“I’m fine. Just tired. We’ll talk later?”
“Alright. Tonia, come inside and start getting ready for school.”
Tonia hugged Charley and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Following her mother inside, she turned and looked at Charley with a gaze full of affection as she closed the door behind her.
Twenty-Nine
The following morning, while Charley was grooming the horses, Tonia, carrying her school bag, sneaked unseen through the front door of Charley’s cabin. She rifled through the dresser drawer until she found the gun, the one she and Charley practiced with when her mother wasn’t around. Charley had said every girl should know how to protect herself.
She found it tucked away under a pile of much-darned socks. She checked it; it was loaded. Her heart knocking in her chest, she hid the gun in her bag and then with feigned innocence, walked out of the cabin towards the barn.
As she mounted her horse, Charley called out, “You riding to school with Dwayne today?”
“Yes. You know I always do.”
“Well, tell him to come over after to pick up an old saddle I want to give him.”
“Okay.”
“And have a good day at school.”
“I hate school.”
“That’s a bad attitude. Never hurt a girl to be able to read and write.” Charley winked at her. “Now git, girl. You’ll be late.”
“Bye. See you tonight.”
Charley slapped the horse on the rear, sending it and Tonia out of the barn.
Tonia rode not to her friend Dwayne’s or school that morning, but instead, to the Wells Fargo stagecoach office. She tied her horse to the hitching post out front. Inside was Jim Birch, sitting behind his desk drinking his morning tea.
“Tonia, why aren’t you at school?”
“I’m on my way there sir. But Charley asked me to stop by your office first and find out if Lee Colton is still in town and how to find him.”
“He sure is. For a few more days. We put him up at the old Clinton place.”
“Oh. I know where that is.”
“How ’bout that Uncle Charley of yours? Took down Sugarfoot in one shot!”
“Yes, he told me all about it. He wants to talk to Mr. Colton. I don’t know about what. He just said it was important that he caught up with him before he left town.”
“Glad to be of help. Now I have to get back to work, and you have to get to school young lady. Remind Charley I got a run for him in two days.”
“Thank-you Mr. Birch. See you soon.”
Thirty
Tonia rode up to the old Clinton place. It was just a small one-room shack on a clear and level bit of ground. She was nervous, but determined to see this adventure through. She slid down off her horse and tied it to a small cottonwood tree. She rummaged in the bag for the gun. This she held before her, making her way to the shack.
So much was going on inside of her. She was thrilled with herself. She was terrified. She wanted to pee. Just shoot the gun like Charley had taught her. That’s all she had to do. She would pretend she was on the stage with her mama. She would make Charley proud. She could imagine Charley’s expression later tonight; how very pleased she would be with her. After this they’d be together for life.
Her cheeks were flushed with excitement. Her whole body was quivering. On rubbery legs she walked to the door, took a breath, and tried to push it open. Stuck. It took great pushing and shoving, but she got the creaky door unstuck. No one was home.
The interior of the shack was dark and sparsely furnished and smelled of stale tobacco. Tonia felt a surge of disappointment, mixed with the faintest taste of relief. Her heart pounding, she went inside and looked around. This was the place where the man lived who’d hurt Charley so. And she, Tonia, who believed she possessed a courage beyond her years, was about to show her bravery and loyalty to Charley.
She took a chair and maneuvered it to face the half-closed door, then sat down on it, the heavy gun in her lap. She’d wait.
It must have been half the day before Lee rode up, pausing to observe the unfamiliar horse tied to the tree. Tonia hadn’t quite thought of that. Lee wheeled his horse, moving in toward the shack. The half-open front door creaked in the light breeze. He dismounted a short distance away, then pulled his pistol from its holster and cocked it.
Tonia had fallen asleep in the chair. A low melodious whistle sounded from outside. She stirred, awakening, her eyes opening, her hands closing around the gun.
Lee, back pressed against the outside wall of the shack to the side of the door, swung out his arm. The door banged open.
