by D. L. Snow
I decided to remove my clothes, or at least my heavy skirt, blouse, petticoats, stockings and corset because, well, what if it didn’t work? What if I didn’t get back? From my morning’s work, I knew how heavy wet laundry was and I suspected if these clothes got wet, there was no way I was getting out of the water again.
I paused as I undid my blouse. Then again, if it didn’t work, maybe I didn’t want to get out of the water. Maybe I was meant to die and this was some in-between place for lost souls.
No. With a brisk shake of my head, I continued to disrobe. This would work. If there was a way to get here, there had to be a way to get back.
Once I was standing in only my one piece ‘bloomers’ – as Camille called them - and camisole, I moved to the edge of the pond and closed my eyes. Curling my toes around the cold wet pebbles, I took a deep, shuddering breath, and said aloud, “Here goes,” and dove in. The frigid water took my breath away and my automatic response was to gasp resulting in a lungful of icy water. The experience was horrifically familiar; the burning, crushing sensation in my lungs, the sirens in my head, the panic and pain. But it was like I was experiencing it in fast forward instead of slow motion.
Did that mean it was working? Oh, please, God!
My instincts told me to flail and head for the surface, but I refused to give in. Light and shadows swirled around me in a vortex of confusion until a ray of light hit my eyes, nearly blinding me. Something beyond the surface of the water moved in front of the light – a shadow, the outline of a face. It was like I was looking at a reverse reflection of myself, distorted strangely by the water. I reached for my reflection and my hand broke through the surface.
Another hand grasped mine and in one great heave, I was pulled from the water with such force that I toppled whatever solid mass had pulled me. Sputtering and coughing, I shook the water out of my eyes.
Lying beneath me was none other than Kyle Copeland, in the flesh!
“It’s you!” I cried grasping the sides of his face, afraid he’d disappear into thin air if I didn’t hold on. His skin was wonderfully warm beneath my hands and I stroked his stubble-covered jaw. Up close I realized his brown eyes were flecked with green and they currently shone with an unholy light.
“I know you,” he whispered, taking in a deep breath as if breathing in my scent.
“Yes, you do.” I smiled in relief. “I knew it would work. I knew you’d come.” His jaw flexed beneath my touch as if he was gritting his teeth. Without thinking about what I was doing, I explored the contours of his face with my cold fingertips. “You’re here. You’re real.” I had a bizarre urge to nestle myself beneath his chin, maybe because I was already pressed so intimately against him, chest to chest, with his warm hands spanning the small of my back.
He grunted and slowly eased himself out from under me. Grabbing a hat that lay discarded on the ground beside him, he stood and settled the hat onto his head. He extended his hand to help me to my feet. “There are easier ways to capture the attention of a man, you know.”
His gaze raked over the length of my body and I quivered in response. When I looked down and realized that my soaked under things left me standing there virtually naked, I shrieked and crossed my arms over my breasts while turning my back to him.
“I-I don’t understand.” In desperation, I looked around.
Oh no! No, no, no!
There was the smell of smoke and the sound of a train’s whistle from down in the valley. There was the pond and by the side of the pond was a neatly folded pile of clothes.
I barely noticed when Kyle placed his jacket around my shoulders, although I hugged it tight around me.
“You’re the girl who chased me on the street the other day, aren’t you?”
I shook my head refusing to believe I was still here. “But, you’re Kyle Copeland.” My voice caught in my throat.
“No. Never heard of him. I’m Morgan Hawes and whatever it is you’re selling, Sweetheart, I’m not buying.”
*****
After covering for my unexplained absence, Camille didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day except to give me instructions as we completed chore after chore. It couldn’t have been later than nine o’clock when we crawled into our narrow cot and I was so bone tired, from the work and my near drowning in the pond, I didn’t care that I was pressed back to back against Camille in the small bed.
I was just starting to drift off when Camille asked quietly, “You were wearing someone’s jacket today. Whose was it?”
