SMALL SPIRITS
By Mel. White
Sam Voss lay dying, face down in the dry
Rio Grande
riverbed underneath a hot Texas sun, his last
breaths whispering across the
dust.
"Is this the one?
T’aint fit for coyotes," a voice
said. The
assessment was impersonal; a
judgment delivered from a very bored god who wasn't
too interested in the soul
of poor Sam Voss, Boston accountant.
Something tapped against his foot.
"Not dead yet."
"Ah-yuh."
A second voice responded.
Sam wondered vaguely if they would try to
rob
him. The
joke would be on them, because
he had no money, no watch, no guns and no jewelry. Even his
shoes weren't worth taking.
"Not from around here" First Voice
observed.
"Might be one of them drunks from the saloon at
Langtry." Whoever
they were, they seemed to be a
gossipy lot. He
wished they'd just check
his pockets and then go away to leave him to his
task of dying.
"Don't smell like no drunk."
First Voice commented. "Must
have got hisself heat stroke."
A shadow flickered over his face.
Maybe it was buzzards that were arguing
over
him. "Naw. Face ain't
red enough. Looks
like discouragement and
discombobulation.
What's good for
discombobulation?" Second Voice asked.
"Water," said First Voice.
Hands lifted Sam up towards heaven.
Light bathed his closed eyes, and he felt
his
spirit rise and reach for the clouds, soaring on
angel wings. He
was flying.
Then he was landing, face down, in
something
liquid. There
was a noise that Sam's
brain interpreted as a splash.
Sam's
body immediately made the entirely independent
decision to rise and attempt to
levitate out of the wet stuff while his brain was
still trying to figure out
why Heaven was wet and whether he'd been sent to
some sort of fishy afterlife
in revenge for all the trout he'd eaten during his
lifetime.
Then there was air for his lungs.
He lay on a stretch of muddy ground,
gasping.
"Yup.
That done it," Second Voice said, sounding
satisfied.
Sam looked up and around.
Wherever this was, it wasn't Langtry, Texas
-- a
town so small that any building outside the saloon
might be called an
outskirt.
He was still outdoors, but he
seemed to be lying in front of a shallow cave at the
edge of a pool of water; a
place that was too hot to be Heaven, but too cool to
be Hell. Several
hopeful-looking buzzards perched in a
nearby tree. A
few feet in front of his
head, two very large lizards were eyeing him
critically.
"Not much to work with.
The Cihuateteo must be gettin' desperate
after all these years."
First Voice
Lizard inflated its throat sac briefly.
"Well, that’s what comes of telling her
that
wailing down by the river don't work.
Now she sends us after a grifter who's so bad
at it that he can't even
get properly lynched,” Second Voice Lizard said
flatly.
"Nah.
He's no grifter.
He's an
a-ccounter turned writer."
First
Voice Lizard was doing pushups at Second Voice
Lizard. Second
Voice Lizard flattened against the
limestone.
"So how we gonna get him to the Hog Farm?"
"I have a plan."
There was a low, feral growl from behind,
and Sam
rolled, twisting to escape.
As a large,
spotted paw pinned him down, Sam heard Second Voice
Lizard saying, "Oh,
not THAT again!"
And all went black.
###
The waning moon dappled pinpoints of light
on the
dirt floor of the tiny shack.
Rosa sat
wearily on the edge of her rickety bed as her
visitor left without looking back
at her. It
was payday for the soldiers
at Buffalo Pools, which meant a busy week for the
whores at the Hog Farm. The
officers and sergeants spent money on the
women who lived in the Big House, but ordinary
enlisted men took their needs to
the “Abandons” – Rosa and the women like her who
lived in tiny “crib” shacks at
the back of the Hog Farm.
Too old, too
ugly or too poxed to win a berth in the Fancy House,
they serviced the men who
were too drunk or too desperate to be picky.
Rosa
scraped
the coins off her dresser and dumped them into the
leather pouch that she kept
hidden behind the bed’s headboard.
