Heresy

by Melissa Lenhardt

  I laughed so long and hard that my scar started throbbing. Newt looked alarmed. I told him I was fine.

  —I’m not going to be around to help you, Newt, but I will give you one piece of advice. You ready?

  —Yes, ma’am.

  —Whenever you’re faced with a tough situation, think of what your father would do, and do the opposite. Except for blacksmithing. Your father was a damn fine blacksmith when he was sober. But when it comes to women, well, I consider Sheriff Rhodes and Jehu as fine examples of good men.

  My failure was weighing on me. I saw disappointment in everyone’s eyes, blame, embarrassment, because they’d trusted me, followed me, believed in me, in my promises of protection, of providing for the future. I couldn’t stand their solicitousness about my illness, their wanting to take care of me. Taking care of the family was my job. My responsibility. My reason for staying.

  The truth of it is I wanted to be alone. I wanted to die alone. I didn’t want anyone to have to see me like that, I didn’t want it to feel like a responsibility to be borne. I’d hoped to be able to sneak away as a success, a champion, and ride south with a jaunty lift in my step, treating my death journey as an adventure. The night I decided to leave, there was none of that, only a profound sense of failure and the almost unbearable need to get away. To free my family from their burden. Me.

  Horse saddled and one ponied behind, with enough supplies to get me two hundred miles south to a wide spot in the road named Owlhoot, I mounted, adjusted my sawed-off shotgun in its holster (I’d become partial to it), and clicked my horse. It was well past midnight, and everyone should have been asleep.

  They weren’t.

  There they were, all clumped in the road, blocking my path, seven of the best people I’d ever known.

  —Did you really think we were gonna let you go without us? Hattie asked.

  —Go where?

  Hattie looked at the gang, the family, with an expression of “Can you believe this woman?” Hattie’s a born leader, and it’s only right that she take my place as head of the family. As such, she stepped forward. She held my horse’s reins as if I were going to bolt (an impossibility with a pack horse, of course) and met my gaze with her beautiful copper eyes. My throat constricted.

  —Garet, come on down. Come on. I want to talk to you.

  I dismounted.

  —I know why you’re doing this, leaving like this, and I’m here to tell you you’re wrong. No one here blames you for what happened. Look at those troublemakers and think of what you did for all of them. You took us all in, treated us with respect, took care of us, and loved us. Ain’t none of us been loved for us until we met you. That’s a rare gift, Margaret, and you gave it to all of us, and more besides.

  —I failed you, Hattie.

  —You might have failed yourself, but that’s just because your goal was too ambitious this time. No crime in aiming high, just got to be prepared to fail, is all. You’re not used to failure, and, well, it don’t look good on you, neither. But you didn’t fail me, or them. Don’t you ever think that. Ever, you hear? You could never fail me, Margaret Parker. I love you, just as I know you love me. You’ve been a true friend, one I won’t see the likes of again, I suspect. More than that, you’re my sister, and you always will be.

  She embraced me, and I buried my face in her shoulder and sobbed. Why did I ever think it was hard and bony? My face notched perfectly into her neck. She smelled of sweet sage and lemongrass, comfort, family, home. When she spoke, I heard the tears in her voice.

  —I wish it could be just you and me riding south. I want you to myself a little while, to tell you all the things I’ve held back over the years, to take care of you, and maybe rob a little bank or two along the way, Hattie said.

  I laughed and we pulled apart, and I saw she was smiling through her tears as well.

  —These yahoos won’t let me out of their sight, though.

  My smile dipped a little.

  —Hattie?

  —Yeah, Duchess?

  —I don’t want to go.

  —We can stay here, then.

  —No, I don’t want to die. To leave you, and Jehu, and this world. I thought I was ready, but seeing all of you, feeling … I’m going to miss so much.

  —I know. I don’t want you to go, either. It’s tearing my heart apart, the knowledge of it. But you were right. Staying here and waiting for it will be torture for everyone. Best we ride, give us something to do. Keep us occupied. Maybe get into a tiny bit of trouble.

  She pulled a slip of paper from her breast pocket and waved it in front of me. It was the notes I’d jotted down from Callum’s office after I killed him. A list of businesses to hit. Hattie grinned and said that there were quite a few near enough the Owlhoot Trail that we might make a couple of detours.