After a short silence, I said, “Mr. Hawes’.”
“Is he your…suitor?”
“No.”
I thought Camille was asleep when suddenly she asked, “Kitty says you’re running from someone. Are you?”
I took a deep breath and sighed. “No. I’m not.” After a bit of silence I said, “I’m just trying to get home.”
“Where’s home?”
“It’s…I don’t know.”
“How can you not know where your home is?”
I wanted to confide in Camille. The temptation to blurt everything out was so strong that I had to grit my teeth to keep it all inside. What could I say? What could I tell Camille to make her believe me? My home was in another time? The ghost of Kyle Copeland, or Morgan Hawes, or whoever-the-hell he was, had brought me here by pulling me into a lake that no longer existed?
I couldn’t do that. It would serve only one purpose, to prove to Camille that I was as mad or ‘touched’ as they all thought I was.
“It’s complicated,” I whispered.
After another short silence, Camille asked, “Do you have someone there waiting for you? At home, I mean?”
“No,” I whispered.
The cot shifted as Camille turned to face me. “If you ain’t running from no one and you don’t know where you’re from and you got no one there waiting for you, then why are you so fixed on getting home?”
Her question felt like a blow to the stomach, the kind that knocks the air right out of you. It kept me awake for hours after Camille’s breathing deepened into a soft snore. Who was at home waiting for me? I had no family left, no friends – my mother had kept me too busy and too sheltered for me to develop close relationships with anyone other than those who were paid to be near me, my tutors, the band, Amber.
“People are like moths,” I remembered her saying. “They’re attracted to light, to its brilliance. But let me ask you, what has a moth ever done for the light except get in its way?”
I’d always disagreed with her philosophy and yet I still lived by it. Perhaps that’s why there was no man waiting for me at home. After a short, unsuccessful affair with my former bass player the year after my mom died, I’d pretty much kept to myself. So who did that leave? Who truly cared whether I went back or not?
The sad truth was, no one cared. No one, except me.
Chapter 6
Every morning when I woke up there would be a brief moment when I would think I was in the guest room in my grandmother’s house. But then Camille would shift in the small cot beside me, or she’d mutter in her sleep and I’d remember where I was. With every day that passed, I became more and more convinced this wasn’t a dream, that however impossible, 1899 was my new reality and I had little choice but to accept it. Yet I couldn’t. I didn’t care there was no one waiting for me at home. I had to get home. I wanted my life back, my real life.
One morning, the feeling of being in my own bed was stronger than ever, perhaps it was the way Camille gently patted my cheek to wake me. My mother used to do that when I young and I’d always loved it.
“It’s time to get up, sleepy head. You don’t want to be late for church.”
The last time I’d been to church was…well, my grandmother’s funeral and before that? My mother’s. Other than that, I don’t remember the last time I’d been but I didn’t argue as I followed the little procession - headed by Kitty Sullivan - to the Methodist Church two blocks away. Cap’n and another man I didn�
��t know trailed behind her, followed by the rest of the hotel staff. As the newest member of the entourage, I brought up the rear and ended up sitting in the hard wooden pew directly behind Kitty who wore a rather large, feathered hat.
Though it had been a while, the church service was similar to any other service I’d ever attended, with prayers and hymns and the droning on and on amongst coughs and snoring. The only item of interest occurred when the collection plate was passed around. As I had no money, I was about to simply pass it off, when something caught my eye. The plate was mostly filled with nickels and pennies and the odd silver dollar. But lying right on top was something that looked suspiciously like a one-dollar bill except it had a two where the one should be and George Washington’s head was smaller. Across the top and bottom were the words, Silver Certificate and right above old Georgie’s head were the words, Two Silver Dollars.
I picked up the bill - I couldn’t help it - and turned it over. Before I could get a good look, it was snatched from my fingers and the girl sitting beside me hissed, “Don’t even think about it.” As if I was going to steal it!
