The Whip

by Kondazian, Karen

  “If anything should happen today, you’ll see to it Anna gets whatever’s coming to me?”

  Birch hesitated at the implication, but then gestured assent with a nod and disappeared back into the building.

  An eerie unsettled feeling hung in the air. She felt a rising rush of dread and energy building up inside of her. She picked up the reins and started the horses moving.

  He had returned again. To drag her down into her nightmare.

  How could this be happening? Life had, these last years, become pleasurable. She had her job. Her horses. She had Edmund, Anna, Tonia. Life was good.

  Fucking Lee. What should she do now? Pull out her gun, kill him? Finally get her revenge. Did she even want revenge anymore? She had tried to let go. She had almost forgotten about him.

  All these thoughts were jumbled in her head. For the first time in a long time, she felt fear…her fate sitting in the coach below.

  Their last encounter she had lost everything.

  And that was it. Her head cleared. Her body grew still, cool, alert. She could not let that happen again.

  The right moment would come. She just had to recognize that moment and not flinch when it came.

  Twenty-Five

  About an hour out of town they reached a narrow pass. A sheer rock face on the north side and rolling rocky hills to the south, an arroyo long since dried up.

  Lee was staring out the coach window. Killing was his profession and he was good at it. Already he’d emptied his gaze in readiness, in trance…in such a way a hawk dreams over the landscape—detached, yet attentive. The smallest movement and he plunges.

  The six-team kicked up dust as Charley’s stagecoach rounded a bend. The rocks glittered on their left and right. The light was brilliant and Charley shielded her eyes with one hand.

  High above them, the bandit shielded his eyes for a moment as well, looking down through the blinding sunlight at the coach navigating the dusty trail. He wore a pair of burlap sugar sacks tied at the ankles and another one over his face.

  Down below, Charley guided the team through the rough terrain. She scanned the rocky hills that hemmed the coach. She was radiating tension, and the horses were picking up the unfamiliar scent of it, the strange jaggedness in the feeling of the reins. They snorted.

  Charley and the horses would all have liked to make a run for it, to leave this ominous, glittering corridor. But the road was too narrow to move faster than a walk.

  All of a sudden, the lead horses began to whinny and toss their necks. They strained against their bits. The swing and wheel horses joined in the confusion. Charley reacted, reining them back under control.

  Lee’s eyes scanned the hillside, his gun trained through the open window. The gun up top next to Charley sat chewing tobacco, eyes scanning as well.

  Not a second had passed when they heard the characteristic rattle of a diamond-backed rattlesnake. Charley saw it coiled on a rock near the road. That is what spooked the horses. She cracked the whip at the snake and it slithered off, away from the road. She relaxed. Just a rattler. The guns relaxed. At Charley’s urging the team moved on slowly.

  She heard a gunshot. She ducked. The horses frightened and unable to bolt in the narrow pass, came to a confused, disorganized halt.

  Up on the hillside, four masked outlaws were silhouetted against the bright sky, their rifles trained on the stagecoach.

  Charley looked up from the driver’s box. “Oh, shit,” she said.

  Charley and the hired gun leapt off the coach and hunched down behind the front wheel, guns drawn.

  Atop the hill, three of the bandits were raining down bullets. Sugarfoot was moving down the slope, covered by their gunfire. Inside the coach, Lee was kneeling on the floor, the barrel of his rifle resting on the window ledge, returning fire.

  The second gun started to move down the length of the coach to the cover of the larger rear wheel.

  Sugarfoot was now crouched behind a boulder, taking aim just as the second gun’s legs appeared through the undercarriage. His eyes followed the movement of the legs, and his finger squeezed the trigger. A shot rang out and the man fell to the ground. As he tried to defend himself under the coach, Sugarfoot fired a second shot, this time to the man’s head. He collapsed.

  “Put your hands up,” commanded Sugarfoot. “I know what you’re carrying.”

