by Diane Munier
So I stayed against that stinking building in that stinking gangway and I watched both directions at once. He chose the back, creeping up. I couldn’t look directly, but I waited, my hand in my coat, revolver passed over, but my knife in my hand. I felt him close, my head straight, but my eyes seeing movement. I turned as he lunged, and I tripped him and he sprung back on his feet, and someone passing saw and said something, but there was no one coming into this dark void, not if they wanted to live. So I got this one against the wall, leaning into him, arm on his throat, hand on his wrist, banging his arm against the bricks until he dropped his weapon. I turned him, smashed his face on the wall and jacked his bent arms behind him. My knees pressed hard into the backs of his, I felt for the gun and I found it and helped myself. I had the arsenal now. “Why you following me?”
He told me to go to hell.
“You looking for Michael?”
I stepped back then and he turned slow, nursing that wrist.
“Tell your boss I don’t know where he is. He has business needs discussed he can face me in the daylight man to man and not like some cockroach in the alley. I will kill the next one ambushes me. I don’t care if it’s his mother. Go on now,” I said, kicking after him. I stuck his gun in my waist, armed to the hilt now, and I found the knife and added that. I was getting in that red fog. I needed to find Bertha. If Gaylin was married to some singing whore…but these girls lied, she said.
Tom Tanner
Chapter Three
It was in a fixedness of purpose that I strode down that hollow street amid the staggering, fast-talking, rowdy, drunk and laughing, skirmishing, look-seers, to the place where Bertha adorned colorful posters noting attributes of her womanly beauty, angelic form, and joyous sound.
I did not know if this was a bawdy show, or a religious invitation. Last I knew, men did not pay ten cents to see an angel, but ten cents for the hope of a nipple, a man might sell his mother for that.
Well, it was quite a congregation, and I had not a fond feeling for such, but in I went always the one, pointing my boots into the chute of duty once again.
I pushed my way through, using my legs as they’d taught me on the field. We were constant in our attacks, and annoying as mosquitoes between. So you can see what forged me, and I felt it in me now.
Bertha was up there singing, “Oh Susanna,”…and swinging on a trapeze, her skirt blowing, and them caught in it, the show of her legs, those two columns of hope leading straight to the bull’s-eye.
And the rest of her worthy of another look if yellow-haired beauties with fat corseted bosoms were what you craved. And her voice was passable, not that it mattered.
Was this, then, my new sister-in-law? Or mayhap she was the lie, but either way, I could see the draw she would have for him, him knowing only the hard work of the farm, him always thinking he deserved better. Him wanting an adventure and having lived through a bang-tale of one. Not settled in what he believed, thinking he’d been denied, and finally knowing he was better than me. Now the money giving him brass, even the promise of it, even that making him reach high…or low according to whom you asked.
They called as one as the swing brought her forward, against the breeze and the skirt did lift. There were her bloomers, above the knee.
Saints and glory he could not be this ill prepared to find his wife. This was not a marrying gal. This was Jezebel. I tried to picture my Addie on display for all of these dowagers and even the notion left me murderous. Her beauty was mine…and my strength was hers, and this…this was selling the sacred for filthy gain.
I saw him then, my brother, at the end of the stage, drunk and yelling, elbowing those around him, watching her like he feared she would fall. But she looked fine. So fine she stood on the seat then, and they went wild.
And as she looked down at them, at the crowd of hats and heads, upturned faces and open mouths, as she heard their applause that were not for any talent she possessed beyond being in the room and not afraid of flying in her unmentionables, she looked at him, my brother, and I saw the worry in her painted face, for just the smallest beat. And I wondered that she would let him hang over the edge like the train that day, until he was falling and drowning, and this wasn’t love. I knew love. This girl would wreck him!
I made my way to him. I clapped him hard on the shoulder, and he turned to fight. But it stopped him cold to see me, and he stared for a minute, through all the layers of worry and doubt, and just plain drunkenness.
