Steel Beach (5 page)

I wrapped them in an oiled cloth and stowed them carefully in my toolbox, then headed down the trail toward town.

I was in sight of New Austin before I spied Brenda, looking like an albino flamingo. She was standing on one leg while the other was turned around so the foot was at waist level, sole upward. To do it she had twisted at hip and knee in ways I hadn’t thought humanly possible. She was nude, her skin a uniform creamy white. She had no pubic hair.

“Hi, there, seven foot two, eyes of blue.”

She glanced at me, then pointed at her foot, indignantly.

“They don’t keep these paths very tidy. Look what it did to my foot. There was a stone, with a sharp
point
on it.”

“They specialize in sharp points around here,” I said. “It’s a natural environment. You’ve probably never seen one before.”

“My class went to Amazon three years ago.”

“Sure, on the moving walkway. While I’m at it, I’d better tell you the plants have sharp points, too. That big thing there is a prickly pear. Don’t walk through it. That thing behind you is a cactus, too. Don’t step on it. This bush has thorns. Over there is cenizo. It blooms after a rain; real pretty.”

She looked around, possibly realizing for the first time that there was more than one kind of plant, and that they all had names.

“You know what they’re all called?”

“Not all. I know the big ones. Those spiky ones are yucca. The tall ones, like whips, those are ocotillo. Most of those short bushes are creosote. That tree is mesquite.”

“Not much of a tree.”

“It’s not much of an environment. Things here have to struggle to stay alive. Not like Amazon, where the plants fight each other. Here they work too hard conserving water.”

She looked around again, wincing as her injured foot touched the ground.

“No animals?”

“They’re all around you. Insects, reptiles, mostly. Some antelope. Buffalo further east. I could show you a cougar lair.” I doubted she had any idea what a cougar was, or antelope and buffalo, for that matter. This was a city girl through and through. About like me before I moved to Texas, three years ago. I relented and went down on one knee.

“Let me see that foot.”

There was a ragged gash on the heel, painful but not serious.

“Hey, your hand is hurt,” she said. “What happened?”

“Just a stupid accident.” I noticed as I said it that she not only lacked pubic hair, she had no genitals. That used to be popular sixty or seventy years ago, for children, as part of a theory of the time concerning something called “delayed adolescence.” I hadn’t seen it in at least twenty years, though I’d heard there were religious sects that still practiced it. I wondered if her family belonged to one, but it was much too personal to ask about.

“I don’t like this place,” she said “It’s
dangerous
.” She made it sound like an obscenity. The whole idea offended her, as well it should, coming as she did from the most benign environment ever created by humans.

“It’s not so bad. Can you walk on that?”

“Oh, sure.” She put her foot down and walked along beside me, on her toes. As if she weren’t tall enough already. “What was that remark about seven feet? I’ve got two feet, just like everyone else.”

“Actually, you’re closer to seven-four, I’d guess.” I had to give her a brief explanation of the English system of weights and measures as used in the West Texas disneyland. I’m not sure she understood it, but I didn’t hold it against her, because I didn’t, either.

We had arrived in the middle of New Austin. This was no great feat of walking; the middle is about a hundred yards from the edge. New Austin consists of two streets: Old Spanish Trail and Congress Street. The intersection is defined by four buildings: The Travis Hotel, the Alamo Saloon, a general store and a livery stable. The hotel and saloon each have a second story. At the far end of Congress is a white clapboard Baptist church. That, and a few dozen other ramshackle buildings strung out between the church and Four Corners, is New Austin.

“They took all my clothes,” she said.

“Naturally.”

“They were perfectly good clothes.”

“I’m sure they were. But only contemporary things are allowed in here.”

“What for?”

“Think of it as a living museum.”

I’d been headed for the doctor’s office. Considering the time of day, I thought better of it and mounted the steps to the saloon. We entered through the swinging doors.

It was dark inside, and a little cooler. Behind me, Brenda had to duck to get through the doorway. A player piano tinkled in the background, just like an old western movie. I spotted the doctor sitting at the far end of the bar.

