A Captive in Time

by Sarah Dreher

  She’d thought about calling home from the hospital. But she knew, as soon as she heard a familiar voice—no matter how dearly she loved that voice—Billy and Big Dot and Blue Mary and Tabor would be lost to her forever.

  She just couldn’t let go. Not yet.

  It was cold. She wondered if Billy was cold, wherever she was. Had she found the suffragists? Or was she wandering around the prairie, alone and lost and unloved?

  She missed Billy. She’d probably always miss her. Even if they were lovers now, in a different incarnation—well, Billy was still Billy, and a huge hunk of her heart transcended time and longed for her.

  The angry blare of a car horn yanked her back to present reality. She had missed that millisecond window of opportunity between the time the light turns green and the guy behind you blows his horn. She inched forward passive-aggressively, pretending to be looking for something along the street.

  And there it was. The Whitley. Separate from the buildings on either side. Old but clean. Small. And an empty parking space out front.

  In her experience, empty parking spaces were a Sign. Like shooting stars, or having a butterfly light on your shoulder. Signs that say, “Pay close attention. Something of great significance is happening.”

  She pulled over, got out, and locked the car. As she opened the trunk and took out her suitcase, she wondered what was happening to the parka she had left for the Arapahoe woman back in Tabor. Maybe someday she’d go back, find the remains of the old town. Maybe she’d even find a shred of Thinsulate. What if archaeologists found it first? What would they make of it?

  Probably call it a hoax, the way they labeled anything they couldn’t fit into their narrow scheme. Between “hoax” and “mass hysteria”, the scientists had managed to do away with just about anything interesting.

  She’d come a long way in ridding herself of that kind of thinking, but she knew she still had a long way to go. Maybe she could start a support group—Survivors of Science.

  “Boythink,” Gwen called it.

  She slammed the trunk lid and ran up the steps of the hotel.

  The lobby was dark and Muzak-free. Oak panels covered the walls, and potted plants stood by gilt-overlaid pillars. Deep, well-used armchairs were placed for small conversational groups. The carpets had once been deep-hued Orientals, but had been worn thread-bare. The redheaded woman in her late sixties at the registration desk looked as if she had worked there most of her life.

  She smiled as Stoner approached. “Something we can do for you?”

  “Do you have a room for one? For tonight?”

  “We almost always have room,” the woman said. “We’re a little hard to find.”

  “To be perfectly honest,” Stoner said as she signed the register, “I wouldn’t have known about you if it weren’t for the detour.”

  “You know,” the woman said as she slid a key across the counter, “I have to admit I like it this way. It’s a lot more personal. Would you like help with your suitcase, or would you rather carry it yourself?”

  “I’d rather.”

  “Okey-doke. Your room’s on the second floor. Turn right at the elevator and go on to the end. It’s a quiet room. No telephone, I’m afraid.” She grinned in an embarrassed way. “We’ve been planning to put them in since—oh, probably about 1965. Never can seem to get around to it. There’s one in the lounge, though, and if you get a call someone’ll track you down. Have you had dinner?”

  “Not yet.”

  “The dining room stays open until ten, but I’m afraid there’s not much of a selection. Tonight’s feature is...” She consulted a scrap of paper that was wedged in the corner of the blotter. “Stew.”

  Stew? That gave her an unreal, the-past-is-just-around-the- corner kind of feeling.

  “Plus the usual assortment of sandwiches,” the woman added. “And save room for the homemade pie. My specialty.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Anything you need, give me a hoot and a hollar. Name’s Bea.”

  “Thanks.”

  Right now, all she wanted was a long bath. It had been either twenty-four hours or ten days since her last one.

  The hot water was comforting, soothing. Gently, it peeled the sadness from her. Billy was gone, like an old friend moving to another country. No matter how much she missed her, Billy was a part of her past now. She might see her again some day, at least in a dream, certainly in memory. That would have to do. She washed and dried carefully, making a healing ritual of it. She slipped into fresh clothes. She thought she was ready.