Tonia sprang up from the chair, bracing herself behind the gun. She spoke, her voice and body trembling. “Lee Colton?”
Lee stepped into the doorway.
Tonia took a breath and squeezed the trigger with all her might.
Lee heard the bullet hit the wall beside him. He fired several rounds into the dim interior. He heard the word “Mama.” Then the sound of a body falling to the floor.
He strode over to the body and turned it face up to get a look at her. “What the hell?” he muttered.
She was thoroughly dead. Who was this girl? Why had she been here? He played it out in his mind. She was in his cabin, waiting for him with a gun. She tried to shoot him. He’d done the right thing. Still: a young girl. He was bewildered and angry. He wondered what to do now. He stomped around the room for a few moments, avoiding looking at the girl’s face, her empty staring eyes.
He left the cabin, leaving her there on the floor where she’d fallen, and went back out to his horse. He’d go into town and tell the sheriff that young girls were now attacking people in their own homes.
A few hours later, Sheriff Halstead arrived at the old Clinton cabin with Lee in tow.
“Fuck,” he said. “It’s Charley’s little girl, Tonia. What the hell? You sure you don’t know her?”
Lee shook his head, “Never met her in my life.”
“You know Charley Parkhurst right? You just did that job together.”
Lee’s breath stopped. Parkhurst? He was right. Shit. That driver was Charlotte. He had been so liquored up. Charley’s girl? What the hell did that mean? Charlotte sent a girl to kill him? Was he going crazy? Was the booze getting to him?
“Hey.” The sheriff raised his voice trying to get Lee’s attention. “When are you planning on leaving town?”
“Uh…I got one more job for Jim Birch in two days. Then headin’ out to Frisco.”
“Well, you’re coming with me first. I’ve got some more questions for you. And plan on sticking around till we get this matter sorted out. Get your damn blanket off the bed. I’m gonna wrap her up and take her body back to her mama.”
Thirty-One
The next morning the birds were singing as usual. The sun was shining as usual. The sunlight streamed in through the cabin window onto Tonia’s body, dressed in white, laid out on the bed. Anna was kneeling next to her; her face expressionless as she plaited white ribbons into her dead daughter’s hair.
A short time later a small group gathered around the grave: Jim Birch, Ben, Hank and a few other whips and neighbors, Charley and Anna. The rough homemade wooden box containing Tonia’s body lay at the bottom of the freshly dug hole. The soft spring earth was heaped to one side, awaiting the moment to cover her.
Birch was speaking, “…there is no death. Only a change of worlds…”
Anna was on her knees sobbing. Over and over she sobbed, “Perché? Perché?”
The whips were awed by her grief. There weren’t many mothers in their midst. They thought of their own mothers: would they grieve like this at their death?
Charley’s eyes were frozen into an expression of rage…remorse…loss. She knew the “why”—if only she hadn’t told Tonia…if only she had closed the cabin door that nig
ht. If only, if only… .
It was time.
She broke away from the group, striding off toward her cabin. She grabbed Byron’s pistol from off the hooks on the wall, loaded it and headed to the corral. A time to every purpose, a time to be born, she was thinking. A time. A time. She saddled up the horse. A time to die. Hell, even the Good Book was telling her it was time.
Charley mounted her horse. As she passed the little group around the grave, Anna looked up for an instant, her eyes like great black stones. It won’t change anything she was probably thinking. You stupid man, it won’t change anything. Anna dropped her face back into her hands. Her body shook with anguish.
Charley glared at the grave, at the sky, at the road, at God. She gave the horse a hard slap of the reins.
This was that moment she had lived in her dream. But the horror in the dream had been that the trigger would not move, no matter how hard she pulled, no matter how she willed it, no matter how she begged God. The trigger was always frozen in place, and she would wake up in bed sweating, shaking. And now this moment felt like her dream. It was hard to know the difference. Just breathe. Breathe. She would move her finger against the curved metal of the trigger. She would pull with all her strength. This time the gun would fire. She would kill Lee. She would finish this nightmare forever.
