“It’s just…I have far too much respect for you.”
“Oh?” said Anna. She shifted a little closer to Charley, leaning forward on her hands so that Charley was facing her formidable cleavage of flesh. “I’m not so respectable.”
Suddenly her lips were on Charley’s.
And Charley was kissing back. She felt hazy and drunk and Anna’s mouth tasted like new made wine, heady and sweet. The kiss went on and on, and Charley was part of it going on.
Anna took Charley’s hand and laid it on her chest. Charley did not resist. She then slid Charley’s hand down the great slope of her breast. The hairs on Charley’s arm prickeled…it was a stunning sensation to touch another woman’s flesh in such a manner. Ever since Byron, Charley had been somehow able to deny that desire to be held, to be filled, to be overwhelmed. Not that she had had much choice—living her life the way she was. But now…that long dormant need was returning with a vengeance. Anna was whispering in Italian…her hand inching up Charley’s leg—mouth following, tongue tracing, etching the wet path. Then far away a soft whisper from below—“Charley…please take me.”
Charley’s eyes snapped open. Summoning all of herself, all of her will, she broke away, scrambling to her feet. For an instant she teetered in her resolve; she could so easily fall back to the floor with this woman. Enough. Enough. She could pretend to herself that she had re-invented herself. But the truth was something else. Just keep the mask locked in place. That was the only protection she had. Anna would put her hand low on Charley’s body to feel the expected hardness there, and all she would find was a soft pillow of round flesh. And then there would be Anna’s expected scream. And after that—the end of everything that meant anything in this world.
“I’m—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Charley stammered.
“What?” said Anna. “What?”
But Charley was gone in a blur, leaving her stunned and half undressed on the floor. A few moments passed. She looked down at her rejected body. She tucked her flesh back into her bodice. More moments passed. Longer ones. The sound of Charley’s horse galloping away. Anna reached for her wine and drank it down. She finished Charley’s, and then poured a third.
Sometime later in the night, Tonia wandered in from the other cabin, barefoot, in her nightdress.
“Mama? Where are you? Are you there?”
In a glance, Tonia took in the situation—not what had happened of course, but as only a daughter could understand her mother. There was pain and the pain had been caused by yet another man.
“Oh, my little mama,” she said. She knelt down and put her arms around Anna who was lying in a heap on the floor. She helped her up and guided her back to their bed. Anna for once allowed herself to be led.
Fifteen
It was Hangtown that Charley rode to that night.
She had started riding just to get away. Anywhere. Somewhere. But she found herself heading towards Hangtown. And Edmund…drawn towards him in some inexplicable way. She didn’t even know anything about him. This was craziness. What did she expect to happen tonight? What could happen? But here she was riding through the darkness. Not knowing if Edmund would even be there. Nor what she’d do if he was.
Would she ever again be known as she had been with Byron? That was her deepest fear—that she was nothing. A woman growing old alone, who would always be alone. A woman dressed as a man.
Froth poured from the horse’s mouth and its neck was soaked and salted. Charley was running the horse too fast, kicking too hard the sore flanks. But she needed to vanish. She needed to run.
As she rode, the great dead appeared beside her, immense and slow and distant; moving in the shadows and broken flickers of moonlight like giant Byzantine mosaics in the night. Uneven patterns cast on rock face, flickering, stretching along the dry ground as she moved past them. They were all there: Byron, Jonas, Beelzebub. And everywhere her soft silent baby cast large upon the landscape, still bearing that immaculate expression passed through time from the ancients to the very newest born. She felt the look of her child emanating from every rock and tree bark glittering back through the moonlight. All of them were now moving in the direction from which she’d come. So big, so slow, so grand. And oh, they seemed not to know her, seemed not to care—the slow traffic of the complex dead and she, human fool, racing feverishly in the other direction.
She kicked the horse again, hard.
The figures were vanishing, blinking away. They were gone. The lights of Hangtown were appearing. It was too bright here for enchantments.
