Whiskey When We're Dry

by John Larison

  “Is that on account you ride a circus pony for a mount?”

  It was partial true what they said about Ingrid. With them up on those big buckskins I felt to be looking eye to eye with their saddle horns.

  * * *

  —

  The brothel wasn’t like no whorehouse I ever seen. The sign on the door was in French and didn’t make no sense to me. We come in past two heavies with clubs who called Drummond “Drum.”

  Upstairs, we was the only patrons. In its smell and furnishings, the place give off the sense that no man had been there before. The six girls was on the couches in various costumes of red and black, playing cards and giggling. They looked to be having honest fun.

  “Hi, boys,” one of them sweet-called. “Wanna teach us to play cards?”

  I let my eye wander to their round edges, to the dark shadow where leg met leg. I will admit I felt something.

  The matron welcomed us in French. She wore her gray hair in a tall bun draped in a gold chain and she greeted Tuss and Drummond and Greenie each with a kiss on the cheek and a squeeze of the hand. Greenie pulled another bill from his pocket and give it to the matron on my behalf. The Governor had paid our way in but Greenie told me it was classy to slip the matron a little something extra. “This one here is unbroke,” Greenie said.

  “Mais non.” The matron put her hand to my cheek and studied my eyes. “Ah, so he is. We will take gentle care of him.”

  “Make sure he gets it good for his first time,” Drummond said.

  Greenie slapped me on the back hard enough to make me gag. His hand pulled me close and he whispered in my ear, “Don’t be afraid. Ain’t no better teachers in the whole wide world than these ladies.”

  He crossed the room and took up his Miss Aberdeen and spun her till she squealed. Tuss and Drummond took theirs by the hands and soon three doors shut and I was alone in the room with the matron and the remaining ladies.

  The matron didn’t waste no time. She gestured with a feather toward those girls still fanning themselves. Two smiled on me, a third glared. “And your preference, monsieur?”

  “I . . . I . . . I sorta . . .” I took a step back.

  The matron took me by the hand. She was grandmotherly and endowed with mountainous bosoms and a girth wider than three of me. She put her hand to my chin then passed the back of her fingers along my marked cheek. She snapped her finger and a girl stood. She was a stalk with black hair and blue eyes. She said in an accent I couldn’t place, “Have no apprehension. I make good use of you, cowboy.”

  She took my hand in hers and walked with me across the room and to a closed door, which she drew open. She shut the door behind us and said, “You desire a drink first?”

  “Sure. But I ain’t much for this business. I’ll give you a bill and all that but I don’t want nothing from you. No offense or nothing. I just, well . . . I’ll just drink some and then we can go out and you can tell the others I done good. All right?”

  She poured a whiskey from the crystal on the bedside and handed it to me. Her blue eyes pierced. There was a smile on her lips but not in those eyes. “It is my business to know what you want before you know what you want. Now sit with me.”

  “I’d rather stand.”

  “You poor thing. Come here and I tend to you.”

  She drew me down to the bed and passed her fingers through my hair. I turned away. I sipped my drink. I was afraid to finish it and so have nothing left to do. She stood before me. There was nowhere else to look.

  She took my hands and brought them to her thighs. Their heat stunned me. Together we raised her skirt inch by inch. I couldn’t hear for the rush of blood in my ears.

  At the sight of curly hairs I leapt from the bed and stood in the middle of the room.

  She only lowered her skirt and laid against the pillows and crossed her bare feet. “Come now. Don’t leave me alone. We don’t have to know any rules in this room.”

  “I don’t . . . I ain’t . . .” I stumbled.

  “You don’t know what you like, do you?”

  “I reckon I don’t.”

  She looked on me until I broke first.

  “I don’t know. I ain’t like them.” I nodded toward the door that opened to the parlor. I put in a three-finger pinch of tobacco. “You gonna tell?”

  She smiled. “You pay me not to tell.”

  I wasn’t surprised by this turn of events. “How much?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Fifteen dollars!”

  “You would pay more. You pay whatever I ask, so thank me for only asking fifteen. You have sad eyes and maybe I take pity on you.”

  I took the bills from my pocket and counted fifteen and threw them on the floor. I slid the spittoon toward the chair and sat and spat. “How long until I can go out without drawing suspicion?”

  She shrugged. “It’s your first time, so not long.”

  I pointed a thumb toward the door. “You aim to tell them?”

  “The girls? You are no novelty in these halls.”

  “You can’t tell the girls or it’ll get back to the men I come in with.”

  Her eyes narrowed over her drink. “For fifteen more I make sure those men never doubt you.”

  It’d been a mistake to show her my wad of cash. “That’s a crazy lot of money.”

  “Not for safety. That is what you want, correct? To hide and not be found?”

  No doubt what I needed more than money was not to be called out. “What you offering exactly?”

  “Trust. They will trust you.”

  I put fifteen more on the arm of the chair.

  She rose from the bed and collected her monies. She put two dollars on the bedside table. The rest she tucked inside a shoe on the floor. So she was gaming the matron. “You thank me later.”