Thirty-Two
Charley rode up to the Clinton place and saw a horse in a small corral. She saw a bit of wood smoke curling up from the stovepipe sticking out of the roof. He was home.
She paused for a moment at the tree where Tonia must have tied her horse. She rode in closer. Her hand gripped the butt of the pistol in her holster. He would probably kill her, she thought in passing. But it didn’t matter.
Just outside the shack she dismounted. The front door creaked open and Lee appeared. He was leaning against the door frame, gun dangling from his fingers, his veiled eyes glittering.
“Well, hello there. Shit. I wasn’t sure back then at the coach it was you Charlotte. Or should I say Char…lee? Looks like you took my name advice after all.”
Charley just stared at him.
“Guess I been sorta expecting you,” Lee said. “You’re lookin’ mighty tough and serious these days. Oh, and sorry about the girl…it was a mistake. Don’t know what the fuck she was doing. You send her out as your hired gun?”
He ambled out onto the porch, taking a few steps along the length of it, laughing. The laugh at this moment was forced, but he’d had plenty of time on his own to think how funny it was, the way things turned out—the girl and all. And Charlotte, like this. And the way his life became, and hers. You’d never have expected it. Not in a million years. He turned to look at her as she raised her gun and trained it on him.
Eyes cold, Charley cocked it.
Lee quietly cocked his gun as well, except his he left dangling at his side.
“Come on now, Charlotte,” he continued. “You can’t kill me. I’m the one took care of you. I raised you. I’m the one that loves you. I’m all you’ve got in the world. I’m your brother.”
And then he pursed his lips and whistled their private whistle and smiled the way he smiled—the fetching, lopsided way he used to reserve for her alone.
“You’re not my fucking brother,” Charley whispered.
Lee winced at the words. He wheeled, raising his gun toward her—but Charley was already aimed and ready.
She squeezed the trigger hitting Lee square in the chest. As Lee fell he got off a single wild shot, missing Charley entirely. She followed with her eyes and with her gun the trajectory of his falling body.
She fired again.
On Lee’s face was a look of utter surprise. He was already just about dead.
She stepped in close to Lee’s body. Her thoughts were wrapping themselves tight around her feelings. There was no joy or relief, no satisfaction, no sense of revenge now fulfilled. The time had come. She had done what she had to do for Tonia, for Anna, for Byron, for the baby. Done what she had to do for herself. And now it looked as if she had not been killed.
Lee was right, but not the way he’d meant it. The world was different for her now, without him. Better, maybe. Alone, but emptied of some curse that had followed her since a child.
It was so strange, she thought, these moments we pray for; they happen so quick and then they’re gone. “Just like that,” Charley said out loud.
She left Lee staring at the sun. Someone else would have to close his eyes.
Thirty-Three
Charley sat alone, hunched over a glass of 40 Rod Whiskey, a half empty bottle on the table next to her. The barkeep came over. He wiped the whiskey bottle and put a cork in it.
“Closing time again, my friend. Time to go home. Maybe you should take a night off.”
By now everyone in town had a different theory about what had happened. Someone had revenged Tonia and killed Lee Colton, a good for nothing gunslinger. Charley was the likely candidate. But maybe it had been Anna…maybe some other enemy of Lee’s out for revenge, or maybe even that drunk Ben. Folks still could not fathom though, what in the world Tonia had been doing at the Clinton place. With a gun no less. Some thought perhaps there was more to the coach robbery than they had been told. Colton and Charley kill a famous outlaw, and two days later Tonia is killed by Colton? It was all very confusing. But if it was Charley, nobody could blame him. After all, Tonia had been like Charley’s daughter, for Christ sake. Even the sheriff, with no proof, had eventually dropped the matter. Anybody would have done the same thing. No doubt about it.
Charley looked up at the barkeep. She nodded, staggered out and headed home.
