The Whip (16 page)

Thirteen

Anna forbade Tonia from ever riding the coach again. Tonia was not daunted. One morning, after the incident, she set up an imitation of a driver’s box and team, with four lengths of rope attached to pieces of wood that were meant to be the horses’ heads. She sat up on a little box, calling out words she’d heard Charley say. She was commanding the imaginary horses to gallop faster and faster and to turn at the same time.

Charley was nearby repairing the corral fence…amused at watching Tonia play her game of make-believe.

Tonia saw Charley watching her. “Don’t laugh at me.”

“I would never ever laugh at you. You’re doing a good job. But we’re both going to get in trouble when your mother sees what you’re doing.”

“I don’t care. Do you really think I’m doing a good job?”

“Yes, I do. Your reining is improving. I can tell you’ve been paying attention on our coach runs. Did you know though, that a horse can sense what you want even without the reins?”

“What do you mean?”

“Once they trust you, they respond to your energy—what it is you want from them.”

“They can read my mind? Like a fortune teller?”

Charley laughed. “Not quite. But you can’t hide anything from a horse. They know if you care about them, respect them. And after a while there’s a strong connection that can happen between you and them. They’re smart and wise creatures. And you know what? I’ve heard that the Indians even believe that horses are spiritual teachers, that they are a bridge between heaven and earth.”

“Really?” said Tonia, not quite understanding but captivated by Charley’s words. “How did you learn so much about horses?”

“I had a great teacher…a man who was like my father. His name was Jonas. He taught me everything I know about horses. And about people as well. I miss him. I wish he could see me sometimes…up on the driver’s box.”

Just then, Anna appeared, stepping out on the porch. “Charley. Get in here.”

“See,” Charley said to Tonia. “I told you we’re in trouble.” She smiled a henpecked smile and shrugged.

Tonia shrugged back; it was a little thing they did.

Anna turned and went back inside. Charley followed.

Kneading bread with a vengeance, Anna did not bother to look up. “I don’t like what you’re doing with Tonia. I want it to stop.”

“What?”

“All this nonsense with the horses and the stagecoach driving. She could have been killed the other day. And besides, it’s not proper.”

“Look, I agreed to not ever take her on the coach runs again, but I don’t see any harm in her having some fun and playing her pretend games. Besides, I don’t see as it hurts a woman to know her way around a horse.”

Charley picked at a little piece of the dough.

Anna swatted her hand away. “It is all she talks about, all she thinks about. She dreams about it at night.”

“Well, I was the same way at her age—”

“But you’re a man. It’s cruel to encourage her to have a dream that will never come true.”

“I won’t encourage her, then.”

“It’s not just that. She admires you. She looks up to you, as if you were some kind of god. She loves you. I’m afraid of how she will be hurt when—”

“When what?”

“When you ask us to leave.”

“My God, who said I would want you to leave? I know we haven’t talked about it…but I’m very happy with the way things are. I love having you and Tonia here.”

“But that will change. I’ve known men like you. Maybe not tomorrow or the next day—”

“Anna.”

Charley moved toward her wanting to embrace her, to assure her. Not knowing if she should dare. What was this thing between them? Not the love of a woman for a man, as Anna believed. Not exactly love between two women, either. It was something else, made up of equal parts gratitude, need, and fear.

Anna held herself very still.

“I’m not going anywhere—and neither are you,” Charley said.

Anna looked up, brushing away her tears with a floury hand.

Charley, not knowing what the hell to do, turned and walked out the door.

Fourteen

It was the following summer that Charley, Ben and Hank with several other whips were finishing up a new, one room cabin adjacent to Charley’s original structure. The men, sweating hard under a hot sun, were pounding in their last nails before lunch.

“Anyone want a nip before we eat?” Ben asked, offering up a flask.

“Are you crazy?” laughed Hank, “You’ll pound a nail through your fucking drunk hand if you’re not careful.”

“And if you’re not careful Hank, I’m going to force feed you some of my Indian whiskey.”

“What the hell is that? Or should I ask?” said Charley.

Ben took a long swig from his flask. “Well, you take one barrel of river water, and two gallons of alcohol. Then you add two ounces of strychnine to make the Indians crazy, cuz strychnine is a fucking great stimulant. Add three plugs of tobacco to make ’em sick; an Indian wouldn’t figure it was whiskey unless it made him sick. Then add five bars of soap to give it a bead, and a half-pound of red pepper. And then you put in some sage brush and boil it until it’s brown. You strain this into a barrel and hell, you got yourself some delicious Indian whiskey.”

