Tessie sauntered over, red gems dangling from her earlobes. She draped an arm around each of them. “My two favorite men.” Tessie stepped in time to the tune on the piano. “Kalvo, how’s that spread of yours coming along? My friend ain’t put you in dutch, has he?”
Swopes inhaled the sweetness of her powdered bosom, turned up his nose, swallowed another shot of whiskey. His steely blue eyes gleamed. “Ain’t never been better, Tessie.” He swallowed a shot then reached for the bottle. “You’re packing them in tonight, old girl.”
“Chill always sweeps the studs in. A man’s gotta do something to keep warm on these cold prairie nights.” She turned to Swopes and added, “Colder in bed with their wives than it is in here!” She laughed and smacked each man on the back.
The cloying scent of Tessie’s talcum and perfume irritated Swopes’s nose. He sneezed, rubbed his eyes.
“You fellas in the mood for eats? Got an Indian girl in the kitchen made a heap of buffalo stew and fry bread. Mighty tasty.”
“Stew’ll keep us from getting drunk,” said Kalvo.
Swopes glanced across the room at Sherrod. Wiry, with a broad flat nose and a large forehead, he swayed left to right while his long fingers frantically rapped the piano keys, all the while smiling the way children smile when they get away with mischief. A black bowler was cocked on the side of his bald head. He caught Swopes’s gaze, winked at him, kept storming the keys.
“We’ll if you ain’t got no appetite for food,” Tessie said, “maybe you two gents got a hankerin’ of another kind, huh?”
She gestured toward the staircase with her chin. Two comely whores, both topless, leaned over the railing. Each blew Kalvo a kiss.
“We’re stag tonight, Tessie.”
“Kalvo you ain’t been up them stairs in a coon’s age. Religion got you or the clap?”
The air left Swopes’s lungs for a moment. He stared at Kalvo as he leaned in close to Tessie, tilted his head, and arched an eyebrow.
“I’m a clean sinner, Tessie old girl,” Kalvo declared. “A clean sinner.”
The aged madam yelped. “The best kind there is, handsome. Well if you change your mind you climb upstairs. I’ll tell Adeline to set herself by.”
“Adeline?”
Tessie Rose pointed her ringed index finger at one of the girls upstairs who had blown a kiss to Kalvo. A coiffure of saffron-colored hair crowned her head. She had a face like a valentine and skin so white she seemed to glow. Her breasts were enormous; her waist was slender. She winked at Kalvo.
“Fresh off the train from Kansas City and still virgin tight,” Tessie bragged. “Ain’t too many studs rid her yet. I won’t let ’em.”
“Give her the night off, won’t you Tessie?” said Kalvo. He teeter-tottered the bottom of his shot glass on the counter lightly.
“No doing, Kalvo. A whore’s gotta earn her keep. I’ll set her by for you. Ease up on the hooch or your pecker’ll be no good for hanging wash even. Bye now.” She was about to strut off when she turned to Swopes and said, “Don’t think I forgot about you, sad eyes. That little Indian girl gotta earn her keep too. I seen her eat a whole fried rattlesnake once so I know she can handle black snake. Haha!”
Swopes nursed his shot of whiskey and waited for Kalvo to speak, all the while remembering their afternoon the previous week, the pleasure that once again announced itself in his pants. Swarms of lustful schemes crisscrossed his mind.
“Why’d you come out here, Swopes?” asked Kalvo.
“The South is no place for a colored man. The North is no place for a colored man with ambition.”
Swopes couldn’t tell him the real reason. In a flash he recalled Mama and Sarah’s tear-soaked faces as they pleaded for him on their knees outside the schoolhouse, and Sheriff Musgrove carting him away like roped cattle for a white man’s crime. The truth would stay locked within Swopes forever. He swallowed his drink.
“Thank you for the drink, Mr. Kalvo, sir.”
“Kalvo’s good enough for me, Swopes.”
Swopes’s heart fluttered. “Thank you, Kalvo.”
They drank.
“Got around to that book yet? Great Expectations?”
Swopes poured another drink. He could see Sherrod spying on them from across the saloon with a menace in his eyes. “It passes fair. I’m nearly done with it.”
“I receive a shipment of new books every month from Boston. Come to the main house at your liberty and borrow one whenever you want. I can never read them all.”
“Thank you, Mr. Kalvo.”
“Just Kalvo, like I said.”
Swopes admired the nape of Kalvo’s neck as he drank.
