by John Horst
“Oh, yes. Oh, definitely yes. You are kind, like my father. She’d, she’ll like you very much.”
“Will?”
“Oh yes. Will.”
“And your father?”
“He will too. My daddy’s a good judge of men. Oh, Robert, he’s the best of men. He is kind and funny and he is always smiling. Like you.”
He sat up and pulled her into his arms. He looked her in the eye. “Rebecca, I’m an engineer. I’m not an emotional man. I like to calculate and make my choices scientifically, not from the heart.” He thought hard about what he wanted to say. “I’ve known you one day, Rebecca. But I can’t help myself. I need to tell you…” he faltered.
“What?” She thought for a moment that it was all going to unravel, that he was going to tell her that he was married, had half a dozen children, something that would destroy it all.
“I love you, Rebecca. I loved you the first moment I saw you. I’ve loved you since that moment. I’ve…” She stopped him. Pulled him close and kissed him hard on the mouth.
“And I you.”
Marta found Del Calle wandering about, looking important. He saw her and just barely discernibly, dropped his guard. He’d been waiting to see her all morning.
“And where have you been Mister Captain?”
“Just here.” He stiffened. He liked that she wanted to know what he was about. Her antics over the course of the evening had him distracted.
“What are your thoughts on suffrage?” She patted him down and found his cigarette case. She took two, stuck one in his mouth before he could speak. She leaned over the rail, placing one leg up high on a rail, exposing her leg up to the knee.
“There’s no reason why a woman should not vote.”
She looked at him sideways, grinning. “Really?” She smoked and blew smoke at the ocean. “Del Calle…”
“Pedro.” It was his turn to be a little assertive. “My name’s Pedro, not Mister Captain or Del Calle. It’s Pedro.”
“Okay, Pedro. So you think women should vote.”
“Of course. It’s ridiculous that women should not vote.”
“You are an interesting man.”
“Thank you.”
They looked out onto the ocean and smoked for a while. Del Calle was happy she’d come around to see him. She was vexing. He thought about what his mother would think. She would likely be initially appalled, then would warm up to her. She was a fine looking woman and so smart. His mother liked intelligence in a woman above all else.
“How many men have you killed?”
“I’m sorry?” Del Calle was not certain he heard the question clearly.
“How many men have you killed? You’re a soldier.”
“A marine.”
She shook her head dismissively. “You’ve been in the banana wars. How many men have you killed?”
“I think that’s something I’d like to not discuss. How many have you killed?”
“Six.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
He looked back to the horizon.
“Why?”
“I used to be a bandit, down in Mexico. My father was a brigand, a cutthroat. Rebecca’s mother killed him.”
“I thought you were sisters.”
“Step sisters. Not really that, either.” She was restless. “Let’s eat.” She grabbed him by the arm. “You’ve got nice arms, Pedro.” She reached over and kissed his cheek. He stopped and she looked on, confused. He resolved to get things straight.
“Marta. You are playing with me, and I don’t like it.”
“I’m sorry.” And she was. Marta was not cruel. She was having fun and she lacked the capacity to be intimate with anyone. She was playing this badly and she did not want to hurt the man. He was more sensitive than she originally thought. She extended her hand. “Just friends.”
He shook her hand, disappointed. “Just friends.”
“Good,” she took his arm again. “You’ve got to entertain me. My sister is preoccupied with her future husband.”
“I thought they only just met.”
“Yes, well…now Pedro, don’t be a bonehead marine. You can’t see that they are hopelessly in love?”
“I didn’t notice.”
“You men…this is what I mean by saying I’m not even certain I even like men.”
“You’re not a…”
“A what?”
“A Gertrude Stein?”
“Ha! Pedro, I am impressed with your range. You are quite the polymath, aren’t you?”
“Well, no.” He was not by his own reckoning a deep thinker. “I just…” He was blushing again.
“I don’t know what I am, Pedro. Hell, I don’t even know how old I am.”
“Seriously?” He was intrigued.
“Nope. When I grew up among cutthroats, it wasn’t common to have birthday parties and cakes and sweets. I never had a birthday until I met Rebecca. We just made one up. So, I am listed as having my birthday on April 25th, born in the year 1891.” She shrugged.
He suddenly felt sorry for her. He looked on at her. She appeared small to him. Small and frail and vulnerable. He clamped her hand a little tightly with his arm.
She closed the door behind Curtin and looked around his room. It was smaller, significantly more modest than the one she shared with her sister. It was his room, manly, smelled of Curtin, tobacco and leather from his luggage and engineer tools and of shaving soap. She liked being in his room and did not care if it wasn’t right. She didn’t care about anything anymore except being with him. He wrapped his arms around her from behind, nuzzled her neck and she thought she might faint.
She pushed him away, turned and began removing her dress. He helped her. With trembling hands he worked on the fine pearl colored buttons and she was soon as naked as they day she was born. She worked on his clothing next. They lay down on the bed together. Both straining to comprehend, assaulted with the feelings that neither had ever known, felt lightheaded and excited and desperate to consummate the thing that is natural and yet so unnatural to people of their station in life.
