Hart & Boot & Other Stories (2 page)

She was right on the first count, but sadly wrong on the second.

***

Pearl and John Boot weren’t separated during the long ride through the desert, and Pearl vented her fury at him as they bounced along in the back of the wagon, under armed guard. “Thirty years he gave you, and me five. They think five years will knock the piss and wildcat out of me?”

“How do you stay so energetic all the time?” John Boot asked. “You’ve got enough strength of will for any two people. I’m surprised fire and lightning don’t come shooting out your ears sometimes!”

Pearl rode silently for a long time, thinking on that. “You reckon that’s how you came to be?” she asked, looking down at her knees. “Some of that fire and lightning I’ve got too much of spilled out, and made you?”

They’d never really talked about this before, about where John Boot came from, where he might someday return, and Pearl looked up in irritation when he didn’t reply.

He was sleeping, head leaning back against the side of the cart.

Pearl sighed. At least she couldn’t see the boards through his head this time. He hadn’t gone to smoke and starlight. She let him be.

***

Pearl and John Boot climbed out of the wagon and stood in the rocky prison yard. The landscape outside was ugly, just flat desert and the dark water of the Colorado river, but the prison impressed her. Pearl had never seen a building so big. It seemed more a natural part of the landscape than something man-made. Like a palace for a scorpion queen.

“Put out that cigarette,” the warden snapped. His wife stared at Pearl sternly. The warden looked tough, Pearl thought, and his stringy wife in her colorless dress looked even tougher.

Pearl flashed a smile. She took a last drag off her cigarette and flicked it away.

John Boot looked from Pearl to the warden to the warden’s wife like a man watching a snake stalking a rat.

“Welcome to the Arizona Territorial Penitentiary,” the warden said.

His boots aren’t nearly as nice as John’s
, Pearl thought.

“I hear you two are escape artists,” the warden said. “Well, you can forget about that nonsense here.” He began to pace, hands knotted behind him. “Back the way you came there’s fifty miles of desert crawling with scorpions, snakes, and Indians. The Indians get a reward for bringing back escapees, fifty dollars a head, and we don’t care how banged up the prisoners get on the way. They’d love to catch a woman out there, Hart. We’d get you back, but you wouldn’t be the same, and I truly don’t want that to happen to you, no matter how bad you are.”

“I bet I could teach them Indians a few things,” Pearl said.

The warden paused in his pacing, then resumed. “Keep your tongue in your mouth, girl. Besides the desert, there’s two branches of the Colorado River bordering this prison, moving fast enough that you can’t swim across. Then there’s the charming town of Yuma.” He pointed west. “You try to go that way, and the folks in town will shoot you. They’re not real friendly.” He turned smartly on his bootheel and paced the other way. “That’s not real important, though, because you won’t get outside. The cells are carved into solid granite, so you can’t cut your way out with a pocketknife.” He pointed to a tower at one corner of the wall. “That’s a Gatling gun on a turret up there—it can sweep the whole yard. There was an attempted prison break not long ago, and my
wife
manned the gun. Cut those convicts down.”

“Ladylike,” Pearl said. “Mighty Christian, too.”

The wife stiffened and crossed her arms.

“I’m not happy about having you here, Hart,” the warden said, putting his face close to hers, exhaling meat-and-tobacco-laden breath. “I had to tear out six bunks to make a ladies-only cell for you, and we had to hire a seamstress to make a special uniform.”

“Shit, you dumb bastard,” she said. “I’ll sleep anywhere, and I’d just as soon go naked as wear whatever burlap sack you’ve got for me.”

John Boot groaned.

“We’re gonna clean that backtalk out of you, Hart,” the warden said. He turned to the guards. “Get this man to his cell,” he said, pointing at John Boot. “My wife and I will escort Miss Hart to her quarters.”

The guards led John Boot away. The warden later wrote that Boot looked distinctly relieved to be leaving his lover.

