The Bride's House (10 page)

Will took Nealie to see the hose-cart races and the water fights, while they ate sausages and popped corn and white divinity candy that looked as pure as fresh snow. In the afternoon, they sat on the grass in the park and listened to the brass band play in the bandstand above them. The air was hot, and Nealie used a paper fan with
MACKENZIE FUNERAL PARLOR
written on it to swish the air back and forth in front of her face. She wanted to pull her dress up to her knees, but mindful of what Charlie had said about such a display, she kept her skirt down. She was sure Will wouldn’t have minded much if she’d shown her legs, but she didn’t want him to think she was a slattern. In the evening, Will escorted her to the town hall where a band played dance music.

“I can’t dance,” Nealie said.

“You mean you don’t approve of dancing?” he asked. “What a pity, for you’re as light on your feet as dandelion fluff.”

“Oh no. I’ve nothing against dancing. I just don’t know how to do it.”

“Then it must be taught, and now. This one is a waltz. The secret is to count.” Will led her forward and backward, counting one-two-three, one-two-three, swirling her around, until Nealie understood the rhythm, and Will said, “There, you’ve got it.”

“It’s like floating,” she said, thinking she could float like that all night.

But the dance ended, and Charlie came up to her. Will bowed a little to him as he relinquished Nealie’s hand and retreated to the doorway.

“I guess you didn’t have time for me before,” Charlie said.

“I didn’t see you, Mr. Dumas,” she lied. Of course she’d seen him hovering around, the way he always did, but she’d pretended not to. “I looked for you, but I only saw you at the foot race. Mr. Kaiser said you won.”

Charlie was gleeful at that. “I got the prize. I’m saving it for you.”

“Are we going to dance?” Nealie asked, because she didn’t want to carry around whatever it was he’d won. In fact, she didn’t want it at all.

“I told you I don’t know how, so I guess we’ll just sit down.”

The two sat on a bench, Nealie looking around the room for Will, but he had disappeared. “Mr. Kaiser said you’re fast.”

Charlie looked embarrassed. “I guess I do all right.” He swallowed, then he took Nealie’s hand in his big one. “Miss Nealie, this isn’t the right place—”

But Nealie did not want to hear what he had to say, and she interrupted, just as the band stopped playing. “I guess the music’s done for.”

At that moment, Will appeared beside them. “I will have the next dance with her,” he said.

“Just one. Then it’s my turn,” Charlie replied, glaring at the man.

When the music started, Will danced Nealie across the room, toward the door, whispering, “What do you say we run off? It’s too hot in here, and I won’t share you with that ox. If you dance with him, he’ll crush your feet.”

Without a backward glance at Charlie, Nealie nodded and slipped out the door with Will into the darkening street. The happy, patriotic crowd of the day had been replaced by men drinking from bottles or carrying mugs of beer they’d purchased in the saloons. Women from Brownell Street, as drunk as the toughs, hung on to the men’s arms. Nealie had never seen a drunken woman before, except perhaps her mother, although she wasn’t sure about that. When she thought nobody saw her, her mother drank the silly-bug that Hog Davis made, but she didn’t laugh and carry on. She only cried and fell asleep. Nealie stared at one of the whores, wondering if she might have turned out herself if Mrs. Travers hadn’t offered her work. The woman, taken with meanness, snarled, “What you looking at, you and that green dress?”

Nealie stepped back, bumping into a man who said, “Let’s you and me have a drink, Katy.” “Katy” was the name men gave to prostitutes.

He grabbed her arm, but Nealie snatched it away, and Will came up then and said, “Sir, you are insulting a lady. I won’t have it.”

“Oh,” the man said, sizing up Will. “Sorry, miss.” He tugged at his hat, which slid off his head into the dirt.

“Maybe we ought to go back inside,” Nealie said.

“No such a thing. We’ll get away from here. I have it on good authority that the fireworks will be shot off from that mountain.” He pointed at a dark hump in front of them. “I have a splendid view of it from my cottage. What do you say we eat your cake and watch the fireworks?”

