A Season in Hell

by Easy Jackson

  Maribel wasn’t ready, so Tennie had to spend another thirty minutes discussing horses and antecedents with the land agent, meanwhile hoping Maribel didn’t come down the stairs wearing a repeat of the costume of the night before.

  When she did arrive, she was wearing a close-fitting but much more demure dark blue skirt and jacket that showed her eyes and hair off to perfection. She carried a little lace parasol that had Tennie breaking the tenth commandment.

  The land agent helped Tennie into the backseat of the buggy, putting Maribel up front with him. She was on her best behavior, being so pleasant to the agent Tennie wondered if she had been overreacting to Maribel’s earlier deeds. However, as the afternoon wore on, and Maribel continued to ignore her, Tennie sat in the backseat, marveling at the beauty of Mobile all to herself as the horse clopped along brick streets, and the buggy wheels rolled them down sedate, treelined avenues.

  “Now this lovely home belonged to one of the grand dames of Mobile society,” the agent said. “She just recently passed, but the family is being very particular. They want to rent it to just the right sort.”

  Maribel agreed it was a gorgeous home but did not take the bait. On it or any of the others he presented so adroitly. Tennie was fairly sure it was not a question of money, and the agent had shown them a nice range of homes. Maribel didn’t appear interested in setting up housekeeping and joining Mobile society.

  Tennie didn’t know what Maribel wanted. She had shown no interest in Hawkshaw and was just as glad to avoid him as he was her. She barely suffered Tennie and Gid’s presence, and she had made no effort to make any contacts within Mobile’s higher society, which she easily could have, given the network of old families in the South. They probably had heard of the tragedy involving Lafayette and her husband, but the farther away Maribel removed herself from the scene, the fewer people would have censured her about it.

  That night, when Tennie heard the door across the hall open and Maribel’s voice murmuring something to Esther as they walked down the hall, she did not bother to get up and look. There wasn’t a woman, with or without an escort, who could walk the streets at night in Ring Bit—it was far too dangerous. She could only hope for Maribel’s sake that Mobile was safer.

  Tennie did not know how she lived through the next day. Now that they were on their way back, all she could think of was getting to Texas and closer to Wash. She inspected the stock car Hawkshaw had altered. Boards with wide spaces between them for ventilation ran lengthwise across the long sides of the car. The door and platform on one end were sturdily done. Inside the car, he had put in boxed stalls. She wasn’t sure how much he had to pay the railroad, if anything, to make the adjustments.

  “Ain’t that something, Miss Tennie?” Gid said, as proud as if he had helped build the Taj Mahal.

  They would put Floyd on a train for home in the morning. It had been a wonderful adventure as far as he was concerned, but he was ready to get back to the farm, the beloved horses, and his grandmother’s cooking.

  “Do you think she’ll stay here?” Hawkshaw asked as Tennie walked with him into the train station to buy their tickets on the train bound for Houston the next day.

  Tennie shook her head. “She leaves her room every night. I don’t know where she’s going.”

  Hawkshaw gave her a stare. “She’s gambling at the casinos.”

  “Gambling? I thought her brother gave her a big dowry. Is she trying to gamble it all away? Does Mr. Gid know?”

  “Probably,” Hawkshaw replied, refusing to talk about it further. “They don’t have first class on this route. She’ll have to ride in second class with us, blast it to hell.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Tennie said, meaning it as a prayer, not an oath. “What am I going to do? Mr. Lafayette will kill me if I let her step one foot in Texas.”

  “I will kill you if you let her step one foot in Texas,” Hawkshaw said. “I thought that black mammy promised you she’d jump the train before then.”

  Tennie nodded, pressing her lips together as she considered. “I don’t think she was wrong. We still have New Orleans,” she reminded him.

  That night, Tennie felt too excited to sleep. She slipped downstairs into the dimly lit lobby, thinking she might find someone to talk to. To her surprise, Hawkshaw sat alone in a darkened corner, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles.

  “Are you waiting for the boys and Mr. Gid to go to sleep?” Tennie asked in a quiet voice.