The collection finished and the preacher began his sermon, extolling the evils of drink and gambling. I tuned out the rest of the service. I had more pressing problems.
Namely, how was I going to get home? I had thought that Kyle Copeland, or Morgan Emerson Hawes as he was called here, was the key. But now I wasn’t so sure.
The man in question was sitting at the front of the church beside an elderly couple. I saw him between two of the feathers on Kitty’s hat. He was wearing a black suit and his thick hair was combed back from his forehead. When we stood to sing the final hymn, I got an even better view of him as, once standing, he was taller than those around him.
He was an enigma. Was it a coincidence that he appeared to be about nine or ten years older than the boy I’d seen in the basketball photo? Had he come here himself, ten years ago, as Kyle Copeland, and then, for whatever reason, forgotten who he really was and how he’d come to be here? Or, was he playing dumb. I considered the possibility that he was pretending not to know me but somehow it didn’t ring true.
Suddenly the words of the song the congregation was singing sunk in. It wasn’t a hymn I was familiar with but after three verses, I could sing the strangely appropriate chorus with fluency.
When we get home we’ll shout and sing,
The praises of our Redeemer and King,
And make the heavenly arches ring,
With the songs of home, sweet home.
The song came to an end and the congregation began to file out starting with the front pews. When it was Kitty’s turn to exit her pew, she yanked on my arm and forced me along with her.
“Ouch!”
“Mind yourself, Girlie. You and I need to have a little chat when we get back to the hotel.”
On the way out we shook hands with the preacher. “Mrs. Sullivan,” he said. “And how is Mr. Sullivan?”
“Same as ever, Reverend Hamm. Still abed. But he asked me to send his regards and made me promise to commit your sermon to memory so I might recite it for him myself this evening.”
“How very good of you.”
“I do try.” Kitty shoveled the shit like a true pro. From one shit-shoveler to the next, I should know. I tuned out her long-winded explanation of Mr. Sullivan’s various ailments while I craned my neck hoping to catch another glimpse of Morgan Hawes, but Kitty kept a firm grip on my upper arm so my movement was limited.
For the walk home, Kitty linked her arm though mine as if we were best buddies. I had no idea what I’d done to deserve such favor, or such punishment, but it took no more than a moment inside the saloon to find out.
“You’ve been holding out on me, Girlie.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She came forward and pinched the underside of my arm. “Oh, I think you do. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Now tell me the truth, who are you really?”
Oh my God! She knew. Somehow Kitty Sullivan knew. How? Had she come from the future herself? Maybe there was something weird about this town, maybe it was caught in some time warp that…
“Stop your stuttering, Child.”
I hadn’t even realized I’d been stuttering.
“Now, spit it out. Why didn’t you tell me the truth? Valuable time’s been wasted.”
“I didn’t think you’d believe me.”
“Of course I would have.”
“It’s too fantastical.”
“Fantastical? No, it’s wonderful. Ellie was the girl before you. She worked for me for almost a year. Really brought in the customers until she flew off into the wild blue yonder.”
“She went home? You know how I can get home?”
“Home! A girl of your talents? Now why would I send you home?”
“I need to get back. I have a life there. People are worried about me…” I trailed off, because I wasn’t sure if it was true.
As if reading my mind, she said, “What do you have to go back to? Go back and you’d be giving up your freedom for sure. Stay right here and you can be famous. Leave it to me. I’ll help you.”
“Famous?”
“With a voice like yours,” She shucked me playfully on the chin, “you can do anything you want. Anything. You’ll have an income of your own, you’ll wear the finest clothes, stay in our finest room. We’ll tell everyone you’re my niece, Jo-Jo Sullivan – that’ll lend you some credibility. We’ll put a big sign outside in bright colors advertising your show. No wait, you won’t perform here, we’ll set you up at the Opera House, next Friday, which is salary day.”
I shook my head and started to back away. “Oh, no.”