Charley let out a high-pitched hoot, “Remind me never to ask you for a drink. No wonder you can’t get yourself a woman…drinkin’ shit like that.”

“I just make it…I don’t drink it. And you’re not one to talk about the ladies.”

“Yeah,” joked Hank. “Whenever any marriage-minded spinster pursues Parkie, he solves the problem by switching routes. So then Charley, why the hell you building this sage hen a cabin right next door?”

“Shit,” slurred Ben. “With the price of lumber these days, wouldn’t it a been cheaper just to marry her?”

Everyone laughed.

“Come on, Parkie. We all know you’re a little peculiar, but tell it to us straight. That Anna is one damn fine lookin’ woman. Don’t the two of you ever do it?”

“I’m a man as likes my privacy, Ben. That’s all.”

Charley gave Ben a dirty look, then turned her attention to hammering in a nail. Around her now, the men were trading sly, suggestive glances. She pretended not to notice.

By evening, most of the cabin had been finished—orange-yellow lantern light spilled out through its open window. There was still a sound of hammering; alone, Charley was putting up the shutter on the window frame.

Anna walked through the front door. She was carrying a tray with a covered plate of food, a large jar of homemade wine, and two tin cups. She set the tray down on the floor.

“I brought you some supper.”

“Smells good, Anna. Thank-you.”

Charley finished the hammering and sat down on the floor while Anna knelt and poured the purplish red liquid into the cups.

She then sank down next to Charley, spreading her skirt around her. “Tonia’s in bed asleep.”

She caught Charley’s eye. She smiled and handed Charley the wine. The two clinked cups, raising the wine to their lips to drink.

Something was happening or about to happen. Charley could feel it moving through the night air. She took a swig of her wine.

“The place isn’t much, but it’ll keep the rain off your head.” She looked up at the roof and laughed. “I hope.”

Anna looked around the cabin. “It’s nice. I can see it’s going to be nice. Thank-you.” She refilled Charley’s cup. “And, you won’t have to stay in the barn anymore. You can sleep in your own bed now.”

“Oh, I haven’t minded. Spent most of my growing up years sleeping in a stable.”

There was a long moment of uncomfortable silence.

“Charley?” said Anna. “Can I ask you something? Do you like me?”

Oh shit, thought Charley. She felt a wave of nausea. She knew what was coming. What the hell was she going to say to Anna?

“Well…sure. Of course I like you fine.”

“Charley, it’s been a year that we’ve been living here with you. You never speak of yourself. You hardly speak at all to me. And you have never once spoken of…that is…” She looked right at Charley. “How is it that you think of me?”

“How do I think of you?”

“I’m like a wife to you, Charley, in every way but one.”

“I think of you as…as my friend.”

“But why have you never touched me? Why have you never tried to make love? Is there something wrong with me?”

“Of course there’s nothing wrong with you.”

Fuck. Had she deluded herself into thinking that this moment would not come, or had she just ignored all the signs because she didn’t want to face the inevitable questions. Hell, she barely remembered she was a woman most days. But then the words were at the tip of her tongue…I’m not who you think I am. Dear God yes—the relief of being known. She wanted to shout it—to show her. She caught her breath, slowed her thoughts. If she revealed her secret, she risked losing everything—the daily, comforting presence of Anna and Tonia, not to mention her job. She risked losing who she had fought so hard to become. Far safer, far surer to continue to be whom people thought she was. She opted for the noblest-sounding lie.

“It’s just…I have far too much respect for you.”

“Oh?” said Anna. She shifted a little closer to Charley, leaning forward on her hands so that Charley was facing her formidable cleavage of flesh. “I’m not so respectable.”

Suddenly her lips were on Charley’s.

And Charley was kissing back. She felt hazy and drunk and Anna’s mouth tasted like new made wine, heady and sweet. The kiss went on and on, and Charley was part of it going on.

Anna took Charley’s hand and laid it on her chest. Charley did not resist. She then slid Charley’s hand down the great slope of her breast. The hairs on Charley’s arm prickeled…it was a stunning sensation to touch another woman’s flesh in such a manner. Ever since Byron, Charley had been somehow able to deny that desire to be held, to be filled, to be overwhelmed. Not that she had had much choice—living her life the way she was. But now…that long dormant need was returning with a vengeance. Anna was whispering in Italian…her hand inching up Charley’s leg—mouth following, tongue tracing, etching the wet path. Then far away a soft whisper from below—“Charley…please take me.”

