by John Jakes
“Sam, I accept your offer—conditionally.”
He overlooked the last word, crying, “Splendid!”
“This is the condition. My first act as manager is to put you on an allowance. The theater will pay your living expenses, but nothing for whiskey, beer, champagne, or strong drink of any kind.”
He smote his bosom with his fist. “Oh! How sharper than a serpent’s tooth—”
“Sam, I just took over this theater. Do you want me to quit?”
“No, no!”
“Then you are on an allowance.”
“Dear lady—” His chin fell, covering the moonstone cravat pin. “I hear and I obey.”
MADELINE’S JOURNAL
July, 1865. The dark mood has passed. Hard work is a strong antidote for melancholy.
The state remains in turmoil. Judge Perry is now the provisional governor. He has pledged to implement Johnson’s program, and set Sept. 13 for a constitutional convention for that purpose.
From Hilton Head, Gen. Gillmore commands the nine military districts, each with a Union garrison whose primary purpose is to forestall violence between the races. In our district some of the soldiers are Negroes, and many of my neighbors angrily say we are being “niggered to death.” So we shall be, I think, until we resolve differences and live in harmony. It is my heart, Orry, not my ancestry, leading me to believe that if Almighty God ever set a single test by which to judge the republic’s ability to fulfill its promise of liberty for all men, that test is race.
Freedmen’s Bureau of the War Dept now operating. Gen. Saxton at Beaufort the assistant commissioner for the state. Needed food is beginning to find its way to the destitute …
A strange letter from Cooper. C. met a certain Desmond LaMotte of Charleston, whom I do not know. This D. L., whose profession is dancing master, said the LaMottes believe I cuckolded Justin, and they want reprisal. After so much bloodshed and privation, how can anyone find energy for such hatred? I would consider it ludicrous but for Cooper’s warning that I must take it seriously. He thought this D. L. quite fanatic, therefore possibly a threat. Could he be one of those tragic young men whose nerves and reason were destroyed by the war? I shall exercise caution with strangers …
Brutal heat. But we have harvested our rice crop and got a little money for it. Few Negroes want to work as yet. Many on abandoned plantations in the neighborhood are busy tearing down the old quarters where they lived as slaves in order to put up new homes, however small and primitive, as emblems of their freedom.
Andy and Jane continue to press me about a school for the local freedmen. Will decide soon. There are risks to be weighed
Yesterday, in need of lamp oil, walked to the old store at the Summerton crossroads. I went the shorter way, through the lovely bright marshes, whose hidden paths you taught me so well. At the crossroads, a sad spectacle. The Gettys Bros. store is open but surely will not be for long—shelves are bare. The place is little more than a shelter for members of that large family, one of whom, an oafish old man with a squirrel rifle, keeps watch on the property …
The noon sun shone on the Summerton crossroads. Three great live oaks spread shade over the store and its broken stoop. Near them, clusters of dark green yucca with spear-sharp fronds grew low to the ground. Madeline stood looking at the old man with the rifle on the edge of the porch. He wore filthy pants; his long underwear served as his shirt.
“Ain’t nothin’ here for you or anybody else,” he said.
Sweat darkened the back of Madeline’s faded dress. The hem showed dampness and mud left by her trek through the salt marshes. “There’s water in the well,” she said. “Might I have a drink before I start back?”
“No,” said the nameless member of the Gettys clan. “Go get it from the wells of your own kind.” He gestured to the empty tawny road winding away toward Mont Royal.
“Thank you so much for your kindness,” she said, picking up her skirts and stepping into the blaze of light.
A half-mile down the road, she came upon a detachment of six black soldiers and a white lieutenant with a downy, innocent face. The men lay at rest in the hot shade, their collars unfastened, their rifles and canteens put aside.
“Good day, ma’am,” the young officer said, jumping up and giving a little salute of respect.
“Good day. It’s a hot day for travel.”
“Yes, but we must march back to Charleston all the same. I wish I could offer you water, but our canteens are empty. I asked that fellow at the store to let us fill up, and he wouldn’t.”
