House of Purple Cedar

by Tim Tingle

  “A drink for the marshal!” was the rallying cry as Hardwicke flung down one drink after another. By ten p.m., the entire story of the bank robbery was reduced to Hardwicke’s slurred verdict, “No doubt…hang’em, gonna hang.”

  Just after midnight he tried to stand and instead sprawled across the table. He sat by himself for almost an hour before the same two Irishmen who had earlier carried Terrance to jail, much to the dismay of their wives, now carried Marshal Hardwicke to his front porch and woke his wife, who thanked the men as they carried him to bed.

  In his younger days, when he carried his liquor better, Marshal Hardwicke had often been the last to leave the Salty Dog, buying the final drink of the day before the bartender closed the saloon. But this eventful day saw a most unlikely customer enter the saloon and make the final purchase. Maggie Johnston.

  “Good evening, Maggie,” said the bartender, lifting his brow and placing his hands on his hips. He was making his final towel swipe over the shiny cedar surface before retiring. “What brings you here?”

  “I would like to purchase a bottle of whiskey.”

  “A bottle of whiskey?”

  “Yes, a bottle of whiskey,” said Maggie. The bartender didn’t move. “You do sell whiskey by the bottle?”

  “Yes, we do. What do you want with whiskey?”

  “It’s a gift for the marshal,” said Maggie. “He saved my life, you know. What does he drink?”

  “Well, Maggie. Why didn’t you say so? I thought you’d gone to drinking,” said the bartender. “The marshal likes rye whiskey. He carried a bottle of this very brand home tonight,” he said, lifting a bottle for Maggie to see. “In his gut.”

  “I’ll take it.” Maggie said and paid for the purchase. “Let’s keep this to ourselves.”

  The bartender had already turned his back to her, but she caught his blue eyes reflected in the sparkling glass of the full-length bar mirror. They flashed in silent acquiescence.

  “My little surprise of gratitude,” she said as she left, closing the door behind her and stepping into the sweet pregnancy of the morrow.

  Maggie the Wolf

  The day following the arrest of Terrance Lowell, Maggie rose at four a.m., a full hour earlier than usual. She dressed quickly and packed an overnight bag with three days of clothing for herself; and a pair of white muslin britches and a shirt for Terrance, clothes she had spent the previous evening sewing while she waited for the Salty Dog to clear of customers. She filled the bag with a canteen, a bar of shaving cream, a mug, a straight razor, two towels, and six pieces of jewelry from her modest collection.

  She paused at the doorway, then turned to take her last look at the house where she had lived for twenty-nine years. By the time she opened her front gate, Maggie’s face sported a smile that stretched her skin to bursting. Maggie Johnston was about to undertake the adventure of her lifetime.

  She made her way to the hardware store for a tin box filled with four hundred and twenty dollars, enough to make her feel secretly wealthy. Hidden in the back of her desk drawer, the dollar bills represented money saved once a month for the duration of her employment under Hiram. Depending on how honest she felt she’d been, Maggie slipped herself an extra fifty cents or a quarter every month.

  “Honesty is not always rewarded,” she had often told Hiram. “But it should be.” And every month it was, as Maggie watched her pile of honestly earned dollars grow.

  Before leaving the hardware store, Maggie peered through a small opening in the window curtains. The streets were clear. She saw the marshal’s horse tied to the rail in front of the jail. Maggie crossed the street and paused for a brief moment at the door to the marshal’s office.

  Through four small squares of windowpane she saw Marshal Hardwicke, or at least the top of his hatless head. His hair was disheveled and he sat facing her, but sound asleep and slumped over his desk. A cup of coffee, filled to the brim and still steaming, stood by his balled-up fist. She turned the knob carefully, pushed open the door, and entered the office.

  The room smelled of strong tobacco and her eyes fell upon tin ashtrays scattered randomly about, ashtrays overflowing with cigar stubs like piles of bodies in various stages of decomposition, chewed at the feet and burned at the scalp. A dark-stained oaken chair, square cut and serious, faced the desk. Maggie eased herself into it without a sound.

