by Denise Dietz
“Put me down,” Flo pleaded. “Suzette kicked my ribs. They’re bruised, perhaps broken. Don’t carry me to the house. You could do more harm than good.”
Edward’s face was now the color of parchment, but he calmly said, “Harry, get rid of Suzette’s body. Lift it or drag it from the barn. Grace, fetch clean towels. Cook, go with her and boil some water. Daisy, collect all the horse and buggy blankets and make a pallet inside the breeding stall. Bully-Ben, Karl, place Mrs. Flower very carefully on the pallet.”
The servants hastened to obey.
“Little Toby, how’s the mare?” Edward asked.
“She’s hurting, sir, but nothing’s broke.”
“Good. Find some feed bags for Mrs. Flower’s head and legs. Karl, fetch the doctor.”
Within the confines of the breeding stall, Flo gratefully breathed the familiar stable odors she had always loved. She felt Daisy remove her blue jeans and panties, then cover her lower body with a scratchy horse blanket.
When Edward wheeled his chair to the stall’s entrance, Flo subdued her agony. His trepidation was palpable and she wouldn’t be the cause of his heart’s final convulsion.
“A first baby takes a while, doesn’t it?” Edward’s voice betrayed his agitation. “I must be losing my mind, sending Karl for the doctor. We have telephones. Is it all right if Little Toby wheels me to the house? Or would you prefer I stay?”
She forced her mouth into the semblance of a smile. “There’s nothing you can do here, Edward, and if I don’t have to worry about you, I can concentrate on the birth of our child.”
“Don’t forget the words of Robert E. Lee. The human spirit is equal to any calamity.”
But Lee lost the war, she thought, as another wave of pain swept through her. Damn Suzy! Damn Cat McDonald!
How did Cat fit into all this? Hellfire! Cat’s note was a forgery! Clever Suzy.
Why hadn’t she watched Suzy more carefully? Because “Flower Lytton” had grown complacent, lulled by her pregnancy, forgetting her sworn revenge on the woman.
Flo seemed to be floating above her pain now. Several of the servants had left the barn. A few remained, frightened and useless, but they didn’t exist. She didn’t exist. Only the wild duck was real. Soft feathers folded around her body and carried her up past the barn’s rafters.
What a beautiful duck.
I’m dying. That’s why the pain is gone.
Poor Edward. Tonight he’d lose both his wife, Flower, and his granddaughter, Fools Gold.
Faceless multitudes would mourn the passing of motion picture actress Flower Smith, but there’d be another star to take her place. Would Flower’s movies survive? Probably not. After all, movies were merely dreams that pierced the darkness.
Did heaven exist? If it did, Blueberry would be waiting there. Minta and Robin, too. Wouldn’t it be nice to see their faces and bury herself in their loving arms?
Flower Lytton lay on the stable floor, writhing with unbearable pain. Fools Gold Smith floated above her, and all she had to do was close her eyes and let the beautiful wild duck carry her up to heaven.
Horrified, she watched her duck merge into a carnivorous shrike. This new bird would surely impale her on his talons. She fought against the talons. With profound relief, she felt the hard stable floor beneath her bed of blankets. The pain went away and so did the shrike. She had fought hard and she was exhausted. When the wild duck lifted her, she snuggled against its soft plumage.
Somebody called her name. She didn’t want to answer.
“Hello, Fools Gold,” the man’s voice repeated. A familiar voice.
Though her eyes stung with tears, she saw a shape kneel by the pallet. Hands shifted the grain sack from beneath her ankles so that her knees were bent across the burlap. “Hello, Cat,” she whispered. “Are you really here? This isn’t a dream?”
“I’m really here.”
“Why can’t I see your face?”
“Because the light is dim and a hat hides my eyes. Do you feel my hand holding yours?”
“Yes. Why are you pressing my fingers so hard?”
“I want you to feel your pain. Remember what I told you about Dimity? She let the snow cover her body and lull her to sleep. I want you to stay awake.”
“I was riding a duck . . . a wild duck. I almost recited that poem at the Penrose Ball. It mentions gold and flowers and . . . I’m so tired, Cat. Please let me ride the wild duck.”
“Ride your pain, Fools Gold, not the duck.”
Lost within his hand’s grip, she said, “Look how beautiful he is . . . he is bound for the hilltops . . . the gold hilltops . . .”