Pearl went with the warden and his wife through an archway into a cramped corridor. Iron bars filled every opening, and the low ceiling made her want to duck, even though her head cleared it by a good margin. The hall smelled like sweat and urine.

“Did you enjoy shooting those boys, Mrs. Warden? Feeling that big gun jump and buck in your hands?”

“That’s enough, Hart,” the warden said. “Get in.” He pointed to an open cell door. Pearl could see the boltholes on the wall where the bunks had been removed. A curtain hung from the ceiling, blocking the open-pit latrine from view. She’d expected open-faced cells, like at the county jail, but these cells had real doors.

“Cozy,” Pearl said, and sauntered in. Men hollered unintelligibly down the corridor.

“We’re going to make every effort to guard your modesty,” the warden said. “You’ll never be alone with a man. My wife or a female attendant will accompany me and the guards if we ever need to see you privately.”

“Doesn’t sound like much fun,” Pearl said. “Maybe just one man alone with me every couple days? You could hold a lottery, maybe.” She showed her teeth.

The warden shut the door without a word.

Pearl sat on the bunk for a while, thinking. The cell was tiny, with a narrow window set high in one rock wall. She’d roast all day and freeze all night, she knew. John Boot had better get her out soon.

She got bored, and after a while she went to the door, looking out the iron grille set in the wood. “Hey boys!” she yelled. “I’m your new neighbor, Pearl!” Hoots and whistles came down the hall. “I bet you get lonely in here! How’d you like to pass some time with me?” She went on to talk as dirty as she knew how, which was considerable. She wondered if John Boot was in earshot. He liked it when she talked like this, though he always blushed.

The men howled like coyotes, and the guards came shouting. Pearl sat down on the bunk again. She’d wait until the men quieted down, then start yelling again. That should get under the warden’s skin, and pass the time until John Boot came to set her free.

***

Pearl woke when John Boot touched her shoulder. She sat up, brushing her hair away from her face. John Boot looked tense and dusty.

“Are we on our way, then?” Pearl asked.

He shook his head, sitting down beside her. “I don’t think I can get us out, Pearl.”

“What do you mean? You got into my cell, so you can get us out.”

“I can get myself out, sure.” He laughed forlornly. “Walls don’t take much notice of me, sometimes. But you’re different. Back in Tucson I had to cut you an opening.” He thumped his fist on the granite wall. “I can’t do that here.”

“You could steal keys,” Pearl said, thinking furiously. “Take a guard prisoner, and...” She trailed off. There was the Gatling gun to think of, and fifty miles of desert, if they somehow did make it out. “What are we going to do?”

“You’ve only got five years,” he said, “and you being a woman, if you behaved yourself—”

“No! They ain’t winning. Or if they do win, I’ll make them miserable, so they can’t enjoy it. You keep looking, John Boot. Every place has holes. You find one we can slip out of, hear?”

“I’ll try Pearl, but...” He shook his head. “Don’t expect too much.”

“Long as you’re here,” Pearl said, unbuttoning her shirt.

“No,” he said. “It’s tiring, Pearl, going in and out like this. It’s not hard to get dim, but it’s hard to come
back
. Look at me.” He held up his hand. It shook like a coach bouncing down a bumpy road.

“You’re about as much good as bloomers in a whorehouse, John Boot,” she said. “Go on back to bed, then.” She watched him, curious to see how he moved in and out of impossible places.

He stood, then cleared his throat. “I don’t think I can go with you watching me. I always feel more... all together... when you’re paying close attention to me.”

Pearl turned away. “I thought only ladies were supposed to be modest.” She listened closely, but heard nothing except the distant coughs and moans of the other prisoners. She turned, and John Boot was gone, passed through her cell walls like a ghost.

Hell
, she thought,
now I’m up, I won’t be able to fall back asleep.
She took a deep breath, then loosed a stream of curses at the top of her lungs. The prisoners down the hall shouted back, angrily, and soon cacophony filled the granite depths of the prison.

