The Chili Queen (15 page)

Emma looked older than dirt when Ned called for
her in the morning. The night before, on the way to the French Brewery, he had gotten tight as a boot on bellywash at Cockney Jack’s Saloon. Then he’d called at the French Brewery, where he’d engaged a big blonde named Carmel for three dollars—a dollar more than Addie’s girls charged—stripped her to the bare pelt, but did not get much in the way of satisfaction. Afterward, he’d smoked a twenty-five-cent cigar, then went back to the hotel and washed his feet and went to bed.

The breakfast of pig’s feet and Oregon apples had improved neither his stomach nor his mood. He had not bothered with a shave, telling himself a fresh shave would only make him stand out among the farmers and saddle tramps, but the truth was, he couldn’t endure the sound of the blade scraping across his skin. The only thing that pleasured him was the memory of Emma across the table from him the night previous, her face shining like quartz in the candlelight. But now as he looked at her, he wondered if his bleary eyes had distorted her image. She was indeed a sorry sight.

Emma stood before him dressed in her traveling costume—the black dress and the sunbonnet of the day before, both still dusty from the trip. Like her clothes, her face seemed to have a layer of something dusty on it, and her skin was dull. Ned sorely could not believe she was the same woman he had found so enchanting just twelve hours earlier.

She must have guessed Ned’s disappointment, because she asked, “Did you think I would wear my wedding dress to shop for sacks of flour?”

Ned grunted. She was right of course. He did not want even a sparkle in her eye to draw attention. Still, he had not gotten her out of his mind since he had delivered her to her door after supper. He expected some spark of recognition on her part to show that she, too, had a few warm memories of their dinner, even if it had ended badly. He was not used to women who remembered him indifferently, so Ned waited, giving Emma a chance to remark on that evening, but she closed her door and brushed past him without another word. He followed her down the stairs and out the door, then caught up as she crossed the street.

“Other way. The general store is in that direction,” he said.

“I thought you would want to check out the bank first. It wouldn’t be wise to cash our bill too close to noon, when somebody might remember we had just been there, would it?”

Ned would have thought of that if he hadn’t been hung over, and he blamed Emma for his state. He grunted, as he set off in the direction of the bank, ahead of her, taking long strides so that she had to hurry to catch up with him. He turned into the side street and reached the bank before she did, pausing at the door for her before he preceded her inside. Half a dozen people waited in line for a teller, and they looked exactly like Ned and Emma.

The banker was seated at a desk behind a railing, and he glanced at the two newcomers, sizing them up. Ned touched his hat in deference, obscuring his face as he did so, but the banker returned to his paperwork without acknowledging either of them. He had already dismissed them as likely prospects and would be hard-pressed to bring them to mind ever again, Ned knew, and that was just what he wanted. He and Emma waited their turn at the teller’s cage, where the clerk, taking his cue from the banker, made them wait a minute while he finished counting money. Then he looked up, raising an eyebrow instead of speaking.

Ned cleared his throat, as if he were embarrassed to be there. “Think we could get change for this?” He shoved a bill under a metal grate.

The teller picked it up and examined it. Then without asking what change Ned wanted, he counted out several coins.

“Obliged,” Ned muttered. He studied the bank as if he’d never seen such a grand establishment, while Emma glanced behind the counter and moved around to stare at the safe. Neither the clerk nor the banker paid attention to them, and after they had taken in everything, Ned and Emma left. By the time they reached the main street, Ned’s mood, along with his head, had improved considerably. “It
is
as easy as honey,” he told Emma. “The safe’s wide open. There’s money in the till. We could have taken it right then if there hadn’t been any customers, but it’ll be better if the banker’s not around. The teller won’t risk his neck. All we have to do is make sure he’s alone.”

“The safe is open, and there appears to be plenty of money in the teller’s drawer. The buildings on either side are boarded up, and the front door is visible only from the back of the hotel. It looks almost too easy,” Emma replied. When Ned frowned, she added quickly, “But how would I know?”

“Yes,” Ned agreed. “How would you know?”

“Will he leave the safe open all day?”

“He’s a big man, and Addie says he’s lazy. I don’t suppose he likes to heft himself off that chair more than he has to. We’ll just have to hope he leaves it open when he goes to dinner.”