She'd
have fifty cents left over after Madame Pleasant
took her cut. The
last customer left behind a half-empty glass
of beer, and she drained it in quick swallows,
hoping he’d forgotten about it.
Madame Pleasant would have her whipped if
the
man complained.
Madame Pleasant never let her girls have
alcohol,
but she did give them a daily ration of syrup of
poppy. Rosa
always saved her dose and traded it to
Slutty Mary or Big Lizzie for their leftover beer.
The ghosts that lived in the
tiny cemetery behind the whorehouse warned her that
poppy syrup might help you
forget better, but it made you ugly and stupid and
then killed you. On nights
like tonight when the Big House was ablaze with
light, she began to believe
that a fast death would be much better than a
never-ending calendar full of
unwashed men, and mindless, uncomfortable sex.
It would take more than a swallow or two of
beer to
erase the memory of the last two clients.
Reaching into the glass jar beside her bed,
she fished out a pinch of
locoweed leaves.
They crumbled like dust
in her hands. Tomorrow
she’d walk down
to the little meadow behind the garden and harvest a
handful of leaves from the
plants.
"That stuff'll put a begoozler in your
thinkin'
bits."
She eyed the scruffy creature in the
doorway.
"Maybe it'll begoozle me into thinking
you look like a real coyote instead of an oversized
lizard wearing a bad rug,
Tchalak."
He sidled through the door, shrinking from
fox size
to lizard size. "It ain’t easy bein’ a spirit. I can't
help it if I'm bad at
shapewalking. Besides,
I gots other
talents I'm better at.”
“Like ‘borrowing’ dresses’ from the
clothesline?”
“That weren’t my fault.
I was on a mission o’mercy an’ th’ dress
kinda
got in my ways.” Tchalak looked around nervously.
Rosa pulled a few more leaves from her jar. “That’s
what you said last time.”
“Did it sound more convincin’ this time?”
“No.”
He
flattened
against the rug with a sigh.
“Gotta
practice on my innocence. “
She splashed water from a bedside jug into
her wash
basin. “So
why are you here?
And where’s Yahxa?”
His color brightened.
“We got a present for you.
Well, sort of a present.
It's a man. The Cihuateteo brought him here
to help you. He's
kinda discombobulated
right now so Yaxha an’ the Cihuateto are watching
over him so he don't flounder
into something.
You need to come talk to
him."
Rosa dipped a towel into the wash basin and
began
cleaning herself.
"The old jaguar
ghost-woman got me a man?
I don't need a
man unless he's gonna give me enough money to buy me
outta here and ship me
where I can start over."
Tchalak sat up on his haunches with a
shrug. "He
gots no money after the Chambers
boys over at Langtry bushwhacked him, so he’s not
much good for bail."
Rosa rolled her eyes.
"She sends me a no-money, beat up wreck
from Langtry to help me out?
Go tell her
thanks but I don't need him."
“She sez he's an a-counter from somewhere
back East
who wants to be a writer.
She sez he's
not too bad with money as long as he don't get beat
up and robbed.
Besides, if you don't go along with it, the
Cihuateteo will find another way to reward you.”
Rosa tossed the towel into the washbasin. The
ghost’s message wasn't quite a threat -- but
it wasn't a comforting thought, either.
She
yanked her dress on.
"Lead the
way," she said wearily.
###
Her knight in torn and dusty broadcloth was
sitting
with his back against a large limestone rock,
looking like a lost puppy.
Tchalak's twin, Yaxha, still in lizard
shape,
clung silently on the rock above the man's head,
while a ghostly shape in
jaguar form paced the ground in front of him.
The Cihuateteo turned her head as Rosa
climbed the stony slope.
"This one is named Sam.
He knows about cheating.
He will help you," the Cihuateteo
announced with a self-satisfied purr and a nod
toward the man.
He opened his mouth in an apparent effort to
protest that he was honest, but a look from the
ghost stopped him.
