Forgiving

by LaVyrle Spencer

  In spite of the clamor, the town had an eerie feeling lit solely by blobs of light from the saloon windows falling onto the rows of sleeping horses. She looked up. Only a narrow corridor of starlight shone overhead. The sides of the gulch hung like a widow’s curtains, closed against intrusion, isolating Deadwood from the rest of the world. In the dark she made out the blacker shapes of pines high on the steep slopes, separated from town by the paler spots where the hills had been denuded. A few pines straggled in places to the very edges of the street. The wind whistled through them and down the ravine, a cold late-September wind that fluttered her skirt and stirred the scent of fresh animal droppings. Sarah covered her nose as she hurried along, formulating yet another editorial.

  She passed a tin shop, grocer’s, barber’s, tobacconist, hardware, uncountable saloons and (surprisingly) a huge theater, the Langrishe, where lamps were lit and the bill announced “Flies in the Weed” by John Brougham. Smiling, Sarah paused and reread the bill. A hint of culture, after all. To her amazement, in the next block on the opposite side of the street she passed another theater, the Bella Union! Her spirits took their first upswing since she’d arrived in Deadwood. But where was the church? The school? Surely in a town this size there must be some children. She would make it a point to find out how many.

  At the far end of Main, where it took a swing to the right, the wooden structures petered out and the gulch bottlenecked from three streets into one. Beyond that point fires glimmered in the distance, dots of hazel light between the paler squares of lantern-lit tents that lay scattered along the cut like the beads of a broken rosary. Where the three streets of town merged, foot traffic picked up. Men... all men. They stared at Sarah and stopped in their tracks as she passed. Men... noisy men, milling about the last string of buildings on the left whose doors opened and closed constantly, releasing peals of piano music and laughter.

  All six buildings looked alike—narrow, unadorned, with heavy draperies drawn across the windows; windowless doors. There must be some mistake, she thought, stopping before Rose’s, glancing at the names of the adjacent establishments—The Green Door, Goldie’s, The Mother Lode, The Doves’ Cote and Angeline’s. They appeared to be saloons.

  Nevertheless, she decided the safest course was to knock on the door of Rose’s. She did, then clutched her money packet against her jacket buttons with both hands and waited. Given the noise inside, it seemed little wonder nobody answered. A creek purled somewhere behind her. A man left the place next door and disappeared into the dark in the direction of the tents. Unaware that she stood behind him, he broke wind noisily, pausing and canting his left buttock before the sound died and he moved on.

  She knocked again, harder.

  “Nobody knocks on the door at Rose’s,” a deep voice said behind her. “Go right on in.”

  She jumped and spun, pressing a hand to her heart. “Good heavens, you scared me!”

  “I didn’t mean to.” A tall man stood close behind her. The dark hid his face.

  “Tell me... is this the only Rose’s in Deadwood?”

  “The one and only. You’re new in town,” he speculated with a grin in his voice.

  “Yes. I’m looking for my sister, Adelaide. I’m told she’s an upstairs maid at Rose Hossiter’s, but it seems she’s changed her name to Eve.”

  “I know Eve.”

  “You do?”

  “I know Eve very well, as a matter of fact. So you’re her sister.”

  “Yes—Sarah Merritt. I’ve just arrived from St. Louis.” She extended her gloved hand. He took it in a hard, protracted squeeze while she peered up trying to make out his face in the deep shadow of his ten-gallon hat.

  “Noah Campbell.”

  “Mr. Campbell,” she returned politely. When she would have withdrawn her hand he continued gripping it. “Well, Miss Merritt, this is an unexpected pleasure. Allow me to escort you inside and introduce you to Rose. She’ll know just where your sister is.” As if executing an allemande-left, he opened the door and swung her inside, dropping her hand as the door thumped shut behind them.

  “Welcome to Rose’s, Miss Merritt,” he said at her shoulder, flourishing an open palm at the room.

