The Whip (11 page)

Thirty-Seven

By candlelight Charlotte laid out on the
farmhouse bed…a little red homespun baby dress, a pair of tiny crocheted shoes, Byron’s worn copy of Emerson and one of his shirts, his old hat, coins in a tin box, Jonas’ whip. She stood there for a moment, then gathered the clothes into her arms, embracing them, inhaling them. Enough. She bundled everything together into a saddlebag with some food and a canteen of water. From Byron’s bed table, she took his five shot Colt Baby Dragoon pistol and holster that Weldon Phillips had given him as a gift after they took over the farm. Byron had, with care and patience, taught her how to shoot it and how to load it with its .31 caliber balls and powder. Now as she fed its chamber, she intoned Lee’s name with each click. She snapped it shut.

She would shoot a hole deep into his heart. She could not turn the other cheek. She would not turn the other cheek. Not in this lifetime.

She’d already made the final preparations. She’d played them over and over in her mind. What she would do. How she would do it.

Outside it was quiet and dark and cold. A small flame appeared from the curtains of the bedroom window. The flame turned into fire. It moved around the house, faster and higher, reaching, stretching its arms, consuming and purifying all. Chickens and goats scattered, released from their pens. As she watched it burn, she had a fleeting moment of peace. The house looked so serene against the darkness, its burning face turned toward the comforting coolness of that constant sky.

She went out to the barn and released all but one of the horses. She placed Byron’s pistol in its holster on the saddle, along with her small bundle of possessions. There was nothing left for her. Lee had swallowed her whole.

She rode off into the night.

Thirty-Eight

It was almost sunrise as Charlotte reached town
.
She
headed towards the stagecoach stop to inquire if anyone had seen Lee. Knowing him, he’d be skipping town as soon as possible. She had all night to envision how she would kill him. All night to imagine it over and over and over. She would move her finger against the curved metal of the trigger. She would pull with all her strength. She had no idea when or how this thing would happen. But, in fact, her future was already seamlessly in place.

As she turned down the street toward the stagecoach stop, there was Lee. He was grinning, having a smoke with a couple of gals. There he was. It was shocking to see him. It was almost as though she had dreamed him there. All she wanted to do now was turn and run. She took a deep breath. It wasn’t enough. She took another, deeper. And another. Even deeper. Still not enough. She felt dizzy, faint…as though she were suffocating.

Somewhere in the distance she heard the driver yell at Lee to get in. She heard the stagecoach start off in her direction. It clattered by on the narrow street. She was compelled to look up. For an instant, Lee’s face was framed in the coach window staring straight ahead. Her head jerked away. He hadn’t seen her. The coach rattled on. She turned in her saddle to watch it disappear down the street. It rounded the corner and was gone.

The coach was gone. Lee was gone. And she was doing nothing. Just sitting there. Trying to catch her breath. She was rooted in place…staring glazed-eyed at the plume of coach dust still floating in the street. She must follow him, kill him, not lose him. But why had all will seeped from her? Her mind could not focus to command her body to move…her hands to lift the reins. Too many nights without sleep. Tears were rolling down her face…no sobs, just tears flooding her eyes so that she could not see.

She sat alone for a long while, wet eyes wide open, the morning sun glaring down on her.

If she died this second, no one except Lee would even know that she had ever existed. How strange to think that there was no one. They were all sleeping under the earth…their beautiful flesh turning to mulch.

Then an odd thing. Dampness, wetness on her saddle beneath her. She looked down. Blood. Whose blood? For a long moment she stared…feeling that her mind was slipping from her. Blood. It must be, yes, her blood. That was it. Was she sick? She remembered the mid-wife saying she might bleed after. That must be it. Or could it be her monthly curse? More than nine months she had been without it, and she had forgotten of its existence.

She returned to their farm. The embers were still hot; there was the sooty smell of burnt wood. She washed herself from the horse’s water trough. She took Byron’s work shirt from her wrapped bundle, ripping it to shreds and using it as a pad to stop the blood.

She slept in the warm sweet straw in their barn, which was still standing…the only thing left still standing. No house or life existed. The fire had frightened away the animals. All life and sound was gone. Through closed lids, all she could hear that night was her own shallow breath and the sound of the little swing, dancing in the wind.

The night seemed so long. Dark and light behind her lids. She could not open her eyes; she did not want to open them.

She lay in the hay, curled in a tight ball, hour after hour, not moving. Beneath her skin she felt a sharp pain in her throat, in her stomach…hunger…thirst. She tried to open her eyes but they were glued shut with sleep. Threading itself between the layers of darkness was the comforting blanket of cricket voices clicking. More long hours behind lids of dark and light.

At last she moved, stretching her full length on the ground, an animal waking from winter’s hibernation. She made a whimper. She took a breath. She was still alive.

Thirty-Nine

Returning to the stagecoach stop, Charlotte reined in her horse. She called out to the station keeper who was just disappearing into the doorway.

