A Captive in Time

by Sarah Dreher

  “A kind of credit card.”

  “What’s it do?”

  “When you need money, you put it in the Automatic Teller slot, and punch in your code and the amount you need, and the machine gives it to you.”

  “You don’t say. Around here we call that a hold-up.”

  “It comes in handy after hours and on weekends, you know, when you’ve forgotten to go to the bank. I never remember to go to the bank—Marylou says it’s because I’m basically hostile toward banks as symbols of the patriarchy, she’s probably right. Anyway, it’s saved me a lot of embarrassment.”

  The woman replaced the card and picked through the rest of the items in her wallet—credit cards, blank check, three receipts from Stop and Shop, a season pass to Crane Beach, a transaction slip containing her account balance (two months old), five coupons she had won at Skee-Ball Alley in Old Orchard Beach, Amtrak ticket stubs, and her library card. She held up the knapsack, shook it upside down, poked around at the spilled contents, and peered inside. “No gun,” she said in a disapproving tone.

  “I don’t carry a gun,” Stoner said. “I think it’s… dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “Dangerous even if you do know,” the woman said, and put her pistol on the bar. “But you’re thumbing your nose at the Devil, going around unarmed in these territories.”

  Territories? Stoner was beginning to be impressed with the woman’s ability to stay in character. If she was, in fact, in character. There was the possibility, terrifying to contemplate, that Calamity Jane, here, actually believed herself to be living in the Old West, guns and all. In which case, a great deal of caution and agreeableness were called for. She cleared her throat. “What should I call you, Ms., Mrs., Miss...?”

  The woman laughed. A rich, throaty, sexy, whisky-husky, seen-it-all laugh. One of those generic middle-aged-woman laughs that always made her knees go a little weak with excitement.

  “Call me Dot, everyone else does. Well, mostly they call me Big Dot—on account of I’m so formidable—but you needn’t.”

  “Then you’re not married?”

  “Was. Law man name of Paul Gillette, back in Kansas City. But he was a lazy sort, so I cut out. How ’bout you?”

  Oops. “Well, I’m...uh...well, not married but in a relationship, if you know what I mean.”

  Dot shook her head. “Can’t say’s I do.”

  Now what? Do I look this armed, probably-crazy woman in the eye and tell her I’m a lesbian? “I have a friend,” she said ambiguously.

  “Well, good for you. It’s a cold world without friends.”

  “I mean, a… well, a close friend.”

  Dot studied her pistol for a moment for inspiration. “Close gal friend?”

  “Sort of,” Stoner said.

  “You might not want that to get around,” Dot said in a low voice. “Folks hereabouts sometimes get a little strange about things like that.”

  “Yes,” Stoner said. “I can imagine.”

  “See, you got no gun on your person, and no man backing you up. Leaves you in a vulnerable position.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “We have some terrible people out here.”

  “Well,” Stoner said, trying to be polite, “there are terrible people everywhere.”

  Dot nodded. “Look like you’ve been riding hard.”

  Stoner brushed specks of Colorado from her jeans. “Yeah, it’s been a long day. And the wagon trip was sort of dusty.”

  “What wagon trip?”

  “A boy picked me up about 5 miles out of town.”

  “What boy?”

  “He said his name was Billy.”

  “Found you out on the prairie?”

  “That’s right.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Just standing out there, were you?”

  “There wasn’t much else to do, with the car broken down.”

  “Axle?”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe something in the computer…

  “If it wasn’t the axle,” Dot said, “it was probably the engine, not the car.”

  Stoner nodded. “Could be the engine. That’s why I need a mechanic.”

  “You got your own engine?” Dot said tightly.

  “It’s not really mine. I borrowed it.”

  The woman stared at her in amazement. “You stole an entire car and engine?”

  “They gave it to me. Well, they didn’t give it to me, they asked me to drive it for them.” She could tell she wasn’t getting through. “Look, I’d show you the registration, but it’s locked in the glove compartment.”

  “I have a little trouble with your story, stranger.”