  As if plunged into a nightmare, she stood rooted, absorbing impressions—hazy lantern light, garish parlor furniture, a parrot sidling left and right on a perch, squawking, “Dollar a minute! Dollar a minute!” Thick, tassled draperies, the smell of stale whiskey and hard-boiled eggs, the sting of cigar smoke, a lot of men in stages of semidrunkenness and one blowsy woman dressed entirely in emerald green with carmine lips and a feather in her red hair. She possessed an acre of cleavage resembling a baby’s bare buttocks: an obese woman with a smoking cigar between her teeth who stood with her arm around the shoulders of a big, bearded man while he fondled her rump.

  Sarah spun to Noah Campbell. “There must be some mistake. This isn’t a private home.”

  “No, ma’am, hardly.”

  For the first time she saw his face. He had a bushy auburn mustache, a roundish nose with a faint dent at the end and grinning gray eyes that lighted on Sarah’s and lingered. “Come along, I’ll introduce you to Rose.”

  He put a hand on her spine and she balked. “No! I told you, my sister is an upstairs maid and her landlady’s name is Mrs. Rose Hossiter. And please remove your hand from my back!”

  He obliged, then stood back, studying her indulgently while his grin lingered. “Getting last-minute jitters, are you?”

  “This place is horrible. It looks like a brothel.”

  He glanced idly at the woman in green, then back at Sarah. “Tell you what.” His eyes roved lazily down her torso and back up. “I’m a pretty conventional fellow—Rose will vouch for me. I like it straight, no rough stuff, no more than two or three drinks beforehand. I pay good, in pure gold, I don’t have any diseases or lice. And, I already took my bath. You can tell Rose that you’ve already lined up your first customer. How would that be?”

  “I beg your pardon!” Sarah felt the blood surge to her face. The skin across her chest felt taut as a sausage casing, and it took superior poise to keep from slapping his face.

  “I understand,” he added in a confidential tone, taking her arm as if to guide her toward Rose. “Your first night in a new place and you’re bound to be nervous—but there’s no reason to make up stories about Adelaide being your sister.”

  “Adelaide is my sister!” She wrenched her arm free and turned upon him furiously. “And stop touching me, I said!”

  He raised both palms as if she’d drawn a six-shooter. “All right, all right, I’m sorry.” His voice turned irritated. “You women are all so damned quirky. Never met a one of you who wasn’t.”

  “I am not one of those women!” she spit, mortified.

  Several men had risen and encroached. “Hey, Noah, what you got there?”

  “Hooey, she’s a tall one... nice long legs... I like them long-legged ones.”

  “’Bout time we was gettin’ some fresh flesh around here.”

  “What’s your name, sugar?”

  One of them with a beard like a billy goat reached out as if to touch her and Sarah recoiled, bumping back against Campbell, who gripped her arms to steady her. She lurched from his touch and hid a shudder, fighting the urge to crouch and raise her fists. The men inched closer. They were for the most part loud and ogling, with wet lips and florid cheeks; hair that needed cutting, nails that needed cleaning and necks that needed scrubbing. Most were old and brazen, but some were pitiably young and blushing as much as she.

  At the sudden stir Rose glanced over and raised one eyebrow.

  “Hey, Noah,” one of the men asked, “where’d you find her?”

  “Out on the street,” Noah replied, “but back off, Lewis, tonight she’s spoken for;”

  Rose was bearing down on them with one hand on her fat hip and her breasts leading the way like a pair of pink cannon-balls. Her face wore an expression of hauteur and she carried her cigar in the
crook of one finger. She parted the crowd as a plow parts soil, stopped before Sarah and assessed her coldly—one pass, down and up—with contemptuous, putty-colored eyes. She drew a mouthful of cigar smoke, let it slither up her nostrils and spoke, breathing a gray plume like the top of an Indian teepee.

  “What’ve you got here, Noah?”

  Sarah spoke up angrily. “Are you Rose Hossiter?”

  At close range Rose’s skin had the texture of cottage cheese, and her mouth was ludicrously enlarged. The kohl on her eyelids had gathered in the cracks and oozed to the inner corners where it collected in two black beads. One of her teeth was cracked off and her breath stank of cigars, though the smell was muddied by that of lily-of-the-valley perfume.

  “That’s right. Who wants to know?”

  “Sarah Merritt. I’m Adelaide’s sister.”

  Rose’s hard eyes perused Sarah’s flat brown felt hat and high-collared wool traveling suit, pausing on her inconsiderable breasts and hips. “I’m not looking for any new girls. Try next door.”