  For several minutes she listened to the wall clock’s ticking. So rhythmic did the cadence of the clock blend with the quiet breaths and snores of the marshal that for a moment even Maggie was softened by the irony of innocence slumbering before her. Here lay a man so loathed by his enemies, so ridiculed and feared by those closest to him, yet his door was open and his throat lay bare.

  And I the wolf, she whispered.

  Years later, at the quiet hour of her awakening, Maggie sometimes replayed this scene for reassurance that her senses did not lie. At the precise moment she whispered, “And I the wolf,” the right eye of Marshal Hardwicke popped open, only the right one, and not another muscle moved or even twitched. Of this also she was certain—his snoring never ceased.

  The eye stayed glued to Maggie. When she gasped and fell back into the chair, it neither blinked nor gave any indication of human emotion. In fact, Maggie Johnston later recalled that the lone eye soaking up her form was anything but human. It seemed a beastly eye—callous and calculating.

  Or so the story went.

  Maggie stood and placed the bag containing the whiskey bottle on the desk, hoping to slip out unnoticed and into a more recognizable world. Hardwicke’s arm shot out with such speed, the speed of a striking snake, that Maggie stumbled backwards. The marshal sat upright and held the bag aloft.

  “What did you bring me, Maggie?”

  “A gift,” said Maggie, surprised at the unwavering sound of her own voice.

  His mouth curled into a sneer. “What gift?” He lifted the bottle from the bag by the neck and puckered his lips. “Why, Maggie, you’ve gone and brought me whiskey.”

  “You were there when I needed you,” she said.

  “There when you needed me. I was there when you needed me, is that how it was, Maggie?” Hardwicke pulled open a desk drawer and placed two short, thick glasses in front of Maggie.

  “Now you are here when I need you,” he said. “I hate to drink alone, especially when I have company. Have a seat.” He poured the sparkling whiskey, filling the glasses an inch from the rim.

  “Let’s get a good start on the day,” he said, lifting his glass and downing the contents in a single gulp. Maggie took a small sip and shivered visibly, partly for effect and partly in response to the burning liquid coursing over her tongue. Hardwicke’s eyes came alive and a red glow rose in his cheeks. He refilled his glass and lifted his gaze to Maggie.

  “Not your cup of tea?”

  Maggie replied with a tight smile and took another sip.

  Half a bottle later, after twice lifting the marshal’s glass to his mouth for him, Maggie found the jail keys in the desk drawer. She left the slumbering lawman with a full glass of whiskey within easy reach and the curtains drawn over the door. Her confidence returned as she moved down the narrow hallway and past one empty cell after another. Just as she had hoped, the jail was empty except for Terrance.

  “Wake up, Terrance,” she said. Terrance was huddled against the wall on a far corner of the bed. From where she stood, Maggie could smell the grime and stale sweat on his dirt-layered skin and clothes.

  “Terrr-unce!”

  “Huh,” he said, opening his bloodshot eyes.

  “I’m coming in,” said Maggie. “Get your clothes off and don’t be long about it. We are getting out of here, but we have work to do first.”

  “Lady,” Terrance said, rubbing his eyes and sitting up, “I shure do wanna git outta this jail. I smushed bugs last night even I ain’t never seen before. But I ain’t taking my clothes off fer you or nobody.”

  “Don’t get your dander up,” said Maggie. “Just sl
ip down to your longjohns and roll your sleeves up to your elbows.”

  Some tone in Maggie’s voice, as if she spoke to a child, a silly misbehaving child, bade Terrance to comply. He soon stood before Maggie in the most foul-smelling men’s underwear she had ever laid nostrils on. Maggie only smiled.

  You will hate my bossiness, many people do, she thought, but you will love being clean and well-fed. I’ll see to it.

  “Fine. Now sit,” she said, and Terrance warily settled himself on the cot. Maggie rummaged in her bag before placing the shaving mug and brush, soap, and razor on the cot beside him. She poured water over the soap and whisked around the mug till it was filled with foamy lather. When she turned to face Terrance, her right hand held a straight razor.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Your beard, to begin with,” said Maggie. “Then your head…your arms…your eyebrows.”

  “You musta lost your mind, lady,” but even as he said it, Terrance closed his eyes and leaned back to enjoy his first clean shave in three years.