She
twitched
starlight-frosted whiskers in amusement.
"I have made the sacrifices in heaven and
have done the
divination. The
signs are clear.
This man can discover how to free you from
your debt to the cruel woman.
I give him
to you as your reward for moving the bones of myself
and my baby to a safe
hiding place."
The man's eyes strayed from the
jaguar-ghost to Rosa
and back again. "Uh… as a citizen of…" he began.
The Cihuateteo rose, starlight-speckled and
pony-sized. The
words died in his
throat.
"Omens do not lie,” she hissed, lowering
her
head until she was nose-to-nose with him.
“They say you can free Rosa from this woman. Once you
do this, I will help bring justice
to those who hurt you." Her canines glinted in the
moonlight. "I
was the wife of a Jaguar Warrior of
the Aztecs. I
may only be a ghost, but I
still have power in this world and the next.
Being beaten and robbed and left for dead is
not the worst that can
happen to you."
With that she faded, leaving only wind and
starlight
and the night.
Everyone stared at
Sam. Sam
stared at the place where the
Cihuateto had been.
"It'll look better in the mornin’,"
Tchalak said confidently.
"He can
stay at your place, Rosa, an’ the two of you can jaw
amongst yourselfs about
what's going on."
Rosa gave a long, detailed and obscene
reply about
would happen if Madame Pleasant found a man staying
in the crib. When Sam
looked blankly at her, she told him about a
wandering drunk who moved into one
of the shacks without permission and was forced to
be a specialty act in a pig
show to pay off his debts.
Sam
turned pale, clenched his knees together,
wrapped his arms around himself and stared at her
with horror-stricken
eyes.
Yaxha scurried down the rock and sat on
Sam's
knee. "There’s
no call for getting’
all spookety on us," she said confidently.
"Ol’ Whiskey Maller didn’t have nothin to
trade for rent but his
body. You’re
a countin’ man, and that’s
useful.”
Sam’s expression didn’t change.
Yaxha patted his knee with her tiny paw. “Madame
wants to buy a house in town an
become respectable,” she said.
“That
means she’s gotta do a lot of wranglin’ an
bargaining, cause the hoity-toity
‘decent folks’ of the town think she’s a low-down,
dishonest, mean-spirited old
harridan.”
“An’ she’s all of that and a box of
biscuits, too,”
Rosa snarled.
“That’s beside the point,” Yaxha replied. “She don't
trust nobody she don't own, so
that’s where Sam here comes in.”
Sam raised his head and glowered at the
lizard. “I’m
not going to be a specialty act for
anyone.”
“You don’t have to do nothing like that,”
Yahxa
reassured him.
“Old God Coyote says to just
go up to the house an say that you’re an accounter
an got robbed and throwed in
the middle of nowhere an how you need help getting
back to Boston, an she'll go
after you like a trout after a fat fly.
Once you’re in, you can figger out how to
help Rosa."
Tchalak bounced up and down furiously. “Old
God
Coyote? You been talking to Old God Coyote?"
he huffed.
"I never quit talking to him like you did.”
“I didn’t quit talking to him – he left!”
“That was him bein’ all dramatic,” Yaxha
said
cooly. “He
still comes out for flute
music.”
“He
tol’ all
of us that he was gonna walk with the other gods.” Tchalak
bounced furiously.
"He was just fussin’.
He never left.
He prognosticated that Sam would figger out
how to buy Rosa free.
When he does, the
Cihuateteo will help him get revenge and everyone’ll
be happy."
"I kin see he might like that better than
being
the star of a pig show,” Tchalak observed.
Sam nodded forcefully and enthusiastically,
sealing his
fate.
###
The hard stare of the afternoon sun had
bleached the
sky milky white by the time the lizards led Sam to
the back door of the Hog
Farm’s biggest house.
Rosa sat by her
window and watched the lacy shadows of the mesquite
tree stretch across her
porch, reaching for the oncoming night.