  “I’m not looking for a job. I’m looking for Adelaide Merritt.”

  “There’s nobody here by that name.” Rose turned away.

  Sarah raised her voice. “I was told she goes by the name of Eve.”

  Her remark stopped Rose. “Oh?” The madam turned back. “Who told you that?”

  “He did.” She nodded sideways at Campbell.

  Rose Hossiter flicked the wet tip of her cigar with a thumbnail and considered a while before asking, “What do you want with her?”

  “I came to tell her our father died.”

  Rose took a pull on her cigar and swung away. “Eve is working. Come back tomorrow afternoon.”

  Sarah took one step forward and demanded, “I want to see her now!”

  Rose gave Sarah a view of her broad posterior and her brassy Grecian topknot. “Get her out of here, Noah. You know we don’t allow her kind in here.”

  Campbell took Sarah’s elbow. “You’d better leave.”

  She swung around and swatted his hand with her money packet. “Don’t you ever touch me again, do you understand?” Her eyes grew dark with indignation. “This is a public place, as public as a restaurant or a livery stable. I have as much right to be here as any man in this room.” With one finger she drew an invisible arc spanning half of them.

  “Rose wants you out.”

  “Rose will have me out when I’m satisfied about whether or not my sister works here and what she does. You expect me to believe that an upstairs maid works at this hour of the night? I’m not quite that naive, Mr. Campbell.”

  “Upstairs girl, not upstairs maid,” he said.

  “There’s a difference?”

  “In Deadwood there is. You’re right. Your sister is a prostitute, Miss Merritt, but around here we call them upstairs girls. And Rose”—he nodded at the woman—“we call her kind landladies. This end of town is referred to as the badlands. Now, do you still want to see your sister?”

  “Yes,” Sarah declared stubbornly and marched away from him to take a seat between two very bad-smelling men on a horrid beet-colored settee with carved mahogany arms. One of them smelled like dried sweat, the other stank like sulfur. She perched stiffly, folding her hands over her money packet on her knees. She was neither a tearful nor a fearful type, but the realization that her sister was upstairs at this moment, probably servicing a man, brought a lump to her throat. The men beside her began crowding her thighs, and her heart started hammering.

  The fellow on her left took out a twist of chewing tobacco and gnawed off a piece. The one on her right stared at her while she fixed her eyes on the parrot.

  “A dollar a minute! A dollar a minute!” he squawked.

  Presently Noah Campbell cut off Sarah’s view of the bird. Her chin snapped up and her lips pruned. He hadn’t even the grace to remove his hat or gun indoors, but wore the one pulled low over his eyes and the other strapped low on his hip.

  “If you’re not one of the upstairs girls,” he advised, “you don’t know what you’re up against here. Since I’m the one who brought you in, Rose asked me to escort you out. Now the choice is up to you, but if you don’t leave, you’ll have to tangle with Flossie.” He nodded at a figure moving toward them. “I doubt that you’d want to do that.”

  The Indian woman appeared silently, an amazon well over six feet tall, with a face that looked as if it had been hewn from a piece of redwood with ten whacks of an ax, then set afire and stomped out by hobnail boots. Her eyes were tiny, black and expressionless. Her skin was as coarse-grained as a strawberry, her stringy hair clubbed at the nape, her arms the circumference of a Civil War cannon.

  “You,” she pointed. “Get ass out.”

  Fear burned a hot path up Sarah’s chest. She swallowed and stared into Flossie’s unwavering, compass-point eyes, afraid to look away.

  “My father has died. I haven’t seen my sister in five years. I want to talk to her, that’s all.”

  “Talk tomorrow. Now, get skinny ass out.” Flossie leaned forward, gripped Sarah’s upper arms and lifted her bodily from the red couch, extending her arms parallel to the floor until Sarah hung like a union suit on a clothesline.

  “Put me down, please,” Sarah requested in a trembling voice, her shoulders meeting her earlobes. “I’ll leave on my own.”

  Flossie opened her hands and dropped Sarah like a discard. Caught unprepared, her knees buckled and she stumbled forward before catching herself on the arm of a chair and regaining her balance.

  “Flossie!” a new voice shouted. “Leave her alone!”