“Say, young lady,” the bartender shouted. “You can’t come in here dressed like that.” I looked around, saw her looking down at herself in complete confusion.

“What’s the
matter
with you people?” she shouted. “The lady outside made me leave all my clothes with her.”

“Amanda,” the bartender said, “you have anything she could wear?” He turned to Brenda again. “I don’t care what you wear out in the bush. You come into my establishment, you’ll be decently dressed. What they told you outside is no concern of mine.”

One of the bar girls approached Brenda, holding a pink robe. I turned away. Let them sort it out.

Ever since moving to Texas, I’d played their games of authenticity. I didn’t have an accent, but I’d picked up a smattering of words. Now I groped for one, a particularly colorful one, and came up with it.

“I hear tell you’re the sawbones around these parts,” I said.

The doctor chuckled and extended his hand.

“Ned Pepper,” he said, “at your service, sir.”

When I didn’t shake his hand he frowned, and noticed the dirty bandage wrapped around it.

“Looks like you threw a shoe, son. Let me take a look at that.”

He carefully unwrapped the bandage, and winced when he saw the splinters. I could smell the sourness of his breath, and his clothes. Doc was one of the permanent residents, like the bartender and the rest of the hotel staff. He was an alcoholic who had found a perfect niche for himself. In Texas he had status and could spend most of the day swilling whiskey at the Alamo. The drunken physician was a cliché from a thousand horse operas of the twentieth century, but so what? All we have in reconstructing these past environments is books and movies. The movies are much more helpful, one picture being equal to a kilo-word.

“Can you do anything with it?” I asked.

He looked up in surprise, and swallowed queasily.

“I guess I could dig ’em out. Couple quarts of rye—maybe one for you, too—though I freely admit the idea makes me want to puke.” He squinted at my hand again, and shook his head. “You really want me to do it?”

“I don’t see why not. You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”

“Sure, by 1845 standards. The Board trained me. Took about a week. I got a bag full of steel tools and a cabinet full of patent elixirs. What I don’t have is an anaesthetic. I suppose those splinters hurt going in.”

“They
still
hurt.”

“It’s nothing to how it’d hurt if I took the case. Let me…  Hildy? Is that your name? That’s right, I remember now. Newspaperman. Last time I talked to you you seemed to know a few things about Texas. More than most weekenders.”

“I’m not a weekender,” I protested. “I’ve been building a cabin.”

“No offense meant, son, but it started out as an investment, didn’t it?”

I admitted it. The most valuable real estate in Luna is in the less-developed disneylands. I’d quadrupled my money so far and there were no signs the boom was slowing.

“It’s funny how much people will pay for hardship,” he said. “They warn you up front but they don’t spend a lot of time talking about medical care. People come here to live, and they tell themselves they’ll live authentic. Then they get a taste of my medicine and run to the real world. Pain ain’t funny, Hildy. Mostly I deliver babies, and any reasonably competent woman could do that herself.”

“Then what are you good for?” I regretted it as soon as I said it, but he didn’t seem to take offense.

“I’m mostly window dressing,” he admitted. “I don’t mind it. There’s worse ways of earning your daily oxygen.”

Brenda had drifted over to catch the last of our conversation. She was wrapped in a ridiculous pink robe, still favoring one foot.

“You fixed up yet?” she asked me.

“I think I’ll wait,” I said.

“Another lame mare?” the doctor asked. “Toss that hoof up here, little lady, and let me take a look at it.” When he had examined the cut he grinned and rubbed his hands together. “Here’s an injury within my realm of expertise,” he said. “You want me to treat it?”

“Sure, why not?”

The doctor opened his black bag and Brenda watched him innocently. He removed several bottles, cotton swabs, bandages, laid it all out carefully on the bar.

“A little tincture of iodine to cleanse the wound,” he muttered, and touched a purplish wad of cotton to Brenda’s foot. She howled, and jumped four feet straight up, using only the un-injured foot. If I hadn’t grabbed her ankle she would have hit the ceiling.

“
What the hell is he doing?
” she yelled at me.

“Hush, now,” I soothed her.

“But it
hurts
.”