  Lee took careful aim out the window. There was a quick flash as he got a bead on the bandit and fired. The bullet nicked Sugarfoot’s shoulder. He recoiled, falling behind the rock. The three men up on the ridge were still firing down at them. The bullets ripping into the fine wood body of the Concord stagecoach.

  Charley, still crouched behind the front wheel, saw Lee jump out of the carriage.

  “Get in the coach and cover me,” Lee yelled.

  Without hesitation, she climbed inside and began firing back at the bandits on the hill.

  Lee, dodging from rock cover to rock cover, headed up the steep hillside.

  Sugarfoot jumped out from behind the boulder, gun trained on Lee as he fired—missed. Lee flung his body against the ground. In that same moment, Charley’s finger squeezed off a shot and her bullet hit Sugarfoot in the chest.

  On the ridge, the bandits saw him fall. Sensing the jig was up, they fled to their horses tied nearby. Lee picked off two of them as they were mounting up. The remaining rider galloped away, disappearing down the other side of the hill.

  Everything got very quiet.

  Charley climbed out of the coach. She walked up the hillside toward the man she had just shot. She stood for a moment staring down at the body and then knelt down next to him. She rolled him over and pulled off the sack from his face. Sugarfoot was staring up at the clear blue sky, the life draining out of him.

  “Oh, my God,” uttered Charley. “Edmund?”

  He attempted a feeble smile. “Guess you broke even with me…”

  Charley shook her head, astonished beyond belief, “I didn’t know.”

  Edmund emitted a short, painful laugh, blood spurting from his mouth.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She kept repeating it over and over. She was too stunned to even weep.

  “No hard feelings, my girl. We had—” He struggled to catch his breath. There was a long moment of stillness and then Charley heard that sound, that sound she had heard before, that rattle of the soul escaping.

  And he was gone. Her gloved hand closed Edmund’s eyes.

  A shadow fell across the body. Charley glanced up to see Lee looming over her.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he said as he bent down and picked up Sugarfoot’s rifle. “Help me load up these bastards so as we can collect the reward.”

  A sharp cold pain filled her craw. Now. Now was the moment.

  Charley stood up. Where the fuck was her gun? She felt as though she might vomit with rage and impotence. It was gone. The gun was gone. “I got to go to the horses.”

  Lee’s eyebrows went up at that. “Well hurry the hell up. I ain’t carrying three dead bodies myself.”

  At the coach she searched for her gun. Where the fuck did she drop it? Wait. The hired gun under the coach. She would grab his rifle. She couldn’t see it though. It must be underneath his body. She began to pull him out from under the coach. She was struggling at it when Lee came up behind her dragging Edmund’s limp body. He let Edmund’s feet drop to the ground. He bent down and helped Charley drag the guard’s body out. Lee rolled him over with his foot and picked up the rifle before Charley could get it.

  She stood there for a moment, dumbfounded. All she wanted was a fucking gun and Lee was standing there with three of them slung over his shoulder.

  He demanded that Charley help with the other two bodies that remained up on the hill. She had no choice but to comply.

  She’d had her moment and now
it was gone. All these guns and all these bodies and still she fucked it up. She didn’t even know if she had the will left to pull the trigger, even if she had a gun. She was numb.

  She helped Lee drag the remaining bodies down the hill. And together they hoisted all of them into the coach—he made Charley help with that as well.

  They started back to Sacramento; Edmund, piled together with the others, taking his last earthly ride.

  Lee rode shotgun next to Charley, swigging from a flask of whiskey. He offered the flask to her. She gave no response.

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “Don’t know why, but killin’ a man always gives me a powerful thirst. Always has.” He took another long swig.

