effect.”