The Whip (21 page)

Thirty-Two

Charley rode up to the Clinton place and saw a horse in a small corral. She saw a bit of wood smoke curling up from the stovepipe sticking out of the roof. He was home.

She paused for a moment at the tree where Tonia must have tied her horse. She rode in closer. Her hand gripped the butt of the pistol in her holster. He would probably kill her, she thought in passing. But it didn’t matter.

Just outside the shack she dismounted. The front door creaked open and Lee appeared. He was leaning against the door frame, gun dangling from his fingers, his veiled eyes glittering.

“Well, hello there. Shit. I wasn’t sure back then at the coach it was you Charlotte. Or should I say Char…lee? Looks like you took my name advice after all.”

Charley just stared at him.

“Guess I been sorta expecting you,” Lee said. “You’re lookin’ mighty tough and serious these days. Oh, and sorry about the girl…it was a mistake. Don’t know what the fuck she was doing. You send her out as your hired gun?”

He ambled out onto the porch, taking a few steps along the length of it, laughing. The laugh at this moment was forced, but he’d had plenty of time on his own to think how funny it was, the way things turned out—the girl and all. And Charlotte, like this. And the way his life became, and hers. You’d never have expected it. Not in a million years. He turned to look at her as she raised her gun and trained it on him.

Eyes cold, Charley cocked it.

Lee quietly cocked his gun as well, except his he left dangling at his side.

“Come on now, Charlotte,” he continued. “You can’t kill me. I’m the one took care of you. I raised you. I’m the one that loves you. I’m all you’ve got in the world. I’m your brother.”

And then he pursed his lips and whistled their private whistle and smiled the way he smiled—the fetching, lopsided way he used to reserve for her alone.

“You’re not my fucking brother,” Charley whispered.

Lee winced at the words. He wheeled, raising his gun toward her—but Charley was already aimed and ready.

She squeezed the trigger hitting Lee square in the chest. As Lee fell he got off a single wild shot, missing Charley entirely. She followed with her eyes and with her gun the trajectory of his falling body.

She fired again.

On Lee’s face was a look of utter surprise. He was already just about dead.

She stepped in close to Lee’s body. Her thoughts were wrapping themselves tight around her feelings. There was no joy or relief, no satisfaction, no sense of revenge now fulfilled. The time had come. She had done what she had to do for Tonia, for Anna, for Byron, for the baby. Done what she had to do for herself. And now it looked as if she had not been killed.

Lee was right, but not the way he’d meant it. The world was different for her now, without him. Better, maybe. Alone, but emptied of some curse that had followed her since a child.

It was so strange, she thought, these moments we pray for; they happen so quick and then they’re gone. “Just like that,” Charley said out loud.

She left Lee staring at the sun. Someone else would have to close his eyes.

Thirty-Three

Charley sat alone, hunched over a glass of 40 Rod Whiskey, a half empty bottle on the table next to her. The barkeep came over. He wiped the whiskey bottle and put a cork in it.

“Closing time again, my friend. Time to go home. Maybe you should take a night off.”

By now everyone in town had a different theory about what had happened. Someone had revenged Tonia and killed Lee Colton, a good for nothing gunslinger. Charley was the likely candidate. But maybe it had been Anna…maybe some other enemy of Lee’s out for revenge, or maybe even that drunk Ben. Folks still could not fathom though, what in the world Tonia had been doing at the Clinton place. With a gun no less. Some thought perhaps there was more to the coach robbery than they had been told. Colton and Charley kill a famous outlaw, and two days later Tonia is killed by Colton? It was all very confusing. But if it was Charley, nobody could blame him. After all, Tonia had been like Charley’s daughter, for Christ sake. Even the sheriff, with no proof, had eventually dropped the matter. Anybody would have done the same thing. No doubt about it.

Charley looked up at the barkeep. She nodded, staggered out and headed home.

She rode her horse up to her cabin. Dismounting, she slide down the side of the horse and crumpled into a heap on the ground. After a few minutes of lying there staring at the moonless sky, she managed to get herself up. She stumbled into the cabin heading straight for the bedroom—ignoring Anna, who was waiting at the table.

“Life is so simple for you, Charley. Isn’t it? So easy for a man. You go out and you kill somebody. You get away with it. And then you get drunk every night. I wish it was so simple for me.”

“Nothing simple about killing a man,” Charley said. She pulled a cigar out and tried to light it. “Can’t rightly say as to how I feel about it.” She got the cigar to light.

