The Whip

by Kondazian, Karen

  “My late husband. Old Italian gentleman. We lived in the Salinas Valley. He owned a small lettuce ranch. Oh God, Charley. I learned to hate lettuce. He made me work with him in the fields. He left me the ranch though. I sold it and made a little money. I lived in a boarding house for a while but despised it. All those gossipy old biddies.”

  “How the hell did you find me?”

  “I went to Sacramento. The man who bought your place said you had moved down to Watsonville. So I went to the Wells Fargo office here in town, and they gave me directions to your place. What about you? What happened to your eye?”

  “Horse kicked me in the head. Was drinking too much after you left. Didn’t have my wits about me. No matter though…can see just fine.”

  “Why’d you move down here? I thought you loved Sacramento.”

  “Wanted some easier weather. My sciatica was getting to me in the cold. So Jim, you remember Jim Birch? He’s gone now. Went down with a ship in a gale south of Cape Hatteras. Anyway…he suggested for me to move down here and do fewer runs. You know I’m not a young colt anymore.”

  “I’m so sorry about Jim. I liked him. Aren’t you lonely without all your friends though?”

  “Ben and Hank drop in whenever they’re down this way. I’m friends with the neighbors, the Harmon’s and their son, George. And I’m an Odd Fellow…a great group of men…we do a lot of good things for people. I like Watsonville. It’s simple here…and peaceful. Life has been good. Except for the fucking sciatica…I’ve thought of you often, Anna. Hoped life was good for you, too.”

  “I have a favor to ask you Charley. For old time’s sake. I was wondering…what you thought about me coming back. To live here. With you.”

  “Live with me? I didn’t ever think that you’d forgive me, Anna. I never thought I’d see you again.”

  “I’m not angry with you anymore. I understand now why you chose to live your life the way you did. In my travels, I’ve heard of other woman just like you. And I know you didn’t mean to hurt Tonia…that you loved her.” Anna took a little sip of her whiskey. “Life is empty, still. Sad. Thought maybe…thought it might be less so if I came back.”

  Charley stared into her glass. Strange how once in a while God gives you what you didn’t even know you needed. She hadn’t realized how she missed Anna until she saw her again.

  “I’d like that,” Charley said. “I’d like you to stay here with me. If that would make you happy. Whatever I can do. Thank-you for saying that you aren’t angry with me anymore. That means a lot to me…unpack your things Anna. Make yourself at home. Welcome back.”

  Anna continued to call her Charley. Charley continued to pass as a man. And at this point, it’s not like she could have gone back even if she had wanted to. What with lips and teeth stained brown by chewing tobacco, her raspy voice, leathery skin shaded under a battered hat, a particular swagger to her walk, and an ease with cigars, whiskey and cards—her act had long ago become truer to who she was than the truth of her anatomy. The other whips, her passengers, and the world at large, all treated one-eyed Charley as a man. No use in changing who she’d become. She’d tried that once.

  The balance between Charley and Anna had tipped, however. No longer was Anna a doe-eyed female pining for Charley’s affection. She had wandered, and all she had found was that she missed the comfort and security of her old friend Charley. She also knew that she didn’t want to die alone in a damn boarding house.

  So Charley and Anna slept together in the same big bed in the Watsonville cabin. They had talked about how if only Charley were a man, this relationship could have been one of Watsonville’s happiest marriages. The community already saw them as the perfect couple.

  One summer night, in that big bed after more than a few glasses of wine, they had tried to find some comfort in each other’s body. But it had come to no avail.

  They ended up roaring with laughter. They both agreed what an incredible joke life sometimes brings you in the end…not exactly what you planned. So even without the blessings of connubial bliss, the two friends made a vow that they would be there for each other.

  Friendship, true friendship is a curious dance. Why does one recognize and embrace one soul and yet not another. What is that? That something unspoken. Perhaps it is a long ago remembrance of another time, another place, those same familiar eyes shining out. Always we are searching for those recognizable eyes…so that we might at last be recognized ourselves.

