Here by the Bloods (8 page)

She throws her hips into me, arching her back in the gray of the waning daylight. My bed is wet from her, from us. The newness of her scent—rose water, lavender, sweat—charges the familiar air of my room, gracing it, for the first time, with the presence of a young woman.

She reaches her arms behind her, finding my shins for support as she sinks farther onto me. Her motion builds, a soft, yelping cry rising forth from where there was only quickening breath. Her fingers dig in as she lets go, lost in herself, but still connected to me.

She is beautiful, Maria. Her perfect breasts, shuddering in the white-hot throes of her epiphany, point unapologetically skyward. She tightens her grip, challenging the resolve of my kneecap not to pop out of place. I drive into her, spasming at the sight of her tumbled raven hair, which parts, like the rest of her has, to reveal a gentle, conspiratorial smile that she soon brings to my lips. The damp firmness of her body collapses onto mine, spent.

I feel the words forming in my head as sure as I feel her warm breath on my arm. I should tell her. I
need
to tell her. The voice of every person who raised me—Mamma, Sheriff, Mrs. Pardell—thunders in my ears, scolding me that I was brought up better than this. But I am also a man, whether I am ready to be one or not, and men are what she knows. I have seen such knowledge once today already.

“Maria, you ought not be walking out here alone and unannounced like that. It is too far from town. I coulda been out hunting, or off somewhere.”

“So I wait for you.”

“When I go off, I go days at a stretch. And you shivering out here in the dark? Madam Brandywine would call in the Texas Rangers to track you down. You can bet she would have you scrubbing floors for a year, after she busted a couple broom handles across your backside to get the point across.”

“You would not let her.” She sees me ponder that, just long enough to know that she is right. I would not allow it.

“That does not mean you would not deserve it.” She smiles and punches my shoulder. I roll out of bed and find my britches behind the chair where she'd flung them.

“How about I never go back? I stay here with you.”

“And do what?”

“Cook for you . . . give you babies . . . be your wife.” Her eyes stay on me, waiting for me to say something. I walk past my balled denims on the floor and open the wardrobe.

“Crazy talk.”

“Why? Because I am whore?”

“You know damn well I take no issue with that.”

“I wish you would.” Her mouth scrunches into a pout that makes her look even younger.

“Whoring made Mamma no less a woman. I said
crazy talk
because you are too young to talk marrying.”

“I am seventeen!” I barely look at her before she withers from the lie. “I will be sixteen soon enough.”

“You ought to be in school. No sense to a man and wife not one of them able to read.” I pour some water in the basin and dip my comb in it. “You save up some money. Pay off your debt to the Madam. Be your own woman, free and clear. Till then . . . you best get dressed. You are not on the floor, ready to work by sundown, there will be hell to pay. As it is, if I do not send you back with twenty dollars, old Scratch Gardner will pay me a visit with the pointed reminder that the girls from Madam Brandywine's do not make house calls.”

“They no know I am here.”

“I assure you, they do.” I work the comb through my hair, finding the natural part like Mrs. Pardell would have me do on Sundays before preaching. It was a boy's face in the mirror then, not the guilty scoundrel staring back today.

I flatten my unruly cowlick with a dab of pomade for a respectable result. But the stubbly shadow across my face and neck negates the procedure.
If I can drop Maria in time, I might still catch Valdez at the barber's before he locks up.
A guilty lump kicks in my stomach, pulling me back to the present. In my hands I find the clean, starched sleeve of my recent purchase—I have absentmindedly unwrapped it from its box by the basin. I catch Maria in the little mirror—she is trying not to cry. When her eyes well up anyway she gives up trying. I am hog-tied clear as day by my own wandering fantasy.

“You wear that for her.”

“Town is full up of people. Time I start cleanin' up more proper.”

“You wear that for her,” she says again, lowering herself onto the chamber pot. I button my new shirt, knowing she is right again.

 

 

I ease Storm into the alley behind Madam Brandywine's—for Maria's sake, not mine. She grips tightly to my waist. For all the bustle now saddled upon the Bend, the only people who could notice her secretive entrance through the kitchen are the cook and whatever drunks are relieving themselves in the piss pond behind the Jewel across the alley. A solitary figure contributes to the stream as I help Maria down from the horse. She smiles, adjusting the stiff collar that I am not yet used to.

“You look nice,” she says.

“So do you.”

“I smell like your bed.”

I give her a squeeze and brush the hair from her forehead. “You watch yourself in there tonight. Keep your head about you.” She turns to go.