“That is all you ever say to me, ‘Can’t rightly say as to how I feel about it.’ Even with Tonia gone, you can’t say how you feel about anything. You can’t say how you feel about her? She’s dead, Charley. Rotting. Maybe someday God will tell me why my daughter did what she did and why he took her. Maybe in exchange for the pain, God will give me that gift. But now I need you to speak to me. I need you to help me. I feel like you’re not telling me something. Are you protecting me? Why…why did she do what she did?”

Charley’s inebriated body had to sit down. She sat in her old rocker and turned toward the fireplace, staring into the flames.

Anna stood up from the table. Her voice got softer. “Why won’t you look at me? Why won’t you speak? Tell me how we can live together, side by side for all this time, through everything that has happened and you won’t say anything to me. Tell me something. Anything.”

There was a long pause as Charley drew on her cigar.

Anna erupted, screaming, “Good. I’m leaving. Why would I stay? You don’t care about me enough to speak. You never loved me and you never loved Tonia. I don’t think you know how to love anybody.”

Charley threw her cigar into the fireplace and turned towards Anna. “You’re right. I don’t—I can’t love you Anna, not the way that you want. I care for you, and I need you, and that’s a kind of love, isn’t it? It’s the best I can do. Please don’t ask any more of me.”

“More? I get nothing from you Charley. I feel only empty holes. Forget about me. I have never even heard you speak once of love for Tonia. Or love for God…what kind of man are you that you cannot even love God?”

Charley looked at Anna with her glazed, drunken eyes. “Please understand, it’s always been hard for me to put into words what I feel.”

Anna sat down in front of the fire next to Charley. “Well, try. I need your help,” she said.

“I can’t explain. I…fuck.” Charley pushed herself up out of the chair and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. She took a slug and sat back down. “I…I think a lot Anna…when I drive…”

She was struggling to get the words out.

“Have you…have you ever seen a slab of towering mountain rock…so powerful, so perfect. You have to lean back on something when you release the tears that snap into your eyes because you know that God has a face. The poppy growing out of the side of the rock. The waterfall that claws its way through the stone. That force…that face. I’ve come to believe everything that causes me awe, must be what you call God…So yes, Anna, I love God. And I do love Tonia.”

Anna stood up and walked to the window. There was a long moment before she spoke. “I need to leave in the morning.”

“Where will you be going?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t know why Tonia’s dead. I don’t know why you could never love me. All I know is there’s nothing for me here anymore.”

It was so quiet. Charley could hear the scratching of the branches against the cabin. A possum or some other creature ran across the roof. She could see Anna’s chest moving in and out, holding back her tears. She walked over to where Anna was standing. She reached out and touched her.

Anna started to sob. “Oh Charley…where is there to go in this world?”

“Nowhere,” Charley said. “Nowhere.” She had thought about these things. “Here is all we got.”

For a long while they both stood there, Charley’s arm protectively around Anna.

It was time to tell her the truth, Charley thought. It was the least she could do, she told herself, for the part she’d played in Tonia’s death. And how could she go on living with herself, if she allowed Anna to believe that she was unloved for the wrong reasons. Let her vent her fury. She has a right to know. Hell, whatever Anna might say or do to her, she deserved worse. For thinking of no one but herself all these years…putting all her thoughts into protecting her damn, worthless self.

She took a deep breath. “Anna. There’s something you need to know…about why Tonia went to Lee Colton’s…she went because of me.”

Anna pulled back from Charley. “What?”

“I’m not who you think I am. I’m so sorry. I don’t want you to feel I’ve betrayed you. But I’ve kept a secret from you, from everyone, all these years. I don’t know how to tell you this. I guess there’s no other way than to just tell you that I’m a woman.”

There was a stunned silence.

Anna threw back her head and laughed in disbelief. “What? Are you so drunk…what kind of trick are you playing? Why are you being so cruel? Why are you doing this to me?”

“I’m sorry, Anna. I’m not being cruel. I’m not playing a trick.”

Charley took off her shirt and began unwinding the long strips of cloth wrapped round her chest.

At the sight of Charley’s breasts Anna’s mouth dropped in horror.

Charley put her shirt back on and took another long slug of whiskey.

She began to tell Anna everything. All of it. The whole story. It was like unwrapping her breasts from their tight bindings. In the beginning it hurt, but then, as the wrappings came off, she felt free, light, released. At last…Anna now knew.

But her release lasted just a few breaths.

“You bastard…I don’t even know what to call you.”