Madame
emerged from the Big House and lit the red lamps on
the porch, more from habit
than from hope of new customers.
It
was four weeks until the next payday.
There’d be no customers for the women in
the
cribs tonight.
She turned from the window and found the
two spirit
lizards sitting beside the washbowl.
"We stayed with your hero till he got
settled. It's
all good now,” Yaxha
announced.
“He didn’t have problems?”
"Nope.
Happened just like we thought it would.
Madame welcomed him and fed him and then
handed him the bill.
He told her his story and she says she
can't
afford freeloaders.
Then he says that
he’s an accountanter an he asks if he could do her
books for a-while to work
off his debt. She
was most pleased."
Rosa snorted.
"Did she take him to her bed, too?"
"Nah.
He's sharing a room with ol' Greasepaint, the
cook."
"That’ll be quite the eddycation," Tchalak
said.
Yaxha and Rosa stared at him owlisly.
"He can learn to cook," Tchalak continued
breezily.
Rosa blinked in confusion. “Why?”
"Well everyone knows writers don’t make no
money an he can't spend the rest of his life workin'
for no madame, so he needs
to learn new stuff to get him rich.
Like
horses."
"Horses?"
Yaxha blinked.
"Catchin’ horses for the army.
Of course, he needs ta learn ta ride
without
falling off. And
how to tame them so’s
they don't buck an bust their riders to bits.
Or he could get over his unmanly fear of
guns, learn trick shootin, and
join a traveling show. A fancy shootist ain't much,
but it pays better than
writin'." He gaped his mouth in an imitation grin.
"Tchalak, shut up," Yaxha snapped.
Tchalak blinked, “I'm just sayin..."
Rosa glared at him until he scuttled under
the
washstand.
###
After that night, Rosa saw almost nothing
of Sam. She
didn't like admitting that the
Chiuateto's promise had gotten her hopes up, but as
the moon waxed and then
began to wane again, there was no word from Sam. Her spirits
sank into darkness.
She began eating more of the locoweed and
when
that wasn’t enough, started drinking poppy syrup so
that she could lose reality
in a web of dreams.
The days became a
litany of sameness; a drug dream interrupted by
soiled and smelly
customers. Yaxha
and Tchalak clung to
the rafters, silent shepherds of her misery.
###
On the last night of the old moon, Big
Lizzie came
to the door of Rosa's shack with tears streaming
down her face.
"It's Mary," she said without
preamble. "She's
hung herself and
died. Ol'
Greasepaint found her just a
bit ago. They
told her she had the
French Pox so she couldn't have men any longer so
she'd have to go to the work
farm and work the fields.
She cried when
she told me. She
was so scared.
Poor little Mary... so little... so little." Big Lizzie
collapsed in tears, her palms
covering her face.
Rosa knelt beside
her, crying with her, crying for all of them.
"There's no place but here or the grave for
any
of us," Big Lizzie sobbed.
Footsteps scraped on the dirt outside, and
Sam
emerged into the feeble candlelight.
"I came to tell you about Mary," he said,
hands twisting his handkerchief nervously.
"Greasepaint and two of the
soldiers are digging her grave now.
Some
of the girls are cleaning her up and wrapping her in
a blanket so she can be
buried decent."
Rosa sneered at him.
"Decent?
We're too sinful to
be buried in church graveyards like decent folks,"
she said bitterly.
"At the farm they throw us to the coyotes and
buzzards. Here
we’ll just throw her in the dirt and
cover her up without even a marker to her name.
Because nobody knows her real name."
A sudden roaring rage overwhelmed her and
she
rose, fists clenched. "Is that how you're gonna free
us? Bury
us out back without names?"
Sam took a hasty step backwards.
Big Lizzie paused in the act of blowing her
nose on
the hem of her petticoat.
"Free
us?"
"Yeah," Rosa snarled, still advancing on
Sam. "He
got into trouble, and the
lizard spirits rescued him.