A voice peals from the darkness. “Sweet as pie, that is. Brown kissing brown.” Jed Barnes steps into the faint light, bringing the stench of stale and fresh urine with him.

“Go on, Maria.” I send her off with a gentle shove that leaves no debate. She slips up the back steps and disappears into the kitchen doorway. Jed Barnes sloshes through the mud toward me, taking his time, relishing the blind luck that left him the only witness to my encounter with Maria.

“You stick to poking squaws, half-breed,” he says. “Leave that pretty Mexican cunt for white folk.” I snap a straight left jab that connects true and glorious into the gristly meat of his nose. The drunkard staggers back, stumbling in white-hot pain, before splashing ass-first into the puddle of human waste. I close in, spinning the Spencer from my shoulder as I go. “You speak of her like that again, I will do more than that. So help me God, Jed Barnes. You stay the hell away from me.”

Jed Barnes howls into his blood-soaked palm. “You broke my nose, ya dirt-worshipin' bastard! I'll have your sorry Injun ass in jail!”

“Never a Pinkerton around when you need one. Too bad for you.” I glide back onto Storm and face him toward the road.

“You'll swing for this. No half-blooded heathen strikes a white man and gets away with it.”

I show him the gloved fist of my offending left hand. “Was the white half of me hit you, Jed. Injun half woulda kilt you.” Storm gives out a snort of agreement before leading us off into the night, and leaving a bloody Jed Barnes to soak in the piss of a hundred strangers.

In a few hours, the stench on his clothes will cost him his scalp.

I push through the door of the hotel, my freshly razored chin braced by a soothing shot of aftershave and my left hand ignorant of any pain from the evening's prior encounter. The jab landed that true. I had found Valdez's barber's chair not only available, but still warm from the previous occupant, with a line of customers building behind me as the little man from Juarez worked his magic upon me.

The hotel, I discover, is equally busy. Moving past the reception desk, long since abandoned, no doubt, due to a full complement of lodgers, I pass Cookie on his way out of the kitchen, a tray of silver-domed dishes perched on his fingertips. He lights up when he sees me. “Lawd, Mister Harlan. Ain't you looking sharp?”

“You too, Cookie.” His sweated-through bellman's tunic from earlier has given way to a pressed, black shirt and tie beneath a stiff, white waiter's apron.

“Some these folks want their supper brung up their room. You ever hear such a thing?”

“Sounds like high living.”

“White folks sure is good at thinkin' of ways to fritter off money,” he says, dabbing his forehead with a linen napkin before limping up the staircase.

At the entrance to the dining room, Brunson Stone plays the role of restaurant man, overseeing a crowd of new and hungry bodies waiting to be seated, some decked in Sunday finery, others looking like they just stepped off their wagons.

Beyond Stone, the dining room swirls with harried serving girls, rotating in and out of a kitchen door that never once comes to a rest. A tinny drone of clacking silverware rises from the tables, all filled to capacity, save for a prime one in the center of the room, clearly reserved for a prominent party of four. Stone's eyes fall upon me, pausing in a brief window of startled recognition, and then drift disapprovingly back down to his ledger.

“May I help you?” he says, not looking up.

“Here for supper,” I say. He grimaces, flips a page or two of his little book, and finally forces his gaze square onto mine.

“Yes, well, we are fully committed at present. Perhaps you will find the board at the Jewel more to your liking.” I say nothing, letting the man squirm beneath his ill-fitting suit. “Or,” he continues, “if you would prefer to wait, something should open up in about half an hour.”

“So be it,” I say, letting him turn away before I do.

I ease over to the last unoccupied stool and park myself between two visiting drummers: the cigar hawker I passed earlier and another man who, evidenced by the case he has open for the benefit of the woman next to him, earns his keep as a purveyor of ladies' handkerchiefs.

“Three dollars apiece or two for five, madam. The finest silks, direct from Pair-ee!”

The woman's husband reaches over and abruptly slams the case shut. “If my wife's aim was to get picked clean by vultures, we would ride out of town and wait for road agents to set upon us. We need no such attention in here. Come on, Miriam,” the man says, pulling his wife toward the exit.

“These hayseed peasants would not know French fashion if it crept up and bit them on their collective ass!” the drummer says to his colleague.

“Ah, now
there
is a real lady,” says the cigar man.

