He smiled back at her.
She approached him and touched his leg, just beside his groin, and kissed him on the cheek. “I want you,” she whispered, moving her lips to his ear. “I want you, Wallace. Will you have me?” He made to touch her cunt and she grabbed his wrist. “Not just like that,” she moaned. “I want to be your wife. Be my husband, Wallace. Be my dear husband. I have dreamed of it for so long – how I have dreamed! – and I cannot restrain myself any longer. I know it is not proper, but, please, please, ask me. Ask me and I will say yes in a moment.”
She hated the desperation in her voice, hated even more that some of it was real. The idea of spending two years in this place and losing now sickened her. She truly was desperate. She leaned back and regarded his face. It seemed torn between embracing her warmly and pushing her away. But she knew him. He was weak and body-led. Cock-led.
She reached down and grabbed his cock through his britches. He hardened immediately. “Don’t you want me?” she said, giving him an under-the-eyelashes look. “Don’t you want to be with me?”
He let out a long breath. “Of course I do,” he said. “Of course I do, Alma.”
He clamped his hand down on her groin.
* * *
After the wedding, Alma thought she might be sick. She had been born into a situation where she was tethered to a man she did not love, and now she had put herself in another situation like that. She consoled herself by repeating, over and over in her mind: It is not permanent. It is not permanent.
But it did not make Solomon’s gaze, as he watched the happy couple emerge onto the sunbaked streets of Calico, any easier to take. Something reflected the sunlight on his cheek. Alma wanted to go to him and wipe the tears away, but she couldn’t. Not yet. She had to play the Dutiful Wife, the Doting Woman. She had to play the absolute antithesis of herself.
“We’re going to be the happiest couple alive!” Wallace laughed, rubbing her shoulder.
Maybe she should have felt guilty for what she would do. Maybe she should have felt ashamed. Or maybe she should have felt triumphant. She had been used by men her entire life. Now it was her turn to use them.
* * *
She couldn’t help herself.
They were staying in Abraham’s house – the house he had built upon arriving in Calico – and Wallace was fast asleep after their lovemaking. Alma knew it was foolish, but Wallace had drunk a large quantity of whisky and was exhausted. He snored loudly and lay on his front, away from Alma.
Alma rose to her feet, put on her clothes as quietly as she could, and crept down the stairs and out of the door. She knew that Solomon sometimes slept in the store cupboard at Beryl’s, and when she walked into the dead bar and through the moon-touched shadows that was where she found him. She nudged him with her hand.
“Solomon,” she whispered.
He sat up and rubbed his eyes. He recoiled when he saw who had woken him. “What are you doing here?” he gasped.
“I have to say something to you.”
“I loved you. I thought you loved me. Now—”
“That’s why I’m here, you silly man,” Alma said. “I do love you. This won’t be forever, Solomon. I promise you that. One day, we’ll look down on the whole damn bunch of them: the men and women who thought we were chattel will smile and bow to us. I promise you, my love.” My love . . . the phrase she had used so often with her now-husband, but she meant it this time. “I promise. I have to go now, though. Don’t forget me. I won’t forget you.”
When she returned to the house, Wallace was still asleep. She took off her clothes and climbed into bed beside him. She was the queen of the Mojave, but the man beside her was not her king.
Her king was asleep in the store cupboard of a hotel.
She would be reunited with him. She knew people would frown upon them, but money and power talks.
They would have both.
Epilogue
“Is it true that a negro and a woman own the mines?” Jack asked as he sipped his whisky.
The old barmaid and the owner of the hotel came up the bar and leaned over conspiratorially. Jack was looking for work and had never heard of a negro and a woman ruling over so many men.
“That negro used to work for me, right here, only three years ago,” she said, looking up and down the bar as though somebody was listening. It was the middle of the day and the place was dead. “He used to serve drinks and clean the place up. He slept in the store cupboard. The store cupboard! And the woman, she stayed here for a long while. Two years, I think. She married Wallace Saville, Abraham’s boy.”
“I remember the name,” Jack said, sipping his whisky. “The old fella died of a stroke, didn’t he? Never heard what happened to the young fella.”
“I’ll tell you,” Beryl said, refilling Jack’s glass. “Miss Abrams married him, you see, but the marriage must not have been very enjoyable for Wallace. He lost a lot of weight and his hair started to go grey early, and he became like a mouse, and his voice was quiet and he never met your eye. Nothing at all like his old self or his Father.”
“He killed himself?” Jack said, casually, already growing bored.
“No, no,” Beryl said, rushing to fill up his drink even more. “He ran away, east. He lives in Boston, last I heard, with a new wife and a child. Before he left, he sold the company to his wife. She divorced him – a scandal, it was – and now she lives with the negro. Imagine that. Of course, they aren’t married, and he doesn’t ‘own’ a thing on paper, but they ride together, and live together, and folks talk of seeing them walk hand-in-hand, right there in the open.”
“Wow,” Jack said, thinking he’d have to meet this pair. “Where do they live?”
“Just outside town.”
She gave him the directions.
When he approached the house, he saw the most beautiful woman he had ever seen – she was so beautiful he actually stopped walking for a moment – wearing trousers and a shirt with her legs crossed and a glass of lemonade in her hand. She sat on a chair which looked like it belonged in an office, out of place on a porch: an almost throne-like chair. Beside her sat the man who must have been Solomon Crawford. He was a hulking, scarred fellow, but he had a wide smile on his face, and he, too, held a glass of lemonade.
Beside the house, a mare explored the earth with her hoof.
As Jack got closer, he saw a young girl who must have been their servant emerge from the door with another jug of lemonade. “Would you like some more, miss, sir?” the girl said.
“Howdy, there!” Jack called, as he approached the porch. He took off his hat and held it to his chest. He looked into both Solomon’s and Alma’s eyes. It was clear to him they were equal partners, and he had to impress them both. “I am in the Mojave looking for work, and I have heard that you two are the kindest, shrewdest businesspeople this far west . . .”
Romance: Pummel Me: A Boxing Romance Page 87