He's
supposed to pay them back by getting me out of here. Only as
far as I can tell, all he done is
follow the madam around and stare at her booty and
books."
Sam backpedaled, waving his hands in front
of
him. "No
-- wait! I
know how she cheats to keep you here.
I just don’t have a plan yet."
Lizzie stumbled to her feet.
“You knowed we was cheated and kept it to
yourself?" She
loomed over him like
a ship's mast, tall and lean and hardwood solid. Her fists
looked like a pair of fleshy
anvils.
Rosa pulled her away.
"Don’t do that.
We all know that Madame cheats us. The
lizard
spirits warned us long ago.
If Sam knows
how she does it, mebbe we can fix it."
Lizzie scowled and rubbed her knuckles. “I'd feel
better if he was lyin' at my feet
and bleeding lots."
“Won’t do no good.
The Chiuateto says that if he’s no help, then
she’ll keep sendin’ heroes
until there’s one who can fix things,” Rosa replied.
“I don’t know how much
more of this kind of help I can survive.
I’m figgerin’ our only hope is to make him
into a hero.”
Lizzie eyed him.
“Not much to work with.”
Rosa gave a short bark of laughter.
“Fits the rest of us.
Broken down whores, a cook who don’t know
salt from saltpeter, and loco spirit-lizards.
None of us is much to work with.
But if we wait for a handsome hero to come
save us, we’ll die here alone
and old.”
Big Lizzie fisted her hands on her hips and
leaned
forward until she was nose-to-nose with Sam.
“Well, Mr. Accounter, explain it to us.”
Sam heaved a long sigh.
“The story everyone’s heard her tell about
buying a house in Laredo is just that –- a story,”
he said wearily.
“There’s a journal in her desk. I got a
peek
at it one day.
It’s got her private
accounts along with a letter from a bank showing
that she made a down payment
on a house in Chicago.
As soon as she
gets another two hundred dollars, she’s going to go
to Chicago and leave
everything about her past here –- you, the judge,
this whorehouse, everything.”
“No doubt when they find she’s gone,
they’ll ‘clean
up’ the Hog Farm by sendin’ the sheriff to arrest
everyone,” Rosa said
bitterly.
“Oh, not all the girls is gonna get
arrested,” Big Lizzie
growled. “Remember
how Doris kept
hinting she was gonna be a lady’s dressmaker real
soon an’ how Madame’s been
givin’ her th’ best clients?
Don’t take
no scholar t’ figger out that the two of ‘em are in
cahoots.”
“Look,” he said carefully, “I can’t just
run in and
shoot up things and run off with seventeen girls and
a cook. I
need to make a plan!”
“How close is she to getting her
grubstake?” Rosa
asked.
“A month and a half if she pays all her
bills this
month. More
likely scenario is that she’ll
leave next week, after the Farman trail drive comes
through,” he said quietly.
“T’ain’t much time,” Lizzie observed. “We gonna
need one good plan.”
Tchalak flicked his tongue at a passing
fly. “Iffn’
you…”
Four voices said simultaneously, “Tchalak,
shut up.”
###
Greasepaint was muttering to himself and
flailing at
a lump of dough as Sam came through the back door of
the Big House, coffee cup
in his hand. “I
tole her,” he snarled as
he slapped the pastry onto a floury board and began
kneading it roughly,
punctuating each word with a thrust of his
shoulders. “Tole
her again. She don’t lissen.
Not at all.”
“Told
her
what? What’s
going on?” Sam
asked as he lifted the coffee pot.
Something in its depths sloshed wetly, and
he
felt a surge of hope.
This afternoon’s
batch of coffee was drinkable, which meant that the
judge was visiting.
Greasepaint pounded the dough with his
fist. “Madame
Pleasant is lettin’ them thievin’,
lyin’, swindlin’, no-mannered Chambers boys in
here.”
“Chambers boys?”