She steps down onto the carpet from the bottom stair as gracefully as she descended from the coach yesterday, only this time her dress carries no concern for the utility of travel—its intention now is only to dazzle in a curving dance of tawny silk and shimmering pearl. Escorted by the gentleman gambler, she allows her hand to be held in his as they glide across the room, parting the traffic as if by divine intervention. The dude matches her elegance with a dashing suit of his own—peacock blue with a black, satin cravat.

Men rise in her presence. I am no exception, removing my hat as I do so. For her part, Miss Bichard acknowledges her subjects with a nod unburdened by eye contact.

Reaching my full height, I stand a good four inches over the drummers. The disparity alone must be what earns her passing glance. I care not the reason, only that in that fleeting moment a flicker of recognition, and then, upon reflection, an infusion of surprise and embarrassment flutters across her face . . . which delights me to no end.

Her gloved hand releases that of the dude and she turns to face me. “Why, Mister Two-Trees. You have . . . transformed. Appears there is a gentleman inside you after all.”

“Evenin', ma'am.” I feel the two drummers wilt away and vanish into the ether. At the same moment, Brunson Stone rushes over and begins his obsequious blathering to Mr. Willis, leaving me, for all intents and purposes, alone with Miss Bichard. “I hope the evening finds you well,” I manage to say.

“The hotel is a rustic accommodation, but I hardly hold you responsible for that.” There is a sudden softness to her tone that dared not reveal itself during her strident exchange with me this afternoon. Could a shave and a shot of cologne and a clean shirt really carry such sway? Mamma always said white women were the silliest of all. Either way, I plan to buy that little Mexican barber the coldest glass of beer the Jewel can offer.

“I 'spect you are used to much nicer,” I say, apologizing for the town, as if it is beneath her standing, which it is. But she picks up on something in my voice that compels her to sweeten her course.

“Oh, but there is a certain charm to it—as with many aspects of the town.”

She holds my gaze, unable to fight off a darling, nervous smile until the arrival of the dude breaks the moment.

“Ah, Mister Willis,” she says, “May I introduce Mr. Harlan Two-Trees? He was the one I was telling you about.”

She has been talking about me.

The dude turns toward me, taking newfound stock of my presence and pairing it to some mental image he had already conjured of me. “Why, Mister Two-Trees. It is a privilege, sir. Your name is on the tongues of many around the poker table, not to mention the lips of Miss Bichard here.”

Her lips. Her perfect, rose-budded lips.

“Lest any man forget,” Willis continues, “it is your brave deed that is the root and cause of this hoopla.”

“Honor is all mine, sir,” I say, grasping the hand extended out in my direction and giving it a proper shake.

“Have you dined?” Willis asks. “My man Stone here is holding a table. You simply must join us. I will not take no for an answer.”

“Well,” I say, “if the lady does not object.”

 

 

Willis holds the chair for Miss Bichard as every eye in the dining room falls upon our table. Stone, forced to hold my chair, chews a sour mouthful of fresh crow at the sight of my backside about to sully one of his threadbare seat cushions. I take my time descending into the chair, waiting for Miss Bichard to be firmly situated and the dude, in turn, to take his place, before finally lowering myself down completely. “Your best bottle, Stone,” the dude says, dismissing the proprietor with an irrefutable wave.

“Right away, sir.” Stone slinks off through the kitchen door.

 

 

“It is not every day I get to share a table with a bona fide hero,” Willis says, carving into his pot roast between sips of port. “Besides, tonight is just for fun. The real work starts tomorrow. Ain't that right, darling?”

“Why, Mister Willis, I know better than to inquire about your luck at the poker tables.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it, my dear. Any gambling man worth his weight can tell you that.” I feel Willis watching me as I unfold the linen napkin and set it in my lap, half-ready to hear a scolding from Mrs. Pardell if I absentmindedly stick it into my shirt or—God help me—sneeze into it. “The key to a man's hole cards is not what he's holding. It's in his eyes, the way he reaches for his chips. It's in the way his breath shortens when he's sitting on rolled-up aces, or the pulse in his neck after venturing a bluff. Let's take Mister Two-Trees here, as an example,” Willis says, turning toward me. I wipe my mouth, clear my throat. “I deduce that you were well taught by a Christian woman how to comport yourself at table. But it has been a month or more since you were last called upon to do so in the presence of others.”

“Cannot say I have missed much,” I concede, with a nod to the shriveled, gray piece of meat growing cold on my plate. Miss Bichard's face melts with a naughty schoolgirl's grin.