He pulled her onto his body, her naked flesh warm and seductive. She smelled so good and everything he did, every caress and move made her happy, a primordial happiness that was imbedded into every human being yet only allowed, only enjoyed by a very few. She could not comprehend the excitement this moment revealed and was not certain she could endure. She wondered if anyone ever died from such a thing.
She crawled quietly into bed. Marta let her; let her believe that she could get away with it. She waited, listened to Rebecca breathe. When Rebecca was finally quiet, beginning to drift off, Marta suddenly began, a little too loudly and tersely. “Well, young lady. You’ve got some explaining to do!”
“Oh, Marta.” She was so happy that her sister was awake, she needed to talk, needed to tell her all about it. “Oh, I can’t tell you, can’t begin to tell you.”
“It was, how was it?”
“It was like whatever the best feeling you’ve ever had in your life, times a thousand.” She held her sister’s hand and squeezed it gently. “Every time felt even better than the last.”
“Every time! You did it more than once?”
“Four times.”
“My God! Rebecca, you’re going to get knocked up.”
“I don’t care.”
“I can’t believe you.” She was pleased with her sister. Rebecca never did anything wrong and now she had, and she didn’t even care.
“Mamma’s going to kill you if she finds out.”
Rebecca smiled at that thought. It didn’t make her cringe at all. “Marta, when is Mamma and Daddy’s anniversary?”
“September tenth.”
“When’s my birthday?”
“December ninth.”
“Do you really think I had a three month gestation?” She laughed at her little joke, the little secret that everyone knew. She continued on. “I don’t care about anything but him
. I don’t want anything but him. I’m not hungry or thirsty or tired. I don’t want anything but him, Marta.”
She rolled over and placed her head on Marta’s breast. “I love him so much, Marta.”
“What was it like?”
“I don’t know.” She rubbed her temples with her free hand, stared into the darkness, toward the ceiling. “It was like the best hug one could ever have. Like the warmest tingly feeling. Remember when we went sledding, and we went down that one dip, at Mr. Langley’s, you know, by the barn?”
“Yes.”
“It was like that tingly feeling, way down deep, not in the pit of your stomach, but, you know, further down, times a thousand.”
“What does it feel like, to, to have it inside you?”
“Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.”
“It doesn’t hurt?” Marta was intrigued.
“No, not at all. It’s like an electric shock that doesn’t hurt, and it goes all the way through your body. You feel it in your toes, everything, everything becomes sensitive and I thought at one point that I was dying. I thought that one point I would never ever catch my breath. I even cried.”
“You cried?”
“I did, Marta. I cried and I made him scared. At one point at the worst, or best of it, he thought I was ill and he thought that he’d hurt me.” She giggled. “That part was pretty funny.” She sat up, threw her trembling legs to the edge of the bed, she pointed at them and smiled. “Look, Marta. They won’t stop quivering.” She didn’t know what to do. She looked on at Marta. “I have to go.” And in short order, she was back with him again.
She finally came back around five. Marta was asleep this time. Rebecca lay down beside her and listened to her sister breathe. She listened to the sound of her sister, the sound she’d heard on and off for ten years and now she wanted to cry because it would happen sooner than later. She knew that she and Marta would not be together forever. She never wanted to think about it, but now, this changed everything. Certainly it would not do now that Curtin was in her world. She looked over at her. She was lying on her back, breathing through her mouth. She was such a pretty girl. When she was asleep she looked happy. Marta looked happy awake, but one could always tell, if they were clever enough to see it, that she had a deep sadness about her. Way down, into her soul, there was a sadness about her. For a split second, Rebecca thought about her own selfishness. She herself was always happy, deep down inside happy. Her father said she had the wisdom of the ages about her and that she was the happiest person he’d ever known.
She thought about her mother, too. They were two of a kind, her mother and Marta. It had something to do with what they’d endured as children, she was certain of it. Rebecca even, at one point studied it, hoped to make sense of it, hoped, in her adolescent way that she could read from Dr. Freud and figure it all out and make it right.
Rebecca was the one, like her father, who always made everything right. They took care of everyone and their punishment for their good deeds was that they were truly happy and contented people, and the burden, the guilt of being happy around people who are not capable of truly being happy was constant worry and self-reproach. And now Rebecca had even more to worry about. She’d soon leave Marta and she worried that Marta would not endure it.
But there was nothing for it, there was nothing she could do. Asking her to give up Curtin would be like asking her to jump overboard. It just could not be done. She drifted a little, someplace between deep thought and slumber. She thought about her future. She hoped she was pregnant already. She didn’t care if anyone thought badly of her. She didn’t care if she wouldn’t be able to go to Smith. She didn’t care if she would spend the rest of her life caring for Curtin. None of it mattered now.
