by Denise Dietz
“He can’t be dead. He promised—”
“Shut up!” Tiny flung the mirror at another wall, where it shattered with an explosive sound.
Bertha crawled backwards. Splinters of glass tore her black net stockings, leaving small gashes in her knees. Unaware of the pain, her fingers closed around a jagged shard the size of a long comb. Standing, arms flailing, she attacked Tiny.
“Stopitbitch!” The howl emerged as one word.
“You killed my brother, I’ll kill you back!”
Tiny pushed her away, changed his mind, and stepped toward her. His boot caught in Geordie’s legs. Teetering back and forth, he fell rump-ward, landing with a thud that shook the floorboards. He tried to rise, but his hands slipped on a patch of Geordie’s blood.
Bertha carved a smile across Tiny’s throat. Then she deepened the smile with another swipe of her shard.
Tiny sputtered, gurgled, lay motionless, his neck sliced like a Christmas turkey.
Bertha placed two of her coins on Geordie’s eyes. Tiny stared at the ceiling, sightless, but Bertha chose to leave his eyes open, unprotected.
“I’ll feed the chicks and cook piggy meat,” she cried, shoving her few pieces of clothing into the carpetbag satchel that held her mother’s ruby earbobs and Bible. Reflexively, she added her brother’s money pouch and the coins from her performance.
I forgot to bury Geordie, she thought, dropping her satchel and turning round and round in small circles. Spying her brother’s lucky nugget, she scooped it up, fell to her knees, and dug at the floorboards.
A woman’s high-pitched laughter sounded from the hallway. Bertha ceased her frantic motions, thinking how she had to get away fast. She had killed a man. They would kill her back. In her head, she heard Geordie’s voice: Run, Berry!
She replaced her ruined stockings with cotton stockings. She tried to reattach her dance dress bodice, but couldn’t close it without help, so she thrust her feet inside her shoes and slipped her gingham gown over her head. Ignoring the back buttons, she fled.
After descending the staircase, she awkwardly rebounded off tables and chairs. Somebody yelled, “Coochie, girl!” Others joined in. “Coochie-coochie, coochie-coochie.”
Pasting a smile on her face, Bertha swiveled her tummy. At the same time, she danced toward the entrance. Then she curtsied and limped through the swinging front doors.
Run, Berry!
Her feet lurched over the planked sidewalk, her left leg pivoting in an arc. Rounding the corner, she halted, unable to take another step. Her legs crinked, her sides stitched, her bosom heaved, and she couldn’t seem to get enough air.
“I’m snuffed out, Geordie,” she whimpered.
As she stared at the ground, she felt a warm breath on her back where the dress material hung open. Dropping her satchel, she crumpled to her knees and began to pray.
A deep voice said, “I ain’t the devil, child.”
She heard two words: devil child. She scrambled to her feet, made an about-face, and stared at the man clothed in a red plaid shirt, blue denim overalls, and a floppy brown hat that matched the color of his curly beard. Next to the man stood a grayish-brown animal whose fuzzy ears pitched forward as if it favored Bertha’s psalm. The critter brayed, pushed its nose toward her, and this time its warm breath misted her gingham bodice.
“Why, it’s a mule,” she gasped.
“Clementine ain’t no mule,” said the man. “A mule’s the get of a female horse and a male ass, and it can’t make babies. Clem’s a burro.”
The man kept talking, but Bertha didn’t hear him. She pictured a room filled with Tiny, and her hand closed around an invisible shard of mirror.
The burro hee-hawed.
That sound, so different from Tiny’s growl, cleared the shadowy saloon images from her head. Opening her fingers, she stared at the blood stains. “Might there be someplace close by where I can wash my hands, sir?”
The man pointed toward a trough. She limped over to it and plunged her hands beneath the water’s scummy top layer.
“Dry ’em off on Clementine, child.”
Bertha stroked the burro’s neck. “She sure did scare me.”
“Not half as bad as you scared us, rounding that corner like you was being blown by a kite-wind. You never even seen me and him come after you.”
“Him? Clementine’s a girl’s name, ain’t it?”
“Yep. M’wife named him for a mining song. Clementine don’t mind none, long as he’s got food and kindness. Names don’t matter.”