  Forty

  Watsonville, California

  December 28, 1879

  The table had been covered with a red cloth and set for two. The interior of the small cabin glowed in the candlelight. Homemade curtains rippled from the dark recesses of the windows inward towards the illumination. Deliciousness hung in the air; something savory was cooking. Anna bent over the wood stove for a moment, adding fuel, the glow of the fire playing over her face.

  At sixty, one could still see in the secret places of that face, now covered over by shadows and hard lines, what a beauty she had been…a pressed rose now lost in the dusty pages of some nameless book.

  Anna heard the sound of slow hoof beats approaching the cabin. Out of habit, she reached up to smooth her hair, her dark eyes tightening, apprehensive. A few minutes later the door of the cabin opened and Charley entered. Anna put her hands, protected by two checkered cloths, around the rim of a steaming tureen of soup, and carried it from the stove to the table.

  Charley reached with difficulty to hang her coat and hat on their customary hooks beside the door. She paused, trying to catch her breath. Then she rinsed her hands and face in the basin of water, turned and limped toward the table and sat down.

  Anna watched her with concern. Not a word had been spoken.

  Charley brought the spoon to her mouth, blew on it to cool it, and then tried to sip the broth. She could not swallow…the liquid spewed from her mouth. The exertion brought on a racking cough. Pain clouded her eyes.

  “Please let me help you Charley. Let me go get the doctor.”

  Charley’s face was ashen, sweat beading down. When the cough subsided, she grunted no. She heaved herself up out of her chair. Anna watched as Charley moved in a slow painful shuffle toward their bedroom. She vanished into the room, closing the door behind her.

  Charley sat on the bed patting her pockets till she found matches and a cigar. She bit off the end, lit the cigar and took a deep draw…her exhalation became another wrenching cough.

  In the other room Anna sniffed the air, her eyes flickering with unease. She stood up and made her way to the closed door.

  “Charley? Are you alright? Let me help you.” She tried the knob. The door was bolted. “Damn it, answer me. You know what the doctor said. You’ve got to at least try to drink something. To keep up your strength.”

  “We all got to go sometime, Anna.” Her voice was raspy and winded.

  “This is not a joke. Why do you lock the door?”

  There was no reply.

  “Alright. I don’t care. Even if you don’t like it, I’m going across to the Harmon’s, so George can go and get Doctor Irelan. Just lie down on the bed and rest. I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

  A few minutes later when Charley opened the door, she saw that Anna was gone.

  She turned back, shutting the bedroom door again. She started to take another pull on the cigar but her lips had no strength. Her arm felt heavy holding it. The cigar fell from her fingers to the floor. She stared down at it, then put it out with her boot. A stabbing pain ran down her arm and her neck.

  She sat back down on the bed…her breathing still labored. She took from her pocket a small tin. Sliding open the top she removed several opium tablets from inside. It pained her but she managed to swallow them.

  Willing herself, she bent and pulled off her boots. She felt winded…like she had been kicked in the gut. With great e
xpense to her body, she slid down to the floor on her knees in front of the bed.

  Reaching under it, she pulled towards her the little trunk hidden there. She brushed a thick layer of dust off the top and stared at it for a moment, as though it were a stranger. She took a little key from her pocket, turned it in its lock and then raised the lid. Reaching in, she pulled out something small and fragile and red. She held it up in her hands. It was a tiny embroidered homespun dress…the dress of her child.

  She lifted the dress to her face, breathing from it as though it might give her life. She put it down on the floor alongside her, and reached back into the trunk: a tiny pair of crocheted shoes. With care, she placed them below the little red dress. Her shoulders rose and fell. Next: Byron’s tattered copy of Emerson’s Essays. And then lastly, Jonas’ coiled, dusty old whip.

  It meant something, she thought, that she’d held onto these souvenirs from a life that had long since ceased to be hers.