  The sound of Lee’s voice was buzzing through her head. She was unable to speak…unable to make sense of anything. How was it possible that she had not known? Had not recognized? Edmund had seen through her disguise. And yet she had not even considered the possibility that he was also living an invented existence. A life of masks and sacks and games and fantasies. Her mind flew backwards to the gal in the saloon so many moons ago sitting on Edmund’s lap. Charley remembered that brief second that she had seen revealed, the gal’s tiny fragile truth within. Why had she not seen the truth in Edmund? Why had he not trusted her with his truth? If he had, he would still be alive. Enough. Enough. She could not, would not think of what she had just done…killed a man. A man whose moving flesh had found its way deep inside her.

  Enough. Her pain was looming beyond the breath. And now crawling somewhere deep inside the dark side of her brain she heard her mind speak. It was seductive. It told her to be glad that it was not Lee that she had killed. Not sad.

  Lee, whose smell and voice and eyes were here close…so close. They were so intertwined. The truth…she was never going to be able to kill him.

  If she could have gone somewhere, anywhere, to be beaten into stupid insensibility, she’d have galloped there directly. If a tree trunk had fallen to halt the coach and break them, she’d have lain on the road and muttered blessings to that tree trunk with each red drop of the river of blood that poured from her mouth.

  Her mind was slipping from her…floating like the wind that blew the dust from the graves of men.

  Twenty-Six

  The stagecoach was pulling up to the Sacramento Wells Fargo office. Lee was booze blind by now. “We got a hundred for each man comin’ to us in reward money, plus five for Sugarfoot,” he slurred. “What did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I figure, seein’ as how you’re an amateur and all, we ought to split it five hundred for me and two hundred for you. True, you pulled the trigger on Sugarfoot, but I flushed him out for you and put away them other two critters as well.”

  Charley stopped the coach and got down, moving away from Lee.

  Lee pursued it. “Hey, now, don’t git your rattle up. Fifty-fifty, hell, I don’t mind.”

  Charley turned, and for the first time, looked him in the eye. “I don’t want it. Take it all.”

  Lee stopped in his tracks, staring at Charley through whiskey-glazed eyes.

  “What the hell did you say your name was?”

  At that moment, Jim Birch came running out of the office. “Charley? What happened?”

  “Jim, you better get your guards to put the gold back in the safe. We got held up an hour out of town. Got four bodies to remove to the undertaker.”

  A few nosy townsfolk, seeing the bullet-riddled coach, were starting to gather around. Lee was looking at Charley, befuddled. His eyes sliding over her. The realization of her identity was dawning on him, through the liquor and the strangeness of the thought. But by the time he’d gathered his whiskey soaked wits enough to do anything about it, Charley was gone.

  Twenty-Seven

  Tonia woke up to the familiar clip-clop of Charley’s horse. Anna lay sleeping, undisturbed at her side. Tonia lifted herself onto her elbow and stared at her mother’s face. In the starlight that filtered through the window, she could see that her mother’s eyes were twitching under her eyelids…her habitual frown was gone and there was a faint smile on her face. She still has her dreams, thought Tonia.

  With mischievous anticipation she slid out from her side of the bed, stepping down with her bare feet. She began to tiptoe towards the front door, taking care to avoid the squeaky spots in the wooden floor.

  Outside, the summer night sky was brilliant with enormous stars. A sliver of a moon hung low overhead. What Tonia’s eyes focused on, however, was not that enchanted sky, but Charley’s little cabin.

  His door was open tonight, an unusual occurrence she thought; perhaps it was because of the muggy evening. The lantern light streamed out, cutting a sharp wedge of illumination between their two cabins. It was like a pathway directing her. She stepped out onto the dirt and headed towards Charley’s cabin. At his doorway she paused for just a moment before stepping into the rectangle of light outlined by the rough frame. She could see through into the bedroom.

  Charley was on his knees on the floor with his back to her, unaware of her presence. What was he doing? She took in the tousled hair and the broad back straining the coarse blue broadcloth shirt. She could hear a sound that might be weeping. Charley’s shoulders rose and fell. He was weeping.

  Tonia wanted to leave now, but she couldn’t seem to move. She stood there awkward…anxious, longing to be back in bed safe alongside her mother.