“Sir, I’m a friend of Lee Colton. Yesterday, I was told he left here by coach. Can you please tell me his destination?”

The station keeper looked curiously at the disheveled woman before him. Not quite Lee’s usual taste in women.

“No ma’am. Misinformed. Not yesterday. Colton left two days ago for Boston. Then ‘round the horn’ to Frisco, or so he said.”

Two days? How was that possible? She slept that long?

She thanked the man and wheeled her horse around; there were plans to make, passage to calculate, monies to earn.

Something caught her eye. Next to a wanted poster of the notorious gang, the Daybreak Boys, was a large printed sign tacked to the side of the ticket window:

BE A WHIP!

JAMES E. BIRCH

STAGE COMPANY

STAGECOACH DRIVERS NEEDED

IN

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

(TRANSPORTATION EXPENSES PAID!)

ONLY FOR THE HARDY AND COURAGEOUS!!!

TRIALS EVERY SATURDAY THIS MONTH

INQUIRE WITHIN

It didn’t take even a moment. She made up her mind.

She returned once more to what was left of the farm. She went and found the broken wagon with their laundry that she had abandoned four days earlier. She found some shears in the barn. She knew what she had to do.

She was now unrecognizable…haggard and drawn, dressed in Byron’s clothes. She had wrapped tight strips of cloth around her breasts, a scarf around her neck, a long shirt to hide the rest of her woman’s figure and gloves that concealed her small hands. Her hair was cropped short just as Lee had cut it so many years ago…the irony of which was not lost on her. He had wanted Charley. Then fucking Charley is who he’d get. She would get the whip job, follow him to California and kill him there.

Forty

Charlotte rode down the main street of Providence, Byron’s old hat pulled low over her forehead. She rode past Mrs. Bidwell’s boarding house and the bookshop. She rode past Bronson’s General Store. Mr. Bronson was opening the shutters. Of the horse and its rider he noticed nothing out of the ordinary. He glanced up at the click-clocking and then his eyes slid back down to his hands fastening the shutters on the pesky hooks under the clapboards. The horse had looked inconsequential. The rider had looked inconsequential. The hooves clopped in the usual way.

She tried to take all this in. That the woman in her had died in anguish and a vengeful man had been born in her place apparently brooked no notice of the universe. Nor had the universe even blinked in the absorption into itself of her tragedy.

It was astonishing to her that the sun had re-risen and shone down on them all in the same way as always before. That the townspeople weren’t transfixed in shock, dumbfounded—changed outright at the death of the old world and the hollow, hopeless replacement offered in exchange. But no, their lives seemed to be moving on as usual. Charlotte looked around her in dismay. The townspeople were, all of them, just the same as any other day. How could that be?

She rode on, past the crumbling brick buildings and the peeling white houses. Everything was temporary; she understood that now. All of this was temporary. It would all be snatched away. It was all on loan. Even the people we love. They were all on loan. One day you see their face across a rickety table or you pass them hurrying from here to there, or you see them leave you in your bed; and their profile passes you by…and you don’t know…your thoughts somewhere else. And then they are snatched away forever and you did not know to say goodbye. You did not know.

It was going to be a bracing autumn day. The leaves were glimmering in the early light; they’d been turning crisp in the cold nights and rattled now with the breeze. They were orange, gold, and red. In her old life she might have called it glorious. But now she knew the truth about all this beauty.

Forty-One

A course had been set up on the outskirts of town for the stagecoaching trials. Seated in a wagon hitched to a six-team was a young driver. His whip unfurled against a transparent sky with a resounding snap, urging the team onto the course at a hard gallop. A group of men were gathered nearby watching him, calling out encouragement.

The Birch Stage Company scout, distinguished by his dark suit and derby hat, stood at the roadside. He was holding an official-looking notebook, shaking his head, unimpressed. He glanced over at Charlotte, standing diffidently off to one side, her hands in her pants pockets. Intense whooping from the onlookers drew the scout’s attention away from Charlotte toward the approaching driver, who was now whipping the team back towards the finish. It was clear that the driver didn’t have control. The lead team stopped short. The middle team whinnied as the leads tangled and the wagon lurched up for a moment on two wheels, then fell back with a crash.

The driver got down from the wagon. He gave an awkward smile as he approached the scout.

“Gotta work on your reining,” said the scout. “It’s shit. You know damn well your control of the horses depends on it.”

The young man’s face fell.

The scout turned to Charlotte. “Now you, boy. You’re next. What’s your name?”

Making sure to push her voice down low she answered, “Charley, sir.”

“Charley what?”

“Charley Parkhurst.”

“You know Yank-style reining Parkhurst?”

She nodded. There were two styles of reining horses, the old British way, and the Yankee improvement. The Brits ran their horse teams yoked in tight with no room to move. Yank-style reining took longer to learn, but was a hell of a lot easier on the horses.

“Ever driven stage?”

“Yep.”