Anna was beside herself. She grabbed the poker from the fire and held it up to Charley’s face. She was roaring: “Assassino. That’s who you are. It was you murdered my little girl. Not that Lee Colton.”

“Anna. Forgive me.” Charley grabbed the iron tool from her hand. “This won’t put anything right. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”

“No. No you’re not. You were just thinking to protect yourself with your awful secret. Never thinking about how you’d influence a girl who worshipped and loved you with all her beautiful heart.”

“I had no notion of what she’d do, Anna. Believe me. I wish it was me instead of Tonia got that bullet. Seems like my whole life people I love most have gotten killed because of me.”

“People you love?” Anna screamed. “All this time you let me fall in love. Let me care for you. You should have told me. You made me such a fool.”

“I’m the one’s a fool. You’re right. I should have told you. I shouldn’t have told Tonia. But I was afraid I would lose you both. You’d become my family. I needed you. Please forgive me. I’ve been a damn coward. Forgive me.” She sat down and she wept.

Charley’s tears were all it took…to turn Anna’s rage to pity. Anna looked down at her. She watched Charley for a moment and then walked out the door.

The morning after Charley’s truth-telling, Anna packed up her few belongings in her old cloth valise. By the time Charley woke up, she was gone.

Thirty-Four

With Anna gone, Charley’s life-long coat of loss acquired yet another layer. It was what she deserved she told herself. For all the bad choices she’d made. All the secrets she’d kept. Anna. Tonia. Edmund. Byron. The baby. Hadn’t she somehow brought it on them all? Lee as well.

With a heavy heart, Charley turned to her horses. Animals could do you no wrong. Horses did not give a damn if you were man, woman, or anything in between. Animals valued a person, judged a person, loved a person by simple things. Her horses judged her by how hard or gentle she tugged at the bit in their mouths, how often she held out her palm so they could nibble a crisp carrot or an apple and how she spoke to them, groomed them and respected them. She took comfort in the beasts’ warmth and silence, the soft sound of their breathing as they slept…comfort she had discovered so long ago when she’d been taken in by Jonas. She’d been a girl then. My God. A girl with ribbons in her hair. She remembered the time she’d held the reins with such confidence, and then the wagon overturned, hurling her and Jonas to the ground. What was it he had said as they dusted themselves off?
“
Life’s going to upset your wagon. Maybe someone’s riding next to you can help you set it right. Maybe not.” Maybe not…Wasn’t that the truth.

Tonia was dead and Anna had left and now Charley wasn’t sure how she’d set it right. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to set it right. We find a being who we somehow think can fill us, mend us, make us whole. And then they abandon us, or we them. Maybe loneliness was the answer. Maybe the key was accepting that.

So Charley accepted it. And she did so by embracing her old pal, 40 Rod Whiskey. If she wasn’t on her coach, she was with her bottle. She slowly stopped spending time with her friends in the saloon, preferring instead the seclusion of her cabin and horses. She mustered up the energy to take care of the animals but that was about it.

Thirty-Five

Jim Birch found Charley passed out on her porch one afternoon. He had stopped by the cabin to see if she was okay as she had missed her last run. She had obviously tripped, in a drunken stupor no doubt, and was splayed out on the front steps. She began to wake up as he lifted and dragged her into the rocker on the porch.

“Hey Jim,” she muttered. “What the hell you doing here?”

“You realize you’ve missed your last run, right? And the one before that I got three complaints that you were drunk and weaving the coach all over creation. You alright?”

“Oh shit…I forgot. Sorry Jim.”

“You got to ease up on the drinking, Charley. I know it’s hard with Tonia and Anna gone.”

“I’m fine Jim. I just forgot is all. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

“No you won’t. You’re taking a few weeks off. Get sobered up and pull yourself together. Then you can come back to work.”

“No, no. I don’t want to take any time off. ’Sides, Ben drinks all the time on the job…you don’t make him take time off.”

“Ben might miss a run or two because he was drinking, but I’ve never had a complaint from a passenger about him. Look, Charley, we’ve known each other a long time. We’re good friends. But I’m the boss here. You’re taking the time until you get your drinking under control. I don’t want to have to fire you.”

“C’mon Jim. You’re making a big thing out of this. I’m not drinking too much.”

“I’m not here to argue with you, Charley. You used to be responsible. Nowadays, I can’t even trust you. Get your damn self together…you want some help getting inside?”

“No. I don’t need your help.”

“Suit yourself. Hope to see you in couple weeks.”

He then got on his horse and left Charley sitting there.