“My parents were abolitionists in Boston. They taught many runaways how to read and write.”
Swopes straightened his back, stuck out his chin. “I was born free. I’ve been to school.”
Kalvo nodded. “You remind me of Pip. From the book.”
“Do I?”
“It’s a determination I see in you, Swopes. You’re a hard worker and, I gather, no fool. You’ve certainly helped resurrect my ranch.”
The music in the bordello stopped but the raucous activities continued, the vortex of dancing, carousing, arm wrestling, gambling, and fornicating that to Swopes seemed to belong to another space and time. Sherrod came over, stood beside Swopes, and ordered a beer from the bar. He took a gulp, wiped the suds from his lips with his shirtsleeve, and smacked his lips. “Ain’t seen you in a while, Swopes.”
“Been working hard,” Swopes said. “You know Mr. Kalvo.”
Sherrod tipped his bowler. “Evenin’, Rancher Kalvo, sir.”
“Evening, Sherrod.”
Swopes had roomed next to Sherrod in back of Tessie Rose’s before he went to work at Kalvo’s ranch. During his stay he kept his interactions with Sherrod short and busied himself in a different part of the house from wherever Sherrod happened to be. Something about the man kept Swopes on his guard. He always seemed to mock Swopes in silence, and at the same time the man’s obvious fascination with Swopes was somewhat embarrassing for both men, but if Sherrod felt embarrassed he never showed it. Even Tessie noticed Sherrod’s yen for him and cautioned Swopes to steer clear of the invert.
“You gents out on a toot?” Sherrod inquired.
“Just drinks,” Kalvo said. “And good music.”
“Music? Yes, sir. Ol’ Sherrod is just gettin’ hisself a libation, sir. Goin’ out for a piss. I’mma be back in short time to play piano real soon, Rancher Kalvo.”
He smiled and winked at them before taking his mug of beer and exiting the whorehouse.
“Fella’s a character,” Kalvo said. “Your friend?”
“He wants to be everyone’s friend.”
The cowboys smiled at each other before they downed their booze.
Kalvo said, “You keep that book, Swopes. It’s yours.”
Then Swopes did what he didn’t think he had courage enough to do, what took him more courage than the act of madness and retribution that expelled him into the Centennial State to begin with. Gradually, deliberately, with stealth and the thrill that only risk can surge, he motioned his hand closer to Kalvo’s as it rested on the bar until their pinkies touched. Swopes’s little finger raised like a newborn calf struggling against the frailty and fear that comes with birth. Yes, he lifted the smallest finger of his hand—a hand that had loved and killed, created and destroyed—and stroked Kalvo’s pinky up to the nail and back again, three times, the gentlest of caresses transacted between men accustomed to busting the land and the bodies of other men with impunity; the purest declaration of the flesh announced like a whisper inside of a brothel screeching with lustful degradation. Until the last of his days, Swopes would remember this as the most courageous moment of his life.
Kavlo gazed down at their hands for a moment, took his time lifting his eyes to meet Swopes’s. Swopes prayed for a kiss, braced himself for a slug. He had taken the unspoken contract between them, the wordless code all
men like them abided by, and shouted it to the rafters in one small gesture. “I don’t” were the only words Kalvo managed to speak before Adeline pounced on him and kissed him full on the mouth.
“You need to come with me now, cowboy,” the harlot cooed. Her lip rouge smudged his mouth and chin. Kavlo looked like he had been attacked by an animal.
“What are you doing?” Kalvo asked as the woman rubbed his chest and ran her fingers through his hair.
“You’re the best looking man I’ve seen in a spell.” She brushed her bare breasts against him and squeezed him between his legs. “Show me what a real man is.”
Kalvo left the bar without a word to Swopes. Adeline pranced in front of him. She reached behind, took his hands, and placed them on her jiggling breasts. They climbed the stairs and vanished behind a black lacquered door with a shiny brass knob.
Swopes had gotten his answer: I don’t.
He went outside to take a piss behind the whorehouse. Afterwards he decided to saddle up and ride back to the ranch.
“Howdy, sidekick.”
It was Sherrod, walking toward him from the opposite direction.
“Doesn’t your piano need playing?” Swopes was in no mood for talk or games.
“‘Doesn’t’? Damned if you ain’t the whitest soundin’ black boy I ever met.” He spit out a squirt of chaw. “You ain’t foolin’ nobody, sidekick. You one of them Negroes still lovin’ up on master’s dick. Shit, first chance I got I hightailed off the damn plantation, long before the war. Stole a might sum of my master’s loot when he weren’t lookin’ and made out West. That white man of yours surely won’t yield to you, black boy.”