“How long?”

“Two years down in Georgia,” lied Charlotte, knowing full well her skill would back up her words.

“Okay, so how near could you drive to the edge of a bluff with a sheer drop of a thousand feet with perfect safety to yourself, team and passengers?”

When asked the same question, Charlotte had overheard several other prospective whips bragging about how close they could get to the edge. One fella even said he would drive with ‘one-half the wheel over the cliff’.

Charlotte took a different route. “The truth is sir, I might not suit your company. For I would keep as far from that cliff as the horses would let me.”

“Good man. That’s a damn good answer. Now let’s see what you’re made of Parkhurst.”

Taking her time, she walked over to the horses. She checked the teams, running her hand over some of the horses’ flanks, whispering to them. The horses whickered back.

Then Charley climbed up and settled into the wagon. She grabbed hold of the reins with her left hand and tucked her whip into the crook between right thumb and forefinger. The horses’ ears flickered in anticipation of the reining to come. Charlotte was back in her element. She played the reins over her fingers perfectly, just as Jonas had taught her, and the wagon moved flawlessly through the course.

The men watched with grudging admiration as she turned the team a full and graceful 180 degrees and then started back again.

The previous driver standing next to the scout said, “Damn. Who the fuck is that? He’s got good hands”

The scout turned to him, notebook in hand. “That…” he stopped, looked down, and made a notation in his book ending it with a grand flourish of the pen. “That, my dear boy is a whip.”

Book Two

There’s no respect for youth or age.

Aboard the California stage.

And drivers often stop and yell,

Get out all hands and push like hell.

They promise when your fare you pay.

You’ll have to walk but half the way.

Then add, aside, with cunning laugh,

You’ll push and pull the other half.

The bandit grins like it’s a joke.

He stops the stage and lifts your poke.

You want to scrap, but man alive,

That bad man totes a forty-five.

— A California folk song

One

And so Charlotte began her all-expense paid trip from Boston to California. She took the steamer R. B. Forbes south down the Atlantic to Aspinwall, Panama. Then she had to fight the heat and the mosquitoes when crossing, by mule, the Yankee strip across the Isthmus to the Pacific.

At last, she sailed north up the coast towards San Francisco on a smaller steamer, the Dreadnaught. About a hundred miles out, one of the ship’s pumps began to break down and they were forced to disembark in the nearest port city of Santa Cruz, California.

Up until then they had been making record time…four months of travelling, attributable to fair weather, no deaths, nor thank God, any pirate encounters.

During her voyage, Charlotte became acquainted with one John Morton of Morton Draying and Warehouse Company of San Francisco and a European traveler John Charles Duchow.

She studied these two men…their behavior, their mien. Dominance, control, self assurance, mastery…that’s what Charlotte observed made up the mask of a man. That, plus a confident swagger. She also noticed that men never stared strangers in the eye. They tended to look anywhere but at each other.

She learned to swear, spit, chew tobacco, smoke a cigar, gamble and swig a shot of whiskey from her two new friends, who treated her as a son. They kept saying, to Charlotte’s great chagrin, that if only there was a whore around, that they would teach him a few “special tricks” as well.

One of the masculine habits that she found difficult to acquire was keeping her legs spread apart, as men were wont to do. She remembered how Miss Haden used to warn all the girls at the orphanage that if they didn’t keep their legs tight together, the devil would jump in between them. But she realized with some astonishment, that when she kept her legs tight together, or when the pitch of her voice quite by accident became her own female voice, or when an effeminate behavior over-took her, no one at all seemed to notice. How could that be?

After much cogitating on the subject, she decided that it seemed that one could reinvent oneself in this new mysterious, musky world she was invading—and who that new self was, people did not question. Perhaps it was the men’s clothes, the short hair, the pungent smell of sweat she allowed. Or perhaps it was just that people were too involved with their own person to really look, observe and give a damn.

During her long journey, Charlotte, when she wasn’t seasick or carousing with her two friends, had endless hours of daytime daydreams and nighttime nightmares to conjure up the how, the where, the when of finding and killing Lee.

How this would be accomplished, this feat…or even if she could pull the trigger, when and given the moment…or if she herself would be dead sooner than later; she did not know. She had frozen once before. She also did not know if Lee had vanished into the largeness of California or disappeared into another state. Perhaps it might be years before she found him or perhaps never. 

But there was nothing else she could think about. Her thoughts were unrelenting. They were persistent. She had to obliterate him from the face of the earth.

As the months on the sea drifted on however, her initial revengeful rage subsided somewhat. And all she seemed to feel was the old familiar emptiness, the bleakness, the loneliness. It seemed to hide itself from her whenever she was with her friends though, playing their men’s games. So she stayed close to the two men, not leaving their side until the sun came up, reflecting itself on the glinting waves, hurting her drunken red eyes. She would stagger to her bunk after vomiting up the night’s liquid refreshments and sleep until the sun began to set.