“Why’d you call me a devil child?”
“Huh?” The man scratched behind his ear with one hand, behind Clementine’s ear with the other. Then his face brightened. “I said I weren’t the devil, child, although m’wife might disagree. I do beg your pardon for Clem. He’s never seen a gal’s nekkid back and thought it might be fun to snuffle skin.”
She felt sudden heat bake her cheeks as she reached behind her back for her gown’s open buttons. The man offered to help. She flinched but forced herself to stand still. The man stopped at her waistband, unable to fasten the last few buttons.
“Lordy,” she exclaimed. “I disremembered to take my dance dress off. Geordie’d say I put caterpillar skin atop butterfly wings.”
Wriggling the dance costume free from beneath her gingham skirt, she kicked it away. It heaped on the walk, yella as Geordie’s lucky nugget, red as Tiny’s blood. She waited for the bearded man to ask questions and tensed her tired body to run, praying her crimpy foot would support the attempt, but the man scooped up the dress and stuffed it inside his knapsack.
“Why’d you do that, sir?”
“No use letting good cloth go to waste,” he said. “I’ll hand it over to m’wife.”
“Won’t she wonder where you got it?”
“Yep. Keep her on her toes, it will, and she can use the scraps to stitch fairy-tale britches for our young ’uns.”
“What’s a fairy tale?”
“A once-upon-a-time story. Ain’t you heard fairy tales?” When she shook her head, he said, “Who’s Geordie?”
“My brother which art in heaven.”
The man looked like he was still fretting over fairy tales. “Where’s your ma and pa?”
“Never had me no ma.”
“And your pa?”
“Pa favored my cooking and my be-hind. Geordie said I done nothing wrong,” she added, and heard the tremble in her voice.”
The late-afternoon sun was in the man’s eyes, so she couldn’t read his face. He hoisted her atop Clementine, already loaded with pots and pans, rolled blankets, and double knapsacks.
“What are you do-doing?” she sputtered.
“I want to leave before darkness falls, and it’s falling quick, like the curtain on a bad stage play.”
“You gonna give me to your wife along with the dress?”
He laughed. The sound started in his boots, rose to his chest, and boomed through the air like thunder. “Not hardly, child.”
What should I do, Geordie? Does this laughing man mean to harm me? She pictured the long walk to Denver and knew that, even without her lame foot, a return journey would be impossible, so she wove her fingers through Clementine’s shaggy mane. “What’s your name, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I don’t mind. It’s John Templeton but friends call me Whiskey Johnnie. I’m headed for a mining town, Cripple Creek, where I pan for gold.”
“You drink lots of whiskey?”
“Can’t touch a drop. That’s why folks call me Whiskey Johnnie.”
“Don’t believe I figure that.”
“People seem to favor the opposite. Makes the truth more fun, somehow. Long time ago I lived in Texas, where layin’ it on thick comes natural. In them days I’d get so drunk they’d say I couldn’t hit the ground with my hat in three throws. In them days they called me John. Didn’t add the whiskey part till I couldn’t drink no more. What’s your name, child?”
“You said names don’t ma
tter.”
“True, but I gotta call you something.”
“Call me Berry.”
“Hang on, young Berry. Giddyap, Clementine.”
Two
Texas: 1893
White-hooded figures crouched, waiting for three blasts from a penny whistle.
Ned Lytton crouched, too. He was supposed to be praying, but he kept thinking about that line in his father’s last letter: Men with clenched fists cannot shake hands.
A series of amens pierced the stagnant air. Ned clenched his fists.
“Look up at the sky, Lytton,” said Richard Reed. “It’s inspirin’.”
“What’s inspiring?” Ned watched his friend undulate like a hooded Cobra. “The sky?”
“No, the clouds. See how they form white men on white horses? It’s an omen.”
WE MUST KEEP THIS A WHITE MAN’S COUNTRY decreed a pamphlet inside Ned’s shirt pocket. From the open window of the one-room schoolhouse, he could hear children singing, “A-B-C-D-E-F-Gee . . . H-I-J-K . . .”
