Sarah Todd

by Chloe Garner

  And yet, here she was, riding into town after sunset, intending to let Kayla fit her for a dress.

  A damned dress.

  Jimmy kicked up a lot of dust when he went through, that was for sure.

  Sarah had never been the going along type, but what alternative did she have, here?

  She thought of him standing in the firelight, guns out, deadly aim and fearless eyes, the feel of a rifle in her hands. Bolt action. The solid thunk of metal as a new round slotted into the chamber, and Jimmy Lawson tearing a hole in a line of bandits.

  It was what they were built for, the two of them.

  So she would wear a dress.

  She would wear the damned dress.

  ––—

  The door on the dress shop had been replaced with one not dissimilar to the one on Sarah’s house. She put her palm to the screen by the door and, unsurprised, heard the door latch open. Jimmy’s work, doubtless. She went in and looked around, finding the lamps and taking out her lighter to set them.

  The room was completely redone in heavy maroon cloth and white carpet.

  White carpet.

  Sarah looked at her boots for a moment then sighed and took them off. If she was going to impose on Kayla like this, she could at least respect the woman’s space.

  Silly as it was.

  Who in their right mind put in white carpet in a red sand desert? Bad enough on plank wood where it swept away easily enough.

  The mannequins were dressed in the front window, yellow and peach, and more dummies stood in a line against the back wall, cream-colored canvas pre-stuck with pins and bits of ribbon and fabric.

  Sarah heard a yelling disagreement in the street outside and shook her head again.

  Damned tavern.

  She could see where Jimmy was coming from, wanting it to be open, but it did nothing but cause problems.

  Authentic tavern, authentic problems.

  She didn’t look out the window, not interested in knowing who was fighting or why. These days, like as not, she wouldn’t know them anyway. Too many strangers. She needed to ship them all out, start over.

  But the homesteaders had enough work on their hands. Even adding in the active prospectors, there weren’t close to enough people in Lawrence to work even the one mine they had active, not to mention all of the ones that would be starting up in the next few weeks. They’d need overseers, men who could monitor and arrange for supply deliveries. Granger was going to have to employ an army, if Jimmy hit the scale she could see was possible.

  If that much absenta started rolling out of Lawrence.

  It made her shudder, thinking of it. All those men, all those opinions, all those drunk authentic problems in the dark hours of the night, outside the tavern.

  She wondered if the Lawsons would be enough, this time.

  There were the young men they’d hired after the fire, the ones she’d allowed herself to trust enough for specific jobs. Would Jimmy put guns in their hands and give them the power to shoot on sight? That’s what the Lawsons had always done. They were justice. Outside of Little Peter’s stupid, drunken encounter outside of the tavern, if a Lawson said you were in the wrong, you were in the wrong. That was the simple truth of it. Would she stand by and let strangers take on that power?

  She didn’t think she would.

  Damn Jimmy Lawson and making everything change too fast. Lawrence was going to grow, but it wasn’t going to grow natural. It was going to swell like a sweating, colicky cow. Too much, too fast, it would explode if Jimmy didn’t get a handle on it, and hell if she knew how he’d do it.

  She was running a ribbon between her fingers feeling more and more testy as she waited when she heard the gunshot outside.

  Cursing under her breath that someone was going to make her deal with that, too, tonight, she smashed her feet into her boots and hit the street running. Just a short distance down the sidewalk, she found Kayla standing over a man’s body.

  “I...” the woman started. It took Sarah just a couple of seconds to figure out what had happened.

  The tiny gun was out. Playing the noise back in her head, Sarah knew she should have known. It hadn’t fired like a proper gun.

  “He...” Kayla started again.

  “You done what you had to,” Sarah said as the gun fell to the wood planking. She stooped and picked it up, tucking it away and taking Kayla’s shoulders firmly in her hands.

  “I...” Kayla said again, staring down at the man’s body. Sarah could hear others coming. Everyone always wanted to be there when something interesting happened, but with guns, there was a short delay as everyone made sure there wasn’t a second shot.