I gave her my best determined-reporter look, grabbing her hand to intensify the effect.

“There’s a story in here, Brenda. Medicine then and now. Think how pleased Walter will be.”

“Well, why doesn’t he work on you, too?” she pouted.

“It would have involved amputation,” I said. And it would have, too; I’d have cut off his hand if he laid it on me.

“I don’t know if I want to—”

“Just hold still and I’ll be through in a minute.”

She howled, she cried, but she held still enough for him to finish cleaning the wound. She’d make a hell of a reporter one day.

The doctor took out a needle and thread.

“What’s that for?” she asked, suspiciously.

“I have to suture the wound now,” he said.

“If suture means sew up, you can suture your
self
, you bastard.”

He glared at her, but saw the determination in her eyes.

He put the needle and thread away and prepared a bandage.

“Yes sir, it was hard times, 1845,” he said. “You know what caused people the most trouble? Teeth. If a tooth goes bad here, what you do is you go to the barber down the street, or the one over in Lonesome Dove, who’s said to be quicker. Barbers used to handle it all; teeth, surgery, and hair cutting. But the thing about teeth, usually you could
do
something. Yank it right out. Most things that happened to people, you couldn’t do
anything
. A little cut like this, it could get infected and kill you. There was a million ways to die and mostly the doctors just tried to keep you warm.”

Brenda was listening with such fascination she almost forgot to protest when he put the bandage over the wound. Then she frowned and touched his hand as he was about to knot it around her ankle.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “You’re not finished.”

“I sure as hell am.”

“You mean that’s
it
?”

“What else do you suggest?”

“I still have a
hole
in me, you idiot. It’s not
fixed
.”

“It’ll heal in about a week. All by itself.”

It was clear from her look that she thought this was a very dangerous man. She started to say something, changed her mind, and glared at the bartender.

“Give me some of that brown stuff,” she said, pointing. He filled a shot glass with whiskey and set it in front of her. She sipped it, made a face, and sipped again.

“That’s the idea, little lady,” the doctor said. “Take two of those every morning if symptoms persist.”

“What do we owe you, doc?” I asked

“Oh, I don’t think I could rightly charge you…  ” His eyes strayed to the bottles behind the bar.

“A drink for the doctor, landlord,” I said. I looked around, and smiled at myself. What the hell. “A drink for the house. On me.” People started drifting toward the bar.

“What’ll it be, doc?” the bartender asked. “Grain alcohol?”

“Some of that clear stuff,” the doctor agreed.

We were a quarter mile out of town before Brenda spoke to me again.

“This business about covering up,” she ventured. “That’s a cultural thing, right? Something they did in this place?”

“Not the place so much as the time. Out here in the country no one cares whether you cover up or not. But in town, they try to stick to the old rules. They stretched a point for you, actually. You really should have been wearing a dress that reached your ankles, your wrists, and covered most of your neck, too. Hell, a young lady really shouldn’t have been allowed in a saloon at all.”

“Those other girls weren’t wearing all that much.”

“Different rule. They’re ‘Fallen flowers.’ ” She was giving me a blank look again. “Whores.”

“Oh, sure,” she said. “I read an article that said it used to be illegal. How could they make that illegal?”

“Brenda, they can make anything illegal. Prostitution has been illegal more often than not. Don’t ask me to explain it; I don’t understand, either.”

“So they make a law in here, and then they let you break it?”

“Why not? Most of those girls don’t sell sex, anyway. They’re here for the tourists. Get your picture taken with the B-girls in the Alamo Saloon. The idea of Texas is to duplicate what it was really
like
in 1845, as near as we can determine. Prostitution was illegal but tolerated in a place like New Austin. Hell, the Sheriff would most likely be one of the regular customers. Or take the bar. They shouldn’t have served you, because this culture didn’t approve of giving alcoholic drinks to people as young as you. But on the frontier, there was the feeling that if you were big enough to reach up and take the drink off the bar, you were big enough to drink it.” I looked at her frowning intently down at the ground, and knew most of this was not getting through to her. “I don’t suppose you can ever really understand a culture unless you grew up in it,” I said.