  —What will Jehu say?

  —Well, I guess we’re gonna find out.

  We left two days later. We rode down through Timberline and picked up Rebecca and Harvey along the way. They had two wagons, one loaded down with their possessions and the other with enough stock to start a general store in Oro City, or Leadville, as it had been renamed. The silver strike was real, and it was a lode.

  Opal drove one of the Reynoldses’ wagons, and Eli sat beside her. They were going to Oro City as well, to open up a brothel. Opal and Ruby had come to some sort of truce, but all during our ride so far, they’ve avoided each other and have rarely spoken. Tonight Opal played a little on her squeezebox, and I think I saw a smile pass between the Gem Sisters.

  It will take two weeks or more to get to the canyon, and I don’t know if it’s the promise of adventure or the easy camaraderie between everyone, but I feel better than I have in months. I am … content.

  40

  WPA Slave Narrative Collection

  Final Interview with Henrietta Lee

  September 20, 1936

  I’m finishing my story today, Grace. Don’t look sad, though it does an old woman’s heart good to see it. I’ll tell you, it’s been nice having your visits to look forward to. I sure do, and that’s a fact. It’s been a real blessing to be able to relive all of my adventures. The sixty years since? Well, those were good years, too. I was with my family. We were safe, and together. Jehu, Joan, Newt, and that rascal son of theirs, Win. Win Valentine. Have you ever heard of a more ridiculous name? He had a little too much Spooner in him, if you ask me. Turned out all right, I suppose.

  “But I’m getting ahead of myself. I left you up on Cold Spring Mountain, didn’t I?

  “Garet and Luke had ridden off to their deaths, I figured. I stared out across the valley for a long time, thinking I probably wouldn’t ever get to see it again. Mourning my best friend. I did a lot of that over those last few weeks. Couldn’t let it show, least of all to Garet. She was done being the strong one, it was down to me to do it. I was up for it, and that’s a fact, but when you’re always the strong one there ain’t ever anyone there to comfort you. Jehu was too upset himself. He made himself scarce … I’m getting ahead of myself again.

  “I’d practiced what I was going to tell you, to make sure I told you everything. Didn’t do me much good, though. I’ve almost lost the thread.

  “I stood on that mountain for I don’t know how long. When I finally returned to the campsite, Jehu was awake, poking the fire. Newt was asleep. ‘You didn’t go,’ he said. I didn’t answer him because it made me mad that he thought I might. I made a promise, and by God if you can’t say anything else about Henrietta LaCour you can say she’s a woman of her word.

  “‘She’s riding down there to die.’

  “I agreed with him, said, ‘To save her family, she sure is. It’s up to us to honor her, to keep the family together.’ Jehu nodded his head real firm like, like he’d come to a decision. He stood and nudged Newt awake with his boot, told the boy to go saddle his horse, that we were going down to watch Garet’s back. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, ‘It’s about time I started acting like the man in t
his family.’

  “The three of us rode down to the ranch as quick as we could, telling Newt the entire way to do what we said and stay back out of trouble. I figured his dad was down there, and I figured he wouldn’t stay back out of the way. Newt was on fire to impress Joan. Jehu and I didn’t even need to say it aloud: he would be in charge of keeping Newt safe and I would watch Garet’s back.

  “We rode up right as the shooting started. We dismounted and got our guns and approached real slow like, rifles shouldered, in a line. I turned around and walked backward behind Jehu and Newt to cover our backs. Didn’t think no one was back there, but you had to play it safe. Checked in with Newt and his voice trembled when he said OK.