Nealie thought that a capital idea and followed Will as he pushed through the rough crowd onto a side street. The dusky dark was starting, and the sky, which had been split with streaks of red against the blue when they left the dance, had turned indigo, with a pink glow at the horizon. Will took Nealie’s hand as the two walked to his house. He asked if she wanted supper, but Nealie had already eaten enough and told him no. So Will cut slices of the cake and poured wine into tin cups. They took the food and drink outside and sat on a quilt that Will spread on the ground. Nealie shivered a little, so Will fetched a blanket and wrapped it around her. “I shall buy you a proper shawl for these mountain evenings,” he said.

“A blanket works as well,” replied Nealie, who was mindful that he had already been generous with her, had brought her a handkerchief with an
N
embroidered on it and a pair of gloves, as well as the cameo. She touched her throat, but in her hurry to dress, she had forgotten to put on the necklace that day.

The din from the revelry in town came to them as a dull roar. There was the sound of a brass band playing far away, and gunshots, because that was the way Independence Day was celebrated in a mining town. A glow radiated over Alpine Street, where the gas lamps were lit. But everything was dark under the dark trees at Will’s cottage. Nealie didn’t mind. She was glad for the velvet blackness, especially when Will began to kiss her, for she wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see them. “We could go inside,” he said.

“We’d miss the fireworks.”

“We’ll stay, then.” He slid under the blanket he had wrapped around Nealie and held her tight. “Now we’ll both be warm.”

The two of them stayed close, their arms around each other, until the fireworks began, bright explosions that lit up the sky. Nealie, who had never seen a show so fine, watched with wonder. The fireworks broke into rings and showers and cascades of light that shone on her astonished face. “You’d think the stars had blown up,” she said.

For a time, Will watched the fireworks, but as those things went, it was not much of a display and he had seen better, so he turned to watch Nealie, who broke into cries of delight at each flash. Whenever she glanced at him, he was looking at her, and finally, she asked, “Don’t you like watching the fireworks?”

“I like watching you better,” he said.

Nealie felt her face get warm. It was hot under the blanket, and Will’s hands were hot as he touched her. She wished for a glass of lemonade or even water from Clear Creek, but she didn’t want to move away from Will. His touch pleasured her. The fireworks ended in a grand explosion of gunfire and light, and Nealie gave a great sigh of disappointment. “I won’t see them for another year,” she said. “Or maybe never.” She lay back on the ground and looked up at the sky, which was as dark as Egypt now. “There never was a thing so pretty.”

“Except for you,” Will said. Nealie sucked in her breath at the words. Will began unfastening the brass buttons of her dress then, murmuring as he did so how soft she was and did she know she drove him to distraction and had ever since the first day he saw her? He said he couldn’t stop himself.

Nealie knew she ought not to let him touch her like that, should kick him the way she had her pa the times he’d come into the barn and grabbed at her. But she didn’t want to. Will’s words and his hands made her feel good, and besides, she trusted him not to do anything wrong. He’d said she could trust him. But in the end, she couldn’t. He pushed up her skirt until it was bunched around her waist and gently moved her legs apart. Then he was on top of her, loving her the way married people loved each other, and she was wild with happiness.

When the thing was done, Will held Nealie close. She touched his cheek and felt tears and knew there were tears on her own face. She wanted him to say he loved her. But he did not, and although she’d had little experience with men, she knew from the stories in the magazines that words about love came hard to them, and she decided it was enough that he had
shown
he loved her.

They went to sleep then, lying together under the trees, and the girl slept a long time. When she awoke, she was confused at first, not sure where she was. She thought she heard the sound of water in the creek, but it was only the wind in the trees, and she remembered they had made love and then gone to sleep under the pines. Will lay with his back to her, and Nealie wanted to reach out and touch him, but she didn’t care to waken him. She couldn’t tell the time but thought it must be very late, because the town was quiet. She remembered that she had to make breakfast for the boarders and pack their lunches, and she slipped from under the blanket and straightened her dress.

She walked quickly down Alpine Street, which was deserted except for a man asleep on the grass, snoring. Under the gaslights, the street looked tawdry, with bottles and broken glasses strewn about. Flags and bunting had been ripped down and lay in the street, crushed and torn by dirty boots, and the walks were littered with bits of food and paper. As she turned the corner onto Rose Street, a man sitting in a doorway called, “Let’s you and me have a drink, Katy.” He didn’t reach for her. In fact, the effort of speaking was too much for him, and he slumped against the door frame. But Nealie jumped off the boardwalk into the dust of the street, catching her dress with her heel and tearing out the hem. She lifted her skirts and fled down the dark street.