“Rest later, my love. Someday we will ride through the gold hilltops, I promise. Now you must ride your pain.”
“Happy wild duck.”
Cat’s breath caught in his throat. How could he reach her?
“Poor little wild duck.”
Cat groaned. There had to be a way to reach her. Frantic, he said, “You cannot die with your baby trapped inside your body.”
“Oh, I forgot about the baby. Poor little wild baby.”
“When you feel the pain return, squeeze my hand.”
“I feel it. But . . . I . . . cannot . . . bear it.”
“Squeeze harder,” Cat said, and felt her fingernails gash his palm. “That’s my good girl. Now, take a deep breath.”
“I can’t. My ribs hurt. Suzette kicked me. My fault. I hired her. If the baby dies—”
“The baby won’t die. I won’t let it die.”
Cat lost all track of time. The servants must have wondered who he was, but they seemed grateful for his presence. Keeping away from the enclosure, they whispered among themselves or wrung their hands.
Fools Gold smelled hot and sick. Cat bathed her brow and kneaded her belly and listened to her moans become whimpers.
Where was her damned doctor? Forget the doctor. Her contractions were arriving one after the other, nary a pause. If he didn’t do something quick, she would die. Pivoting on his knees, he stared at one of the servants, huddled near the tack. “You!” he shouted. “Fetch hot water, strong soap, and the oil that anoints the newborn colts. Hurry!”
The window above allowed dawn’s inception to permeate the stall. Fools Gold’s strength was waning fast. Cat could see it in her glazed eyes, now purple-black with exhaustion, and in the ashy hue of her face.
He washed his hands, covered them with oil, waited until the next contraction had passed, then thrust his fingers inside her tight passage. He’d done this before with the livestock on his ranch, but never a woman. His groping fingers felt the baby’s head. Perspiration poured into his eyes and down his scarred cheek as he guided the baby’s head toward the birth canal.
Hugging her bruised ribs, Fools Gold gave one last scream. Then she bore down to dislodge her child.
Cat gazed with wonder at ten perfect fingers and toes. “It’s a girl,” he said, tears flooding his voice.
“Tonna . . . Tonnagay. Is she alive?”
“Yes. She’s very tiny, but she looks strong.”
“Like you.”
“No, my love. You.”
Flo heard the sound of Edward’s wheelchair and the voice of her doctor: “A felled tree blocked the road. Thank God for your chauffer . . .”
Cat placed the baby on her belly. “Do you still see the wild duck, Fools Gold?”
“No. The duck’s gone.”
“Then I’ll be gone, too.” With a nimbleness that belied his size, he hoisted himself up and out through the window.
Cat, don’t go. Cat, I love you.
Shifting her gaze toward the wheelchair, Flo said, “You have a new daughter, Edward. Now you must stay alive for a long, long time. Now you must watch her grow.”
Thirty-Three
By 1920 Colorado Springs was overwhelmingly white and Protestant, counting only 500 Jews, 2,965 Catholics, slightly more than 1,000 Negroes, and 2,600 foreign-born immigrants among its 30,605 inhabitants. Unlike De
nver, Colorado Springs had no ethnic neighborhoods.
As recruiting Kleagles, Ned Lytton and Lucas McDonald were failing miserably. Luke tried to manipulate the Catholic menace, repeating the usual refrains concerning priestly corruption, but those allegations collapsed in the wake of intelligent Catholic passivity. Ned had only slightly more success with parental concerns regarding suggestive forms of dancing and adolescent petting parties. He and Luke secured most of their small Klan membership from the city’s rough, bigoted working-class men, who commanded little influence or respect.
Ned wished he still lived in Denver where the Klan thrived, where Klansmen successfully vied for power and became the arbiters of community policy, but he stayed on at Aguila del Oro, waiting for Edward to die.
“Father will outlive us all,” Ned said to his grandfather’s portrait, and could have sworn the benign gent bobbed his head. “Father will outlive Flower, damn her grit.”
Following Tonnagay’s birth, there had been no obvious repercussions. Ned had professed innocence. Yes, he had purchased Rubaiyat, misunderstanding his father’s apprehensions. But he had no idea Suzette planned to kill Flower. Hadn’t he told Old Bully-Ben that Rubaiyat should be shipped back to her previous owner?