  “If you had a phone, we could call the State Police and straighten the whole thing out.”

  Dot crunched her eyebrows together in an agony of thinking. “This is getting worse by the minute. Let’s go back to the point where Billy found you.”

  “Fine,” Stoner said. “You ask questions, and I’ll try to answer them.”

  “You were just standing there. On the prairie.”

  “Yes.”

  “The stage went through day before yesterday, and you were standing out there all that time.”

  “Stage?” Stoner asked.

  “No other way to get here,” Dot said.

  “The car...”

  “Look, you and I both know you didn’t get here in any car.”

  “We do?”

  “The Kansas Pacific tracks are a good twenty miles north of here.”

  “What does that have to do with...?”

  “You might have walked,” Dot went on, “but your boots look too new for that. Or maybe you sprouted wings and flew.”

  “I flew,” Stoner said. “But I didn’t sprout…”

  Dot’s hand inched toward the gun. “Care to hear what I think?”

  “I certainly would.”

  “I think you made up that story about being from Boston. And I don’t believe you ever owned any old railroad car in your life, much less an engine to go with it. It’s coming to me with increasing clarity that you’re running from the law.”

  “What makes you say that?” Stoner asked, genuinely curious. “The Stop and Shop receipts?”

  “On the other hand, you don’t look very tough, so whatever you did, it can’t be worth a hill of beans. Am I right?”

  Stoner didn’t know what to say.

  “Well, never mind.” The woman seemed to have talked it through to some sort of decision. She put the gun out of sight under the counter. “I apologize for being nosy. Whatever trouble you’re in, it’s your business, just so you don’t bring it in here. It was your clothes that put me off.”

  “I’m sorry,” Stoner said.

  “Funny clothes,” the woman said. “Kind of foreign-like.” She examined the car keys, opened the first aid kit and moved the contents around a little. “ ’Course the junk you have in that sack makes the rest of it look like yesterday’s news.”

  Stoner decided she was already in enough trouble. No point in making things worse by taking offense or trying to explain, or any of the things a rational human being would do in the current situation. “Listen,” she said, “about the boy, Billy. I probably shouldn’t have taken that ride. He said there was someone he was supposed to meet and take to someone named Blue Mary. He obviously mis-took me for someone else, but I was desperate...”

  The woman looked at her with renewed interest. “You a friend of Blue Mary’s?”

  “I never met her.”

  “Too bad,” Dot said. “It would account for you being so peculiar.”

  “Do you think I did the wrong thing? I mean, do you think there’s someone out there expecting a ride? I tried to tell the boy I wasn’t the one he was looking for, but he seemed so sure...”

  “You certainly are bent on getting into trouble.”

  Stoner shrugged. “I have a way of doing that.”

  “Blue Mary...you might say she’s a
controversial sort of individual...” She caught herself and gave Stoner a sheepish kind of smile. “There I go again, sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

  “Nonsense,” Stoner said. “I’d appreciate any light you could shed on the situation.”

  Dot laughed. “If you’re on Blue Mary’s business, you’ll find out what you need to know, when you need to know it.” She tossed Stoner’s knapsack across the bar. “Let me give you some advice. I don’t know what goes on back east, but half the stuff in that sack won’t do you a damn bit of good out here. Fresh socks, a decent knife, and a nice little gun, maybe a few trinkets you can hand out if you run into hostile Indians. Makes you look friendly and well-meaning...” She held the crystal up to the light. “This might be good for trade, but once it’s gone, where are you?”

  Good question.

  “Handsome thing.” Big Dot used the nearest kerosene lamp to make rainbows on the wall. “Looks like some of Blue Mary’s paraphernalia. You sure you don’t know her?”

  “I’m sure,” Stoner said. “Look, is there a public phone in town?”

  “Phone?”

  “Phone. You know.” She made a telephoning gesture. Dot looked totally blank. “I need to...to communicate with my friend back in Boston.”

  Dot shook her head. “Sorry, we don’t even have the Western Union.” She reached for a glass. “Pour you something?”