  The bartender, who looked enough like Bea to be her son and probably was, pointed her to the telephone in the corner. She placed the call to Gwen first. She could feel her heart start beating a little faster. Her fingertips felt all tingly. A pleasant blend of excitement and a tiny bit of anxiety. It was a familiar sensation, one she always felt when she hadn’t seen Gwen in a while. As if her body had forgotten that they were friends and lovers.

  The phone rang. Four times. A bad sign. Gwen could reach it in two from anywhere in her apartment, which meant she would probably get the answering...

  “Hi. This is Gwen Owens. I’m watching Designing Women. Why aren’t you? You can reach me after the show, or leave your name and number...”

  Stoner hung up and tried Aunt Hermione.

  “Hello. You’ve reached the answering machine of Hermione Moore and Stoner McTavish. We’re meditating at the moment, but leave your name and number and we’ll get back to you. Blessed be.”

  Marylou had to be home.

  “You have reached the winter residence of Max and Edith Kesselbaum and the full-time residence of Marylou Kesselbaum. Unfortunately, we can’t come to the phone. Edith decided to cook tonight instead of sending out, and it was an absolute DISASTER. We are either repairing the damage or running out to the store. However...”

  There’s nothing sadder or more frustrating than going through a life-or-death situation in another century, and coming back to find nobody home to tell about it.

  Might as well have a drink. Designing Women wouldn’t be over for twenty minutes.

  She put the receiver down with a sigh and went to the bar and climbed up on a tall stool covered with cracked green leather.

  The bartender slid a paper coaster in front of her. “Get you something?”

  “Double Manhattan, please.”

  “You got it.”

  She looked around the lounge. It was darkly lit by lamps with green glass shades. More old wood, dark and polished. There were booths against the opposite wall, and Monday Night Football holding forth silently on the TV at the end of the bar. Just your standard, ordinary hotel watering hole, complete with shelves of bottles under a portrait...

  She caught her breath.

  The woman in the portrait looked to be in her fifties. Her hair was done in a style popular at the turn of the century. Dressed in a white silk shirt and velvet riding pants. She leaned against a white-washed fence, head turned slightly to the side. Behind her stretched endless miles of prairie grass and blue prairie sky. Her expression was self-contained, and yet she looked as if she might burst into laughter at any moment.

  It was Billy.

  The man brought her drink.

  “Excuse me,” Stoner said as he turned toward the television. She indicated the portrait. “Who’s that?”

  He barely glanced at it. “People always want to know that. Must be something about her.”

  “Yes, there is. Do you know who it is?”

  “Billy Whitley. Started this hotel. According to some folks, she once owned a fair amount of Topeka and most of Emporia.”

  She could hardly believe it. Of all the places she could have stayed... But, of course, according to Aunt Hermione, there are no accidents. All our souls just got together and decided to meet here. Kind of like a reunion. “What do you know about her?”

  He shrugged. “Not much. Bea might. She’s into that kind of stuff.”

  She grabbed h
er drink and headed for the lobby.

  Bea marked her place in a paperback novel called The Rich are Decadent and put it down. “Something?” she asked pleasantly.

  “That woman over the bar. Billy Whitley. Do you know anything about her?”

  The woman smiled. “This was her hotel, you know.”

  “Yes, but anything else? I mean, where did she come from? How did she get her money? That kind of thing.”

  “Well,” Bea said, “let me think a minute.” She thought a minute. “We had some local historians here back in ‘76, made up a brochure about her. A lot of interest in history back then, you know. I must’ve memorized the durn thing myself. The way I recall it, Billy Whitley started out as some kind of outlaw or something out in the Colorado Territory, back before it became a state.”

  “Why was she an outlaw?”