  “The gunfire’d stopped when we dismounted, so we were walking up to a dusty scene. Gun smoke, dust kicked up, moaning men, and then a couple of extra gunshots. I heard Garet curse, and that was it; didn’t care about our back none. We picked up our pace and who do we find standing over Garet but Valentine. Raised ax, ready to kill her. I was pulling the trigger when Newt hollered at his dad. Val barely registered his son was holding a gun on him when his head exploded like a watermelon. I’ve never seen anything like that, before or since. I wasn’t looking at Salter when he got his noggin blown off. The aftermath was bad enough. But there ain’t nothing like seeing a man’s head burst like that. I’ve carried that with me my whole life. Thought of it every day. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t mourn Ulysses Valentine for one day, but I did mourn Newt’s loss of innocence. I pulled him to me, covered his eyes, as soon as I could, but it wasn’t soon enough. He was shaking like a leaf, but we went over to Garet, to see how she was. Luke Rhodes came loping up. He’s the one who shot Valentine. Garet had a flesh wound on her arm and one on her cheek, but she was fine.

  “Then we heard Joan screaming out for help. Stella’d gotten gut shot, never found out who did it. She lived maybe three, four minutes when we got there. She’d gone after Spooner. Threw a damn knife at him instead of shooting him. Stupid, stupid girl. Why? Why would she do that? Oh, I understand wanting to cut Spooner’s pecker off; he got her sister in the family way, and like I said before, Stella hated men. But goddamn, if you’re going after someone you make sure you kill ’em. You don’t throw a knife at them from thirty feet away.

  “Joan didn’t. She picked up Garet’s shotgun from where she dropped it, stepped over her sister’s dead body, and pumped Jed full of lead. Died right there on our porch, with Luke Rhodes, our “no killing” sheriff, standing over him. That girl tossed the gun at Luke’s feet, daring him to do something about it. He never did.

  “It was a mess. There were dead bodies everywhere. Dorcas, that bitch, lived. She was there, and, well, I guess I should thank her for making up some story about the shoot-out that didn’t involve us. She saw how broken Garet was and figured she would suffer enough from guilt in the little time she had left.

  “Next morning, I had Jack escort Dorcas to Rock Springs and sent Domino on an errand for me. They were going to come right back, though. They wanted to stay on at the ranch, and that was just fine with us. Domino and Jack were good workers. Ought-Not, too. They all turned straight after that, as far as I know. Don’t know what happened to them after we left the Hole.

  “That night that Stella died, that broke Garet. I’m surprised it took so long. I’d been expecting it to come earlier, but she was so focused on taking care of all of us … well, she thought she failed us.”

  Mrs. Lee is quiet for some time, and I can see tears leaking from her eyes.

  “I said she didn’t, of course I did. We had our ranch, and only one of us dying, with all we went through those couple of months? That’s a goddamn miracle. But we did go through all of it, and I’ve wondered over the years if we really had to. At the time I thought we’d had no choice, that Garet hadn’t had a choice but to take that bet. But you’ve always got choices, Grace. And every single choice you make ripples out through your life and every other person you meet. The people you love. The people you hate. Remember that, but don’t let it paralyze you, neither.

  “I don’t regret those months because that was the last bit of hell-raising we got to do, me and Jehu. Not that he ever raised hell. No, we moved on. Became respectable. Started a freight business. First one in Northern California to switch to automobiles. Made a good living. Sold the business for a pretty penny, and that’s a fact.

  “It would’ve broke Garet’s heart to know we left the ranch that she’d worked so hard to save for us. It was too remote, and once the town died … Joan wanted her son to go to school. I taught her to read and do her numbers, but she wanted her son to have real schooling. I couldn’t blame her. About that same time Newt came back from Cheyenne, a man and a professional. He’d been traveling around the West in a mobile photography studio, taking photos of Indians. It was a good line. Well, when Joanie saw him for the first time in five years? She fell instantly in love, much to Newt’s relief.

  “So we did what was best for our family and moved to California. Claire and Ruby’d moved to San Francisco back in ’77 and had nice things to say about it. We didn’t move into the city. Could you imagine going from the Hole to that ruckus? No, we moved to a small town outside the city called Monterey. Started our freight business, Newt and Joanie ran a photography studio, and we lived our lives. Good lives. Full ones. A few ups and downs, but nothing we couldn’t meet. Joan and Newt got married, raised Win, had a couple children who didn’t survive the cradle. They died in the influenza, Joan and Newt. Took ’em fast. Win, he disappeared, oh, I guess about fifteen years or so ago. Just stopped coming around, writing letters. He was a bit of a scoundrel, but he was loyal, and he loved me and Jehu like we were his grandparents. I suspect he met a violent end, and Lord only knows where his remains are.