“Need to talk,” I said.
One more look to her, but she was fine, lifting her leg, toe pointed in the slipper. Every move she made a vivifying experience for them.
He snapped to me and nodded I should follow. With one hand he vaulted onto the stage, and I did the same dogging him through a gap in the fancy painted garden scene. Well the bully was there, but he knew Gaylin and let us through the dark way, a team of jugglers practicing back and forth, and we worked our way around to a stinking room in the back filled with tossed dresses looked like costumes and whore-cloth all bright like a bird’s plumage.
“You don’t come sign for your share of the money all you went through is for shit,” I said.
He belched and I smelled the still. “Where I gotta go?” The audience roared, and I saw where his attention was nailed. It was all I could do not to give him the ten commandments I’d written the minute I’d seen Bertha.
I did ask, “You marry this dove?”
He was touchy. “Who told you that?”
“Word around here. You a drunk now?”
“Don’t,” big belch, “tell me….”
“You married?”
“Not your look out. Don’t…call her dove….”
“You gonna show tomorrow at the courthouse? Nine in the morning. Don’t be late. This dove finds out you ain’t getting that money….” I had to do it. I was in that frame.
He backhanded my shoulder. “Don’t call her that. Don’t talk about her.”
Another roar came from the crowd. I bit my lips to keep my tongue from evil.
“Where’s Michael? He needs to be there, too.”
“He got in some trouble. He’s been lying low. Gets his money he’ll be okay.”
“His money ain’t coming for a month. He’s got to sign for it,” I said, holding back a cavalry of words now.
“I gotta get in there,” he said walking out.
I followed, my fingers itching to grab him and make him listen. “You gonna tell Michael? You know where he is?”
“I’ll bring him,” he yelled, pushing through the backdrop.
I wanted to warn him that he was being watched for they surely knew about him. I wanted to ask him what the hell he was doing? What was he thinking? And had he married this woman?
But his attention was back on her, and she hung from her knees now, her long blond hair sweeping over them, casting long fingered shadows, her arms dangling white, her fingers spread, all the room in awe, for her bosoms were nearly spilling close to her chin, the colored circles around her nipples peaking out like twin suns rising out of their corset horizon, as she looked down, right at me, boredom on her painted features.
“Lord, God,” I said.
My last look showed Gaylin standing on the stage arms hanging at his sides as he watched her, the most captivated of them all.
Before I went to the inn I grabbed a beefsteak burned the way I liked it. The whole time I ate I listened for what was around me and turned over concern for Gaylin in my mind. I didn’t think it was in me to throw him away.
Then I went to my room at the inn. I approached the door, but stopped to listen before I turned the knob. For I had heard a sound so light I could have imagined such, except I didn’t. Gun in hand I turned that knob and let the door open inwards. Then I stood there looking into the dark room.
“It’s me,” he said, and I went in and closed the door behind me. I struck a match and lit the lamp. Michael sat on the bed. He looked drawn and pale. He was bent over nu
rsing his stomach, hair plastered to his head with grease, eyes sunken.
“What happened to you?” I said, for this was more than drunkenness.
“I…been sick,” he said. “Been in the hospital shitting water. Miss Avery finds out she’ll put me on the street,” he said.
“When all this start?”
“I was on a tear…we got here they made over us…wouldn’t take no money. Then I got sick and for three days. I was in some stinking cabin down by the wharf. Couple of guys put me on a wagon hauled me to the sisters.” He was bent over panting.
“You still sick?”
“I can eat some and it stays,” he said. “They fed me water, salt and sugar for over a week. Without them I’d be dead.”
Both Gaylin and Michael had been on the path to hell. Here I’d been worried over Jimmy and barely given them a thought. “You may die yet. Someone tried to stick me in an alley. Some gal told me you owed money. They put a man on me.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No. I reckon he thought I knew where you were. Here you are…not hard to find.”