  He nodded, and she realized he had probably done that every night. Lucas had told her he and Badger slept either in the bed with Gid or on the floor, while Hawkshaw took the other bed.

  They heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Both turned and saw Maribel, again daringly dressed with the pearls around her neck and Esther at her heels. Neither turned their head to peer into the shadows of the lobby, and Tennie watched unobserved as they exited the inn. She rose and went to the window, peering out to see Maribel and Esther disappearing in the darkness.

  “I hope she finds what she is looking for in that casino,” Tennie said.

  “I wish to God I’d never lay eyes on her again,” Hawkshaw said.

  Tennie turned away from the window and looked at Hawkshaw. “Quit complaining. At least it got Raiford Beauregard off your back. You don’t have to worry about him sending any hired killers after you.”

  “If it’s not him, it will be somebody else,” Hawkshaw said. “For the rest of my life, there will always be someone after me.”

  Tennie swallowed. “Are you going to retire?”

  He stayed silent a long time before answering.

  “Yes. Now go to bed. I don’t want have to deal with two crazy tired women tomorrow,” he said. “I’m going to walk down to the livery to make sure everything is all right.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t going to follow Maribel to the casino?” Tennie asked, trying not to giggle.

  “I am not in the habit of striking women, but you have brought me closer to it than any female alive,” Hawkshaw said. “Now go to bed.”

  Tennie returned to her room and lay in a suspended state hovering between wakefulness and sleep. Hearing footsteps coming down the hall, she couldn’t help herself. She had to see if it was Maribel.

  Cracking her door once more, she put one eye to the opening. In the sliver of flickering light, she saw Maribel returning. The shoulder on her dress had been torn; a vivid red slap mark burned on her cheek. Tennie shut the door quickly, closing her eyes. The pearl necklace was gone.

  That settled it. New Orleans was her last hope.

  * * *

  Maribel left Mobile with the air of a disappointed and angry woman. There was the ordeal with the trunks, and another one over Esther. Maribel refused to even discuss it with the angry conductor, and the only way they could get moving with Esther on the train was by Hawkshaw slipping him money.

  Rusty and Lucas were in the stock car with the horses. Hawkshaw had taken his place at one end of the carriage, Gid on the other with Tennie and Badger in the middle. Maribel and Esther sat two rows up from Gid, facing Tennie, but she might as well have been invisible as far as the two women were concerned. Maribel ordered Gid to stay in the back and not bother her.

  A stocky middle-aged man, prosperous and not too bad looking, sat across from Maribel. After the whistle blew, and the train began to roll and pick up steam, Maribel engaged him in conversation. Tennie couldn’t, and didn’t want to, hear all the words, but Maribel’s gestures held a jarring note of vivacity that came across too strong. After a while he got up and moved.

  A newly married couple sat across from Tennie, but they were so engrossed in one another, she did not even worry about making small talk with them. She glanced across the aisle at Maribel and saw her looking in Hawkshaw’s direction, appraising him with cool and calculating eyes.

  In one of those moments when everyone on the train fell silent, and all that could be heard was the sound of the wheels clacking and the engine chugging, someone in the
back of the train cut loose a tremendous belch.

  Tennie shut her eyes, took a breath, and reopened her eyes in time to see Maribel turn away from Hawkshaw in repugnance.

  “Who did that?” Badger said.

  “Hush, hush,” Tennie said, almost crying in her effort to keep from laughing.

  After a while, Hawkshaw got up and walked through the carriage, heading for the stock car to relieve Rusty and Lucas.

  When the two boys entered the carriage and sat down, Badger immediately told them about it. “Mr. Hawkshaw let out a big ole belch and everybody heard it.”

  “Badger!” Tennie admonished. “Keep your voice down.”

  Rusty and Lucas looked at one another and stifled giggles. Rusty looked at Gid. “I hope Miss Maribel doesn’t turn around now,” he whispered. “Mr. Gid is about to upchuck out the window again.”

  “Maybe he would feel better in the stock car,” Tennie said.

  Rusty shook his head. “He said he’s so wobbly on his feet, he’s afraid he’ll fall off the train getting there.”

