The Outsider (50 page)

He drew in a deep breath and nearly gagged over the foul stink emanating from a nearby china cuspidor. He moved down to the other end of the sofa; the cushions billowed up to his armpits.

The cowpuncher didn’t look any more comfortable than Mose felt. The man kept tugging at his creased and yellowed celluloid collar, stretching out his neck. It looked as though he’d scraped himself shaving, because he sported a mark under his jaw like a strawberry stain. The cowboy gave his neck another stretch, took a twist of chewing tobacco out of his pocket, and gnawed off a piece. His gaze floated up to the ceiling, where a fan was slowly going around and around in the still hot air.

The beaded curtain was slapped open with a loud clatter. A woman came into the room, and Mose felt his jaw come unhinged.

She was the fattest woman he’d ever seen, doughy and white as a dumpling. A three-hundred-pound dumpling. She was also the most woman he’d ever seen, for she had on nothing but a corset and a pair of drawers. She headed right for him, and Mose’s heart sank into his belly.

“Well, hey there, handsome,” she cooed. She leaned over him until his nose nearly disappeared into the chasm between her two mountainous breasts. “Were you waitin’ for me, sugar?”

“I’m here to visit with Miss Marilee,” he said, and he could have sworn the words echoed back at him from the valley of her bosom. Judas Iscariot! He could see her nipples, big as chestnuts.

The woman took a floor-shuddering step back to plant a
dimpled fist on her ample hip. “Marilee, Marilee. Ever’one always asks for Marilee. What’s she got that I ain’t?”

“It’s what she’s got less of, you old cow.”

The woman who followed that remark into the room was skinny—so skinny she would’ve had to walk twice to make a shadow. At least she had all her clothes on, although they weren’t much to crow about. Just a simple black skirt and bodice, with long cuffed sleeves and a high neck. Not too different from what Plain women wore. She went over to the hurdy-gurdy and began to crank the handle, banging out a tune so loud it made Mose’s ears jangle.

The mostly naked, fleshy woman went over to the cowboy. They exchanged a few words and then left the parlor together, the cowboy still trying to stretch his neck out of his tight collar. The spindling woman continued to work the hurdy-gurdy crank.

Mose took another gander around the room. On second look he was able to see the flaws beneath all the gimcracks and foofaraws. The cabbage rose wallpaper was spotted and stained by damp, the Turkey carpet moth-eaten and faded, the plaster crumbling. There was a tainted smell to the place that was more than just tobacco slop and wood rot. The stink of sin, he supposed.

He heard a knock at the door, footsteps, and a voice rough as a whetstone bellowing a greeting. The Oriental’s brass bells rang, and the skinny woman stopped her hurdy-gurdy cranking. The bead curtain clicked and clacked open and Mose’s heart, which had been lying heavy but quiet in his belly, suddenly thrust up into his throat and nearly choked him.

Fergus Hunter strolled into the room.

The cattleman’s gaze flickered over Mose and dismissed him. He exchanged howdies with the skinny woman, who
left the hurdy-gurdy to pour him a glass of whiskey from a decanter that sat on a tarnished silver tray on top of a paisley shawl-draped table.

The Baron finished off the whiskey with one flex of his elbow. He took a cigar out of his vest pocket, struck a match on the silver tray, lit up, and tossed the spent lucifer into the dirt that littered the stove grate. He sucked smoke deep into his chest, his cheeks hollowing.

Fergus Hunter’s face had always been all sharp bones, but now it was as if the hot sun that parched the countryside had melted the last of the flesh off it. He was dressed fine, though, in a dark suit, white brocade vest, and gray silk tie with a pearl stickpin. The gaslight glinted off his thick gold watch chain, which was hung with many seals and a crystal fob.

The beads clicked and clacked again, and a young man entered the parlor. Mose recognized him as the Baron’s son, who they said wasn’t his legitimate son at all but only his get by a Blackfoot squaw.

“Why, good evening, young Mr. Hunter,” the skinny woman said with a false smile. She had teeth like a squirrel’s.

“I decided to let my boy loose on the town tonight,” the cattleman boomed in his rough voice. “You randy young bucks get quarrelsome when you aren’t allowed your weekly spree, isn’t that right, Quin?”

Two red spots the size of dollars appeared beneath the boy’s thin, sharp cheekbones. He seemed embarrassed by his father, and Mose could sympathize with that. His own father managed to dream up new ways to mortify him every day of the week.