  “You done what needed done,” Sarah said. “He came at you?”

  Kayla nodded mutely. Sarah nodded again.

  “You needed to get gone. To get away from him?”

  Kayla nodded again.

  “Didn’t hear you shout,” Sarah said.

  Kayla put her hand over her mouth, looking back at the wall behind her.

  “He get you up against the wall there?”

  There was another nod. The poor girl started shaking her open hands up and down at her sides.

  “You done what you had to,” Sarah said again. “Look at me.”

  Wide, desperate eyes found her face. Sarah swallowed, taking her moment.

  “What no one says, what no one tells you, is that it ain’t the pulling the trigger that’s hard. It’s living with it. You got me?”

  The eyes darted to the side, looking at nothing, as she listened to the words again. She nodded.

  “You want me to own this?” Sarah asked. Kayla looked at her sharply and Sarah shrugged. “Will if you want. No one will ask questions. Just you and me to know was you who done what needed.”

  There was a quick nod, and Sarah eased her own gun out of its holster, standing away from Kayla with a relaxed posture. The first of the strange young men arrived and Sarah motioned at him with her jaw.

  “Run fetch Doc,” she said. The man hesitated, and Sarah tipped her head to the side and raised an eyebrow. He turned on his heel and ran the other direction. More men arrived, and Sarah went to lean against the wall, dismantling her gun and reassembling it once then putting it back away. She looked up at the crowd, finding a face that was vaguely familiar.

  “Jimmy has a crowd of boys for undertaking,” she said. The man’s eyes widened as the men around him took a step away. She waited and he nodded. “Better go get them.”

  She waited another minute then stood. The crowd was big enough. She motioned at the body with her foot.

  “This is what you got comin’ if you take the wrong path with women in Lawrence,” she said. “True for all of ‘em. What you should know, though, is that Lawson women are, in particular, off limits. No pawing, no leering, best if you just tip your hat and keep moving. Jimmy ain’t nearly so forgiving as I am on that.” She held up an arm. “This is Kayla Lawson. Know her, and make sure your dumb friends know her. She’s gonna be around a lot.”

  She looked at Kayla, who was still pale as night light, then jerked her head toward the dress shop.

  “Go on.”

  Kayla swallowed and straightened herself, then with dignity that impressed Sarah, made her way inside.

  Doc arrived a few minutes later, looking at the body for just a moment.

  “You don’t need me to tell you he’s dead,” the man said to Sarah.

  “He came at Kayla with intents,” Sarah said. Doc nodded.

  “That’s a bad plan.”

  Sarah nodded and looked at the accumulated crowd.

  “Ain’t no one gonna cry for you, you end up like this. Night, Doc.”

  “Night, Sarah,” Doc answered. She touched her hat and left.

  A fair object lesson. Could have gone worse. Now it just depended on how Kayla was coping.

  She went into the dress shop and closed the door.

  Kayla was stripping one of the dummies of its bits and pieces of cloth.
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  “I was thinking tangerine,” Kayla said.

  “You okay, girl?” Sarah asked. Kayla looked over at her.

  “You aren’t getting out of this that easily,” she answered.

  “Kayla,” Sarah said, taking the gun out of her pocket and holding it out to her. Kayla looked at it for a moment, then game and took it, tucking it away quickly and regarding Sarah with a ferocity that surprised her.

  “This is what I do. I do it well, and I do it without thinking. Let me do it.”

  Sarah shrugged.

  “You try to put me in some of that damned chiffon lace in the front window, you’re gonna have to hog-tie me to get me into it.”

  “There’s no such thing as chiffon lace,” Kayla answered. “And you’ll wear what I make.”

  Sarah blinked.

  Twice.

  “Come again?”

  Kayla wrestled a dummy into the middle of the shop and pulled a curtain behind the two dummies in the window, creating a closed, quiet-feeling space surrounded by heavy cloth.

  “I said you’ll wear it. Because I’m the best there is, outside of my own mother, and you want the best. Not what you want.”