“No argument there,” the gambler says, laughing. “I would wager the Bend's surrounding chaparral is missing a few coyote carcasses this evening.”

“What do you mean, ‘the real work starts tomorrow' ?” I ask.

“The poker, sir, the true reason for my visitation to your fine town. The day before a hanging's when the serious money starts to roll in. At least I hope so. I have spent the entire day playing dollar stud with the drunks down at the Jewel. Now I admit, I don't mind separating a drinker from his bankroll, but for stakes that low, I could've played Parcheesi at my grandmamma's church social and saved the expense of travel.”

“Why, then we would not have had the pleasure of meeting Mister Two-Trees,” the woman offers.

“Quite right, Miss Bichard.” Willis pushes away his plate, only half-empty, and lights a cigar. “The day was not a total loss, though. I managed to get the Jewel's proprietor to set an agreeable rake for the game.”

“Merle,” I say.

“Yes, Merle. Not a bad poker player himself. Always good to have a saloonkeeper who's willing to sit in when the game is shorthanded. Yes, we've got a nice little corner set up down there. All we need now is the action.”

“I expect you will find no shortage of that after the morning train arrives,” Miss Bichard says.

“I expect, my darling, that after the train arrives, you won't be seeing much of old Avery Willis. Enjoy me while you have me.” He smiles and blows a mouthful of opaque smoke toward the ceiling. “And if the saloon gets too packed with looky-loos, I've arranged to have the game moved upstairs to our . . . to my room for the duration. By then, word will have gotten 'round that the biggest game is over at the hotel.”

“My goodness,” she says politely. “Whatever shall I do to amuse myself?” Her eyes catch mine briefly.

“Take in the local color,” Willis says, well aware of her gaze.

Behind him, a nervous, elfin man in spectacles approaches our table, removing his bowler at the sight of the woman. I know not what he is selling, but I find myself instantly aware that I do not wish to buy. “Ah, Standish,” Willis notices the man, motioning to the empty chair next to me. “Join us for a drink.”

The little man bows deferentially and fumbles the chair out for himself. “With pleasure, Mister Willis. Good evening, Miss Bichard.” Standish earns himself an indifferent nod from Genevieve.

Yes, Genevieve. Surely that is what Willis calls her when they are alone in their adjoined quarters. And I now shall do the same in my thoughts.

The gambler nods toward me, “And Mister Two-Trees I think you know.”

A wispy palm thrusts forth in my direction as the gold-framed eyes bulge eagerly with opportunity. “Mister Two-Trees, of course. We have not been formally introduced. J. Webber Standish,” the newspaperman says as he curls into his chair, a pencil stub miraculously appearing in his fingertips along with a scratch of writing paper. “I say, Mister Two-Trees, I have been meaning to follow up with you on your firsthand account of recent events—the abduction of the Snowman, specifically.”

“I said it all square in the courtroom. Story is as you heard it.”

“Of course, sir,” Standish turns his chair perceptibly toward me. “But I assure you our readership eagerly awaits any of the more vibrant details of your harrowing account, perhaps some juicy morsel, no matter how trivial, that would have been too scandalous to introduce during a formal legal proceeding?”

I feel little need to respond. I let the silence fester, building on itself, for a long, lingering moment. Standish licks his lips like a hungry dog. Willis eyes me curiously. And Genevieve, for her part, allows her unguarded, cornflower eyes to bathe over me as I relish the power of the pause. “Seems like what the Snowman done is scandal enough,” I finally say.

It is Willis who smiles first. “Well said, Mister Two-Trees.”

“Well, should anything come to mind, sir, please look me up here at the hotel. The entire territory, make that the country, hungrily awaits the slightest as-of-yet-unrevealed detail.”

All at once, a high, piercing sound assaults my eardrums. The water glass slips from my grasp and shatters on the floor. My fingers jam themselves into my ear canals to relieve the torment. The rest of the patrons, their mouths agape, clearly hear it too. A second later, the sound comes again, closer this time. I recover from the initial shock to my senses and identify the noise as the urgent scream of a Pinkerton whistle.

My head snaps toward the window. Flying from my chair, I cross to the portal. Through the waving undulations of the cheap glass, I see that the disturbance emanates not from the jail, but from across the street, from Madam Brandywine's. A cold knot of dread blooms in the pit of my stomach. The Madam herself, with blood streaked across her ghost-white skin, points toward her establishment as the Pinkerton man lays into his whistle a third time.