They walked abreast now as they made their way down the boardwalk to a sign that said
SPILLMAN
&
GOTTSCHALK, GENERAL MERCHANDISE
. Like the bank, the store was crowded, which was fine with Ned, because he was in no hurry. Emma, a shopping list in her hand, lost herself among the other women as she studied the patent medicines and fancy groceries—the oysters and herring and imported peppermint candies—in their bright tins, placed at eye level to tempt shoppers. Ned watched her finger a bolt of cloth that lay on the counter, carefully straightening the fabric when she was finished and tucking under the raw edge. She looked up and stared longingly at a yellow-and-white spotted coffeepot sitting among the tin cups and queensware plates that were stacked on a shelf. When she reached the back of the store, she took in the shoes and slippers, the gents’ furnishings, and the corsets and hosiery along the back wall. Emma let out a snort of disdain when she saw the glass case with a display of fans, some made of feathers, others of folded paper painted with exotic scenes.

Ned himself wandered along the other side of the room, picking up a whip and testing it against his hand. He passed the dog collars and window shades, the lamps and brass fittings, then stopped to examine a hoe that was leaning next to the cold stove.

“Lookit here, sister. Here is a fine hoe,” he called.

Emma sent him a hard look. “We have a hoe,” she replied. “Before we throw away good money on another, we must wait and see if we can make a crop in this godforsaken land.”

Two rawboned women dressed remarkably like Emma stopped to look her over and nod in agreement. “New Mexico is the awfulest sight I ever did see. It’s wore me out good,” one remarked. “Bless God,” muttered the other.

A man who looked as if he’d worn out six or seven bodies with the same face regarded the women, then glanced at Ned with sympathy and said, “Farming out here’s harder than pushing a wheelbarrow with rope handles.”

“I guess it beats making shoes in a factory,” Ned told him. “Her,” Ned lowered his voice, “I thought she would jump at the sun with happiness to have her own house. But she has got in meanness since she arrived.”

“You new?” the man asked.

Ned nodded. “How long you been here?”

“Since way back when hell wasn’t no bigger than Jasper.” He turned his back to the women and said in a low voice, “That’s just wind stuff they’re saying. They like it better than they let on. You snook a look at your woman days when the rains come down and the prairie’s green, and you’ll see I’m right. They like it well enough after a rain.”

“You mean it rains here?” Ned asked.

“Sure, a regular toad strangler—every five years.” The man laughed and clamped Ned on the shoulder. Ned wondered what it would be like if he really were a farmer, talking with men like this one about crops and the weather, complaining about the land and the women. Then he remembered he hated farming.

The man began to ask Ned about his place, but just then, the clerk called the farmer by name, and he went to the counter. His wife came up alongside him and began reading off the foodstuffs on her list.

When the couple was finished, the clerk nodded at Ned and Emma.

“We already got most of what we need. We’ll be buying just a few rations,” Emma told him. “I’d be wanting a gallon of molasses, saleratus, a bottle of vanilla. What do you charge for brown sugar?” Emma and Ned had decided earlier that they would purchase items that Addie or Welcome could use.

“Fifty cents the pound.”

“Then I expect you can keep it. I’m not a fool to throw away my money.” With the stub of a pencil lying on the counter, Emma crossed the item off her list. After she had ordered Arbuckle’s Coffee at twelve cents a pound and a pound box of Stickney & Poors cinnamon for two bits, Emma picked up a package of sweet mignonette seeds and asked the price. When the clerk told her ten cents, Emma returned the package to its box and said she would write home and get the seeds for the price of a stamp. She bought two wool blankets, bartering the clerk down from $2.00 each to $3.50 for the pair. Then she asked for a round tin box of Maillard’s Caprices, explaining to Ned that the purchase was not extravagant since once the candy was gone, she could use the copper-colored container to store her pins. Finally, she pointed to a bolt of yellow cloth, and the clerk used a ladder to reach it. He spread it out in front of Emma, who ran her hand over the fabric, which was sprigged with red and blue flowers.

“I expect you’d like a piece of that for your quilt,” Ned spoke up.

“I always fancied yellow,” Emma said.

“Well, you get it then.”

Emma ordered a quarter-yard. The clerk measured it out, giving her a fraction of an inch more.