  Maggie alternately flicked whiskers in the air and wiped cream and curly facial hair from the blade to the bedsheet.

  “Easy, now,” she cooed. “Your skin is raw and sore, I know. I’ll be nice as I can. Don’t jump and we’ll be fine.” Her strong hand cupped his chin in her palm and she moved his face from side to side with gentle ease.

  Terrance smelled the cloudy scent of Maggie’s powdered cheeks. He soon fell asleep, remembering the flowery smell and warm lips of Miss Palmer when she kissed him on his fourteenth birthday.

  Thirty minutes and a quick trip to refill Marshal Hardwicke’s whiskey glass later, Maggie arched her back, placed her hands on her hips, and announced, “That does it. You are a new man forever after. Now get into these clothes. We’ve got to be going.”

  Maggie held up a pair of men’s britches and a long-sleeved shirt with no collar or buttons. Both were loosely sewn from the same flimsy white cotton. Terrance lifted his eyebrows briefly, then his right leg, followed by his left, and after ducking into the shirt Maggie held out for him, he stood before her as shy and uncomfortable as a bug in a dress.

  “Ma’am, you better git me some real clothes. If you think we’re gitting outta here without nobody noticing, me dressed up like this and all, you crazier than I thought you wuz.” Ignoring him, Maggie dashed down the hallway to the marshal’s office.

  “Okay,” she called back. “Everybody’s at church. Come on, Terrance.”

  Terrance tip-toed down the hall and soon appeared at the doorway.

  “Take those boots off!” Maggie whisper-hollered. “Everything that once belonged to Terrance Lowell stays behind!”

  When he didn’t move, she said, “Somebody might recognize you by your boots.” Terrance stared down at his boots and looked back at Maggie, cocking his head like a bewildered puppy dog.

  “My dear Terrance, we are not intending to go unnoticed, just unrecognized, at least you. I want everybody to see my poor disease-ridden brother, who has lost all his bodily hair and is on his way to California to live out his few remaining days in an isolated colony of like-suffering souls.”

  “You talking ’bout me?”

  “Yes, Terrance. You.”

  “What am I ’spossed to be stricken with?”

  “Stricken with never-you-mind, Terrance Lowell. I haven’t thought of everything yet. But we’ll have a humdinger of a disease for you when we need one, don’t you worry about that.”

  “You spectin’ me to walk out in full light of day looking like this?”

  “Not exactly,” said Maggie. “More like this.” She bowed her head, hunched her shoulders, folded her hands over her waist, and shuffled her feet like a chain gang convict. “Give it a try.”

  Terrance did not move.

  “Terrrr-Unnnn-Suh. I will tolerate having to tell you everything twice on one condition. You must promise, for the entire train trip…”

  “Train trip?”

  “Yes, train trip. You must promise for the entire trip to speak to no one. Do nothing anybody asks or tells you to do. Except me, of course. Now, sit down and remove your boots.”

  Once Terrance’s boots were safely tucked under the cot in his cell, Maggie opened the door to the outside world with a sweeping gesture, pinched Terrance on the left hindquarter, and said, “Let’s move. I lead, you follow.”

  “That comes as no surprise,” Terrance said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I said it’s durn sure good to be alive.”

  “That’s what I thought you said,” said Maggie.

  Or so the story went.

  Sam Anatubby

  Not until they were on the sidewalk did Maggie realize the boldness of her plan. She had not anticipated, on an otherwise normal Sunday, their shocking appearance. Sam Anatubby, a Chickasaw horsetrader from Ada, was about to receive a first impression he would never forget.

  Sam was looking to negotiate a deal on a dozen mares he’d already located a buyer for. After receiving directions and coffee from John Burleson at the train station, Sam mounted his horse and started the slow ride through town before turning northwest to pasture country.

  “I know it was a long ride just to come back empty-handed,” he told his wife two days later over breakfast. “But after what I saw coming out the marshal’s office, I wadn’t ’bout to buy no kind of livestock from that sickly spot on the map.”

  Melvina Anatubby scrunched up her nose and lips in her favorite and most often-used expression, resulting in a face so remindful of a bullfrog that Sam had to count off her good qualities at least a dozen times a day just to live in the same house with her.