“No? What do you mean no?”
“I mean what you’re asking is out of the question.”
“Out of the question? You’ve got the voice of an angel. It would be a crime to keep it to yourself.”
I’d heard that argument before, from Amber among others. It didn’t make a bit of difference. My decision had been made five years ago when I woke up in the hospital to find out that I’d killed the one and only person who truly cared about me.
*****
What I did not count on was Kitty’s relentlessness. She was a little devil sitting on my shoulder, constantly needling me to change my mind. She helped her cause along by doubling my workload, reminding me that all I had to do was agree to her terms and my life of drudgery would end. The problem was…deep down inside I wanted the same thing. Barely a night had gone by that I hadn’t dreamt of returning to the stage. But the deciding factor was not my passion and neither was it Kitty’s relentlessness. The deciding factor came down to something Kitty had said, something about freedom.
As things stood, I didn’t have a minute to myself to think, let alone the time or freedom I needed to figure out how to get home. It seemed to me that Kitty was presenting me with an opportunity I couldn’t refuse. Though I vowed I’d never perform again in the twenty-first century, nineteenth century necessity begged that I break that vow. My laundry days were over and my performing days were about to begin.
Chapter 7
I was standing on a stool in front of a full length mirror at the dressmaker’s shop and stared in fascination at my reflection. My silver blond hair was piled loosely on top of my head with soft tendrils hanging down my neck. The corset I wore beneath my dress was extra tight giving me a shape that was both unnatural and strangely becoming. The dress itself was made of pure white gauze and was unlike anything I’d seen on the few women who wandered the streets of Bandit Creek. It wrapped around me in tight swirls with a bodice that was cut so low the swells of my breasts were clearly visible through the lace. The material hugged my ankles– nothing like the loose skirts I was becoming familiar with – it was completely impractical.
I absolutely loved it.
I’d worn some amazing clothes in my day, but this dress was so different, so striking, so feminine that I had to wor
k very hard to keep my satisfied grin inside.
Joss Jones was making a comeback!
No, that wasn’t quite right. The person staring back at me from the mirror looked nothing like the teen superstar I once was. She looked like someone else completely. Then, an unsettling thought sobered me. Was I becoming someone else? If I stayed here for ten years, would I become Jo-Jo Sullivan like I was convinced Kyle Copeland had become Morgan Hawes?
Just then the dressmaker tugged on the hem of the dress, bringing my thoughts back to the present…or the past.
“Are you sure this dress is appropriate?” I asked softly.
“This is the latest style from Paris. It is fashioned after the mythical mermaid,” the dressmaker said through a mouthful of pins.
“A mermaid,” Kitty sighed happily, heaving her body out of the nearby chair to come stand behind me in the mirror. “Yes, a mythical creature. A beautiful siren from the depths of the ocean with a voice to match.” Her small eyes sparkled as she regarded me. “The Siren of Bandit Creek!”
I looked at myself again, remembering the impression that Camille had had of me that first day. “Are you sure I don’t look like a whore?”
The dressmaker’s hands stilled on my hem and Kitty frowned at my reflection. “Don’t be ridiculous. You do not look like a whore, Dearest. You look like an entertainer. There’s a difference.”
I caught the dressmaker’s expression in the mirror; her raised eyebrows and pursed lips. What did that mean?
Once she was finished pinning the hem of the gown, I tried on a few day dresses. There was one in white that Kitty called a lawn dress and she oohed and ahhed telling me I looked like an angel, while the dressmaker pinned and tucked the waist and sleeves. The next was a gown of black lace over an ivory silk lining with a flounced hem and neckline. I certainly was no connoisseur of 1899 fashion, but I knew enough to recognize that these were very expensive garments. Added to the clothes Kitty had already bought me, including the fine lace blouse and embroidered skirt I’d worn to the shop that day, and the fact that I now had my very own room at the Powder Horn, she was investing a fortune into my wardrobe and in me in general.