“I ain’t been seen.”
“You sure as hell ain’t been looking out for Gaylin.”
“I sure as hell been fighting off death, excuse me.” He groaned then and bent over, then fell onto his side. “You got that Enfield under here, I can feel it,” he complained.
“Set to kill any bugger thinks he can bring his nasty sick self onto my bed without retribution.”
He laughed a little and I flipped the one chair around and set myself in, my arm resting on the back, my revolver in my hand, for him being here could get us both killed.
“In the morning we got papers to sign for that money,” I said. “I’m going to get us there, and you’re going to put your mark.”
“Funny,” he said.
“Go on and sleep a spell, I’ll watch. I’d go to the jail right now and wait it out, but they see you sick they’ll scream cholera and we’ll get quarantined.”
“I’m better,” he said.
“Death had a face…,” I said, and he was already snoring.
Couple hours later, after I’d been all around that building making sure we weren’t staked, then fallen asleep against the door, I woke and got my sore self onto my feet.
Michael was still out so I roused him and got him up. He was moving slow, but he could manage. Thing of it was, as we passed Gaylin’s door I heard talking. I pressed my ear against it and heard female Irish gibbering fast. I motioned to Michael and we got either side of it. I tried the knob hoping I didn’t have to rouse the whole floor to make my point.
The door opened, but stopped against what must have been a chair or piece of furniture.
“Gaylin?” I said low.
Rapid steps to the door, too light to be him. Then her face in the crack of it, and now I was pulled back. It was the maid, I think, but there was war in me.
I heard the scrape of the chair then the door widened. “Get in here,” she whispered looking from me to Michael.
In we went. She still wore her cape. “I barely got him here…I paid a foreigner to help me.”
Gaylin was on the bed, rag over his face, bruised hand holding it there.
“I told him not to fight,” she fretted, taking the rag from him and wetting it in the pan.
He’d a goose egg over his eye, the fat lips I knew myself many a time, and his nose…well he’d straightened it some.
She threw back the cape to better nurse him, and she still wore the whore’s get-up. Michael made a sound like a baby bird. There was just no fixing this.
“Where you been?” Gaylin said through those lips.
“Got sick,” Michael said.
She was mopping a cut on Gaylin’s head, but she looked Michael up and down in the dim light. “Don’t be bringing cholera in here,” she said all fiery.
Michael said he was over the sickness, that he’d been in the care of nuns and they wouldn’t lie.
She held her hand up. Then to me, “He said he needs to sign in the morning.”
I looked at Gaylin. His eyes closed as if deferring to her.
“What’s it to do with you?” I said.
“Guess you need to ask, being the brother.”
“And you the swinging lady who also cleans these rooms. It is a strange combination of skills,” I said. “So why did you pretend you didn’t know where he was?” I meant earlier when she had gone on about Gaylin touching her backside.
She had this smirk. “It was true,” she said.
No straight answer here, I guessed.
“This is Rosie,” Gaylin said then.
“Not Bertha?” me.
“My stage name. Rosie is what I’m called.” She stuck out her hand then, smiled wide and white. A very pretty one this, Lord he was stuck. Him and how many others?
“You can’t tell anyone,” Gaylin said.
“Like Ma?” I said. Rosie dropped her hand then.
Now he tried to look murderous at me and bunched the covers in his raw fists. “I meant about her. She lives here. They don’t know about the other. It goes both ways. No one knows where Bertha lives. No one here knows she’s an actress.”
“Actress,” I repeated.
“My aunt is Missus Avery. She doesn’t know about my…work on the stage.”
“Guess not,” I said, fake smile, very righteous. “Figure you’ll get him killed soon,” I nodded at my brother.
He grabbed the rag from where she’d laid it on his forehead and looked flying daggers at me.
“You keep a man like this as a rule?” I said, no smile now.
She was working her jaw. “I don’t blame you for being angry. But I love Gaylin.”
