The Whip

by Kondazian, Karen

  She took a deep breath. “Anna. There’s something you need to know…about why Tonia went to Lee Colton’s…she went because of me.”

  Anna pulled back from Charley. “What?”

  “I’m not who you think I am. I’m so sorry. I don’t want you to feel I’ve betrayed you. But I’ve kept a secret from you, from everyone, all these years. I don’t know how to tell you this. I guess there’s no other way than to just tell you that I’m a woman.”

  There was a stunned silence.

  Anna threw back her head and laughed in disbelief. “What? Are you so drunk…what kind of trick are you playing? Why are you being so cruel? Why are you doing this to me?”

  “I’m sorry, Anna. I’m not being cruel. I’m not playing a trick.”

  Charley took off her shirt and began unwinding the long strips of cloth wrapped round her chest.

  At the sight of Charley’s breasts Anna’s mouth dropped in horror.

  Charley put her shirt back on and took another long slug of whiskey.

  She began to tell Anna everything. All of it. The whole story. It was like unwrapping her breasts from their tight bindings. In the beginning it hurt, but then, as the wrappings came off, she felt free, light, released. At last…Anna now knew.

  But her release lasted just a few breaths.

  “You bastard…I don’t even know what to call you.”

  Anna was beside herself. She grabbed the poker from the fire and held it up to Charley’s face. She was roaring: “Assassino. That’s who you are. It was you murdered my little girl. Not that Lee Colton.”

  “Anna. Forgive me.” Charley grabbed the iron tool from her hand. “This won’t put anything right. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “No. No you’re not. You were just thinking to protect yourself with your awful secret. Never thinking about how you’d influence a girl who worshipped and loved you with all her beautiful heart.”

  “I had no notion of what she’d do, Anna. Believe me. I wish it was me instead of Tonia got that bullet. Seems like my whole life people I love most have gotten killed because of me.”

  “People you love?” Anna screamed. “All this time you let me fall in love. Let me care for you. You should have told me. You made me such a fool.”

  “I’m the one’s a fool. You’re right. I should have told you. I shouldn’t have told Tonia. But I was afraid I would lose you both. You’d become my family. I needed you. Please forgive me. I’ve been a damn coward. Forgive me.” She sat down and she wept.

  Charley’s tears were all it took…to turn Anna’s rage to pity. Anna looked down at her. She watched Charley for a moment and then walked out the door.

  The morning after Charley’s truth-telling, Anna packed up her few belongings in her old cloth valise. By the time Charley woke up, she was gone.

  Thirty-Four

  With Anna gone, Charley’s life-long coat of loss acquired yet another layer. It was what she deserved she told herself. For all the bad choices she’d made. All the secrets she’d kept. Anna. Tonia. Edmund. Byron. The baby. Hadn’t she somehow brought it on them all? Lee as well.

  With a heavy heart, Charley turned to her horses. Animals could do you no wrong. Horses did not give a damn if you were man, woman, or anything in between. Animals valued a person, judged a person, loved a person by simple things. Her horses judged her by how hard or gentle she tugged at the bit in their mouths, how often she held out her palm so they could nibble a crisp carrot or an apple and how she spoke to them, groomed them and respected them. She took comfort in the beasts’ warmth and silence, the soft sound of their breathing as they slept…comfort she had discovered so long ago when she’d been taken in by Jonas. She’d been a girl then. My God. A girl with ribbons in her hair. She remembered the time she’d held the reins with such confidence, and then the wagon overturned, hurling her and Jonas to the ground. What was it he had said as they dusted themselves off? “Life’s going to upset your wagon. Maybe someone’s riding next to you can help you set it right. Maybe not.” Maybe not…Wasn’t that the truth.

  Tonia was dead and Anna had left and now Charley wasn’t sure how she’d set it right. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to set it right. We find a being who we somehow think can fill us, mend us, make us whole. And then they abandon us, or we them. Maybe loneliness was the answer. Maybe the key was accepting that.

  So Charley accepted it. And she did so by embracing her old pal, 40 Rod Whiskey. If she wasn’t on her coach, she was with her bottle. She slowly stopped spending time with her friends in the saloon, preferring instead the seclusion of her cabin and horses. She mustered up the energy to take care of the animals but that was about it.

  Thirty-Five

  Jim Birch found Charley passed out on her porch one afternoon. He had stopped by the cabin to see if she was okay as she had missed her last run. She had obviously tripped, in a drunken stupor no doubt, and was splayed out on the front steps. She began to wake up as he lifted and dragged her into the rocker on the porch.

  “Hey Jim,” she muttered. “What the hell you doing here?”

  “You realize you’ve missed your last run, right? And the one before that I got three complaints that you were drunk and weaving the coach all over creation. You alright?”

  “Oh shit…I forgot. Sorry Jim.”

  “You got to ease up on the drinking, Charley. I know it’s hard with Tonia and Anna gone.”

  “I’m fine Jim. I just forgot is all. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

  “No you won’t. You’re taking a few weeks off. Get sobered up and pull yourself together. Then you can come back to work.”