Charley’s eyes snapped open. Summoning all of herself, all of her will, she broke away, scrambling to her feet. For an instant she teetered in her resolve; she could so easily fall back to the floor with this woman. Enough. Enough. She could pretend to herself that she had re-invented herself. But the truth was something else. Just keep the mask locked in place. That was the only protection she had. Anna would put her hand low on Charley’s body to feel the expected hardness there, and all she would find was a soft pillow of round flesh. And then there would be Anna’s expected scream. And after that—the end of everything that meant anything in this world.

“I’m—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Charley stammered.

“What?” said Anna. “What?”

But Charley was gone in a blur, leaving her stunned and half undressed on the floor. A few moments passed. She looked down at her rejected body. She tucked her flesh back into her bodice. More moments passed. Longer ones. The sound of Charley’s horse galloping away. Anna reached for her wine and drank it down. She finished Charley’s, and then poured a third.

Sometime later in the night, Tonia wandered in from the other cabin, barefoot, in her nightdress.

“Mama? Where are you? Are you there?”

In a glance, Tonia took in the situation—not what had happened of course, but as only a daughter could understand her mother. There was pain and the pain had been caused by yet another man.

“Oh, my little mama,” she said. She knelt down and put her arms around Anna who was lying in a heap on the floor. She helped her up and guided her back to their bed. Anna for once allowed herself to be led.

Fifteen

It was Hangtown that Charley rode to that night
.

She had started riding just to get away. Anywhere. Somewhere. But she found herself heading towards Hangtown. And Edmund…drawn towards him in some inexplicable way. She didn’t even know anything about him. This was craziness. What did she expect to happen tonight? What could happen? But here she was riding through the darkness. Not knowing if Edmund would even be there. Nor what she’d do if he was.

Would she ever again be known as she had been with Byron? That was her deepest fear—that she was nothing. A woman growing old alone, who would always be alone. A woman dressed as a man.

Froth poured from the horse’s mouth and its neck was soaked and salted. Charley was running the horse too fast, kicking too hard the sore flanks. But she needed to vanish. She needed to run.

As she rode, the great dead appeared beside her, immense and slow and distant; moving in the shadows and broken flickers of moonlight like giant Byzantine mosaics in the night. Uneven patterns cast on rock face, flickering, stretching along the dry ground as she moved past them. They were all there: Byron, Jonas, Beelzebub. And everywhere her soft silent baby cast large upon the landscape, still bearing that immaculate expression passed through time from the ancients to the very newest born. She felt the look of her child emanating from every rock and tree bark glittering back through the moonlight. All of them were now moving in the direction from which she’d come. So big, so slow, so grand. And oh, they seemed not to know her, seemed not to care—the slow traffic of the complex dead and she, human fool, racing feverishly in the other direction.

She kicked the horse again, hard.

The figures were vanishing, blinking away. They were gone. The lights of Hangtown were appearing. It was too bright here for enchantments.

The horse was slowing and Charley, whose body had out-sped itself, slowed enough that the soul caught up, entered it. She grunted as soul clicked back into place; the loneliness now was just the usual loneliness and she could bear it; it was not unfamiliar.

She was panting, catching her breath. Her heart was pounding. She could hear it.

The horse was walking now, snorting. Charley was pierced through with feelings of remorse and shame at her ill-treatment of the creature. She stroked the horse’s neck, uttering apology after apology. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”

And then, before them was Kittle Farley’s Hangtown Saloon with its shroud of clamor and odor of drink. The horse halted and for several minutes they just stood there. Charley swung down from the horse and led him over to a watering trough to drink. She tied him to the hitching post. She used her dirty sleeve to scrub the tears from her face, composed an expression of sorts, and plunged inside…stagecoach driver goes to saloon, raises glass, laughs raucously, eyes the painted gals.

Little tables were scattered everywhere; a piano was angled against one wall, replete with piano player with rolled up sleeves, his fingers moving up and down the tinny-sounding keys. A polished wood bar stretched the length of another wall. The bar was lined three deep tonight with boisterous drinking men. Hung in the place of honor behind the bar was a picture of a voluptuous reclining woman, dark eyes and hair, Mediterranean in seasoning—with a satyr hovering over her, leering down at her near-nakedness.

The barkeep paused in his dispensing of drinks and reached under the picture. There was a small rubber bulb there and the barkeeps’ hand closed around it, pumping it a few times. The painted woman’s belly undulated, and her breasts bulged outwards, balloon-like, as the barkeep continued to pump.