“Leave me be.”
It felt to Swopes like being mauled by a rabid dog instead of being kissed by a man. Swopes didn’t fight. He was too drunk and horny. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt the touch of a man other than himself. He needed release. And perhaps Sherrod was right. Kalvo would never be his. Tonight he was Adeline’s.
Swopes opened his mouth wide when Sherrod squeezed his ass, and Sherrod’s tongue slithered inside. Swopes could taste the beer and chaw in the piano player’s mouth, feel gaps where teeth should have been. It made his dick harder. Sherrod had a narrower waist and a smaller frame, but his body was tight with muscles that knotted at the shoulders, biceps, and chest. Swopes rubbed Sherrod’s pecker and liked the size. Sherrod pushed him down to his knees.
The length of Sherrod’s cock was enough to shame every man Swopes had ever screwed. He pushed the foreskin back with his lips and let his tongue swirl over the bullet-shaped head. He sucked deep, making certain to keep his teeth out of the way, opening wide near Sherrod’s pelvis and closing his mouth on the head of his cock. The funk of Sherrod’s privates proved more intoxicating than the whiskey Swopes had drunk. Spit drooled down his chin. His hole puckered.
“You have someplace we can go?” Swopes asked after a few minutes. “It’s cold out here.”
“Fine right here, sidekick. Ain’t never too cold to fuck.”
Swopes stood, turned his back to Sherrod, and bent over. He dropped his britches to his ankles, careful of his pistol, and placed his hands flat against the door of the shit house. He heard Sherrod hawk once, twice. Felt the gloopy wetness on his rosebud. He braced himself.
“Put your hands on your ass and spread your cheeks.” Sherrod was already panting. “Now push back on it. Yeah, like that. Wiggle your ass some. Ooh . . .”
Swopes sucked in a breath and grit his teeth to prevent the agony inside of him from shattering the stillness of the night.
“That’s fine, boy,” Sherrod murmured. “Sweet hole. Come on and talk to me, honey. Let that split beaver talk to me.”
Sherrod rode his ass for only a couple of minutes but for Swopes it felt like a lifetime. A tear salted the corner of his mouth. He thought for sure he’d die from the pain. Then Swopes felt Sherrod pull out and hawk onto his hole a couple more times before the man’s long cock rutted inside of him again. But this time the pain subsided and Swopes wanted Sherrod’s cock to probe deeper, take longer strokes. He countered Sherrod’s rhythmic thrusting, bucked on his cock like a show pony, and reached for his own stiff prick. He thought of Kalvo with Adeline. He imagined Kalvo where Sherrod was, walloping his asshole, and he imagined himself where Adeline was, lying beneath Kalvo with her legs wrapped around his waist, her cooch gripping his hard dick as his firm, hairy body rose and fell on top of her. Ripples of pleasure vibrated in every region of Swopes’s body.
“Tighter than a church girl’s cooch,” Sherrod moaned. “Goddamn!”
Swopes could feel Sherrod’s cock smash his prostate. He was close to coming.
“Yeah, sidekick. You like this black snake, don’t cha? Come on with it.”
They panted and grunted for the whole town to hear. When Sherrod finally came he bellowed. Swopes could feel the cum ooze out of his ass and run down his balls.
“Turn round, sidekick. Lemme taste it.”
Swopes complied, and Sherrod bent down and took his cock in his mouth. He slurped and smacked on Swopes’s cock, staring up into his eyes and stroking Swopes’s dick with his large leathery hand. When he came, Sherrod guzzled his load with wide-eyed delight.
“Got a dick like a mustang,” Sherrod said. “Hell, you shoulda fucked me.”
Swopes made up his mind the next day. He’d quit the ranch and head out for California day after tomorrow. He had saved up enough money, and he had a fear of staying in one place too long. His horse was strong and if he left now he’d be in California before winter. The longer he stayed the more he wanted Kalvo. There were moments when the desire to touch Kalvo, to hold him and bed him were so powerful Swopes felt himself go dizzy from want. No man had ever captivated him like Kalvo. If Swopes couldn’t have him he wouldn’t stay.
He didn’t wait to be invited into the main house, and he didn’t take off his shoes. He found Kalvo seated at the harvest table sipping coffee and staring into space. He stomped toward him and dropped Great Expectations on the table with a loud thud. Kalvo looked puzzled.