  She pulled herself up from the floor. She was feeling ensnared beneath her garments…as though she might smother within their bindings. She had to remove them and free herself from their grasp.

  She stripped off her shirt. She began to unwind the coarse cloths that bound her and they fell in loops onto the floor. In a moment she was finished.

  Fighting against the waves of nausea, she bent down to remove her pants and undergarments. Her breath was short and strained and made a hollow yellow sound in her chest.

  She was naked now. She felt liberated, weightless, euphoric.

  In the dark glow of the candlelight, she stood in front of a small silver framed mirror perched on her bureau. There she watched herself remove the last little bit of cover on her body…the black patch from her left eye, revealing an opaque, sightless orb.

  Next she took the mirror, her hands trembling, and moved it all around her body, every inch that she could see. She put the mirror back in its place.

  She took her hands and moved them to her waist and onto the hair of her groin. She touched the roughness of her face. Then her hands held her breasts. They were round and full and heavy.

  Unexpected tears came to her eyes.

  She lay down naked and spent on top of the blanket and looked up into the shadows of the air above. In the distance, she could hear her breath rattling. How strange it was. All that seemed to be left of this world now was breath.

  Then a sound came to her. A whistle. And fluttering…tiny flapping; orange against the blue.

  The candle next to the bed sputtered, trying to keep its flame. Warm blood escaped from her mouth.

  She sensed now that she was a stranger to that flesh beneath. Without fear, without surprise…the realization that in that moment she was about to die.

  She struggled fiercely—holding tight to that last breath. Why had it felt she’d been holding it in, holding everything in, her whole life…waiting for its release. And in this moment now, a path was opening, and she was still struggling to let it all go.

  There was a flash of blue sky. The whistle. She was reaching for a butterfly as it fluttered away. Her hand was pudgy. The light was brilliant and warm. Lee was there, and she turned and smiled at him.

  “Don’t move, Charlotte,” he whispered. “Hold still…” The butterfly hovered for an instant above her before spiraling down in a single smooth arc to her hand.

  “See it didn’t die,” whispered back Charlotte, after the butterfly floated off her finger towards the sky.

  Charley let go. She let it all go. She released that breath with a long rattling sigh, the light ebbing out of her eyes.

  In the end it was so quick. In the end, it was so easy.

  Epilogue

  Sacramento, California

  January 8, 1880

  “Fuck me—Parkie was a damn female? Don’t that fucking beat all,” Ben said. He was shit-face drunk.

  Ben and Hank were sitting at the bar with Joe, one of the other whips who had helped build Anna’s cabin. They were staring at the newspaper.

  “Go ahead. Keep reading Hank.”

  “Stop yelling in my ear Ben. Say’s here…‘rumors that in early years she loved not wisely, but too well, have been numerous and from the reports of those who saw her body, these rumors receive some color of truth. It is generally believed that she had been a mother’—”

  “A mother? What the fuck?” Ben screamed.

  “Goddamnit. Will you let me finish? ‘—and that from that event, dated her strange career.’ That’s the end of the article.”

  There was a moment of silence as they all took this information in.

  “Hell, I knew,” said Ben.

  “You’re so full of shit,” said Hank.

  “The hell I am. Hey, back me up on this, Joe.”

  Joe looked up from his drink. “You never said nothing to me.”

  “C’mon. Remember those gloves he always wore? I saw his hands once. Soft n’ smooth, they was. And now that I think of it…he never had no beard, neither.”

  “Says in the paper he died of cancer of the tongue,” said Hank. “Anna told me she thought his heart went.”

  “Tongue cancer huh? Probably from going against nature to hold it still,” said Ben.

  “She was shaped kinda funny,” said Joe.

  “That’s right,” said Ben. “I thought he was a morphodite.”

  “A what?”

  “A morphodite. Half man, half woman, kinda.”

  “Shit Ben,” said Hank. “I think you didn’t know nothing. If you did, it would have been all around town with your big mouth. Didn’t act like no female when he got kicked in the eye, did he?”