After listening to that for a while, Pearl slept like a babe.

***

Pearl gave up on John Boot after about a month, but she didn’t figure out a better idea for two years. The boredom nearly crushed her, sometimes, but the time passed. She got to see John Boot a lot, at least—he came to her almost every night, and seemed weaker every time.

“The warden was in here the other day,” she said one night. John Boot sat against the wall, tired after his latest halfhearted search for an escape route. “Telling me what a model prisoner you are, how you never spit on the guards at bed check or raise a fuss in the middle of the night. They said you’re practically rehabilitated, and that you’d want me to behave myself.” She punched her thin mattress. “They still think I’m a helpless innocent, led astray by
your
wicked ways, even though I’ve done my damnedest to show them otherwise. Stupid bastards.”

John Boot nodded. He’d heard all this before.

Pearl, sitting on the edge of her bunk, leaned toward him. “I’m tired of being here, John Boot. Two years, and there’s only so much hell I can raise from inside a stone box. We have to leave this place.”

“I don’t see how—”

“Listen a minute. All my life I’ve hated being a woman—well, not hated
being
one, but hated the way people treated me, and expected me to act. It’s about time I used that against the bastards, don’t you think?”

John Boot looked interested now. He hadn’t heard this before. “What do you mean?”

She crossed her legs. “I mean it’s time for you to leave, John Boot. Go ghost on me, fade away, get as tired as you want. I think if you hadn’t been coming to see me every night, you’d have turned to smoke a long time ago.”

His face betrayed equal parts confusion and hope. “But why? How will my leaving help?”

She told him what she had in mind.

“That might work,” he said. “But if it doesn’t...”

“Then I’ll figure out something else. Don’t waste time, all right? I’m not up for a sentimental goodbye.”

He put his hand on her knee. “One last?”

She considered. Why not? “Just be sure to pull out. I don’t want to start my free life with a swelled-up belly.”

After, he lay against her in the narrow bunk. “I’m a little nervous now,” he said. “I’ll miss you.”

She stretched her arms over her head, comfortable. “I wouldn’t think it. You’ve seemed pretty eager to get away.”

“Well... in a way. Don’t you ever want to go to sleep, and never have to wake up again?”

“No,” she said truthfully. “I’ll sleep plenty when I’m dead.”

He was quiet for a moment, and then said, “I don’t think I have a choice. About loving you.”

Pearl touched his hair, letting her usual defenses slip a little. “I’ll miss you, too, John Boot. You’re the only man I could ever stand for more than a night at a time. But it’s time I let you go.”

“Don’t look,” he said, getting out of bed.

She closed her eyes.

“Goodbye, Pearl,” he said, his voice faint. He went away.

***

It took two days for anyone to notice that John Boot was gone—he’d been so unassuming that they overlooked his empty cell at the first bed check. When the warden and his wife came to tell Pearl that John Boot had escaped, she made a big show of breaking down and crying, saying, “He told me to stay strong, that we’d walk out of here together, that as long as I didn’t give in to you he wouldn’t leave me!” Weeping with her face in her hands, she could glimpse the warden and his wife through her fingers. They exchanged sympathetic looks—they believed it, the stupid bastards, they still believed that John Boot was the cause of Pearl’s bad behavior.

Pearl’s behavior changed completely after that. In the following weeks she began wearing a dress, and having polite conversation with the warden’s wife, and even started writing poetry, the sappiest, most flowery stuff she could, all about babies and sunlight and flowers. The warden’s wife loved it, her tough exterior softening. “Pearl,” she said once, “I feel like you and I are much the same, underneath it all.” It was all Pearl could do to keep from laughing—talk like this, from the woman who’d once gunned down a yard full of convicts! That was no stranger than a stagecoach robber writing poems, maybe—Black Bart aside, of course—but with Pearl it was an
act
.