  “Nobody seems to know. Some said she’d set some fires out that way. Others claim she killed a man in Tennessee, Kentucky, one of those states. But that’s just speculation. What is known is that she hooked up with a bunch of Suffragists back when Colorado was deciding what kind of state it wanted to be—you know, equality for blacks and women or not. When the Colorado legislature voted to come in without giving women the vote, she moved on to Wyoming and worked there until they came in as the Equality State, in ‘90.” She paused to calculate. “Billy must have been about, oh, forty-four or so then.”

  “Do you happen to know,” Stoner asked, “if she ever learned to read and write?”

  Bea looked at her. “Funny question. What makes you ask about that?”

  “Uh...” Stoner shrugged. “I picked it up somewhere, I guess.”

  “Well—again, this could be just rumor, but—the story goes, she didn’t know how when she first joined forces with the Suffragists. But Mrs. Stone—that’s Lucy B. Stone—she was active in the early Suffrage Movement...”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Mrs. Stone took her under her wing and taught her the basics. Mrs. Stone was a great one for causes. Kept her maiden name, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “It seems Billy was a bright young woman who caught on fast. So Mrs. Stone passed her along to her friend Frances Willard over at Evanston College for Ladies in Illinois.”

  Stoner had to laugh. Billy at a “College for Ladies” made quite a picture. She wondered how the Ladies took to Billy’s gunslinging ways.

  “But,” Bea went on, “she didn’t stay there long. Said it made her restless to be cooped up. So she went back on the politicking trail. Settled down in Wyoming, then, and took up wheat farming. When the Depression of ‘93-97 hit, she was one of the few well-to-do farmers who’d turned her money back into the land. So when the European wheat crops failed in ‘97, Billy struck it rich. Used those profits to buy up real estate in Emporia and Topeka and God knows how many other places. But this was her favorite spot. She died here in 1930, in the front room, second floor. Eighty-four years old, and she still had all her faculties.”

  “What did she die of?”

  “Old age, I guess. Went to sleep and never woke up.” She smiled. “There’s some folks say her ghost still haunts that room. But you know how people are. Always looking for a way to make a good story.”

  Stoner swirled her ice around with her finger. “Did anyone ever say what she was like? As a person?”

  “Well, folks liked her. She could be a lot of fun, was good with a bawdy story and never put on airs. Friendly to everyone. Except the clergy. For some reason, Billy never could abide the clergy.”

  “Did she ever marry?”

  “Not that anyone knew. There were plenty of men after her. You’ve seen her portrait. Easy to see why. Plus being wealthy. And lucky. But she was always kind of stand-offish with men. Women, too, really. She’d laugh and carry on with whoever, but no one really got close to her feelings. Not that she seemed to be lonely. At least, if she was she never said.”

  Bea looked thoughtful. “There was one story about her, that she had a great love once in her life. Never could give her heart again to her dying day. A Scot. One of the ones that came out here during those days, most likely. A lot of British of one sort or another passed through this part of the country. Name of...” She looked at Stoner with a delighted look. “McTavish! My gosh, it could even have been kin of yours.”

  Stoner smiled to herself. “I doubt it. My people never settled this far west.”

  “Yeah,” Bea said. “You’re probably right. I’m an incurable romantic. Story might not even have been true.”

  “Well,” Stoner said, “it would be too bad if it were. She must have had a lot to give, if the right person had come along.”

  “One thing she did get fierce about was how men treated women. She got quite a reputation for it. If she saw a woman mis-treated by her husband, she’d just march in and order that gal to pack and take her right out of there and into one of her hotels. Sometimes half the rooms were filled with those women. Sort of like the shelters we have nowadays. If it looked as if the man wasn’t going to straighten himself out, and the woman didn’t have any-where else to go, Billy’d send her out to her ranch in Wyoming. The whole place was run by women. Man didn’t dare go near it, or he’d find himself gelded.”

  She was here, Stoner thought. She died in this place. And some folks say...

  The thought made her sad and happy and frightened and excited, all at the same time.

  “I wonder,” she said to Bea, “if it would be possible to see the room where she died.”

  Bea hesitated. “Well, I don’t know...”