  “No, no. I don’t want to take any time off. ’Sides, Ben drinks all the time on the job…you don’t make him take time off.”

  “Ben might miss a run or two because he was drinking, but I’ve never had a complaint from a passenger about him. Look, Charley, we’ve known each other a long time. We’re good friends. But I’m the boss here. You’re taking the time until you get your drinking under control. I don’t want to have to fire you.”

  “C’mon Jim. You’re making a big thing out of this. I’m not drinking too much.”

  “I’m not here to argue with you, Charley. You used to be responsible. Nowadays, I can’t even trust you. Get your damn self together…you want some help getting inside?”

  “No. I don’t need your help.”

  “Suit yourself. Hope to see you in couple weeks.”

  He then got on his horse and left Charley sitting there.

  Thirty-Six

  Somewhere in the back of her mind Charley knew that Jim was right. But try as she may, she couldn’t let go of the whiskey.

  It was during her involuntary time off that a new horse came under her care, a mature, chestnut-colored gelding. He was an unpredictable and temperamental horse and therefore was about to be put down. So she took him in. The horse had been passed around so much that no one could pinpoint his exact history, but wherever he came from, Charley thought, people must’ve treated him rough. Tabbris was his name.

  Tabbris was a jittery gent who tossed his head and stomped his feet as if to show that he was always ready to bolt or rear. He had wild eyes…even when he seemed to be resting.

  One morning Charley entered Tabbris’ stall. She called out to the horse, as she always did with him before she entered, and held out an apple for him. He gobbled it from her hand. “Come on now, boy, we’re going give you some new shoes.”

  Tabbris snorted and stomped.

  “You’re going to like them,” she said. “Won’t be any trouble at all and afterward you’re going feel like a fine young colt again. Now don’t be nervous, boy…it don’t hurt at all.”

  Charley led the stubborn horse from his narrow confines and into a larger space cleared out for doctoring the horses. Tabbris seemed more restless and anxious than usual. But
Charley overlooked it and her good instincts. She had always tried to follow her instincts with her animals but age was beginning to creep up on her. Her patience was not at all like it used to be…and neither was her once agile body. It was stiffening and hurting as she leaned in toward the horse. She felt a damn ache in her knees and another down her back into her leg. An ache like wire twisting around bone. And as usual these days, her head was pounding from her days and nights drinking. She pulled a bottle of Paines Celery Compound out of her pocket and took a healthy swig. It seemed like she was also living on every snake oil remedy she could find.

  She sidestepped the large snorting animal, turned to the open window, looked up at the approaching rain clouds overhead and took a deep breath of crisp air. Out of nowhere a rough cough erupted from her chest. And another…and again. It left her breathless and surprised and dizzy. Shit…was it the beginning of old age or the influenza? Neither a good sign.

  Still coughing, she turned back to Tabbris and knelt down to begin shoeing him. All of a sudden she was overcome by the faintest memory of her first rain. What a strange sensation…her mind floating backwards so far…so fast. She smelled straw, dampness. Her jarring memory took only a tenth of a second but that was a tenth of a second too long. She shook her head, trying to get rid of the image. And then she glimpsed the horse turning but was not quick enough to dodge the explosive hoof coming toward her face. She did not hear her own scream. She felt an unbearable, searing, infinite pain. And then, darkness.

  Thirty-Seven

  Charley became aware of a familiar voice.

  “You think he’ll come out of it?” said Ben.

  “Sure was a nasty kick,” said Jim.

  Charley moaned. Her head was throbbing.

  The moon-faced Doc Jarvis came into focus. “Looks like our patient is coming around. Charley…you’ve had a bad accident. Your horse must have kicked you in the head. Somehow you managed to stumble across the road to your neighbors, and they found you and brought you here. I’ve cleaned you up and stitched you up and you’re going to be okay. Jim and Ben are here.”

  Charley’s hand went up to her left eye. She felt rough cloth.

  “That’s a bandage,” Doc Jarvis went on.

  Charley remembered another time in this room when she had removed bandages from her chest and Jarvis had repaired her rib. The woman had been revealed that day under the dirty flannel shirt. Today, nothing in his voice seemed to betray that secret.

  “You’re going to keep the bandage on until you’ve had a chance to heal.” His tone was even, yet somehow foreboding.

  Charley felt Jim’s hand on her shoulder.

  “You’ve lost the eye, Charley,” said Jarvis. “You’ll be able to see just fine from the one that’s left. When the healing is done you’d best wear a patch. You know you’re very lucky. You could have been killed.”

  “A patch,” Ben chimed in. “One-eyed Charley. That sounds pretty fine to me.”

  “As soon as you heal up,” Jim said, “you got your job waiting for you…on the terms that we spoke of a couple of weeks ago, of course. Looking forward to having you back. Now, we’ll help you get home. And we’ll all stop in to check on you and see if you need anything.”

  Charley closed her one good eye and felt herself bathed in darkness. She opened the eye and saw the hairs in Doc Jarvis’s nose. Closed it and saw nothing. Opened it and saw Ben’s tobacco-stained teeth. Her head was throbbing.