“Brothers an’ as mean a set of rowdys as
you’ll find
anywheres. Just
waltzed right in through
my kitchen an’ when I tries to stop them, they
throwed my own taters at me an’
kept goin’. Madame,
she’s busy with the
Judge an don’t pay no nevermind.”
“Are they from around here?”
“Nah.
They’s
from ever’ place an’ noplace.”
Greasepaint spat on the floor.
“I
hear tell they come from around El Paso, but they
likes to ride the Rio
Grande. They
allus spends their time
with Dirty Doris.
Doris, she don’t like
‘em much, but she likes their moneys.”
“So why doesn’t Madame throw them out?” Sam took a
cautious sip. It
was mostly chicory and some unidentifiable
weeds, with a hint of real roasted coffee.
The judge must have brought some of his beans
with him.
Greasepaint wiped his hands on a smudged
towel. “Madame
keeps them because they does things
for her. On
the last week of the month
they come in t’ act like peace enforcers.
That’s the week the cowboys and the soldiers
get paid, an’ they finish
any fights that start.
But they’re rough
an’ the customers don’t like ‘em.
I tole
her t’ give ‘em the gate but she sez they keeps the
peace as well as any
officer.” An’
she says their money’s
allus good here.
I don’t fathom her
reasonin’.”
“You’d think she could find someone else to
handle
it.” Sam
said as he fished an apple from
the bin.
“Families ain’t eager t’ have their menfolk
guardin’
a whorehouse. But
the Chambers boys
ain’t that particular.
They got money of
their own, so they take their wages in trade.”
“Seems strange that they don’t take money.”
“Well, that pair makes a habit of takin’
advantage
of folks. Mostly
at card games, but word
is that they been stealin’ from folks acrost the
border. You
keep outta their way, Sam.
They’d shoot ya fer amusem’nt and laugh as
they picked your pockets.”
“I’ll be careful,” he said as he eased down
the
short hallway towards the parlor.
Loud
laughter
spilled from the main room, punctuated by gunshots
and screams and more
laughter.
Someone started playing the
little parlor piano rather badly, and two or three
voices joined the musician
in an awkward rendition of a popular tune.
Sam peered around the edge of the doorframe.
A handsome, unshaven blonde man in rumpled
clothing
was standing in the middle of the parlor room,
recklessly twirling a gun around
one finger while a group of prostitutes and clients
watched. At
his side stood a taller blond man who held
a watch -– a watch that Sam recognized as his own -–
at the audience.
“So after he done insulted us with his
turrible manners, we figgered t’ teach him a
lesson,” the orator declaimed.
The man with the watch nodded.
“Now Frank an’ me, we couldn’t leave
someone
like that wanderin’ around insultin’ fine folks,
could we?” A
round of cheers went up at his rhetorical
question, fueled in part by Frank swinging the gun
casually towards the
spectators.
“Jason ‘n me, we waits until we sees an
openin’, an
then we snuckt up on him. Jason planted a board up
alongside his haid. Then he
laid down an’ moaned.”
“Frank checked his pockets to see iffn’ he
could pay
the fine, an’ he wuz so pore that mice couldn’t find
crumbs in his
pockets. But
he did have this here
little watch with a fine chain.”
Jason
held the watch up for others to see.
“We
flipped fer it, an’ I got the watch an’ Frank got
the chain.”
“It’s a right pretty chain, too.
Make a fine present.” Frank grinned and
waggled his eyebrows at Doris, who smirked.
“Worms
don’t need
no gewgaws nohow,” Jason laughed.
He
gulped his beer as Frank whirled the revolver around
his finger again.
Even the most pathetic worm has a turning
point, and
there was something about seeing his gold pocket
watch in the hands of a thief
that made Sam’s inner worm stand up in outrage. He
shoved the door open and
charged forward, noises coming from his mouth that
somehow framed the words,
“Give me that!”
The other participants in the drama stood
frozen as
he lunged, reaching for the prize and missing it by
fractions of an inch as
Jason Chambers laughed and swung his hand away.