  It struck her as a brilliant idea. “I wouldn’t mind a Manhattan.”

  Dot raised an eyebrow. “Come again?”

  “A Manhattan. Bourbon and bitters.”

  The woman threw back her head and howled. “You must keep some pretty fancy company, girl. Where’d you pick up that receipt, Paree?”

  “Receipt?”

  “For the drink.”

  Right. Receipt. As in “recipe”. As in 19th Century American receipt/recipe…

  Stoner was beginning to feel tired, cranky, and no longer in the mood for Dot’s fantasy world. “Just bourbon, then. Straight, a little ice.”

  “Ice? Only time we have ice in this establishment is when the water in the rain barrel freezes. And that’s just when we don’t need it.”

  “Forget it. Bourbon. Neat.”

  “Nobody ever asked for bourbon sloppy, far as I know,” Dot said as she turned toward the shelf of liquor. “Don’t shoot me in the back, now, ’less you absolutely have to.”

  She decided to try to make an end run around Big Dot’s craziness. “Look, I really need to get a message back east. How do I...?”

  Dot scratched her head for a second. “I don’t recall anyone wanting to do that for quite some time. Maybe never.”

  “But if they did?”

  “Well, just write her up and I’ll hand her over next time someone comes by going that way.”

  “That isn’t good enough,” Stoner said, beginning to feel hysterical. “My car’s broken down, and there are people expecting me to call them, and they’ll be worried sick... I’m worried sick...”

  Dot leaned across the bar and patted the back of Stoner’s hand. “Now, you just relax. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  “How can everything be all right? I don’t even know where I am!”

  “You’re in Tabor, Colorado Territory. Not the best spot in the world, but far and away not the worst.” Dot looked at her in a worried kind of way. “Is there something troubling you, honey?”

  Stoner felt a stinging behind her eyes. I am not going to cry, she told herself firmly. I’m a thirty-two year old adult, and I refuse to cry.

  Dot pushed the glass across the bar to her. “On the house. Drink up.”

  She took a small swallow. The liquor cut a path down her throat like hot lava. “Good God!”

  “You think that’s bad,” Dot said, “you oughta try the cheap stuff.”

  The initial shock wore off. She felt her muscles relax a little. “I probably shouldn’t drink this on an empty stomach.”

  “Can’t hurt you.” Dot poured herself a drink and put the bottle back on the shelf. “Not unless you make a habit of it.” She tipped her glass toward Stoner in a salute and tossed it off. “Wish I knew what to do about your problem, kid, but personally I can’t make head nor tail of it.”

  Stoner rubbed her face and unzipped her parka. “That’s okay. It’s Marylou’s fault, anyway.”

  “That’s your gal-friend, this Marylou?”

  Stoner shook her head. “Gwen’s my girlfriend. Marylou and I work together. See, Marylou’s straight—sort of—and so was Gwen... I mean, she was married, but her husband was a kind of a scoundrel so we killed him...”

  The older woman nodded. “Familiar story out here, know just how you feel. So that’s why you’re on the run?”

  “I’m not on the run. We didn’t really kill him. It was self-defense.”

  “Sure it was,” said Dot, and poured them each another drink.

  Stoner raked her hand through her hair. She knew she was babbling, but couldn’t seem to stop. “Anyway, I live back in Boston with Aunt Hermione. Gwen used to live with her grandmother but her grandmother’s homophobic, so she moved out and got her own apartment.”

  “Homophobic?” Dot asked. “That some kind of disease?”

  “In a way.”

  “Wasn’t there anything your friend could do to help that? Being kin and all.”

  “If there is, she doesn’t know what it is. Every time she tries, her grandmother ends up quoting the Bible at her.”

  “Good thing she got out, then. Once that Bible-thumping urge takes hold, it’s Godawful to shake.” Dot leaned toward her across the bar, casually, confidentially. “We had a spell of the cholera out here a few years back, caused some folks the Screaming Jesus. Folks who hadn’t exactly been living exemplary lives up to that point, if you get what I mean. Came as quite a surprise to the rest of us. This Raving sickness you’re talking about contagious?”

