Dreadful Skin (15 page)

IX.

Eileen, July 8, 1881

I arrived in the evening of the seventh of July. The town was covered with a smothering layer of clouds, all colored up dark like a bruise on the sky, hanging low and heavy.

I hope Melissa’s all right. She almost surely isn’t, but I think Heaven knows what I mean. I hope Jack and this Daniel are alone in their mayhem, but they almost surely aren’t.

Just as I was beginning to wonder if Leonard had been patient enough to wait for me after all, I found him—and it cheered me greatly to see him there.

He was wearing rumpled clothes that looked like they’d been dried over a set of railroad tracks, and he didn’t have a hat. He was standing beside the street, scanning the buildings for—what? Signs of announcements, I imagined. Signs of Melissa.

I approached him without bothering to keep a quiet tread, but he didn’t hear me until I called out, “There you are, dear boy. And you only beat me by a day.”

Leonard jumped as if he’d been stuck with a pin.

“I didn’t see you there!” His face broke out in a delighted grin that warmed my heart.

I had to laugh—to show that the sentiment was mutual, and that I was glad to see him, too. I honestly hadn’t thought he’d stay in town. I figured that once he got here, he’d take off immediately for the camp. Men are so rarely called to be proper knights in shining armor anymore; and men like Leonard are the sort to leap at the chance.

He took my hands in his, and then threw formality out the window and embraced me in a hug. He was a bony thing under those loose-fitting clothes, but there was lean meat there as well. Maybe he was stronger than he looked. And why shouldn’t he be?
I
am, after all.

“I’ve been thinking,” he announced as he stepped back. “I’ve been thinking about…them. About what we can do. Would you like—I mean, I could buy us some tea. We should sit, and we should talk.”

“Your American tea I can take or leave, but I could use a drink and there’s a pub right down the way here.”

He failed to look less than scandalized, then rallied, and stretched out his arm as if to let a lady go first. “After you,” he smiled. “Perhaps I could use a dose of liquid courage, myself.”

“Liquid courage? Now where did you hear it called that?”

“It’s something my father and his brother used to say.”

When we reached the pub, it was nearly empty but not quite. Three or four men loitered in the background, in the small tables up against the wall, behind a broken piano. Another lounged behind the bar with a book in his hand. The title was something sensationalist and silly. It was something about a cowboy with a violent reputation, I’m sure. But at least the man could read, which said something for his character, I guess.

The reader folded a page corner and shut the book around his thumb. He looked me up and down in an appraising sort of way that was too disinterested to be either offensive or flattering. “Huh,” he said.

I ducked my head at him, meaning for it to be a polite acknowledgement. “Leonard?” I said. I tapped his elbow. “Ask if they have Irish whiskey. If they don’t, the colonial version will suffice.”

He agreed to these terms, and I chose a seat in the corner. I liked the position because I could see out the window without immediately being spotted myself, and there was no one behind me. I don’t know when I became such a defensively-thinking woman. Perhaps it happened when I became such a dangerous one.

Leonard returned shortly with two small glasses, one for himself and one for me. He sipped at his with a wince, I swallowed mine with a grimace. Irish whiskey had been too much to ask.

“Tell me what you’ve been thinking,” I urged him. “And I’ll tell you what
I’m
thinking. Between us, we might have a good idea or two about how to proceed.”

“Yes,” he said, lowering his shoulders and his voice so that everyone who could see us could tell we were having a private, possibly interesting discussion. But no one inched closer, and no one gave us more than a sidelong glance. “It’s about what you said in your letter—which I received shortly before I left for here—about how…
they
can drown like any other creature.”

“Go on.”

“If they can drown, they can choke. They can smother.”

“And they bleed,” I added. “Let me assure you of that much, they bleed. And if they bleed, they can bleed to death. I’m not sure how much abuse is required to cause it. It must be a monumental amount.”

“A slit throat? A lost head?”

Now
there
was a thought. I murmured agreement. “I think the lack of a head might confound them. But it’s one thing to propose removing something’s head, and another thing altogether to perform it.”