Mose saw that the Baron had now returned his attention to him and was giving him a slow once-over, with hard eyes. Mose swallowed and burrowed further into the soft purple
cushions. He shifted his gaze to a red-lipped plaster cupid that hovered on a stone pedestal by the window.

“Why, I didn’t think you pious Plain boys ever succumbed to the calico fever,” the Baron said, shaking his head in mock surprise. He laughed, a short, sharp laugh. But then a genuine smile stretched his wide mouth as the beads clacked open again. “Well, now, if it isn’t the best little whore in all the Miawa.”

Mose snatched his hat off his knee and pumped his arms, propelling himself out of the sofa and onto his feet. Marilee entered the parlor on a waft of honeysuckle toilet water and wearing a wispy silk wrapper the scarlet of hellfire. The wrapper hung open down the middle to show off frilly-legged drawers, black stockings with pink garters, and a corset decorated with black lace. Another girl followed after her, a girl with hair the brassiest yellow Mose had ever seen.

The Baron stuck his cigar in his mouth and smacked his palms together. “Come here, Marilee m’girl. Let’s you and me take a walk upstairs.” Grinning around the cigar between his teeth, he tried to slide his arm around Marilee’s waist.

She eluded him, although she gave his cheek a pat as she drifted by. “You can just wait your turn, Fergus Hunter.” She turned a smile that was as bright as new paint onto Mose. “I see I got me a special caller tonight.”

The Baron’s face colored, but he smiled amicably enough. “Sure, then, Marilee. You go and take care of the woolly puncher, first. I’ll bide my time here till you’re done.” He tugged at his watch chain and slid a gold hunter out of his vest pocket. “I doubt that one’ll last for longer than a ten-second spine tingle.”

“Which leaves me with this one.” The brassy-haired girl sidled up to the Hunter boy. She rubbed her near naked bosom up against his arm and blinked eyelashes at him that
looked coated with wet soot. “I hear tell his ma wore moccasins.” She pushed vermilion painted lips into an exaggerated moue. “Oooh, maybe we’ll all be scalped in our beds.”

The skinny woman snorted a laugh. “At least in your case, Jewel, he’ll be able to tell your head from your pussy, since one’s yellow and the other ain’t.”

Everyone laughed at that, except for the Hunter boy. A flush stained his hawk face again, and his mouth tightened at the corners.

Marilee slipped her arm through Mose’s and pulled him out into the hallway, toward a spooled banister staircase. The bead curtain swayed and clicked shut behind them.

“Don’t pay them all no mind,” Marilee said. Mose had forgotten how her upper lip caught on that crooked tooth when she smiled. He liked her smile, although it stirred feelings in him that were definitely wicked.

The skinny woman came through the curtain, gave Marilee a sharp look, then disappeared down the hall to the back of the house.

“Doesn’t anyone feed that woman?” Mose said, but softly, because he didn’t want the poor thing to overhear and get her feelings hurt. She probably didn’t get many gentleman callers, not like Marilee did.

Marilee’s smile was gone, and a crease had appeared between her pale eyebrows. “Feed who? Oh, you mean Jugs.” She gripped his sleeve tighter and edged him over toward the stairs. “Honey, she could dine on chocolate cream cakes and champagne every night if she wanted to. She’s the mother.”

He craned his head for another look at the skinny woman, and nearly tripped over a shell umbrella stand. That scarecrow was this exquisite girl’s mother? He must have misunderstood. “Why do you call her Jugs?”

“ ’Cause she ain’t got tits enough to fill a pair of thimbles.”

Mose tried to puzzle that one out and couldn’t.

He followed Marilee up the stairs. There was a cherub on the newel post, with a candle stuck in the dimple of his bottom. A fringed oil lamp hung from the ceiling on a long brass chain. It creaked and swayed even though the air was hot and still. But then someone was banging hard on the wall above, grunting and groaning with the effort of it.

Marilee mounted the stairs slowly, her hips rocking from side to side. Mose felt his heart quake, his belly tremble. Beneath the straining fly buttons of his worldly checked trousers, he was as iron-hard and rigid as a plow.

She startled him by suddenly whipping around and snapping her fingers beneath his nose. “Thunderation, where’s my head tonight? I nearly forgot to collect your token.”

“Huh?”

She rolled her eyes toward the pressed tin ceiling. “I told you not to come payin’ me no calls without your three dollars.”

He fumbled for the coins in his vest pocket. “I brought it. I just didn’t know when was the proper time to give it to you—”

She cast a furtive look around, lowering her voice to a whisper. “You can give it over now.” Her fingers curled around the dollars, making a fist, but she flashed that bright, crooked-toothed smile at him. “I’m goin’ to show you such a time, Mr. Moses Weaver. You watch and see if I don’t have you singin’ hallelujahs afore I’m done.”