“He isn’t a very generous sort, I’m afraid. If you’ll come along to my plantation—it’s about two miles and right on your way—you’re welcome to use its well.”
So it has risen to haunt me again. “Your own kind,” the old man said. Cooper’s letter said the dancing master made reference to my ancestry, too.
Went last night on foot along the river road to the Church of St. Joseph of Arimathea, where we worshiped together. Have not been there since shortly after the great house burned. Father Lovewell greeted me and welcomed me to meditation in the family pew for as long as I wished.
I sat for an hour, and my heart spoke. As soon as possible I must travel to the city on three errands, one of which is sure to provoke people such as the dancing master and that old Mr. Gettys. Let it. If I am to be hanged regardless of what I do, why should I hesitate to commit a hanging offense? Orry, my love, I draw courage from thoughts of you, and of my dear father. Neither of you ever let fear put chains on your conscience.
5
ASHTON LET OUT A long wailing cry. The customer writhing on top of her responded with a bleary smile of bliss. Downstairs, Ashton’s employer, Señora Vasquez-Reilly, heard the outcry and saluted the ceiling with her glass of tequila.
Ashton hated what she was doing. That is, she hated the act when she had to do it to survive. Being stuck in this flyblown frontier town—Santa Fe, in New Mexico Territory—was unspeakable. To be reduced to whoring was unbelievable. Moaning and yelling let her express her feelings.
The middle-aged gentleman, a widower who raised cattle, withdrew, shyly averting his eyes. Having already paid her, he dressed quickly, then bowed and kissed her hand. She smiled and said in halting Spanish, “You come back soon, Don Alfredo.”
“Next week, Señorita Brett. Happily.”
God, I hate greasers, she thought as she sorted the coins after he left. Three of the four went to Señora Vasquez-Reilly, a widow whose burly brother-in-law made sure the señora’s three girls didn’t cheat. Ashton had gone to work for the señora early in the summer, when her funds ran out. She’d given her name as Señorita Brett, thinking it a fine joke. It would have been an even better one if her sweet, prissy sister knew about it.
Ashton Main—she no longer thought of herself as Mrs. Huntoon—had decided to stay in Santa Fe because of the treasure. Somewhere in the Apache-infested wasteland, two wagons had vanished, and the men bringing them from Virginia City had been massacred. One man, her husband, James Huntoon, was no loss. Another, her lover, Lamar Powell, had planned to create a second confederacy in the Southwest, with Ashton as his consort. To finance it, he’d loaded a false bottom in one of the wagons with three hundred thousand dollars in gold refined from ore out of the Nevada mine originally owned by his late brother.
The massacre had been reported by a wagon driver who reached a trading station shortly before he died of his wounds. In his pain-racked, disjointed telling, he never revealed the site of the killings. Only one person might have that information now: the guide Powell had hired in Virginia City, Collins. Rumor said he’d survived, but God knew where he was.
When she first heard of the massacre, Ashton had tried to find a wealthy patron in Santa Fe. Candidates were few. Most were married, and if they philandered at the señora’s, they also showed no desire to get rid of their wives. As for finding a man at Fort Marcy, the idea was a joke. The officers and men who garrisoned the run-down post near the old Pal
ace of Governors weren’t paid enough to support their own lusts, let alone a mistress. They had all the prospects of a hog headed for a Low Country barbecue.
Of course she could have avoided working for the señora if she’d written an appeal to her sanctimonious brother Cooper, or to the sister whose name she delighted in muddying, or even to the slutty octoroon Orry had married. But she was damned if she’d stoop to asking any of them for charity. She didn’t want to see them or communicate with them until she could do so on her own terms.
Ashton put on her working clothes—a yellow silk dress with wide lace-trimmed shoulder straps, meant to be worn over a blouse with dolman sleeves. The señora had denied her the blouse as well as a corset, so that the bulge of her partly exposed breast would tempt the customers. The dress had been fashionable about the time her damn brother Orry went to West Point. She hated it, along with the coy black mantilla the señora insisted she wear, and the shoes, too—leather dyed a garish yellow, with laces, and thin high heels.