  Charley stood up and teetered for a moment. Tonia thought he was going to fall over. He must be drunk she thought.

  In a single gesture Charley pulled his shirt over his head. Puzzlement upon puzzlement: Tonia saw that his back and chest were wrapped round with wide cotton bands. An injury? Poor dear Charley—he must be in pain. That was why he was weeping.

  Charley began to unwind the cloths. They fell to the floor. In a moment he was finished. His back, naked and pale.

  Perhaps Tonia made a sound then, perhaps Charley felt a presence. She spun around and saw Tonia outlined in the doorway.

  Tonia’s breath stopped. What she saw at that moment…the shock of the revelation tore through her…disbelief, fear, disgust.

  “Charley,” she whispered. She turned and ran.

  Charley threw on her shirt and hurried after Tonia. In a few long steps she’d caught up with her and wrapped her arms around the girl. Tonia struggled and kicked.

  “Let me go. Let me go. You’re disgusting.”

  “Shhh,” said Charley, tightening her clutch around her.

  “Don’t touch me. Let me go.”

  “Be quiet, Tonia. It’s all right. It’s all right.”

  Tonia stopped struggling. She twisted around and looked up at Charley’s tear-sodden face. She had thought him such a handsome man with his etched and sun-darkened skin. When he sat at dusty high speed on the driver’s box, and the sweat-streaked horses responded to the crack of his whip, she caught her breath at the romance of it. She’d admired him so. Fatherless as she was, she was proud of the gift of his special, enviable friendship. The way he’d listen to her sagas of school and support her determined opinions and imaginings. His quiet, common-sense philosophies were so different from those of her drama-ridden mother’s. A woman. A woman? Tonia started to cry.

  Charley held the girl close until she quieted. She glanced over at the other cabin. Thank God. No sign they had woken Anna.

  “But Charley, why? I don’t understand why. How can you be a woman?” Tonia couldn’t look her in the eyes.

  There was nothing else for Charley to do. “Come inside and I’ll tell you why Tonia.” She turned back to the cabin.

  Tonia hesitated, then followed. She flashed on a memory of that first time years earlier when, holding onto her mother’s hand, she had followed Charley out of an old life and into a new one.

  Twenty-Eight

  At daw
n, the door opened and the two of them stepped out. Charley’s face was sagging with fatigue and sadness, but also relief. Tonia’s was glowing with exhilaration and new understanding. Tonia now knew as much as Charley could find the words to tell.

  “There’s a freedom, my girl, that comes from speaking one’s truth,” Charley said, as they stood in the doorway of the cabin. “I’ve been in and out of men’s britches so much that half the time I don’t know myself what I am anymore. And if truth be told, I don’t much care. But too much has passed between your mama and me as I am, for her to know. If she ever found out the truth about me, she would feel betrayed. It’s my secret that I trust in your hands now, Tonia.”

  “But she loves you.”

  “I know,” Charley nodded. “But think for a moment about what this would do to her. Finding out. No matter how your mother’s life has been turned upside down by this man or that, she’s always landed on her feet. But this is different. This would shame her.”

  Tonia thought about this for a moment. “Okay. I won’t say anything. I promise. It’ll be our secret. I love you Charley.”

  “Me too.”

  There was a long silence as they walked towards Anna’s cabin.

  “You know, if I had the chance I’d kill that bastard Lee Colton for you,” Tonia whispered. “After what he did to you, and Byron, and your baby. I hate him.”

  “I don’t even know if I could kill Lee if I had another chance. For years I’ve had dreams of killing him. It’s why I came out west. But I don’t know anymore.”

  The front door of Anna’s cabin creaked open, and she appeared, looking stern and rumpled with sleep.

  “Antonia. What are you doing?”

  Charley spoke up. “It’s all right, Anna. I was up early feeding the horses and Tonia just came out to help.”

  “Why are you home so soon? We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

  “There was a hold-up.”

  “Oh my God. Are you alright?”