Just then the banging, groaning, and grunting stopped. There was an instant of utter silence, followed by a great trumpeting bellow, like a bull moose in rut. Mose nearly jumped out of his skin, but Marilee continued on up the stairs as if it hadn’t happened.

She paused before a half-open door and turned to him,
rubbing her palm over the satin-piped lapel of his worldly coat. She leaned into him, took his hand, put it between her legs, and pressed herself up against his palm so hard he could feel her crinkly woman’s hair through her silky thin drawers.

“You did take a bath, didn’t you, Moses? ’Cause you know I can’t abide the smell of sheep.”

Lord Jesus God in heaven. She felt sinful. She felt wonderful. He tried to tell her that he’d scrubbed himself down proper right before he came, that he’d even washed under his union suit. But he was having too much trouble simply breathing. She stirred again beneath his hand. A deep groan burned up his chest like a belch.

Her fingers closed around his coat, pulling him into the room. Unlike the parlor downstairs, this was furnished simple. Just a small two-drawer dresser with a blue enameled pitcher and wash basin on top of it, and a bedside table with a smoking white glass oil lamp. The bedstead was iron, rusting through in places. The tick looked too lumpy to be filled with feathers. It was probably stuffed with prairie grass, like his own bed at home.

She took the hat from his hand and set it on the table next to the oil lamp. She turned over an egg timer. Beside the egg timer was a bowl of butter, which was melting in the thick heat. Mose figured the egg timer and the butter had to have some relevancy to what was about to happen, but he couldn’t imagine what. His gaze roamed over the roses and ribbons that were climbing the wallpaper. He blinked, feeling dizzy. The room smelled of the twist of dried sweetgrass burning in a tin saucer. But there was another smell, moist and musky, underneath. The way his sheets smelled after a night of wicked dreams.

He realized she was looking at him, smiling. “What?”

“Do you know that when you get excited, those handsome brown eyes of yours light up till they shine like sunstruck whiskey?”

Mose didn’t know about his eyes shining like whiskey, but he liked hearing she thought them handsome. It made his chest swell.

He reached for her, the silky scarlet wrapper shifting and whispering beneath his hands. Her own hands moved over his chest, as if seeking to mold the shape and feel of him. “You’re built strong, Moses Weaver. I like that in a man.”

He gathered her closer to him, but gently, as if he were trying to embrace a cloud. He was suddenly afraid of his own strength, afraid that he might hurt her. He lowered his head and brushed his lips over hers.

She turned her face aside. “No, don’t. I don’t kiss.”

Mose had a hard time hiding his disappointment; he had wanted to rub his tongue over that crooked tooth. Still, he understood. “Kissing is sure enough a terrible sin,” he said.

She giggled and poked him lightly on the chest. “Lord, the notions you all have.”

Then her hands fell to his waist and somehow she got his buttons open, and his cock was cradled in her palm, and he heaved a chest-shuddering sigh. “My oh my,” she crooned. “Will you look at that?”

Mose looked. It almost didn’t feel like a part of him. It certainly didn’t look like a part of him. He knew he ought to feel shame, for this lust that was a pain and a fire in him. But what he really felt like doing was crowing louder than a two-headed rooster.

Her fingers closed around him. “Judas!” he hissed through clenched teeth. He shuddered again, hard. “I’ve never . . . Oh, Judas, Judas . . .”

“I know, dearie.” She pressed her face into the crook of
his neck, her hot breath bathing him, while her hand was busy gripping his cock, stroking it. “And it’ll be real good, too,” she said. “So good. Just you wait.”

She fell back onto the bed, bringing him with her. The tick rustled like wind-stirred summer grass beneath them. He rubbed his face in her hair, burying his nose deep into the sweet honeysuckle softness of it. She tangled her fingers in his own hair, pulling his head up. “Hey, careful now. You’ll mess me all up.”

He almost tried to kiss her again, but then he remembered that she thought it a sin. So he touched her breast instead, pushing his fingers beneath the stiff jean of her corset. She moaned and squirmed beneath him. A funny strangling sound erupted from his throat. He ground into her, stabbing with his cock up between her legs, searching with his fingers for the slit in her drawers, searching, wanting desperately, desperately to push himself into the slit in her. She was saying something else now, something about slowing down, but all he could hear was the rush of his own panting breaths and the pulsing of the blood in his ears.