Flower, perhaps unwilling to distress Edward further, implied that Suzette was insane with envy. But somehow Flower knew about Ned’s part in the plot. When they were together, her blue eyes glittered with undisguised hatred.
It might be prudent to lie low a while, Ned mused, slurping whiskey from a wine glass.
Why hadn’t Flower died in childbirth?
Admittedly, one-year-old Tonnagay was an enchanting child. With her porcupine-quill hair, blue-green eyes, and miniature chin-crease, she looked a lot like his beloved Katie. Suzette had been wrong about John Chinook—dead wrong. Tonnagay looked like a Lytton!
Three weeks ago, following his sister Dorothy’s marriage to Alan Tassler, Father had moved the whole family to Aguila del Oro. Kate’s condition had improved moderately. She could dress and feed herself, and sometimes she talked a blue streak, but her mind still functioned like a child’s. Her doctor had very nearly persuaded Johanna to have Kate placed in a private institution, insisting that qualified personnel might restore Kate’s memory. Ned had fired the doctor and hired another. His darling Katie was ill, not crazy.
Dollyscope was no longer a Lytton enterprise. Its assets had been gobbled up by another film company. Just like Dolly, Dollyscope had died from acute inflammation of the gut, or at least that’s what everybody whispered loudly behind Ned’s back.
So be it. He had become bored with the motion picture business. In fact, until recently, he couldn’t summon enthusiasm for anything.
Now Ned refilled his glass, tilting the crystal decanter that perched atop the music room’s Chippendale table. Soon he’d leave for a Konclave to be held in a field fifteen miles east of Colorado Springs. In the meantime, Luke would have arranged for the abduction of Cat McDonald.
Ned had resented Chinook’s superior attitude during the filming of Heaven’s Thunder, and was well pleased when the handsome actor’s face got scarred. Handsome is as handsome does, Suzette would have said. As it turned out, Chinook was part Mex, part Injun, part Negro.
Luke had finally blurted out the truth about his brother’s mixed heritage. He’d kept it under wraps, unwilling to sully his mother’s reputation, but Cat’s control over the JMD ranch, at first welcomed, had become an irritant. In any case, Luke had overheard his mother tearfully confess that she’d been raped by an outlaw who was part Mex, part Injun, part Negro, and Cat was his son.
“John Chinook’s a tar baby,” Ned chanted, just before he tainted the air with a belch. He planned to star the former actor in tonight’s performance. Cowardly Luke had chosen to shun the Konclave. Tonight’s script called for several Klansmen to frighten Cat so badly that the scar-faced bastard would flee Colorado. Ned had already stored the tar and feathers inside the trunk of his Rolls-Royce.
Following Cat’s punishment, a letter would be delivered to a ranch hand named Black Percy, warning that a similar fate was in store for him if he didn’t leave the state.
A thrill coursed through Ned’s body. Tonight’s Konclave would be rollicking good fun.
* * * * *
Kate stared into Mummy’s dressing-table mirror. Mummy’s mirror was so much prettier than the tent mirror. The tent mirror had been shot, broken.
I look like a grown-up lady, Kate thought as she dipped her fingers through the top layer of Mummy’s rouge pot and smeared carmine across her cheeks. She had tied back her long black hair with a yellow ribbon and a string of Mummy’s pearls, but Kate hated her body. Her body had two big bumps on top with two bitty bumps on the end of the big bumps.
“Breasts and nipples,” said Mummy.
There was fuzz between Kate’s legs, dark furry hair, darker than her teddy bear, who was named for a president. Beneath the fur, her legs made her taller than Mummy and Dorothy, taller than her brother Steven. For her last birthday, she had blown out twenty-five candles on Cook’s cake, anxious to blow away the fire.
“I like white cake,” she’d said, after blowing out the flames on the candle stars. Her daddy had laughed and said white was good and K-K-Katie was a good girl.
Now Kate looked around for a towel. There was no towel, so she wiped her red face and red fingers on her nightie’s hem. Oh, no. She’d messed the white nightie, and Nurse would be mad. Nurse was always mad. She didn’t like moving into this new house away from all her “Denver-kin.” Nurse said she needed the salad . . . no, salree.