  “Yes,” Stoner said. “It is.” She swallowed half of her second drink, which didn’t feel the least bit hot now that she had burnt all the feeling out of the nerve endings in her throat. She shrugged out of her parka. “Anyway, we have these clients at the travel agency, a married couple, who had to cut short a trip to Denver because of an illness in the family. So they flew home, only they left their car behind, and they didn’t want to go back for it. They have more money than time, you see. And they asked us to pick it up, but Marylou couldn’t do it because she’s afraid to travel—she says she doesn’t approve of travel, but we all know she’s afraid—and Gwen couldn’t come along because she’s teaching...”

  “Yep,” said Dot, “teaching’s a big responsibility. I did a little of that myself, in my younger days. Didn’t take to it, though. This line of work suits me better.”

  “Anyway,” Stoner pressed on, beginning to feel a little light-headed and in danger of losing her train of thought, “I flew out alone—well, Marylou insisted I do it because of St. Croix and the Carharts. I think she’s planning to tell them she fired me. But she can’t fire me, can she? I’m a full partner. So I was driving the car back when it just stopped, and I went looking for a garage, and ran into that boy, and here I am. And I’m supposed to stay in Topeka tonight, and call Gwen, and she’s going to be frantic.”

  Dot’s eyes broke into little crinkles at the corners. “Aw, honey, you just have yourself all mixed up. You couldn’t get to Topeka from here by sunrise tomorrow if you rode all night. And if you’re thinking of hauling along a wagon, you’d be lucky to make twenty-five miles a day. Want my advice? Travel light.”

  “I don’t have to get to Topeka,” Stoner said. “If I can just find a telephone…”

  “I’m afraid you won’t find one of those things in Tabor. Might be someone over at the Army post could help you out, though.”

  Her spirits lifted. “There’s an Army base here?”

  “Fort Morgan to the north. Not much of a place, really, and too far to walk. Couple days on a good horse. They haven’t been much help to us
with our problems, though. Of course, all they really care about’s killin’ Indians, and we haven’t had Indian trouble like some folks. When things start gettin’ crowded, that’s when the trouble begins.”

  She could feel a sense of maudlin begin to wash over her. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Not much until morning,” Dot said, gesturing toward the blackness of the street. “But don’t you worry, honey. We won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “Something already has happened to me.”

  Dot crossed her arms in front of her chest and leaned against the mirror. “We should get you something to eat. Probably half starved, I expect that counts for your funny ideas. Lack of food can do strange things to you. I once knew an old man, didn’t eat properly—you know, like they don’t when there’s no woman to cook for them, pathetic, helpless creatures. Any hoo, this old coot, he lived on nothing but dried beans and sow belly. Year after year. Had the gas so bad you could smell him coming if you happened to be downwind. One day got the notion he was some kind of star gunslinger. Got himself a Colt .44 and went up and down the street shootin’ out windows. Much as I hated to, I finally had to take him down. Too bad to lose the old guy, but he was worth a lot less than window glass.” She shook her head regretfully. “All on account of those dried beans and sow belly.”

  “I’m not crazy,” Stoner said wildly. “And I haven’t been eating dried beans and sow belly, whatever that is. I just want to go home.”

  “Well, I can’t blame you for that. Home’s where the heart is.”

  In this case, Stoner thought, home might also be where the mind is.

  “When I first moved out here from Kansas City, I thought I’d die from nostalgia,” Dot went on. “But now that I’ve put down roots, I don’t think you could pry me out of Tabor with a crowbar.”

  Maybe if she put the conversation on a normal level... Sort of pretended to go along... ”You stay here all winter, then?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Don’t you get lonely?”

  “A little bored, sometimes,” Dot said. “Looking at the same old faces day after day. But before you know it spring’s here and business picks up considerably.”

  “Yes,” Stoner said. “I can imagine it would.”