  “Damn. Get you in your own space, and you turn into an entirely new kind,” Sarah said, then held up a finger. “But you ain’t gonna shove me into something provincial and folksy just ‘cause you think it’s clever.”

  “Sarah, I only make dresses in leading-edge designs. I’m not doing a peasant skirt and a blouse. I’m planning on the highest fashion from Intec.”

  “The dress in the window is yella,” Sarah said. Kayla put her hands on her ribs, inverted with the thumbs forward and the fingers back, and looked at her for a long moment.

  “Take off your jacket.”

  “I ain’t a cotton candy kinda woman,” Sarah said, going to put the jacket on a peg on the wall and leaving her boots again.

  “Femininity goes in cycles, Mama always says,” Kayla said, winding a measuring tape around Sarah’s waist. “There are tools for doing this digitally, but Mama always does it by hand. She says you learn a lot more about a figure with your hands than any box could ever tell you.”

  Sarah watched, bemused, as Kayla took more measurements.

  “Mama has one black pantsuit that she keeps for the dark days, but it isn’t always proper for a powerful woman to try to hide. Sometimes, it’s much better for her to demonstrate that she knows she’s a woman, and that doesn’t frighten her at all.”

  “I ain’t scared of pink, if that’s what you’re implyin,” Sarah said.

  “Just of wearing it,” Kayla said. Sarah jerked her head back and Kayla grinned up at her from where she was kneeling. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “I ain’t scared of nothin’,” Sarah said.

  “That’s a lie,” Kayla said. Damn.

  “I don’t like pink,” Sarah said.

  “And you shouldn’t,” Kayla said. “Not with your hair and your skin tone. Tangerine, though...”

  Sarah gritted her teeth.

  “You make a joke out of me...”

  Kayla stood.

  “Sarah, you insult me. Of all the things you’ve said to me, that and only that is the only thing you’ve said that’s insulting. Yeah, I’m not that smart, and I’m not tough, and I surely don’t belong out here. Maybe someday I will, and maybe it will be because I change and maybe it will be because out here changes, but I don’t belong. Fine. But I would never, ever use a dress as an opportunity to make someone else feel out of place, not to mention uncomfortable or like the butt of a joke. I am a professional. And I take this seriously.”

  Sarah wanted to point out that the woman made floaty, pastel pastries of garments in a place where people died in sandstorms and floods every year, but she could see that it would make things worse. She kept her tongue. Kayla nodded and returned to her work.

  “Your wedding dress is going to be beautiful,” she said. Sarah wrinkled her nose.

  “Ain’t no part of that I want,” she said and Kayla grinned at her.

  “I talked to some of the women. I figure I’m going to be making a wedding dress for someone, at some point, so I may as well get a feel for them. I like the Lawrence traditions.”

  Sarah wrinkled her nose again.

  There weren’t many weddings in Lawrence, and there wasn’t that much excess going around to celebrate them the way they did on the coasts, but there were still plenty of traditions that had evolved over the years, ones that were distinctive to Lawrence, as far as Sarah could tell. One of them was the simple linen dress ornamented with lavender - a nod to the hobflowers and the first of many issues Sarah had with the idea of wearing one. As families were able, they would send away for larger numbers of colored fabrics and ribbons, all in hobflower colors, creating a dress that was largely cream-and-lavender, but that was eccentrically highlighted in bright snatches of color, like someone had flicked paint on the bride. Sarah had seen one lavish gown that had had buttons all the way down the back in a random array of magenta, blue, purple, yellow, and on.

  Tangerine.

  “I ain’t fixin’ to marry,” Sarah said.

  Kayla shrugged.

  “You weren’t planning on wearing a tangerine dress until three hours ago, either.”

  “Remind me why I am, now,” Sarah said wryly and Kayla stood, taking a step back and looking at her with a critical eye.

  “I need a brush.”

  “No,” Sarah said. Kayla stepped away quickly and returned with a wire brush, pushing Sarah in front of a full-length mirror and pulling her hair up and away from her face.