  “If this don’t work, I’ll tell your boss about the shoe.”

  Her eyes narrowed on me. “I make it work.”

  She took the glass from the bedside and smashed it to her bottom lip. It wasn’t enough force to break the glass or split the lip, only enough to make the flesh swell at once. Still, I was speechless at what she done. Then she drew a thin blade from the small of her back, which she kept, I’m guessing, in case of trouble with a patron. She poked her finger and squeezed drops upon that lip until one ran, and this she smeared across her chin. The effect was convincing from a distance.

  “Won’t that hurt your chances with the next man?”

  “Beef from icebox will shrink the lip.” She sucked the bleeding finger. She waved it in the air. She smiled on me. “You ready?”

  “Ready for what?”

  She screamed and threw herself into the wall and let her body crash into the floor.

  * * *

  —

  I was dragged through the parlor and down them stairs and thrown out the front door into the street by the two big men with clubs. The air left me on landing.

  Greenie saw the whole thing, as he was already waiting in the parlor. I thought it queer for him to be so soon done with Miss Aberdeen. Greenie picked me up from the dust and manure. “You can do just about whatever you please, but you ain’t supposed to hit them!”

  “Yeah, well.” My breath was slow in coming back.

  Greenie brushed the dirt from my back. “That girl bite your rutter or something?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Fine then. But you done got milked, right? Look me in the eyes.”

  “I got my money’s worth.”

  He punched me in the shoulder. “All right then! No friend of mine stays a frosty!” He rubbed his hands together and looked down the street. “Now where we gonna find us a bottle of whiskey to celebrate?”

  * * *

  —

  After a visit to the holehouse in the morning, I found Drummond
and Tuss and Greenie at the table with their coffees, and they broke out laughing at the sight of me, as if they’d just finished joking at my expense. Greenie shot me a quick wink so I wouldn’t take offense.

  Tuss said, “So tell us the real reason you hit that gal last night?”

  Drummond rose from the table and put his arm around my neck. This was the first time he’d done such a thing. “Don’t worry, kid. It’ll go better next time.”

  “I don’t want to go there again, never.”

  At this they all laughed anew.

  Drummond rubbed his knuckles through my hair. “From now on, down here with us, your name is Little Pony. You hear? None of you’s say different.”

  “Little Pony?”

  They was laughing, and I understood. They was of the mind that I had punched that woman for laughing at the size of my thing.

  “Good thing you’s skilled with that pistol!” Tuss nearly fell off the bench he was laughing so hard.

  Drum wouldn’t let me go. “Want to complain, LP? Huh? Huh?”

  I pushed free from him and picked up my hat. “Couldn’t I at least be called Wild Pony or Bucking Pony or some such thing?”

  “Nope,” Drummond said, still smiling. “Round here, a man earns his name.”

  * * *

  —

  After my regular morning duties I joined the Governor and Constance on a journey into town. I was climbing into my dust-eating seat up top when the Governor said, “Straight. Why don’t you join us inside?”

  Drummond said, “I wonder if there is room for all of us, sir?”

  “You ride up top, Drum. Don’t pout. I already have one daughter.”

  Drummond eyed me as we passed.

  I stepped inside the carriage and took a seat beside the girl and set the Winchester’s stock between my feet so its barrel pointed up. My eyes stayed off Constance and upon the horizon as we rolled down the road. My mind was with Drummond. How easy the Governor reduced him.

  They was speaking of her upcoming wedding. It was to be in a month’s time so that the new Mr. and Mrs. Scott could catch the train to Washington before the snows of autumn closed the passes.

  “I am going to great lengths to please you, pea,” the Governor said.

  “You are a wonderful father.”

  “You said you wanted dancers and so I have formed a troop of the most limber in the city and have flinched at no expense to train them.”

  “I said dancing, not dancers.”

  “But you can still dance. That is the point.” The Governor’s voice rose. “Dancers to fill the floor! This is a frontier town. I am trying, girl.”

  “Yes, I know. I value your efforts. I’ve said nothing to suggest I don’t value your efforts.”

  “You drive me mad.”

  “I hope to please you, Father. That is my life’s ambition.” She said this while her eyes looked with boredom out the window.

  The Governor said to me, “Daughters are what you live for and what will kill you, Straight.”

  “Don’t say such things, Father. It is not kind to be coarse with words. Mr. Straight buried his own father not long ago.”

  “It is fine,” I said. “It is but a coarse world.”

  “Indeed,” the Governor roared. “Well put.”

  Constance took up the book in her lap and began to read. It wasn’t the Bible. I read over her shoulder and saw that within these pages she was entering a realm of chatter and family.

  “This is what she does,” the Governor said to me. “She rides off into her books rather than converse with her old father who is soon to be left alone in his vast western wilderness. She is ready to be done with me.”

  “Father, don’t be dramatic. It is a ride to the restaurant is all, and you are becoming short on words and long on emotion. Such is not your most becoming condition.”

  “As you can see I have no need for a wife. If I procured one I would only have but two.”

  “Three, Father. You would have three. Mother is still your wife according to law.”