“I’m sure,” he said, but he wasn’t sure. He’d never tried to decapitate anyone before, and I could see him turning the idea over in his mind. He was wondering if he could do it—if he’d have the stomach, or the strength. I don’t know what conclusion he reached before changing the subject. “So what plan is there, then? You’re here, I’m here. She’s
there
, somewhere. Outside town.”

“And they’re running for the west—to the mountains, and to more bleak deserts than this one, or so I hear. They’re going to run out of water before long. What then? Maybe it will weaken them, or slow them to go without it. Maybe they haven’t thought of it yet. But their location, their camp—it isn’t a secret, I suppose?”

“No. It’d be easy enough to find them. Should we go then?”

“No! Not yet. Now we evaluate. It’s morning, dear. There’s time to weigh our options.”

This frustrated him, I know. He wanted to take action, to seize the day, to rescue the damsel. And there I was, reigning him in.

“What then? This is what I really meant, when I asked you if there was a plan—what weapons can use against them? How are we going to retrieve Melissa? I don’t know if she ever received my letter. I don’t know if she will ever come to town, though I asked her to—in a veiled way, as you suggested. But she’s been seen here, in the company of others.”

“Others?” A warm, dense feeling in my stomach tightened, and dropped.

“Men.” He spit the word across the table. “They’re holding her hostage. They’re keeping her there at that camp, and it’s caught people’s attention. They’re guarding her, that’s what they’re doing. But you know how it
looks
. You know what people
think.
”

“Of course I know what
people
think. But my boy, it’s not half as bad as what it makes
me
think.” I sank into silence. I had no proof of it, but I was increasingly sure: they were culling the women, whether they meant to or not. “Oh God,” I breathed.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Let the world think what it wants. Let the citizens of Mescalero assume the worst. They won’t even be halfway there. We’ll do what we need to do, and propriety be damned.”

Again, there was that flicker of shock and disapproval, but he was learning.

“Look,” I said. “You’re sitting in a saloon with a papist and a handful of hard liquor. A year ago, this would have seemed improbable, at best—and embarrassing or unthinkable at worst. Yet here we are, you and I. And we know there are worse things than critical glares and the snubs of our fellow men. The rules are changed now, Leonard.”

“Changed? By whom?”

“By me. By you. By Jack, and Daniel. They aren’t playing by the rules, and neither are we.”

“Then we become monsters too, in order to engage the monsters? I don’t like that.”

No
, I wanted to say.
No, of course you don’t want to be the monster. You want to be the knight, not the dragon
. “No, that’s not what I mean. We aren’t breaking any rules, we’re writing new ones to repair the damage done by others.”

He went calmer, and he nodded as if by moving his head he might make the idea dissolve there better.

***

Tomorrow, if we haven’t yet heard from Melissa, we will leave together for the camp.

X.

Melissa’s Journal, July 8, 1881

Leonard wrote!      

He wrote back, and he’s here—now! Or rather, he’s nearby in Mescalero. Only two short miles away, and I can hardly believe it. I wish I could feign some ambivalence in the matter. I wish I could return to my previous attempts at moral confusion about his presence, but I cannot. I can scarcely contain my complete, abject, absolute joy at the prospect of seeing him again.

He’s nearby, and he received my message, and he’s coming for me. He means to take me out of here. I was lucky his response wasn’t seen by anyone else here in the camp—he was being careful with his words, but not careful enough. Or maybe I only know what to look for, and that’s why it seemed so obvious to me that he was speaking of a rescue.

I can hardly imagine it. It’s astounding, the things a woman can grow accustomed to in time. It’s amazing, the horror that can become so commonplace as to feel inevitable and inescapable.

Oh, there’s the dread. Yes, a prickle of it. Poor Leonard, come to save me.

It might not work. It might fail outright—a hopeless and laughable attempt that ends with the death of both of us. But my ambivalence is gone. I can’t even care that this threatens him. I can’t even muster a shred of decency to say, “I should not have asked him for this.”

If this fails, then so be it. If we die, we die.

We won’t be
here
.

But I won’t sit here and wait, like a toadstool on a log. I need to prepare. I’ll need an excuse to go to town. The meetings begin tomorrow night.

***

There will be things I can never tell him. I care enough for him to keep things from him, and I care enough for my own preservation that I think, it is likely, that I will be better received if he’s never made aware of the humiliation I’ve daily suffered. I can live with his rage on my behalf, but I cannot live with his pity or revulsion.