The horse was slowing and Charley, whose body had out-sped itself, slowed enough that the soul caught up, entered it. She grunted as soul clicked back into place; the loneliness now was just the usual loneliness and she could bear it; it was not unfamiliar.
She was panting, catching her breath. Her heart was pounding. She could hear it.
The horse was walking now, snorting. Charley was pierced through with feelings of remorse and shame at her ill-treatment of the creature. She stroked the horse’s neck, uttering apology after apology. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”
And then, before them was Kittle Farley’s Hangtown Saloon with its shroud of clamor and odor of drink. The horse halted and for several minutes they just stood there. Charley swung down from the horse and led him over to a watering trough to drink. She tied him to the hitching post. She used her dirty sleeve to scrub the tears from her face, composed an expression of sorts, and plunged inside…stagecoach driver goes to saloon, raises glass, laughs raucously, eyes the painted gals.
Little tables were scattered everywhere; a piano was angled against one wall, replete with piano player with rolled up sleeves, his fingers moving up and down the tinny-sounding keys. A polished wood bar stretched the length of another wall. The bar was lined three deep tonight with boisterous drinking men. Hung in the place of honor behind the bar was a picture of a voluptuous reclining woman, dark eyes and hair, Mediterranean in seasoning—with a satyr hovering over her, leering down at her near-nakedness.
The barkeep paused in his dispensing of drinks and reached under the picture. There was a small rubber bulb there and the barkeeps’ hand closed around it, pumping it a few times. The painted woman’s belly undulated, and her breasts bulged outwards, balloon-like, as the barkeep continued to pump.
“Keep at it, Kittle!” shouted the men. “Go! Go! Go!”
Kittle pumped and pumped, a foolish grin pasted on his face, and the breasts bulged and bulged, until at last the tips of them, daubed with red and purple and pink, dawned like pointy heavenly bodies. Orgasmic whooping and hooting filled the room.
A young miner stood next to Charley doing a double take, his eyes popping. “Oh, baby,” he shouted, crossing his eyes in simulated ecstasy. “Give me some of that, barkeep.”
The men laughed and raised a grateful toast to the naked lady.
Charley blanched—Edmund was there, standing at the bar, looking rather unsteady. What the hell did she think she was doing? She should leave. And yet she felt herself move through the crowd until she was standing at his side.
“Hey. Charley, my friend,” warbled Edmund. He was in an advanced stage of drunkenness. He hooked an arm around Charley’s elbow and allowed himself to be steered back to a chair where he landed with a thump. She slid into the chair next to him.
Edmund narrowed his eyes. “I hope you won’t take it amiss,” he said, “if I tell you that something about you has always puzzled me Charley Parkhurst.”
So it’s now, the unveiling, she thought. Shit. She had been hiding from this moment. Protecting her goddamned secret. Good. It’s over.
But then Edmund saw a stray deck of cards lying on the table and lost his train of thought. He picked them up and attempted to shuffle them. His fingers were too drunk. Laughing at himself, he gave up, pushing the cards away with a resigned sigh.
“There are two things, my friend, in which a man should never attempt to engage beyond a certain point of inebriation,” he slurred. “Cards and…”
As if on cue, a saloon gal interrupted him. She was very young, with a face that might have been pretty had it not been ruined with too much rouge and dissipation. She sidled up next to him and ran her hand through his hair.
“Edmund,” she said simpering. “I got something special for you.”
She had a bright expression, a sing-song voice.
He swung her down into his lap, almost dropping her. “Oh you darling soiled dove. Haven’t I already sampled what you’ve got?”
Charley watched as Edmund cupped the gal’s chin in his hand and turned her head to face his. She pouted at him. Then stunningly, she relaxed her face for an instant into a real smile, a smile of sudden girlish sweetness—and then, just as quick, tightened her mouth and eyes…back into an appearance of false coyness.