Nealie had gone through the gate and come up onto the porch of the boardinghouse before she realized someone was sitting on the bench. A drunk, probably, a man who had celebrated too hard and hadn’t made it home, she thought, hoping she could slide past him. The house was not locked. They never locked it. So she wouldn’t have to fumble with a key, only slip inside and bolt the door, because she didn’t want the man stumbling in when morning came, asking for coffee or would she fix him breakfast?

But the man was not a drunk, and he was not asleep. “Miss Nealie?” Charlie Dumas’s voice was tired and filled with sadness. Nealie had never heard a voice so sad.

The girl wished for all the world, then, that she were alone, for she was caught up in the night before and wanted a little time yet to recall the words Will had said, the thing they’d done together. She wanted to be glad for it, and now there was Charlie Dumas, looking at her in a strange way. He had no right. Suddenly, she felt shame that he saw her like that, her dress torn and half buttoned, her hair down around her face. He made her happiness seem cheap, and she hated Charlie for making her feel that way. Would he know what she’d done? Nealie wondered, and the wondering made her angry. Charlie had no right to intrude, no right to sit on her porch all night, waiting for her, watching out for her the way he’d done. She’d never asked him to. She mustered her anger and said, “Mr. Dumas, you ought not to be here.”

“And you ought not…” He couldn’t seem to say the rest and gave a great sigh and was silent.

“You bemean me, waiting for me like this.”

“You bemean yourself, Miss Nealie.”

“I don’t know what you say. I’ve been celebrating Independence Day.”

“It’s been a long time over.”

“Then I best look to breakfast for the boarders.”

“Miss Nealie…”

But she would not have him talking. The girl wanted him to leave, wanted it in the worst way. She thought about ordering him away from the boardinghouse—and out of her life. She hadn’t asked him to come around courting her, hadn’t wanted it at all. Why, she’d tried to be easy with him when he’d asked her to marry him, not hurting his feelings. Instead, she should have said no, she’d never be his wife, no more than she’d marry the drunk who had called her Katy and asked her to take a drink. Nealie wanted Charlie to go before he spoiled the thing that had happened between Will and her. “Go home, Mr. Dumas,” she said.

“Don’t be doing that, Miss Nealie.”

She did not ask what. She was afraid he knew. Instead, she said, “What I do’s not your business. Go kill your own snakes, Mr. Dumas.”

The big man slowly rose from the bench. “I was waiting for you. I brought you the prize.” He held out a medal in his hand, but Nealie didn’t take it, didn’t care to have it. He sighed deeply. “You won’t stop me saying it. I wanted to marry you, Miss Nealie, wanted it in the worst way there is. I’d have taken care of you, made you proud to be my wife. I guess you didn’t want that, and now I don’t want it, either. You’ve spoiled yourself for a husband. There it is.”

“Git, you!” the girl said, stomping her foot. “I wouldn’t have you if you were strung with solid gold nuggets.”

Charlie stepped heavily off the porch. “Don’t be doing that. He’ll treat you pretty rotten, and he won’t marry you.”

Nealie turned her back on the man, rushing inside the house and slamming the door. Everything had been so magical at night, but now morning was coming on, and Nealie wondered if the thing would seem cheap and dirty in the light. She blamed Charlie Dumas.

CHAPTER 5

T
HE SUMMER PASSED ALONG
. T
O
Nealie’s surprise, Charlie continued to take his meals at the boardinghouse. She’d thought that after what had happened between them, he would go elsewhere, and she had hoped he would, because seeing him every day was a raw spot in her happiness. Every time Nealie looked at him, she remembered his words and felt her cheeks grow hot with his reproach. But as Mrs. Travers had observed, Charlie was a sticker—a sticker for the boardinghouse, if not for Nealie. He wasn’t the same, however. Charlie no longer arrived early for supper, joking with Nealie and offering to help. Instead, he came into the dining room just as the men sat down at the table. He didn’t banter with the others the way he used to or hang around after the meal, hoping to catch Nealie alone. In fact, he ignored Nealie, not even asking could he have more gravy or another slice of bread. And he left as soon as dessert was finished. When she did catch Charlie’s eye, Nealie turned away quickly, because there was always the look of reproach on his face.