K-K-K. Ku Klux Klan. A nucleus banded together at Ned’s university. For his initiation, he had been blindfolded, led over obstacles placed inside a musty cellar, finally brought before Richard, the Grand Cyclops. After answering nonsensical questions, his blindfold had been stripped away. He faced a large mirror. On his head were donkey ears. Klansmen had burst into laughter. Ned had laughed too, aware that the rites were patterned after the Klan’s original ceremonies. He’d been sworn to secrecy about the club and the identity of his companions. He had joined because he thirsted for adventure, excitement, and some rollicking good fun.
Now he, along with Richard and eight others, knelt behind a grove of western yellow pine trees, anticipating Richard’s signal. Twenty knees mashed pink and violet phlox while the gurgling rush from a nearby stream mingled with the sound of droning insects. Close to the stream, crushing clumps of wild plum, lay a huge wooden cross.
Through raggedy eyeholes, he watched Richard clamber up. Ned followed, his legs all pins and needles.
Children emerged from the schoolhouse.
Richard’s hand crept beneath his hood, and Ned heard the penny whistle’s triple blast. Three Klansmen hefted the cross. Drawing revolvers from bootstraps, others shot toward the sky.
The happy cadence of youthful voices abruptly ceased. One elderly man, white, dashed through the doorway, into the school yard. A beautiful colored woman practically breathed down his neck. “Run, children!” she shouted.
“Fetch help, Lily Ann!” Above a full beard, the schoolmaster’s nostrils flared and his eyes burned with a feverish glow. In his fist he clutched a wooden ruler.
“But I want to stay, help you fight.”
“You’ll never be a teacher if you’re dead.”
Petticoats swirled as she followed the children.
Ned resisted the urge to chase her down. Chocolate candy would taste mighty fine after his sparse breakfast of corn pone and grits. His hood restricted vision so he yanked it off. He didn’t give a damn if a crackbrained schoolmaster described black hair, blue eyes and a cleft chin to the sheriff. Tonight he’d leave Texas and return to his Denver home.
The cross had been erected, doused with kerosene and lit. Several Klansmen entered the schoolhouse. Ned heard the sound of splintering wood.
Richard was dodging blows from the schoolmaster’s ruler, and Ned recalled the well-placed clouts delivered by his father’s gnarled walking cane. As Ned considered joining forces with his friend, the sound of splintering wood became the angry buzz of hornets.
Shit, Ned thought, that ain’t bees.
Children had returned with their parents. Men and women raced down the trail, holding aloft sticks, shovels, hoes and brooms.
Ned’s companions turned tail. The blazing cross cast flame-licked shadows across their hooded gowns as they scattered in all directions, looking like the vanes on a pinwheel. Ned was no coward, of course, but those colored men and women looked indestructible.
Sweat poured down his face as he stomped his way through the woods toward his horse. He experienced a momentary gut-wrench, fearing his father, the honorable Edward Lytton, would be livid at his only son’s expulsion from the university. The chancellor had expressed dissatisfaction at young Mr. Lytton’s lack of attendance and failing grades. Ned had told the chancellor to stick his university where the sun don’t shine. If he had licked the chancellor’s boots, he might have been given a second chance, but Ned wasn’t one to lick boots. The honorable Edward wasn’t one to lick boots, either, and yet Father would never endorse the Ku Klux Klan. Father had Jewish and Catholic business associates. Father was good friends with Congressman George Henry White, an ex-slave from North Carolina.
Directing his gaze toward Richard Reed’s portentous clouds, Ned realized that his thirst for rollicking good fun had become a goal—a purpose. Despite his father’s imminent censure, Ned would disseminate the Klan’s doctrine throughout Colorado.
But first he wanted to dig up some gold.
Three
Outside Denver, Whiskey Johnnie made camp by the side of the trail. Bertha was so tired she slid from the burro’s back and fell to the ground. She tried to rise but her head felt twisty, like a Kansas tornado she’d once seen. Geordie’d said the tornado’s swirls were rings of smoke from a giant’s corncob pipe.
“Bed down on the blanket,” Whiskey Johnnie said, “and I’ll sing you a lullaby.”
“What’s that?”
“A cradlesong.”
“You’re funning me. Cradles can’t sing.”