Kate didn’t like the new house, either. It was hard to find the rooms. Her room looked the same. Same bed and chair and coloring books and building blocks. Mummy’s room looked the same. Same bed and dressing table and cushion-baskets for the doggies. But the other rooms looked different. Scary.
Nurse would be mad at the dirty white nightie, so Kate had better change her clothes. But if she went to her own room, wherever it was, she’d be caught and she couldn’t come back and play with Mummy’s rouge pot.
Maybe she could borrow one of Mummy’s dresses from the big closet. Mummy was fat and the dress would be fat, but that was okay because the fat dress would hide Kate’s hateful breasts and nipples.
She opened the closet door. A pink-and-white hatbox caught her eye. Pretty box. She placed it on the bed, opened it, and gasped with pleasure at the sight of the fruit on the straw hat. Yanking a green grape free, she bit and spit. It wasn’t a real grape.
Disappointed, she hurled the hat across the room. Then she peered into the box again. Nestled in tissue paper was a ladies’ revolver with a white mother-of-pearl handle. Pretty gun.
So different than the strikers’ guns.
What’s a striker?
Kate looked out the window. In the distance, shadows played hide-and-seek. No sun. No moon. No candle stars. She could see grass and flowers and trees. The stables and horses were too far away, but she could see the path from the garage where the cars lived. On the wall, clock fingers pointed to the numbers seven and one, and Kate thought that meant night, but the sky wasn’t black yet.
Daddy was driving a car he called an Alpine Eagle down the path from the garage to the house. He stopped, got out, and walked away. Kate could hear the car go chug-chug-chug. She hated Daddy’s car. It smelled like fire.
Was Daddy planning to leave? When Nurse was mad, Daddy would say that’s-all-right-leave-my-girl-alone. Kate forgot why Nurse was mad tonight, but Daddy was leaving her alone with Nurse. Maybe she could bully Nurse with Mummy’s revolver.
Steven had a gun with paper bullets that sounded like snapping fingers when he pulled the trigger. Then he’d blow on the front end and put the gun in his pocket. No, not his pocket. His hole-stir.
She didn’t have a hole-stir, so she lifted her nightie and tucked the pretty little gun underneath the elastic of her panties. It felt cold. Then she scurried from Mummy’s room, ran down the lo
ng staircase, and out the front door. She turned a corner and saw the Alpine Eagle.
Daddy hadn’t come back yet. The Eagle’s top was down and Kate glimpsed a fur-lined car rug on the backseat, so she curled herself into a ball and hid underneath the rug, like the children who’d once hid in the holes she dug underneath the tents. The fur made her want to sneeze, but if she did the soldiers would find her, so she held her breath until the sneeze went away. The gun pressed against her belly.
Oh, no. If Karl drove, Daddy would sit in back and squish her.
But Daddy sat on the front seat. Kate heard him say, “Almost forgot my robe and hood.”
The car went chug-chug-chug and she fell asleep.
* * * * *
Cat strummed his mandolinetto with a tortoiseshell pick. The mandolinetto looked like a guitar but sounded like a mandolin, and Janey had sent it all the way from California.
“The day has passed and gone, the evening shades appear,” he sang. “Oh may we all remember well, the night of death draws near.”
“No, Gato, sing a happy song.” Maria stamped her foot. “Sing a song of love, and I shall reward you well.”
“I’m honored, querida, but you would not enjoy sharing the loft with a devil.”
“If you are truly el diablo, Gato, I would enjoy sharing a bed de cacto.” With a wicked grin, she stretched the neck of her blouse so that it dipped below her breasts.
Cat felt a stirring beneath his belt. How long had it been since he’d had a woman?
When time allowed, he’d drive to the red-light districts in Colorado Springs or Denver. After their first startled wince at the sight of his face, the parlor girls performed with gusto. A paid whore didn’t make promises she couldn’t keep. A paid whore didn’t talk of love then turn away.
Maria had noted the bulge in his trousers. With another grin, she snuggled her pliant body against his. “My husband Rodolfo snores in the big chair,” she said, “and fills the room with loud odors from his dinner of torrijas . . .” Her voice faltered. Her dark eyes widened. She screamed.
Cat whirled about.
The moon shone down upon eight white-robed, hooded figures with conical hats. In the distance, parked close to a grove of spruce, were two Model-T Fords.