She adjusted the mantilla in front of a small scrap of mirror and ran her palm down her left cheek. The three parallel scratches barely showed, thank heaven. Another of the girls, Rosa, had attacked her in a dispute over a customer. Before the señora pulled them apart, Rosa had scratched Ashton’s face badly. Ashton had wept for hours over the bloody nail marks. Her body and her face were her chief assets, the weapons she used to get whatever she wanted.
For weeks after the fight, she’d plastered salve on the slow-healing wounds, and rushed to the mirror seven or eight times a day to examine them. At last she was sure there would be no permanent damage. Nor would Rosa trouble her again. Ashton now carried a small sharpened file in her right shoe.
Occasional thoughts of the mine in Nevada only sharpened her greed. Wasn’t that mine hers, too? She’d practically been married to Lamar Powell. Of course, if she wanted to get possession of the mine, she faced two gigantic obstacles: She’d have to convince the authorities that she was Mrs. Powell, and, before she could do that, she had to reach Virginia City. Ashton considered herself a strong and resourceful young woman, but she wasn’t crazy. Cross hundreds and hundreds of miles of dangerous wasteland by herself? Not likely. She focused instead on the nearer dream, the wagons.
If she could just find them! She was convinced the Apaches had not stolen the gold. It had been cleverly concealed. Moreover, they were ignorant savages; they wouldn’t know its value. With the gold she could buy much more than material comfort. She could buy position, and power. The power to travel back to South Carolina, descend on Mont Royal, and, in some way yet to be devised, rub dirt in the faces of those in the family who’d rejected her. Her consuming desire was to ruin every last one of them.
Meanwhile, it had come down to a choice of starving or whoring. So she whored. And waited. And hoped.
Most of the señora’s customers loved Ashton’s white Anglo skin and her Southern speech and mannerisms, which she exaggerated for effect. Tonight, when she descended to the cantina with her grand airs, her performance was wasted. No one was there but three elderly vaqueros playing cards.
The cantina looked particularly dismal after dark. Lamplight yellowed everything, and revealed the bullet holes, knife marks, whiskey spills, and general filth on the furniture, floor, and adobe walls. The señora sat reading an old Mexico City newspaper. Ashton handed her the coins.
The señora favored her with a smile that showed her gold front tooth. “Gracias, querida. Are you hungry?”
Ashton pouted. “Hungry for some fun in this dreary old place. I miss hearing a little music.”
The señora’s upper lip and faint mustache dropped down to hide the gold tooth. “Too bad. I can’t afford a mariachi.”
The brother-in-law, a stupid hulk named Luis, walked in through the half-doors. The only piece of free goods the señora allowed him was Rosa, who had stringy hair and had had the pox. Soon after Ashton started to work, Luis had tried to fondle her. She couldn’t stand his smell or his swinish manners, and she already knew the señora held him in low regard, so she slapped him. He was about to hit back when the señora stepped in and cowed him with shouted profanity. Ever since, Luis never got close to Ashton without letting her see his sullen fury. Tonight was no different. He stared at her while he grabbed Rosa’s wrist. He dragged the girl past the door leading to the office and storeroom and pulled her up the stairs. Ashton rubbed her left cheek. I hope he works her like a field hand, she thought. I hope she gives him a good case, too.
A hot wind swept dust under the half-doors. No customers showed up. At half past ten, the señora said Ashton could go to bed. She lay in the dark in her tiny room listening to the wind bang shutters and again entertaining the idea of robbing the señora. Now and then customers spent a lot at the cantina, and cash sometimes accumulated for over a week. She couldn’t think of how to commit the robbery, though. And there was a great risk. Luis had a fast horse and some bad friends. If they captured her, they might kill her or, just as bad, disfigure her.
Anger and hopelessness kept her from sleep. Finally she relighted the lamp and reached under the bed for her lacquered Oriental box. On the lid, bits of inlaid pearl formed a scene: a Japanese couple, fully clothed and in repose, contemplating cups of tea. Raising the lid and holding it against the light revealed the couple, with kimonos up, copulating. The woman’s happy face showed her response to the gentleman’s mammoth shaft, half inside her.