She thought again about the act, what they’d done together. She knew all about it from the bad books that Marta read to her late at night, but nothing, nothing could ever prepare her for what she had with Curtin. And she knew, was a clever enough young woman to know that it was special. She’d heard stories, horror stories of other couples, how the women hated the act, how the men were bumblers, how they didn’t know how to do it. That was a funny thought to her. It was instinctive, wasn’t it? She thought about how, for some of the unfortunate souls of the world it was a duty to endure, to do for simple procreation and nothing more. Oh, she used to fret over that. She wondered what it must be like to have a man on top of her, to be like the ugly men who captured her all those many years ago and how she was terrified of it. And now, her lovely lovely Curtin was not that way at all. He was loving and gentle and expert at it. He was so good. She missed him. She held up her arm and smelled her sleeve. It smelled of Curtin, she was sure. She loved that odor. She loved everything about him.
Marta woke at six, bringing Rebecca out of her trance. “Good morning, my little rabbit.” She reached over and looked Rebecca in the eye.
“What are you looking at?” Rebecca stretched and spoke through a yawn.
“You are a real woman now. Wanted to see if you looked any different.”
“Do I?”
“No.”
Marta reached over and pulled out the telegram. “Now that you are not busy fornicating…”
“Don’t call it that.”
“It is that, you don’t want me to say the really naughty one do you. Fu…”
“No! Stop it, Marta. You are making me embarrassed. Call it lovemaking. That’s what they call it in all the songs, except for the ones you listen to.”
She opened the telegram and Rebecca read it:
Dan George lives. Warning, much danger to you and your sister. Take care. Watch the ones who pretend to be your friends. Z
Rebecca looked it over, doing her best Sherlock Holmes. Marta took it from her. “It won’t have any clues, silly. The thing was made up in the ship’s wireless room. I did find out it was sent from Tampico, though.”
“What do you make of it? Do you think Dan is really okay, Marta?”
“I never doubted that he was.” She folded it up. “Don’t tell anyone about this, okay?”
“You don’t suspect Curtin?” Rebecca was a little annoyed at the thought of her sister thinking her love was up to no good.
“No. I think someone is playing with us, with me.”
“Are you, are we in danger, Marta?”
“I don’t know. It is kind of fun, though.”
“It’s the kind of fun I don’t need. I’m not like you, Marta.”
“Oh, there’s a bit of news.” She smiled coyly at her sister who was not looking happy. “Don’t worry, my little rabbit.” She patted Rebecca’s quivering leg. She looked down at her and grinned.
“Four times?”
“Six. Two more when I went back the second time.”
“Will you be able to walk today?”
Rebecca smiled and pressed her head into the pillow, She stretched like a cat. She was thinking of Curtin again. “I think so.”
Marta became serious. “Rebecca, I want to talk to you about something.”
“Okay.” She waited. She’d only seen Marta like this once or twice in her life, and didn’t much like it.
“This Curtin fellow. He seems a good sort. I like him. And, well…” if Rebecca had not known any better, she thought she had seen Marta choke up a little. Her sister cleared her throat and continued. “You go on.”
“Go on?”
“My God, Rebecca,” she was welling up. Marta del Toro was welling up. “Don’t make me spell it out for you. Just go on.”
“I see.” She reached over and grabbed her sister, pulling her close, pressing her head to her neck, could feel her shoulders wet where Marta’s head rested. She could feel the sadness coursing through her very being.
“I’ll never leave you, Marta. You know that. I’ll always be your best friend. We are sisters. You’ll find someone, I know it, and we’ll all be together. Sisters do that all the time. Sisters get homes right next door to each other and we can too.”
“I, I…don’t even know if I like men.”
“Then you’ll get a woman!” She smiled and patted Marta gently on the shoulder.
Marta smiled sheepishly. “I’m not a lesbian. I, I just don’t know. I’m confused. I like men well enough. Curtin is a good fellow. Like Daddy.”
“They say you look for a husband who is like your daddy, for better or worse.”
Marta looked up at her. “So my husband will be another Sombrero del Oro?”
They looked on at each other and burst out laughing.
“No, Marta. Daddy’s more your daddy than that fat hog ever was.” She lifted Marta’s face by the chin. “You know something?”
“What, darling.” She was brightening.
“Dan George gave me some advice about you.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And you like Dan, right?”
“Love him.”
“You know he was an orphan. Didn’t have a mother or father, like you. But he didn’t have Mamma and Daddy either. He told me that one day we’d have to grow apart a little. He said we’d both be looking to make our own lives, and he said I had to be careful because you were very special and that you aren’t as tough as you pretend to be.”
Marta blushed a little. She knew it was a compliment.
“He said you had deep scars and he knew a little about them, knew because he had them, but that they can be overcome. He said you didn’t have to suffer from the things that happened when you were young.”
Marta regarded her sister. She was humbled by the thought that they thought so much to speak about her in such a way. She suddenly began talking, almost a compulsion that she couldn’t stop. “I, I think about men, a lot, Rebecca. I like them, but when I think about them, all I can think about is all the ugly things men did when I was a bandit. It makes me feel sick. It makes me not want to touch another person or be touched. Remember the big redhead? Remember her? They were so terrible to her. And I watched, Rebecca. I watched them. I should have run away, should have shot a few of them, should have told them to stop it. I didn’t do any of those things and now, whenever I think of a man in that way, all I see are savages doing horrible things.”