  “You really are a beautiful woman,” Kayla said. “And you’re doing this because you’re making a statement. A loud statement. That you want Jimmy to think twice before he goes through with marrying Rhoda.”

  Sarah pushed Kayla’s hands away.

  “It’s too late,” she said. “He’s done what’s done, and I ain’t gonna undo it.”

  Kayla was watching her in the mirror.

  “You believe that?”

  Sarah raised an eyebrow.

  “He proposed, didn’t he?” Kayla asked.

  “And she said yes,” Sarah answered. Kayla shook her head.

  “No. To you.”

  Sarah didn’t answer, and Kayla nodded.

  “And you said no.”

  “It ain’t just weddin’ dresses I ain’t made for.”

  “I’m not letting you back out,” Kayla said. “You’re going to fight for him, or you’ll regret it the rest of your life.”

  “Not so different from anything else.”

  “Wait. You wish you’d gone with them?” Kayla asked.

  “I ain’t having this conversation with you,” Sarah said.

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  Kayla’s persistent hands were pulling Sarah’s hair up again, and Sarah let her do it. All this time, and she was letting herself be bullied by this wisp of a woman. It was astonishing, but there it was.

  Kayla smiled.

  “He’s not going to know what to think.”

  “Nor am I,” Sarah said. There was a sparkle from Kayla.

  “Go. Sleep. Be here by sunup.”

  “I ain’t just leavin’ you...” Sarah started, but Kayla was already digging through a trunk.

  “I’m not going to let you sit here and watch me work,” Kayla said. “It would drive both of us crazy. I’ll be done by dawn, and we’ll get you ready for the auction.

  The auction. Sarah had almost forgotten.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  Kayla stood suddenly, as if she’d just remembered what had happened out in the street just a few minutes earlier.

  “Yeah,” she said, slowly resuming her search through the trunk. “I’m working. I’m okay.”

  “I don’t like leaving you on your own.”

  “The door locks,” Kayla said. “No one is coming in here. I’ll be fine.”

  “What about Wade?” Sara
h asked.

  “I told him I was coming to work,” Kayla said. “Go. Everything is fine.”

  Sarah frowned at her, then shook her head and went out to find Gremlin.

  The ride home was quiet, just the sound of the desert breeze in the hobflowers.

  ––—

  An unsettled night’s sleep. Sarah wasn’t used to them, and it bothered her that she found it harder to sleep because of the dress than because of the gunfight. The gunfight actually felt like a return to normal, compared to everything.

  She was up before the sun, sweeping the new accumulation of sand out of the kitchen, making herself tea, and then seeing to Dog and Gremlin. The hobflowers had reached full bloom outside, a sea of foreign color encroaching right up to her porch on all sides, no sand, hardly even any green to be seen through the dense blooms. Clouds of insects wandered happily from flower to flower in the early morning cool, warm enough to keep their little bodies moving, but cool enough to not dry them out. Sarah didn’t know where they came from or where they went, but this was an hour dedicated to the proliferation of both species - flower and bug.

  As the sky pinked, she threw a saddle over Gremlin and rode into town. She was reluctant.

  No going back from here. They’d sell the claims to the highest bidder, and they’d open Lawrence up to the fates of the wider world. No more would it just be Lawrence natives, or even Lawrence natives and the newest crop of prospecting hopefuls. No, Lawrence would be a business, ruled by money far away, money that would glide in and out on rail lines, riding on train cars that actually showed up when they were supposed to.

  And then the dress.

  She let herself into Kayla’s shop, stopping dead in the doorway.

  Kayla was elsewhere in the room, clinking things and humming to herself. The sunlight splashed into the demure space, bright yellow and radiant, bouncing off of the dress with a defiant glow. Sarah hated it and knew it was perfect.

  Tangerine. It was still a pastel, but in a tangy sort of orange flavor that defied the passivity of most pastels. It had lines that were, themselves, defiant, curvy and fixed in a shape that was unrepentantly feminine.

  “Take your boots off,” Kayla called.

  “You did this in the last six hours?” Sarah asked, toeing off her boots and dropping them. She let the door fall closed.