The box always lifted Ashton’s spirits. It held forty-seven buttons she’d collected over the years—West Point uniform buttons, trouser-fly buttons. Each button represented a man she’d enjoyed, or at least used. Only two partners didn’t have a button in the box: the first boy who took her, before she started her collection, and her weakling husband, Huntoon. The collection was growing rapidly in Santa Fe.
For a few minutes, she examined one button and then another, trying to put a face with each. Presently, she put the box away, and examined her perspiring body in the mirror. Still soft where it should be, firm where it should be, and the nail marks on her face hardly showed. Gazing at herself, she felt her hope renewed. Somehow, she would use her beauty to escape this damnable place.
She went to sleep then, enjoying a dream of repeatedly pricking Brett’s skin with her little file, till it bled.
Three nights later, a coarsely dressed Anglo walked into the cantina. He had mustaches with long points and a revolver on his hip. He downed two fast double whiskeys at the bar, then wobbled over to the hard chairs where Ashton and Rosa waited for customers. The third girl was at work upstairs.
“Hello, Miss Yellow Shoes. How are you this evening?”
“I’m just fine.”
“What’s your name?”
“Brett.”
He grinned. “Do I hear the accent of a fallen blossom from the South?”
She tossed her head, flirted with her eyes. “I never fall unless I’m paid first. Since you know my name, what’s yours?”
“You might find my first name a bit peculiar. It’s Banquo, from Mr. Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth. Last name’s Collins. I may be back to see you after I have a couple more drinks.”
He ambled back to the bar, while Ashton gripped her chair to keep from toppling off.
Banquo Collins pounded a fist on the bar. “I’ll buy for everybody. I can spend ten times that much and never worry.”
The señora closed in. “Bold words, my dear sir.”
“But they’re true, lass. I know where to mine some treasure.”
“Ah, I knew you were fooling. There are no mines around here.”
Collins swallowed all of a glass of popskull. “I don’t mine dirt; I mine wagons.”
“Wagons? That makes no sense.”
“Does to me.”
He extended his arms and began to shuffle his booted feet. “Ought to have music in this place, so a man could dance.” Because everyone was watching him, they missed the wild look on Ashton’s face. This was the man—Powell’s gui
de!
“Gonna be rich as Midas,” he declared, rubbing his crotch. Rosa primped furiously. Ashton slid the file from her shoe and beneath her left arm. Rosa gasped when the point jabbed her.
“This one’s mine,” Ashton whispered. “If you take him, I’ll put your eye out tomorrow.”
Rosa was white. “Take him. Take him.”
“Gonna have plenty of music when I see the world. Rome, the Japans—” Collins belched. “But not here. Guess I can get pleasured here, though.”
He lurched to the girls. Ashton stood. He grinned again, took her hand, and headed upstairs.
After latching the door, she helped him undress. She was so excited she pulled one trouser button too hard. It flew and ticked against the wall. He sat on the bed while she worked his pants off. “That was interesting talk downstairs,” she said.
He blinked, as if he hadn’t heard. “Where’d you come from, Yellow Shoes? You’re sure no greaser.”
“I’m a Carolina girl, stranded here by misfortune.” A deep breath, and then the leap. “A misfortune I think we both know something about.”
Despite all he’d drunk, and his aroused state, what she said put him on guard. “Are we gonna talk or fuck?”
She bent forward, ministering to him a moment to curb his irritation. “I just want to ask about those wagons—” He grabbed her hair. “Collins, I’m your friend. I know what was in those wagons.”
“How come?” Furious, he yanked her hair. “I said how come?”
“Please. Not so hard! That’s better.” She leaned back, frightened. Suppose he really felt threatened? Suppose he decided to kill her? Then she thought, If you stay here you’re as good as dead anyway.
She collected herself and said carefully, “I know because I’m related to the man who owned the wagons. He was a Southerner, wasn’t he?”
His eyes admitted it before he could deny it. She clapped her hands. “Sure he was. Both of them were. And you guided them from Virginia City.”