It was a shocking moment; as if a mask had been dropped for an instant, confirming lest you weren’t sure, that indeed there were masks. Had it really happened? Was everyone—including herself—playing a role here? But by then the girl had already disappeared back inside the gal.
“Why, yes, I believe I have sampled you my dear,” Edmund said, rolling his eyes at Charley. He turned back to the hard whore on his lap and Charley watched as Edmund’s hand snaked under her arm and squeezed her breast.
“Aren’t you Mimi?” he said.
The gal slapped his hand away with a playful sulk. “What a bad boy you are.” She wanted to punch him in the face, but she had her bread to earn. Instead she said, “You know the rules, Mr. Bennett.” She made her dimples appear.
Edmund’s other hand sneaked along the gal’s leg, disappearing up her skirt.
“You are so naughty!” she squeaked. She turned and gave him a quick sloppy kiss. Then she sprang up off his lap, trailing her fingers through his hair as she started to move away. She looked back, batting her eyes and puckering her lips.
He reached up and grabbed her by the wrist, bringing her hand to his face.
“Come with me to San Francisco, my darling girl. I’ll show you things you never dreamt of. And you’ll get to see the head of the famous bandit Joaquin Murieta.”
He turned and winked at Charley. “You should come too my boy—The Stockton House Saloon on Stockton Street. It’s going to be on display for just one night, August 12th; supposed to draw a big crowd.”
Still holding the gal’s hand, Edmund turned it over and kissed it in such a gentle and sweet way that it took Charley’s breath away. She suspected—she couldn’t say why—that he was engaging the gal not for the gal’s benefit, but for hers.
The gal of course, was oblivious to it all. She giggled. “Oh, Mr. Bennett, you rascal, you. You know I can’t go. I’d lose my job.”
She turned her back on him, remembering to twitch her hips in an exaggerated manner as she walked away.
Edmund turned his glazed eyes to Charley and smiled. For an almost imperceptible second, she saw in that smile a profound and moving sadness.
“I’m fractured with drink,” he said. His eyes rolled up and his head fell forward onto the table with a loud painful-sounding clunk.
Sixteen
Kittle, the ever-cheerful barkeep, told Charley the way to Edmund’s lodgings. With difficulty, she dragged a semi-conscious Edmund down the street into the Hangtown Hotel. The proprietor at the front desk glanced up at the sight of the staggering man with his arm draped over a smaller man’s shoulder and looked back down to his work without a word.
“Key, Edmund?” said Charley.
Edmund plunged his right hand into his pocket and pulled out a key, dropping it to the floor in the process.
“Room six,” said the proprietor with disdain. He lit a lantern and handed it to Charley.
The room was first class for Hangtown: it had a lock to begin with, plus it had a window and just enough space around the bed for a narrow bureau and a chair.
The strong moon glow filtered through the window. Charley lowered Edmund down onto the bed as he mumbled something unintelligible, his eyes closed. She pulled off his fine boots and stood them up next to the chair. As she turned to the door there was a voice from the bed.
“Charley, be a good lad and help me with these damned fancy pants,” he slurred. “Damned buttons.”
He was lying prostrate on the bed, his eyes still closed. Charley took a deep breath, then took a step from the door to the bed. She removed her gloves, leaned over him and began to unbutton the trousers. She pulled them down over the front of his hips and over his bulge. A shiver coursed through her body. She turned her eyes away, then went to Edmund’s feet and pulled the trousers over the foot of the bed. She glanced at the long muscular legs noticing a couple of white scars. They looked liked old gunshot wounds.
“Looks like you’ve been in a gunfight or two?”
Edmund mumbled, “Cards can be a dangerous game my boy.”
As she lifted his trousers to drape over the back of the chair something fell from the pocket. It was some sort of large coin. No, a large metal token. She picked it up.
DORA’S
12 Dupont Street. San Francisco
GAMING * WHISKEY * WOMEN
She flipped it over…
GOOD FOR TWO DRINKS OR ONE SCREW
Those are either expensive drinks or hideous whores, she thought.