  “Got me a headache something awful,” she groaned. “Got any whiskey?”

  “Glad to oblige,” said Ben. He sidled over and lifted her back so she could rest against his arm. With his free hand he poured spirits from his flask into Charley’s mouth. How tender a man can be was what Charley thought as she grimaced and swallowed and then lay back on Jarvis’s doctoring table to rest.

  A good kick to the head, if you survive it, is bound to make you examine your life, one way or the other. You might think the loss of an eye would have sent Charley further down into her dark spiral. But oddly, it seemed to do the opposite.

  You get a choice when you hit the bottom. And half-blind Charley felt like she was now spread-eagled, face-down in manure. For a moment it was such a relief to be lying there…to not struggle anymore.

  But as she lay on her bed recovering, she kept hearing Jonas’ voice over and over. That under all the shit was something good…if you were willing to dig through it. What the hell good could come out of losing an eye? Losing a baby? What about all the other bad things that had happened? What was the fucking good in them? She thought about it—for a long time.

  She realized that her work as a whip had been good. Her freedom. Her friends. Even the ones that were gone…the time she had with them. All that still didn’t change the lonesomeness though.

  But then it came to her…just change your mind about it. About everything. Shit. That was it. What an idiot she was. It was that simple. Just decide to stop struggling and embrace it all as a gift. And in a single second, everything is different.

  She was feeling somehow restored, revived. All her senses were on fire. And now from atop the stagecoach there was plenty for Charley, even with one eye, to see. From her perch she could see California growing, changing as more and more people took root. Her attire now included a black patch. People, even the newspapers, called her One-eyed Charley. Cock-Eyed Charley. That Wicked Hoss Done You Charley. She had become famous in her own little world. She had made peace with her loneliness. What she saw and felt now, even more than before, was wind and speed and mastery.

  Thirty-Eight

  Three years later Charley made the decision to move to a steadier climate. The changes from season to season in Sacramento were aggravating her constant cough and rheumatism. She discussed her situation with Jim, and he suggested that she move down south to the Watsonville area and start taking fewer and shorter runs out of that office. So she sold her property at a fair price, packed her belongings and headed down to the Pajaro Valley. She purchased a twenty-six acre ranch with a two-room cabin, stable and apple orchard for six hundred dollars just outside of Watsonville, California, near the Seven Mile House stage stop.

  With much more time on her hands now, she became an avid reader of newspapers—The Watsonville Pajaronian—in particular.

  The world around her seemed to speed and twist and tumble in ways she could not fathom. In 1860, the year the United States was brawling and wrestling with itself over slavery issues, the Pony Express advertised for young riders but stated that only orphans need apply. The Pony Express made its first run to the west carrying 49 letters and 3 newspapers, delivered to Sacramento in tip top shape, all the way from St. Joseph, Missouri in the record speed of eleven days. The new hero of the day was young Tom Hamilton, who had weathered everything from hostile Indians on the prairies to storms on the mountains to make that first delivery.

  Hell, Charley thought, as she turned the page to more interesting news…if she was seventeen again, she could’ve done it in nine days.

  Charley was becoming political. Her usual routine, when she wasn’t working, was sitting in the saloon with her newspaper spread across the table, debating the issues. She loved to read aloud and have great violent arguments with anyone and everyone willing to disagree with her, particularly about the issue of equal rights for both Negroes and women.

  She even voted in the election of 1868 for General Grant. As she made her mark on the ballot, she wondered in passing, if she might be the first women to vote in these United States. Of course, as a man.

  Thirty-Nine

  Watsonville, California

  1876

  Charley was finishing her lunch when she heard someone coming up the porch steps of her cabin. She opened the front door to find an older woman standing there…she had sun baked skin and silver hair. Her eyes…something familiar about them. In that second, Charley looked down a
nd saw at the woman’s feet, a valise. Oh my God…the perpetual bestowing valise.

  “Anna?”

  “Of course it’s me, Charley. What the hell happened to your eye?” Anna peered into the cabin. “My God…your place looks like shit. And so do you. How long since you’ve eaten a decent meal? Are you going to let me in?”

  “I’m sorry, Anna. It’s just that you look…I mean it’s been how many years? What a shock to see you. It’s been a long time…I’m sorry…come in.” Charley grabbed the valise. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes, thank-you. I haven’t eaten since last night at the stagecoach stop.”

  Anna followed Charley inside. She took off her coat and hat.

  Charley poured a bowl of soup and placed it on the table with a tin of crackers. “Sit. Please. It’s not much.”

  Anna sat down and began to devour her soup. Charley watched her eat in silence. It was so hard to believe that after all this time it was Anna sitting in front of her. It felt like another one of her dreams.

  “You want something to drink?” Charley said. “All I got in the place is whiskey.”

  “Sure. Why not.”

  Charley poured both of them a glass.

  “Thank-you, Charley. Funny. Yes? You cooking for me.”

  Charley smiled.

  There was a long pause as they both sipped their whiskey.

  “I swore I’d never cook another meal after Silvio died,” Anna said.

  “Silvio?”