  * * *

  —

  We arrived at a hotel in town and the carriage was met by a mess of employees eager to please Constance and the Governor. Senator Scott was there waiting on the porch. His face wore a smile.

  We entered with them and found the floor cleared of all tables but theirs. A waiter left a pair of drinks upon the table, but Constance waved hers away. The senator then waved his away too.

  In the corner of the room sat the only other occupants of the restaurant, two bearded men in pelts. The older of the two held a pole of tin cups, each one a touch smaller than the last. In his other hand was a wooden wand. On the underside of his boot was tied a white stone so that if he stood his toe would never have touched the floor. He was a queer sight. But his partner was a bound farther. A woman’s washboard dangled about his chest and affixed to it with all manner of nails and twine was strips of copper metal that curled up and away. His boot too was sleeved in twine, in this case holding a metal pipe he was preparing to tap against a spittoon.

  The senator raised his finger in signal and these trappers began their song. I suspect if a man was three months on a beaver line that tune might’ve carried some civilization. To us it sounded like pure industry.

  The Governor leaned to me and said, “Tough town for wedding choirs.”

  Constance shook her head, and the senator snapped his fingers. The racket was stopped at once, the trappers shooed from the room by the senator’s spindly attendant.

  The Governor ordered Tuss and Greenie to linger behind with his daughter. Drummond and I followed him back to the carriage, but again it was me invited inside its confines. We rolled on.

  “She is my only daughter, you understand. Without her I will be a man left with only his work. The prospect becomes more encouraging as the wedding approaches.”

  “You will have your many friends,” I said.

  He laughed. “A governor does not have friends. A governor has people who are friendly because they want something only the Governor can give. But I do not complain. Complaining has long been a market cornered by the French.”

  He looked off at the Chinamen along the street, but I do not believe he was seeing them. “A problem with prosperity is that it makes a place long on crowds and short on people.”

  We turned out of town and I could see his mansion on the hill and the mountain beyond that bore his name.

  “A man works his whole life so that he may build something. He builds and builds and builds, and all the while he suffers. He believes that all the building is for a noble cause, you understand, some future that will begin once the building is complete. And then one day he looks upon his future and sees it shortening. He looks behind and sees opportunities missed. He wonders, ‘When did my cause go rancid?’ That is a sorry day, Straight. It opened a hole under this man.”

  The daughter in me wanted to put a hand to his. Instead I shook my matchbox. He remembered the cigar in his fingers and put it to his lips. I struck a match and lit it. The carriage shook over a bump. “You have built a homeland for your daughter, sir. She may ride on, but this place will be what she carries with her. Home is its own compass point.”

  “She will change her name to that fool’s. Constance Scott. What kind of name is Constance Scott?”

  “It sounds graced, it sounds wealthy.”

  “I shouldn’t put him down. She is lucky I found her a suitor of such stature. But now I see he is a fool who came to his prominence in this family’s carriage. I cannot respect a man who didn’t create his own opportunities. Definitive proof, I must deduce, the West has turned me for good.”

  The Governor smoked for a time. “Her mother lacks fortitude and devotion. It is for the best that my wife remain in the East. But as a result I have come to worry about Constance Pearl for a father and
a mother alike. The habit dies hard.”

  I turned for a look back. The top of the hotel was just visible above the distant buildings. She was in there with Senator Scott, who would lift her from this place and deliver her to a new land where she would create a family of her own. I saw Constance holding her infant to her breast. I saw her cuddling her daughters back to sleep. The straightest path to a missing mother was to become one yourself.

  “Enough of this,” said the Governor. “We must organize a shooting.”

  “Yes.” I remembered the Winchester in my hands. “As pleases you, sir.”

  “Tomorrow then. I want you to spend this afternoon at the range. Practice with that rifle.”

  “Yessir. A shooting of what?”

  He smiled. “Oh, I like you, Straight.”

  * * *

  —

  I had been at the range for a round when I heard Drummond’s voice and turned to see him putting in a fresh plug.

  “You come to learn from me?” I joked.

  He didn’t answer. He sat. He said, “Shoot some. Make it look like I’m coaching you. Boss is watching.”

  I saw the Governor’s shape in his office window. I reloaded the Winchester then held it freehand and continued hitting the targets with uneven success. I braced for ruthless ribbing upon my misses but heard none.

  Drummond said, “I come up during the war and we lost what little we had to Sherman’s advance. Nothing but our skin. Low-down like that teaches you poor ain’t about a shortage of money. To be favored by a man like the Governor, now that answers a call from deep inside, Yank or not.” He looked me in the eye. “Don’t be fooled, LP. We ain’t nothing more than bought souls. He asks us to lay down our lives in his defense. He pays us to exchange our breath for his.” Drummond spat. “I don’t reckon he sees men. He sees losses, profits, distractions. He might be a great man but he ain’t no man’s friend. And he ain’t yours. I see now he wasn’t never mine.”

  Drummond stood and busted six rounds from his pistol at nothing in particular and sat back down. He said, “I seen the way you look at his girl.”