  Sarah straightened, tugging at the peplum of her jacket. Halfway down the uncarpeted stairs that dropped from above into the middle of the room, a woman stood with one hand on the rough rail. Her hair was jet black, hacked off parallel with the earth at jaw and eyebrow level, flaring out at the bottom as if its ends were split. Her skin was white as cornstarch, her eyes ringed by kohl and her lips a slash of scarlet. She wore a chemise and pantaloons of white covered by a transparent black kimono sporting two large red poppies, strategically placed. Wearing an expression as cold as Rose’s, as foreboding as Flossie’s, she advanced toward Sarah and stopped before her.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded icily.

  “I believe I should be the one asking that question.”

  “I work here, and I don’t like to be bothered when I could be entertaining customers.”

  “Entertaining! Adelaide, how could y—”

  “My name is Eve!” she snapped. “I’ve done away with Adelaide. As far as I’m concerned she never existed.”

  “Oh Addie, what have you done to yourself?” Sarah reached toward the brittle black hair at her sister’s jaw.

  Adelaide jerked back. “Get out of here,” she ordered through set teeth. “I didn’t ask you to come here. I don’t want to see you.”

  “But you wrote to me. You told me you were here.”

  “Maybe I did, but I never thought you’d come traipsing after me. Now, get out.”

  “Addie, Father is dead.”

  “Get out, I said!”

  “Addie, did you hear me? Father is dead.”

  “I don’t give a damn. Now get out!” Addie spun away.

  “But I came all the way from St. Louis.”

  Sarah found herself reaching for Addie’s retreating back as her sister moved toward a cluster of men swilling whiskey at a round table.

  “Snooker—you’re next, honey. Sorry for the delay.” Addie ran her palm across the shoulders of a middle-aged man wearing a red plaid shirt and suspenders. He craned his head around to peer at Sarah. Addie put a hand on his cheek and turned his face toward her own. “What’re you gawking at her for? She’s nothing.” She leaned down and opened her garish red lips over Snooker’s much older ones and Sarah turned away.

  Noah Campbell reached for her elbow as if to escort her out.

  “Don’t touch me!” she ordered, once again jerking awa
y from the man who, apparently, was another of Adelaide’s customers.

  Gathering her dignity and her broken heart, she headed toward the door.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Back at the hotel, she lay in bed, wide awake, stiff beneath the blankets. She was not a green waif, ignorant of what went on in the world. Hadn’t her mother run off with a lover when she was seven and Addie three, never to be seen again? Hadn’t she learned young that carnality can drive people to extremes?

  Furthermore, she was twenty-five years old and had begun typesetting for her father at the age of twelve, writing articles, at the age of fifteen. In the years since, she had been exposed to every kind of repugnant story imaginable. She had learned to control her personal reactions to them, to release her choler or her compassion only in ink on newsprint. To care too much is to lose your objectivity, her father had warned, and because there was not a person ever walked the earth whom she had respected more than Isaac Merritt, she had absorbed his every word. In doing so, she had become inured to the seamy side of life, to the frequent cruelties of humankind, to their immorality and greed and callousness and lust.

  But this was personal. This was her little sister, Adelaide, with whom she’d shared a bed as a child, with whom she’d had the mumps and the chickenpox, and to whom, in lieu of their mother, she’d taught the basics of reading, writing, manners and housekeeping. Adelaide, who had always had such difficulty being happy after Mother left. Adelaide, in that repugnant place, doing repugnant things with repugnant men.

  She pictured the brothel again with its wet-lipped clientele, its cigar-smoking madam and its degeneracy. What had prompted Adelaide to work there? How long had she been there? Had she been a prostitute ever since running away from home?

  Five years. Sarah closed her eyes. Five years and all those nights and all those men. She opened her eyes: five years or five nights—was there a yardstick by which to measure depravity? She relived the initial rush of shock upon seeing Addie in those unchaste clothes, a good twenty pounds heavier, with her face painted and her hair dyed black, gone wiry. The last time Sarah had seen Addie, her sister had been a trim young girl with elbow-length silky blond hair and a shy smile she rarely showed. She had been a devout Christian, an obedient daughter and a loving sister. What had changed her?