  “Do you want to go, Miss Tennie?” Lucas asked. “I can take you.”

  Tennie glanced around the train car. The couple on the other side looked as if they did not appreciate three boys crammed in the seat across from them with Tennie. She nodded her head, and Lucas took her by the hand.

  “Badger, you stay here with Rusty and Mr. Gid,” Tennie said.

  “Don’t be scared now,” Lucas said, leading the way.

  The train rocked back and forth, but Tennie held her footing. They left the car, and outside, the wind blew Tennie’s hair around her eyes. They stepped into another car, going through another second-class carriage.

  “The stock car is next,” Lucas told her, still holding on to her hand.

  The door to the stock car wasn’t pretty, but it was solid enough to keep a kicking horse from busting it down. Lucas opened the door, and Tennie went inside.

  Hawkshaw was standing at one of the stalls, looking over a mare. Rusty and Floyd had taken the horses’ tails down in Mobile, doing a good job of brushing them. Before he left, Floyd had braided and tied up the tails again for travel just as his grandmother had taught him. Every horse had a water trough and feed bucket in its stall. Straw covered the floor; the wind coming from between the boards whipped it into occasional flying wisps. Despite all the light streaming through the cracks, the roof of the car made it shady, with dark corners containing shovels, pitchforks, barrels of water, and feed.

  Being nearer the engine made the ride smoother, but noisier. Hawkshaw looked up at Tennie and spoke when she stopped to look at the mare with him. “She’ll be a good one if she drops her colts like Nab promised,” he said raising his voice.

  “I really don’t know anything about horses,” Tennie said, trying to talk loud enough to be heard, but not so deafening she scared the animals.

  “I know that.” He turned to scold Lucas, who had climbed up on the stall. “Be careful and don’t fall in. These are gentle horses, but anything can spook a stallion into kicking your brains out. These mares aren’t too happy riding in a train car either.”

  “They seem to be doing rather well,” Tennie said.

  Hawkshaw nodded. “Your friend Gid acts like he’s a pint short of a quart, but he knows horses.”

  “He’s your friend, too. You just don’t know it,” Tennie said. “When do you want Rusty back here?”

  “When the train stops, he and Lucas can scat back here to help me take on water and shovel out droppings,” Hawkshaw said. “Don’t let Badger come back here. He’ll climb all over everything and fall into the stalls.”

  Tennie nodded, and after a while of looking over the horses, she and Lucas returned to their carriage. The newlyweds had found seats in another car. Esther still looked mad and unhappy but had lost some of her surliness. Maribel stared out the window.

  When they stopped at the next station, Maribel did not like having to step down from the car to use their facilities. It wasn’t a particularly inviting station, sitting alone in the middle of a windswept sea of grass.

  “I don’t know why we couldn’t have waited for a first-class Pullman,” she complained.

  “I don’t think they ever put one on this side of the run,” Tennie said. “We’ll be in New Orleans sometime before dawn. We’ll probably get off the train for a while there.”

  “You mean I have to sleep in that wretched seat?” Maribel demanded.

  “They fold down,” Tennie said, but Maribel only frowned deeper.

  When they stepped back up into the car, Gid was there to assist Maribel, even though his face was pasty green. “Cousin—”

  “Don’t bother me,” Maribel cut him off as she stepped up. “I don’t want anyone to know we are related. Even in this godforsaken place.”

  Gid looked as if she had slapped him with a horsewhip, but he said nothing. Tennie didn’t know what to say, except that Hawkshaw was exceptionally pleased with the way the stock car was working out.

  “I told him it would,” Gid said. “Suffering saints, my stomach is queasy.”

  Rusty and Lucas shut the sliding door of the stock car while Hawkshaw stayed inside.

  “Here now, you boys help me up,” Gid called. “My legs feel like calves’ jelly.”

  They got him into the railcar, and Rusty took the seat across from Tennie vacated by the newlyweds. Badger, mad because he wasn’t allowed in the stock car, sat by Gid. Lucas sat beside Tennie and looked at cartoon drawings in a newspaper Hawkshaw had given him in Mobile. Esther kept her eyes looking straight ahead, apparently at nothing, while Maribel stared out the window, also apparently at nothing—nothing that took the discontented expression off her face, anyway.