She rode her horse up to her cabin. Dismounting, she slide down the side of the horse and crumpled into a heap on the ground. After a few minutes of lying there staring at the moonless sky, she managed to get herself up. She stumbled into the cabin heading straight for the bedroom—ignoring Anna, who was waiting at the table.
“Life is so simple for you, Charley. Isn’t it? So easy for a man. You go out and you kill somebody. You get away with it. And then you get drunk every night. I wish it was so simple for me.”
“Nothing simple about killing a man,” Charley said. She pulled a cigar out and tried to light it. “Can’t rightly say as to how I feel about it.” She got the cigar to light.
“That is all you ever say to me, ‘Can’t rightly say as to how I feel about it.’ Even with Tonia gone, you can’t say how you feel about anything. You can’t say how you feel about her? She’s dead, Charley. Rotting. Maybe someday God will tell me why my daughter did what she did and why he took her. Maybe in exchange for the pain, God will give me that gift. But now I need you to speak to me. I need you to help me. I feel like you’re not telling me something. Are you protecting me? Why…why did she do what she did?”
Charley’s inebriated body had to sit down. She sat in her old rocker and turned toward the fireplace, staring into the flames.
Anna stood up from the table. Her voice got softer. “Why won’t you look at me? Why won’t you speak? Tell me how we can live together, side by side for all this time, through everything that has happened and you won’t say anything to me. Tell me something. Anything.”
There was a long pause as Charley drew on her cigar.
Anna erupted, screaming, “Good. I’m leaving. Why would I stay? You don’t care about me enough to speak. You never loved me and you never loved Tonia. I don’t think you know how to love anybody.”
Charley threw her cigar into the fireplace and turned towards Anna. “You’re right. I don’t—I can’t love you Anna, not the way that you want. I care for you, and I need you, and that’s a kind of love, isn’t it? It’s the best I can do. Please don’t ask any more of me.”
“More? I get nothing from you Charley. I feel only empty holes. Forget about me. I have never even heard you speak once of love for Tonia. Or
love for God…what kind of man are you that you cannot even love God?”
Charley looked at Anna with her glazed, drunken eyes. “Please understand, it’s always been hard for me to put into words what I feel.”
Anna sat down in front of the fire next to Charley. “Well, try. I need your help,” she said.
“I can’t explain. I…fuck.” Charley pushed herself up out of the chair and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. She took a slug and sat back down. “I…I think a lot Anna…when I drive…”
She was struggling to get the words out.
“Have you…have you ever seen a slab of towering mountain rock…so powerful, so perfect. You have to lean back on something when you release the tears that snap into your eyes because you know that God has a face. The poppy growing out of the side of the rock. The waterfall that claws its way through the stone. That force…that face. I’ve come to believe everything that causes me awe, must be what you call God…So yes, Anna, I love God. And I do love Tonia.”
Anna stood up and walked to the window. There was a long moment before she spoke. “I need to leave in the morning.”
“Where will you be going?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t know why Tonia’s dead. I don’t know why you could never love me. All I know is there’s nothing for me here anymore.”
It was so quiet. Charley could hear the scratching of the branches against the cabin. A possum or some other creature ran across the roof. She could see Anna’s chest moving in and out, holding back her tears. She walked over to where Anna was standing. She reached out and touched her.
Anna started to sob. “Oh Charley…where is there to go in this world?”
“Nowhere,” Charley said. “Nowhere.” She had thought about these things. “Here is all we got.”
For a long while they both stood there, Charley’s arm protectively around Anna.
It was time to tell her the truth, Charley thought. It was the least she could do, she told herself, for the part she’d played in Tonia’s death. And how could she go on living with herself, if she allowed Anna to believe that she was unloved for the wrong reasons. Let her vent her fury. She has a right to know. Hell, whatever Anna might say or do to her, she deserved worse. For thinking of no one but herself all these years…putting all her thoughts into protecting her damn, worthless self.
The Whip Page 21