She tucked the token back into his pants pocket. Undressed down to his undergarments, Edmund looked peaceful and handsome, now asleep on top of the blanket. She stood over him, looking down. She reached her fingertips like a curious child, toward the smooth skin of his cheek, touching him. She was startled by her gesture.
She put her gloves back on and stole out of the room.
Edmund opened his eyes briefly. Then shut them.
So, Charley left a sleeping Edmund and Hangtown in the dead of night, stopping at a swing station for a few hours sleep. When she awoke from her rest, she was filled with a kind of lightness that she didn’t know she had been missing. It was as though the care-free Charlotte had somehow emerged out of last night’s nightmare ride to Hangtown…and as after the cleansing throes of a fever, that playful girl had now burst through every pore. She felt her old Charlotte self again—full of hell, full of mischief. She would take a daring chance, make a dangerous adventure. Why the hell not. She had been holding her loneliness and her secret so tight that it had been suffocating her.
She rode towards home as the cool clear morning arched overhead—a pale pristine summer blue just before sunrise. She could not stop thinking about him.
On her way home she stopped off at the Wells Fargo office just long enough to tell her friend and boss Jim Birch that she needed to leave town for a few days on some personal business.
She arrived back at the cabins that afternoon. She called out, “Anna! You there?”
The door to the new cabin opened and Tonia appeared. “Hey, Charley.”
“Hey, Tonia. Tell your mama I’ll be gone a couple of days. Leaving first thing in the morning.”
“Where to?”
“San Francisco.”
“Oh I love San Francisco. Mama and I were there once with Luigi. Can we come?”
“I’m sorry Tonia. Not this time. I’ll take you and your mama another time.”
Anna appeared behind her daughter in the doorway. A stricken expression crossed her face for an instant, and then something else that Charley recognized. She played it over; she took the look apart until she was sure…it was already the beginning of not caring. She’d not be hurt for long, that woman.
Anna was summoning the pieces of a feeling to nest together like strong black birds in her heart. The feeling was righteous anger, and with that feeling protecting her she was invincible. We will be all right, Tonia
and I. We don’t need you. She was putting her hand on Tonia’s shoulder. She was starting to close the door.
“I’ll be back soon,” Charley said. She wheeled the horse around and headed toward the barn.
Seventeen
If Sacramento was the beating heart of the Mother lode, San Francisco, flashy city, was its flesh. Women and men met in the streets and looked each other over in front of elegant shop windows glittering with merchandise. With a pocketful of gold dust you could buy this and that and this. You could clothe yourself all new. You could reinvent yourself fresh, no questions asked. Especially if you were lucky to have the exchange rate of man’s, not woman’s work.
Despite her hard-earned success as a whip, Charley was still unused to having so much money. Now she would let herself spend some of it. So here she was, Charlotte Parkhurst, peering inside an expensive shop window. It made her think of Charles Dickens—one of his poor orphan boys pushing his nose against the bakery window dreaming of bread.
The difference was that she was able to enter that shop behind the window and would matter-of-fact, buy the thing that she was dreaming of. That it was to be a whore’s wardrobe, she hastened to remind herself, mattered not at all. She’d not be any more of a whore than any usual wife. She had once read about a woman that had been put in jail for refusing her husband’s connubial wishes, so what was the difference—wife or whore? Since a wife wouldn’t walk into a bar, a whore it would be.
She had stumbled upon the most amazing and wondrous thought; she had the rare and exquisite freedom to choose—to move between the world of man and woman, just like that.
With the shop clerk’s help, it didn’t take long to pile up the counter with boxes filled with all the accoutrements of flashy feminine ready-made fashion of the day—chemise, stockings, garters, boots, corset, hoop skirt, dress, gloves, and a feathered hat. He’s buying everything, thought the clerk in amazement. He must be dressing his gal from scratch. Even combs and rats for her hair. What’s this all about? But the clerk said nothing of course, thrilled with the size of the purchase.
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