  “I wouldn’t touch anything. I’d just like to well, knowing a little about her, I guess I’d just like to feel close to her.”

  “Oh, what the heck? You have an honest face.” She reached in a drawer and pulled out an old key and handed it over. “Take your time. Just lock up when you come out.”

  By the time she was standing outside the door, she wasn’t certain she wanted to do this. Life goes on, and there’s enough to handle without blending past and present—and maybe even inviting the future to drop in for a chat.

  Oh, don’t be silly, she told herself firmly. It’s only a room.

  She turned the key and pushed open the door.

  A wave of terrible sadness swept out at her. Sadness so deep she could almost touch it. Sadness that wrapped around her heart and twisted it tight as rope.

  “Oh, Billy,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  She touched the top of the bureau, running her fingers over the silver brush and comb and hand mirror. A few threads of hair were still caught in the brush bristles. Hair as soft as rabbit fur and white as snow. A small porcelain dish held tiny earrings and a single strand of beads made from brightly colored, polished stones. The stones Blue Mary had given her. She wondered what Billy had done with the Susan B. Anthony dollar. Had it been found among her things? If so, what did they make of it? Or had she gotten rid of it years before her death, lost or spent it, or even given it to a special friend. Stoner hoped she’d had a special friend to give it to.

  She glanced up at the age-mottled mirror that hung above the bureau. It reflected the shadows in the room, but behind those shadows were other shadows, shadows entombed in the mirror itself.

  She thought she caught movement in the mirror, and whirled to look behind her. But the room was empty.

  Looked empty. It didn’t feel empty.

  She’s here, she thought.

  She backed away from the bureau and sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to wrinkle the bed clothes.

  The atmosphere seemed to thicken.

  “I’m here, Billy,” she whispered.

  The air took on an odor like hay and lavender.

  She could feel the room’s vibrations gather at the head of the bed, and turned toward it. There was nothing visible, but she knew someone was there. She held out her hand.

  She could have sworn someone touched it. Rubbed a finger across her knuckles.

 
A flood of pictures raced through her mind, like memories unfolding at breakneck speed. Places she’d never been, faces she’d never seen. Crowds by torchlight, seen from a platform of some kind, faces upturned, excited, hopeful. Wide expanses of prairie. Grass fires by night, a flicker of flames that circled the black horizon like a burning necklace. An invasion of grasshoppers, black clouds of them like swarming bees, chewing up everything in their path—crops, gardens, grass, even clothing and the wooden sides of barns. Trying to trample them underfoot, their bodies making popping sounds like the cracking of walnut shells. Mountains covered in snow. Years of drought and flood. Sewing quilts from clothing scraps, and clothing from grain sacks and old blankets, even Conestoga wagon canvas. Tiny rooms in rough cabins. Sheets of paper with awkward handwriting, the same letters and simple words practiced over and over. More rooms. Endless rooms, and wagons, and the insides of railroad cars. A farm of wheat, stretching as far as the eye could see, and all the farmhands women. Always women. Women laughing together, crying together, arguing, teasing, dreaming, loving. Range fires, women swiping at the racing flames with water-soaked blankets and burlap bags and even worn petticoats. Women dead, dying. Her first view of a motor car—barbaric, dog- killing machine, nothing good’ll come of it. First electric light, and telephone, and radio. Everything moving too fast, changing too much. Can’t keep up. Emotions—joy and fear and tenderness and sorrow and triumph. And, running through them all, loneliness.

  She closed her eyes. The track of memories slowed, and there were Big Dot, and Lolly and Cherry. Blue Mary and the Reverend Henry Parnell. Tabor and the fire. The blizzard. Billy’s dugout in the creek bank. The white wolf.

  And then she saw herself, the way Billy had seen her first. Standing on top of the hill, little more than a dark shadow against the mauve-gray western sky. Looking lost and bewildered.

  An overwhelming feeling of love swept over her and around her, taking her breath away.