I’m not entirely certain that he could live with it, either—and live with me, too.

Is that what I’m thinking, then? Is this how it will go? I’ll run away and marry Leonard because he’ll suspect enough to ask no questions.

***

He’s mentioned a “friend” in his letter. There’s something he wants to say about this friend, but he dared not—and I wonder what it is.

It sounds like help.

I’m going to get ready, and when I meet with Leonard, he will know that I did not sit idly by, wringing my hands and weeping while I waited for rescue. He will know that I am here, and I am trapped, but before I will surrender, I will
fight
.

If I were ever hungry enough to eat anymore, I’d complain that it’s past lunchtime. But I should eat something, anyway. I should keep up my strength. I should bolster myself for this coming—

No, I should be more careful.

I can’t let them see that anything unusual is present or coming. They must not know that I am alive after all, and that there will be more to my life’s postscript than, “reluctant concubine.”

***

Daniel almost caught me, just then.

I’m getting good at hearing them, though. Their footsteps are quiet—quieter than a man’s ought to be. But like everything else, I’m growing accustomed to it. I felt it more than I heard it, a slight jostling of the ground outside.

I slapped my journal shut and pushed it under my pillow, then lay my body on top of it like I’d been napping, or crying. I don’t cry anymore. They don’t believe it; they think I cry when they’re not looking. They don’t understand that they’ve wrung it all out of me already.

But there was Daniel, twitching the tent flap with his hand.

I’m less afraid of him now, though my contempt for him is greater than it ever was. He should have been stronger than this, stronger than Jack. I can’t forgive him for his weakness, despite his inhuman strength.

Around the meeting time, he gets quieter. It might be that he’s growing tired of Jack’s company. Or it may be only that he thinks of his father more, and he can give a name to the voice of his dying conscience.

Regardless the cause, it makes me glad—so far as “glad” may go—that he abandons me more and more to Jack. It isn’t that I have any fondness for that other brute either; it’s only that I tolerate the one of them, and not the pair of them. Better just Jack than to be shared like a toy between quarrelling children.

They don’t quarrel much, but when they do, it’s over me.

I’m glad they resolved it, however much it may be resolved. I hated being jerked between them. I hated….

I’m tired of writing about it. I hated them both, and I hate them both. But I hold the most anger against Daniel, because once, he was my friend—and he thought better of me than this.

***

But it was Daniel who nearly caught me writing about Leonard, and I understand enough of the relationships here to know how strange and nasty jealousy is between men, even when it isn’t warranted. They aren’t fighting for my affection, after all. They’re bickering for my body.

He sulks when he sees me. I think perhaps he’s been reprimanded by Jack, or maybe they fought like dogs for dominance, and Daniel lost. Whatever the lesson, he’s learned it, or he’s learned to pretend it. We’re all pretending here, anyway.

“What?” I asked when he stood in the opening. “What do you want?”

He said, “The meeting’s tomorrow night.”

I said, “I know. What of it?”

“Will you go to town tomorrow morning? Jack thinks….”

“He thinks what?”

“I think that we should try to do more to bring the families, the women and children too. There was talking in Mescalero, that this was a camp of men. You should be seen, so that others aren’t afraid to attend.”

Instrumental in the damnation of others again, of course. As you like. “What would you ask me to do there?”

“Visit the ministers. Stop at the general store. Here’s money.” He threw a wad of bills down onto my cot and turned to leave. For a second I could not believe my luck, and then I remembered that I have no luck. “I’ll come and get you. We’ll walk into town together. You’ll be my sister.”

My heart sank, but it was too buoyant to drop far. At least it wouldn’t be Jack. There was something beaten about Daniel that made me feel like he was easier to control in some respect. I might be able to fool him or flee him ore easily.

“Tomorrow morning. Whatever you like,” I said. I held my voice down, kept one toe upon it to hold it flat.

***

Tomorrow morning I’ll go to town and Leonard will be there. Daniel will know Leonard, of course. He’ll know the lie we perpetuate, and he’ll raise suspicions, seed dissent, rally the town and the surrounding towns, if it comes to that.

God knows what it will come to.

God knows what it will cost.