  “Claire and Ruby? They moved to San Francisco, like I said, and opened up a detective agency. It was pretty successful for a few years. Did she try to write Garet’s story? She sure did. Nobody would buy it. Just like I told Garet in that cabin. Well, Claire and Ruby came on hard times, and Claire decided to make it an adventure story in hopes it would sell for a penny a page. You heard of those penny dreadfuls? Problem was twofold: One, by the time Claire did it, they’d fallen out of fashion. Two, those dreadfuls were read mostly by young boys and men. They weren’t interested in a female gang fighting the men. She gave me a copy and I read it. No idea where it ended up. The trash is where it belonged.

  “Claire and Ruby were hard up, and our business was growing, so they came to work for us. Ran our office in the city. Both died in the big earthquake. Nineteen-oh-six.

  “I know that’s a lot of death. I’m ninety-two years old, child. I’m the last one left. Jehu died in his sleep in ’31. Prepared his body for viewing myself. I didn’t want him to have any humiliation after he died, didn’t want people making fun of him. Of us.

  “Oh, I’m not completely alone. I have some young women from my church who check on me regular, bring me groceries and a casserole once a week. Good girls, those. I’ve made arrangements. They know what to do. I’ll be taken care of when I pass, don’t you worry. It’s sweet of you to, though. It nice to have someone worrying over me.

  “What happened to Garet? I was afraid you were going to ask me that.

  “Garet wanted to see the Grand Canyon, she wanted to die there. That had been the next stop on her honeymoon back in ’64, but first they wanted to see Colorado. Thomas wanted to try his hand at mining, and when Garet saw that first herd of wild mustangs? She was in love. So they never made it to the Grand Canyon, but they always talked about going. Then you had the outlaws stopping in and telling stories about how it had to be seen to believed and how words didn’t do it justice.

  “I wanted to see it, too. We all did. We’d all heard the stories at one time or another. More than that, I wanted to be with Garet when she died. I owed her that much, at least. I owed her more. My life. Jehu. Our family. No matter what we went through, right or wrong, should we have d
one this or that or the other, didn’t matter. All that mattered to me was that I was losing my best friend. I could see it, death coming for her. I asked him to wait, and he did. But he followed us every step of the way down the Owlhoot Trail.

  “She tried to leave without us. She’d gone around and said goodbye without really saying goodbye. Trying to be sly about it. We all knew what she was doing. We let her make her plans, pack Ole Pete with supplies, saddle Rebel, and met her at the front of the house when she rode up well past midnight. I told her she was crazy if she thought I’d let her go off to die by herself.

  “We left two days later. Luke had pulled me aside and told me it would take us a month to ride there, at the least, and that was going at a good clip. ‘She can’t go at a good clip,’ he said. I told him that knowledge was not to leave his mouth again, especially in front of everyone else. Garet wasn’t stupid; she knew how far away the canyon was. The journey wasn’t about the canyon, but about letting her die on her terms, in the saddle, with her family around her. By God, after everything Garet had given me, I was going to give her that.

  “The day before we left, Domino returned from the errand I sent him on the day after the shoot-out. He came trotting up the lane ponying Old Blue behind him. I don’t know who was happier in that reunion, Garet or Old Blue. She hugged me so tight she almost cut off my breath. Didn’t say a word, just let her sob into my shoulder and told her I loved her.

  “When I think of Garet too long, the grief,’ cause there’s still grief there, after sixty years, it changes to anger. She died too damn young. All that lost possibility. She could have been a great woman, greater in the eyes of the world, if she hadn’t been brought low by the colonel. Well, I blame him, but he was just being a man of his times. Of these times, too, if you want to know the truth of it.

  “No, I’m not talking about her outlawing, I’m talking about her capacity for love and empathy, how she pretty much always put others before herself. She was driven by love, that woman. Love of horses is what gave us the ranch and allowed women to find us when they were brought low. The love of her family is what led her to pull that first bank job. She took that bet with Spooner for the possible glory, I’ll give you that. But underneath it she was driven by the responsibility of being the head of the household, taking care of her family after she was gone. If that ain’t love, I don’t know what is.