“Keep at it, Kittle!” shouted the men. “Go! Go! Go!”

Kittle pumped and pumped, a foolish grin pasted on his face, and the breasts bulged and bulged, until at last the tips of them, daubed with red and purple and pink, dawned like pointy heavenly bodies. Orgasmic whooping and hooting filled the room.

A young miner stood next to Charley doing a double take, his eyes popping. “Oh, baby,” he shouted, crossing his eyes in simulated ecstasy. “Give me some of that, barkeep.”

The men laughed and raised a grateful toast to the naked lady.

Charley blanched—Edmund was there, standing at the bar, looking rather unsteady. What the hell did she think she was doing? She should leave. And yet she felt herself move through the crowd until she was standing at his side.

“Hey. Charley, my friend,” warbled Edmund. He was in an advanced stage of drunkenness. He hooked an arm around Charley’s elbow and allowed himself to be steered back to a chair where he landed with a thump. She slid into the chair next to him.

Edmund narrowed his eyes. “I hope you won’t take it amiss,” he said, “if I tell you that something about you has always puzzled me Charley Parkhurst.”

So it’s now, the unveiling, she thought. Shit. She had been hiding from this moment. Protecting her goddamned secret. Good. It’s over.

But then Edmund saw a stray deck of cards lying on the table and lost his train of thought. He picked them up and attempted to shuffle them. His fingers were too drunk. Laughing at himself, he gave up, pushing the cards away with a resigned sigh.

“There are two things, my friend, in which a man should never attempt to engage beyond a certain point of inebriation,” he slurred. “Cards and…”

As if on cue, a saloon gal interrupted him. She was very young, with a face that might have been pretty had it not been ruined with too much rouge and dissipation. She sidled up next to him and ran her hand through his hair.

“Edmund,” she said simpering. “I got something special for you.”

She had a bright expression, a sing-song voice.

He swung her down into his lap, almost dropping her. “Oh you darling soiled dove. Haven’t I already sampled what you’ve got?”

Charley watched as Edmund cupped the gal’s chin in his hand and turned her head to face his. She pouted at him. Then stunningly, she relaxed her face for an instant into a real smile, a smile of sudden girlish sweetness—and then, just as quick, tightened her mouth and eyes…back into an appearance of false coyness.

It was a shocking moment; as if a mask had been dropped for an instant, confirming lest you weren’t sure, that indeed there were masks. Had it really happened? Was everyone—including herself—playing a role here? But by then the girl had already disappeared back inside the gal.

“Why, yes, I believe I have sampled you my dear,” Edmund said, rolling his eyes at Charley. He turned back to the hard whore on his lap and Charley watched as Edmund’s hand snaked under her arm and squeezed her breast.

“Aren’t you Mimi?” he said.

The gal slapped his hand away with a playful sulk. “What a bad boy you are.” She wanted to punch him in the face, but she had her bread to earn. Instead she said, “You know the rules, Mr. Bennett.” She made her dimples appear.

Edmund’s other hand sneaked along the gal’s leg, disappearing up her skirt.

“You are so naughty!” she squeaked. She turned and gave him a quick sloppy kiss. Then she sprang up off his lap, trailing her fingers through his hair as she started to move away. She looked back, batting her eyes and puckering her lips.

He reached up and grabbed her by the wrist, bringing her hand to his face.

“Come with me to San Francisco, my darling girl. I’ll show you things you never dreamt of. And you’ll get to see the head of the famous bandit Joaquin Murieta.”

He turned and winked at Charley. “You should come too my boy—The Stockton House Saloon on Stockton Street. It’s going to be on display for just one night, August 12th; supposed to draw a big crowd.”

Still holding the gal’s hand, Edmund turned it over and kissed it in such a gentle and sweet way that it took Charley’s breath away. She suspected—she couldn’t say why—that he was engaging the gal not for the gal’s benefit, but for hers.

The gal of course, was oblivious to it all. She giggled. “Oh, Mr. Bennett, you rascal, you. You know I can’t go. I’d lose my job.”

She turned her back on him, remembering to twitch her hips in an exaggerated manner as she walked away.

Edmund turned his glazed eyes to Charley and smiled. For an almost imperceptible second, she saw in that smile a profound and moving sadness.

“I’m fractured with drink,” he said. His eyes rolled up and his head fell forward onto the table with a loud painful-sounding clunk.