  “No. Guess not. Just took his medicine like a good ole boy.”

  There was a long pause as the three men mulled over the newspaper, drinking, shaking their heads.

  “Well, here’s to Six-Horse Charley Parkhurst, one of God’s great mysteries!” said Joe.

  “A damn fine reinsman,” said Hank.

  “A helluva guy,” said Ben. “Never did see him take a piss, though.”

  “May he rest in peace,” said Hank.

  “She. She,” said Joe.

  “I can’t fucking believe it. I can’t,” said Hank. “I know it’s true, but I never suspected a thing. Jehoshaphat! I camped out with Parkie once for over a week, and we slept on the same buffalo robe right along; wonder if Curly Bill’s been playin’ me the same way.”

  “Probably,” said Ben.

  They all laughed. Tears rolling down their drunken faces.

  “Hell. Here’s to you Parkie,” said Ben. “You one crazy son-of-a-bitch.”

  THE END

  Chalrey’s Grave

  Charley’s grave stands in

  the Pioneer Odd Fellows Cemetery

  in Watsonville, California.

  It reads…

  CHARLEY DARKEY PARKHURST

  1812 – 1879

  Noted Whip Of The Gold Rush Days

  Drove Stage Over Mt. Madonna in

  Early Days Of Valley. Last Run

  San Juan To Santa Cruz. Death In

  Cabin Near The 7 Mile House,

  Revealed “One Eyed Charlie,”

  A Woman. The First Woman To Vote

  In The U.S. Nov. 3, 1868

  Obituary

  “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth is not.”

  —Mark Twain

  Obituary for Charley Darkey Parkhurst

  The New York Times January 9, 1880.

  THIRTY YEARS IN DISGUISE.

  A NOTED OLD CALIFORNIAN STAGE-DRIVER DISCOVERED, AFTER DEATH, TO BE A WOMAN.

  Correspondence of the San Francisco Call

  Watsonville, Cal., Dec. 31.—There is hardly a city or town or haml
et of the Pacific coast that includes among its citizens a few of the gold-hunters of the early days where at least one person cannot be found who will remember Charley Parkhurst. For in the early days the gold-hunters were, by rapidly-succeeding gold discoveries, drawn back to San Francisco as a head-quarters, and again distributed from it to the most recently found diggings, and in those same early days Charley Parkhurst was a stage-driver on the more important routes leading out from the city. He was in his day one of the most dexterous and celebrated of the famous California drivers, ranking with Foss, Hank Monk, and George Gordon, and it was an honor to be striven for to occupy the spare end of the driver’s seat when the fearless Charley Parkhurst held the reins of a four or six in hand. California coaching had, and has even yet, one exciting adjunct that was wanting in all preceding coaching. It was when the organized bands of highwaymen waylaid the coaches, leaped to the leaders’ heads, and over leveled shot-guns, issued the grim command made so often that it has crystallized into the felonious formula of “Throw down the box.” Drivers of a phlegmatic temperament become accustomed to these interruptions, expertly reckon up the killing capacity of the gun-barrels leveled at them, accept the inevitable, throw down the treasure-box and drive on. Charley Parkhurst was high-strung, and this was one requirement of the driver of the early days he could never master. He drove for a while between Stockton and Mariposa, and once was stopped and had to cut away the treasure-box to get his coach and passengers clear. But he did it, even under the “drop” of the robbers’ fire-arms, with all ill-grace, and he defiantly told the highwaymen that he would “break even with them.” He was as good as his word, for, being subsequently stopped on a return trip from Mariposa to Stockton, he watched his opportunity, and contemporaneously, turned his wild mustangs and his wicked revolver loose, and brought everything through safe. That his shooting was to the mark was subsequently ascertained by the confession of “Sugarfoot,” a notorious highwayman, who, mortally wounded, found his way to a miner’s cabin in the hills, and in articulo mortis told how he had been shot by Charley Parkhurst, the famous driver, in a desperate attempt, with others, to stop his stage.