  Tennie began practicing scenarios. They would stop in New Orleans—Hawkshaw already said he wasn’t taking Maribel any farther. He wouldn’t have any compunction about getting back on the train to Texas without telling her, but Tennie would feel bad, and Gid wouldn’t let them ditch her like that anyway.

  They would probably put her up in a nice hotel, and Tennie would stand at the door of the room and tell Maribel that Mr. Hawkshaw had changed his mind about marriage, but they would help her get settled somewhere in New Orleans or put her on a train to wherever she wanted to go. Tennie was fairly certain it wouldn’t be back to her brother Raiford.

  She dreaded the scene because she feared Maribel would do just that, make a scene. Not that Maribel wanted Hawkshaw, she just wanted to be the dump-er, not the dump-ee.

  Rusty leaned forward and whispered. “What about her?” he said, motioning his head toward Maribel.

  “I guess we best get to praying for a miracle,” Tennie replied.

  The sun beat down on them as they headed west, still daylight, but getting close to the time Nab and Gid referred to as “the edge of dark.” The conductor had passed through a few minutes before and announced they were somewhere in Mississippi, leaving behind the flat grassland and entering hills dotted with stands of pines. It smelled clean and pure, notwithstanding the smoke from the boiler, but despite her prayers, Tennie’s stomach was tied in small hard knots thinking about the trouble awaiting them in New Orleans.

  She was so upset, it took a while for it to sink into her brain that the brakes were screeching, and the train was slowing dramatically.

  “What is it?” she asked Lucas, who had his head out the window, looking toward the engine.

  “It looks like trees fallen down over the tracks ahead,” he said.

  “Look behind you!” Rusty said.

  Tennie turned and saw a masked rider coming up the edge of the car on a fast horse. He stood up in the saddle, and with one tremendous leap, grabbed the bars of the platform. Before any of them could react, he was inside the car, holding a revolver on them.

  The train shuddered to a stop. Badger stood up in his seat beside Gid and cried, “It’s the Daring Dandies!”

  Tennie’s mouth fell open. She shut it and stared. The man holding the
gun was dressed in new black pants and a black leather vest with silver conchas, and he wore spurs with large decorative rowels. His hat was new and black, and underneath it, a black satin handkerchief was tied around his forehead, with holes cut out for his eyes, leaving a pencil-thin dark mustache visible. He walked down the aisle, looking for weapons. No one in their railcar was carrying a gun except Gid, and the masked man leaned over, pulling it from Gid’s side and throwing it out the window. Badger stood on the seat next to Gid, his eyes wide and his hand resting on Gid’s shoulder. Gid frowned, sick with fury and mad at himself for being taken unaware.

  Other riders on horses stayed outside the carriage, and Tennie could hear another robber in the other car. She thought of Hawkshaw, who could easily pick off every single bandit from the horses outside, but he wouldn’t do anything to draw fire on his own horses.

  The robber held open a tote sack and demanded everyone put their money inside. To her relief, he passed by Tennie without stopping. He ignored Maribel, who was watching with excited animation, and Esther, whose eyes bulged wide and white against her black face. Tennie had never seen anyone who looked so scared and so mad at the same time. When the robber came back to Gid, he forced him at gunpoint to empty his pockets.

  “That all you got, farmer?” the bandit said, his voice low and mean. Tennie thought him to be in his early to late thirties. He was not younger or older than that, she was sure.

  “He keeps his money in his boot,” Maribel drawled.

  Gid gasped. Before he could utter her name, the robber demanded he remove his boot, waving his gun in front of Gid and Badger’s faces. Badger had almost every cent Tennie possessed sewn into his pockets, and she could only pray he didn’t suddenly spout, “You’re not getting my money, mister.”

  Tennie thought quickly—Esther had seen her take her coin purse out of her pocket at the last stop, but Maribel hadn’t. Neither Esther nor Badger spoke, however, and Gid drew out his stash from one of his boots and handed it over with none too much grace. The bandit backed up.