Ned glanced around the store, then spotted the yellow coffeepot he’d seen Emma admire. “That up there. We’ll take it, too,” he said, pointing, “and a couple of tin cups.”

Emma frowned. “We surely cannot afford it.”

“It’s yellow. You said you like yellow, and I’m treating you to it. Now don’t complain.” Ned wasn’t sure a coffeepot was a good present to give Emma, but as a dirt farmer, he couldn’t very well spend money for a necklace or a silk dress.

“Why, brother, I believe you’ve gone soft in the head.”

As the clerk totaled their purchases, Emma eyed the fancy foodstuffs and said, “I guess it wouldn’t rob us to buy a tin of oysters for you and a bottle of peaches. ’Twill remind us of home.” She pointed to the cans. Ned added some crackers and sardines and a small shovel, then paid and told the clerk to store the order until after dinner, when they would pick it up.

Since it was still only midmorning, Ned and Emma strolled along the boardwalk, peering into the stores. After Nalgitas’s handful of meager businesses, Ned found Jasper rich and tempting, with blocks of fine establishments—two more hotels, restaurants and saloons, and stores. He and Emma passed a butcher shop with lard pails sitting in the window and hams and breakfast bacon hanging from hooks inside. Flies covered a beef carcass that was laid across a counter, and Emma made a face, but Ned only laughed. “I’ve eaten many pieces of beef that were worse,” he said.

Emma paused in front of a jewelry store to admire the brooches and rings in their little boxes. “I always cared best for rubies,” she said, leaning closer to a ring in the center of the display. She strolled on and stopped at a millinery, studying the hats and gloves and bottles of perfume in the window. She cocked her head at one hat and lowered her voice to a whisper. “If bank robbing does not suit me, I believe I might open up a hat shop here, no matter what Addie says.”

Ned, who did not know about such things, moved along to a photographer’s studio. “I guess we don’t care to get our pictures took,” he told Emma.

“The sheriff might like it if we did,” she replied.

As he laughed, Ned looked down the boardwalk to a saloon where two men had just emerged, and he stiffened. “Turn back,” he ordered in a low voice. Without a word, Emma did as she was told, at the same time adjusting the bonnet to cover more of her face. Ned slouched a little as he looked at the props in the photographer’s window.

The two men sauntered down the boardwalk toward them, and as they reached the photographer’s studio, the smaller man swerved and bumped Ned’s elbow. “Hey, Jesse,” he said softly, “look who I just run into.”

Jesse, a giant of a man with long black hair that hung around his swarthy face, smiled at Ned, showing a mouthful of broken teeth. “We used to have a friend that looked like you. We don’t see him no more, do we, Earlie?”

Ned shrugged and smiled back. “Folks get busy.”

“We heard about that,” Earlie said. “We heard you got real lucky.”

“I heard you were dried up and dead, one of you anyway,” Ned told them.

Earlie smirked, showing even teeth under a blond mustache. He was a head shorter than Jesse and had a pretty look to him. “Yeah, I did, too. But I didn’t hear ’bout you throwing no funeral.”

“I was in mourning,” Ned replied. “You just get in?”

“Yesterday. We went to the cockfighting pit, but we were too late to see the fun,” Jesse replied, scratching his face, which was pockmarked with scars from black measles. “You going to introduce us?” Jesse tried to get a good look at Emma. Her back was still turned to them.

“Naw,” Ned laughed. “Why would my sister want to meet a couple of saddle bums?”

Emma turned around nonetheless. Her face, shaded by the sunbonnet, seemed even darker and older than before.

The men lost interest. “I guess she’s your sister, after all,” Jesse said. “She is poorly thin and old.”

“She’s ageable, all right. Maybe she’s your mother,” Earlie added.

“Hey!” Ned said. It was the second time since he’d arrived in Jasper that he’d defended Emma.

“Oh, don’t mind Earlie. He fell down drunk last night, and somebody stepped on his nose.” Earlie scowled while Jesse laughed at him, then leaned against the window of the photography studio and sized up Ned. “You gone to farming, have you?” he asked.

Ned looked away as he nodded.

“How come you done that?” Jesse asked.

“I’ll say it real slow so’s you can catch it. I never knew anybody who got old robbing people. Everybody’s got to settle down.”