“I can’t stay,” Swopes said, trembling.
Kavlo looked down at the book and up at Swopes. “That book is yours.”
“No, boss. I leave only with what I came with.”
Kalvo stood and approached him. “I thought you were happy here. You have plenty of money and the run of the spread. Have I done something, Swopes?”
“This is no place of mine, boss. No place for me.”
“Boss?” The word from Kalvo’s lips sounded like a rebuke.
Swopes lifted his eyes to the ceiling. He couldn’t bring himself to look into Kalvo’s eyes.
Kalvo’s voice dropped to near silence. “Bosses and ranch hands don’t do what you and I do, talk the way you and I talk.”
Droplets of sweat formed on Swopes’s nose and upper lip as Kalvo took one of his hands and placed it on his crotch. Kalvo’s cock was getting harder and harder.
Kalvo pulled him close. Chest to chest, he whispered in Swopes’s ear,“You’re pretty. You’re my pretty.”
The men embraced and kissed as they clumsily stepped into the bedroom. Their britches dropped before they could take off their boots. Kalvo’s knees hit the floor. Swopes shut his eyes and pumped his prick in and out of Kalvo’s moist mouth. He tugged at his nipples while Kalvo let loose on his dick, licked his balls and his taint. They kicked off their boots, tossed off their pants, and landed on the soft bed; lying mouth to dick they devoured each other.
They had to use spit and a finger scoop of shortening from the cupboard. It helped; Swopes’s rosebud relaxed and accepted Kalvo’s chubby cock with ease. He rode Kalvo’s cock slowly at first, then crashed down hard on his dick, gripping the girth of Kalvo’s cock with the muscles of his hole. All the while Kalvo whispered, “You’re my pretty.” And it went the same for Swopes: Kalvo bent over the side of the bed and shouted when Swopes slid his dick up Kalvo’s willing ass. He wanted it hard and f
ast, and the harder and faster Swopes rammed him the louder he shouted. Once Kalvo’s ass had been ridden good the pair lay side-by-side, kissing and jerking their dicks. Kalvo shot first, four pumps that slid down his knuckles. Swopes fired five loads above their heads that splashed the headboard. They slept deeper than the dead and held each other through the night.
The next morning word went around town that some no-account named Charlie Guiteau had shot President Garfield dead.
In the winter the pair took a trip into town. Kalvo sprung for new duds for Swopes: quality shirts and denim pants, a corduroy coat, rough leather boots. He even gifted Swopes a Winchester. The owner of the general store, Jessup Griffith, gave them both peculiar looks. Swopes knew why. They paid him no mind. They loaded up the horse-drawn cart with the clothes and guns, other supplies and tools, Kalvo’s monthly parcel of books, and a case of whiskey. The winter was a rough one and after their spree in town they kept close to the homestead. Kalvo cooked flapjacks in the morning and stew at night. Swopes baked biscuits, even a cake once. The eats weren’t fancy but they kept the men well fed and there was plenty. On clear days they trudged through knee-high snow, shot and cleaned elk, held hands, and kissed beneath the night sky with no one to witness but the stars studding the heavens. They read out loud to each other: Dickens, Stowe, Hawthorne, Poe, Douglass, Twain, Wilde. There were card games and dirty jokes, stories from their pasts, and plans for the future. Kalvo said he wanted to hire a couple of Indians to help out come summer. Swopes didn’t know how he felt about it; he didn’t want to share his man with anyone else. Kalvo played harmonica. Swopes played guitar. They took turns singing, got drunk most nights, fucked each other til the stink of it became the air they breathed.
In the spring Swopes gifted Kalvo a clay jug full of dandelions. Kalvo set it on the harvest table so they could look at it when they ate their meals. They hiked the snow-topped mountains and sometimes picnicked on the dry ridges. On a crisp, sparkling morning in mid-March they rode into town after six weeks holed up on the ranch. They bought lumber, more supplies and tools, and more whiskey. Wildflowers pushed through shallow snowdrifts. Women huddled in Griffith’s General Store and haggled over fabric to sew their little ones new clothes and themselves new dresses. Men gathered at the post office or at Tessie Rose’s, cussed Charlie Guiteau, questioned the new president, disagreed about finance and politics. Tessie, dolled up in a baby-blue dress and a feathered bonnet, called out to the pair as they passed her establishment. They ignored her.
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