“Sure, sure,” I said. “I can see it in him,” I beheld him now, his blue blooming face, “he has that glow.”
“Look…I told Gaylin you wouldn’t like me…. But…we’re married now. And…I will be a good wife to him.”
“Sons of glory,” I said, sick in my stomach. “I was told you’d already married. I hoped it was a lie and mayhap those boys knocked some sense into you.”
She looked at Gaylin. “I told him I was nothing but trouble.”
I nodded agreement. “Right out of the horse’s mouth,” I said to him.
“You did this,” he said to my disbelieving ears.
“Me?”
“This was Buster,” he said. “He said to tell you…if Michael got his money tomorrow he wanted his cut. If not…we’ll never leave here alive.”
“Get up,” I said. “We’re going straight to the Sheriff.”
We quickly packed our gear. We were a pathetic group making our way to the Sheriff’s office in the moonlight. Inside, one deputy was sleeping at the desk, and those in lock up were thrown in various attitudes around the two cells.
We threw down our belongings. I eased Gaylin onto the bench, and Michael dropped exhausted beside him, though I’d told him to look as sharp as possible I didn’t care what the constitution of his shit. When I told the deputy the pickle we were in, he sent for the sheriff who sent for the judge. We signed the papers in an expedited condition. There was one freight train due in before sun up that would switch track in Hillsboro. I said we would take it. All the while I was doing the necessaries, Rosie and Gaylin were carrying on, having a hot discussion.
He wanted her to come home with us, and she was fighting it, wanting to finish up here and meet him. He insisted that wouldn’t work, she feared leaving her boss, Tulley, in the lurch, cause he’d been so good to her, rat-a-tat-tat, and her aunt needed her to boom-boom-boom.
Finally she decided to come along, and then she wanted to go back to the inn and tell her aunt good-bye. I told her no, hoping to discourage her anyway I could, but I figured if she did come with us it would be like bringing a bug into the light of day, and then we’d watch the sun curl her right up. So short of getting the three of us out of there in one piece, she could stay or go, I cared not long as I could get
on the track headed toward Addie.
Well Rosie decided to come. Of course she did. And soon as that train appeared we threw our gear aboard and dragged inside. Once it started to move, a relief came on me. A longing, too. I was headed toward my life now. And nothing would stand in my way. Not cholera, not bruises and cracked ribs, not some soiled dove didn’t know to keep her breasts in her dress, not crooks or gamblers. I was headed toward home. I was headed toward Addie.
Tom Tanner
Chapter Four
Nothing has come easy to me. That’s what I think when I saddle my horse in Hillsboro. The others, in no good shape, the dove included, can hire them a way to Greenup or wait for the regular train. From the looks of them, they’d do well to hire a carriage. The dove has some money, she can pay. As for me, it’s Adios. I told Michael that once he made it to Greenup he needed to lie low, get himself to William’s old cabin and stay put. Any of those boys from Springfield showed William would catch it. “Hear me?” I said.
He nodded.
“You stay put ‘til that money comes and you can pay your debt. Hear me?” I said again and he nodded.
To Gaylin, “I don’t know what kind of trouble trails you two, but you need to do the same, lie low ‘til that money comes. Jimmy and Allie….”
“Tom,” he cut me off, his face a horrendous display of colors, “I can figure it.”
Well, he didn’t want me holding his willy in front of the new wife. Had to hold in a laugh at the sight of her, that paint running onto her cheeks, that hair gone to wild, and her still in that Jezebel get-up. I doubted anything Allie had could corral what I was doing my best not to look at, but it wasn’t my trouble, but Gaylin’s to ‘figure.’
I knew some part of me was past tired. Even so I pushed my horse. When I finally hit Greenup, I stopped by Jimmy’s, but didn’t get out of the saddle. First off I asked about Addie. She’d sent word she’d be home four days from now by his figures. I told him the others were not far behind me.