  She is one funny woman. She cooks real good. Lord knows, just look at my fatbelly self. She’s no slouch about kissin’, neither, he often told himself, though Melvina had come close to spoiling a long, wet kiss one lazy Saturday morning when Sam made the mistake of opening his eyes and discovering she scrunched her face when she kissed. He never did that again.

  “Honey,” Sam said. “I wished you coulda seen it. Here come a short squatty-bodied little white woman walking on a wooden leg. Well, I seen wooden-legged people before. ’Member my granddaddy’s Cherokee cousin by his marriage to that Creek woman over in Seminole? He had a wooden leg and I liked him just fine. He used to take me fishing. He would run sometimes six trot lines at a time.

  “He’d roll his britches up, drive six nails into his leg, tie a line to each and every one of ’em, and go to fishing. I ’member one morning he caught three fish all at once’t. He just unhitched his leg, throwed it up on the shore, and them fish flew right over our heads. One of ’em, I promise you, landed right in the frying pan.

  “But best I can recall, that was a bass and once we fried it and cut it open, it had worms, little maggoty critters, so we couldn’t eat it, at least not the part where they was crawling.

  “But Granddaddy’s cousin's wooden leg never did bother me is the point of it. Have a sip of coffee, sweetheart.” A week after their honeymoon, Sam made a discovery that saved their marriage. Melvina couldn’t sip her coffee and scrunch her face at the same time.

  “Nope,” he continued, after stirring two heaping tablespoonfuls of sugar into his own coffee. Melvina scrunched her face in disapproval. “It wadn’t her wooden leg that bothered me, though you got to admit you don’t see one every day, that is unless you work over at that hospital in Talahina, you know, the one where all them veterans do the best they can.”

  Melvina Anatubby was a patient woman. She often told herself, Anybody with less patience would have left Sam long ago, the way he circles and strays before he gets to the point of what he’s trying to say. He just won’t stop talking!

  Not long after they were married, Melvina discovered something that made even Sam’s rambling tolerable. She found that if she twitched her nose and puckered her lips in that cute way her daddy just loved, Sam would say what he meant and get on with it. It was her only weapon short of rudely interr
upting him like any other woman on the face of God’s good earth would do—that or scream.

  “Nope,” said Sam. “It wadn’t that leg that bothered me. But trailing after her was the most pitiful excuse fer a man I ever in my life see’d, and, hon, I see’d some messed up folks. ’Member that fellow what used to hang around the saloon losing ever penny he had whilst all the time cheating at cards? You ’member, hon, that white man what smelled so bad you almost didn’t want his money ’cause you had to sit and smell him just to git it.

  “Well, as bad as that fellow wuz, with bugs crawling outta his hair and all, this yer fellow I’m tellin’ you ’bout, he was wurst. His skin was pale and ghost white, like he’d been living underground, that ugly pink color of a possum belly. He wuz all over colored like that. And he didn’t have no hair, not on his head, I mean not even no eyebrows.”

  Melvina took another sip of coffee and Sam leaned over the table, closed his eyes, and kissed her. When he settled back in his chair and started talking again, he saw that Melvina’s eyes were beaming bright and her cheeks were rolled into a puffy bisquit dough grin.

  “I asked that woman that seemed to be leading him around like he wuz some kind of a white slave or something, you heard ’bout white slaves, aintcha, darlin? ‘What is it he got?’ I ast her. ‘He got a real bad disease, mister, and it’s catching. You better don’t ride over so close,’ that’s what she told me. I turned around and rode right home to you, Sweet Dimples.”

  Other than Sam Anatubby, no one saw Maggie and Terrance leave the marshal’s office. Three doors from the jailhouse, Terrance caught sight of his own reflection in the millinery shop window. He paused for a moment, cocking his head like a puppy dog seeing himself in the mirror for the first time.

  Once assured it was himself he was beholding, Terrance jumped back and grabbed his head. He leaned forward, peering at himself in the glass and patting his naked forehead where his eyebrows had been. His eyes bugged out and he spun around and ran full speed to the jail, hissing over his shoulder at Maggie, “You crazy women. I’m gonna be arrested, looking like this.”