Hours later, she tugged at Johnnie’s shirt. “Geordie,” she whimpered, “you can call me Weed. You can say my hair’s yella.”
“Hush, Berry,” Johnnie said. “Go back to sleep.”
She pressed her head against his chest like a broody hen nestled into its own feathers. “Geordie had him a dream. He saw a nugget big as an egg, but it was only fool’s gold.”
“Sleep, child. There’s peace of soul with the dark.”
Staring up at the sky, Bertha heard her brother’s words: I’ll bring you white sparkly gems that look like nighttime stars.
But the sky was as black as her hair. Black as the preacher’s carriage. Black.
*****
The warm west wind swirled tinted leaves from tree branches, and the wild sarsaparilla stems nodded hopefully toward a sky that ranged from the deepest blue to the lightest green. On their second day of travel, Whiskey Johnnie halted early, set up camp near a stream, tethered Clementine, and fished for speckled trout.
Tummy full of trout, Bertha sat close to the fire and plaited her hair, preparing for sleep. “Won’t your wife wonder where you’re at, Johnnie?”
“M’wife’ll be mad as a bull tangled in a clothesline, but I brung her gifts from Denver — shoes, thread, store-bought soap and the like.”
“Am I to live with you, Johnnie?”
“Not hardly. M’wife’s got a heart as big as the rest of her, but she ain’t too fond of me right now. She didn’t want me to gally’vant off to Denver, said she’d be gone when I got back. Don’t figure she’ll truly leave, but I can’t gift her a pretty gal along with the soap and thread.”
“I ain’t purty.”
“Texans would say you was pretty as a red heifer in a flower bed.”
“I ain’t purty,” she repeated, “but I’ve got me some coins. You and your wife can have them.”
“Thank you kindly, Berry, but you might need your coins.”
“What’ll I do when we get there, Johnnie?”
He added kindling to the fire. “I seen you running like a sheep culled from the herd for supper, so I acted quick and didn’t think that far ahead.”
“How do other girls earn their keep?” She watched him poke at the fire with a forked stick. “Ain’t there no other girls?”
“There’s gals. Some are wives, like mine. Others . . . give relief.”
“Like a physic for the belly ache?”
His booming laugh seemed to set the moon spinning. “Guess you could call it medicine. In Cripple Creek there’s what’s called parlor houses and crib houses. Whores live there. They pleasure a feller for wages.”
“I could be one of them whores if I learned their ways, Johnnie. Won’t you teach me how to pleasure a feller?”
He lowered his head and pushed at the fire until his stick broke in half.
“You gotta teach me, Johnnie. If you don’t, I’ll starve with my goodness. There’s only whores and wives in your town, and I ain’t wed. The Bible says sluggards should consider the ways of the ant and be wise.”
“Whores ain’t ants. And you was born wise.”
“No, sir. Geordie once said how the owl’s wise to fly through the night and hooty-hoot his song. I can hooty-hoot a song but I can’t fly through the night. Wish I could.”
Johnnie led her away from the fire and lowered her to her blanket. “There’s as many crib and parlor girls as fleas on a pup in summer,” he said. “But sometimes, Berry, if a gal pleases a feller, he’ll up and marry her. Maybe you can find a gentleman to wed.”
“A gentleman.” She yawned and closed her eyes. “Won’t you learn me how to pleasure a gentleman?”
Why not? thought Johnnie. Physic for the belly ache! He swallowed his chuckle.
“Wish I had the coins to keep her safe, Lord,” he said softly. “Too bad I ain’t struck my gold vein, but that’s up to you, Lord, though I do wish you’d hurry.”
He hunkered by the fire. “Let’s dicker, Lord. You help me get the child settled and I’ll leave her be.”
Thunder rumbled. Johnnie looked up and grinned. “One more thing, Lord. If m’wife’s waiting for me in Cripple Creek, I’ll never gally’vant to Denver again. Amen.”
Four
Cripple Creek lay in the first range of the Rocky Mountains, twenty miles west of Colorado Springs and eighty miles south and a little west of Denver. Volcanoes had piled up the hills. Sudden valleys were marked by scrub trees and, in season, a wealth of wildflowers. Beneath the ground, a lusty devil dwelled, his penis erect. Sometimes he ejaculated gold.