“Why look-a here, Frank.
It’s th’
worm hisself.”
Frank aimed a kick at Sam’s legs as he went
stumbling past.
“An’ still a runty calf
what thinks he’s bad medicine.
Tole’ ya
we shoulda aired him out when last we seen him.”
“It’d be a waste of a good bullet.”
He aimed idly at the floor near Sam’s feet,
and fired.
Sam hopped aside as a second
bullet snapped past him and shattered the leg of a
coat tree. Overburdened
and overbalanced, it toppled
onto a table, knocking a kerosene lamp to the floor. Jason
swore loudly at his brother as the
puddle of lamp oil caught fire.
“I’ll have it out in a second,” Frank
laughed as he
grabbed a fallen greatcoat and began flailing
energetically at the burning
carpet. The
coat, wet with kerosene,
promptly caught fire.
Frank yelped and
threw the flaming bundle of cloth toward the office
door.
Sam
froze in
horror as flames danced toward the desk.
If the fire reached the books and papers on
the desk, it would destroy
all the evidence he’d collected. He
lunged
for the door.
A dark-skinned woman that he didn’t
recognize
grabbed his arm.
“Don’t go in
there. You
need to save the others
instead.”
“You don’t -–“
“Understand?”
A dusky ring-shaped pattern swirled across
one cheek. Some
trick of the firelight made her eyes
seem to glow. “Books
and records don’t
matter now. Get
everyone out. Things
will sort themselves out.”
Her nails dug into his arm like claws. “You can
save them. Trust
me again,” she said, and by some
strange trick of the night and the fire, she was
both jaguar and woman. He
glanced at the door and felt her grip loosen.
When he turned back, she was gone.
“Well, don’t just lollygag around,” he
heard Tchalak
whisper.
“We’ll take care of these-here
things. You
take care of the
people. I’d
do it mesself, but they
don’t hardly listen to lizards.”
A drift of smoke made him sneeze.
He heard a breathy shriek, and a woman
named
Cajun Sally sprinted past him, headed back toward
her room. He
grabbed her arm and wheeled her
around.
“You’re going the wrong way!
You can’t go back there –- you’ll burn up!”
Tears streaked her cheeks.
“Let me go!
I’ve got to get my dress!
It’s
new and it’s the only nice thing I ever had.“
There were a thousand trivial things he
could have
said to her –- that dresses were less precious than
life, that the dress was
one that Madame had spent a few dollars on one night
when she was drunkenly
generous –- but the thoughts faded at the sight of
the desperation in her
face.
She twisted in his grip.
“Let me go!”
“’ll get it,” he promised.
“You run to where it’s safe.
I’ve got to go upstairs and get the others
out. I’ll
bring your dress with me.”’
“Promise?”
He
could see the shape of a jaguar on the wall behind
her.
“Promise.
Just run.”
Something about the way he said that last
must have
made her believe.
Cajun Sally turned and
ran towards the front door and safety, hope bright
on her face.
Frightened patrons pushed past as flames
licked at
the carpet and crawled up the drapery.
Cursing himself for a fool, he rushed to
Sally’s bedroom and grabbed the
precious dress from her chair.
Then he
sprinted for the staircase, shouting “Fire!
Fire!” and waving the dress like a battle
flag.
He glanced upstairs. There was no sound
from the
group of private suites where Madame and her more
expensive girls took the
wealthiest clients for private shows.
The walls were heavily soundproofed so that
the entertainment wouldn’t
be disrupted by the raucous noise downstairs.
That soundproofing would have kept them from
hearing the warning
shouts.
He glanced back toward the front door,
wondering if
anyone was trying to form a bucket brigade with
washbasins and jugs from the cribs.
However, the river was several hundred
yards
distant, and from what he’d heard around town, most
of the property-owning
citizens didn’t seem to be particularly motivated to
save the Hog Farm.
He knocked furiously on a door and heard a
man’s voice growling something at him.
“Fire!
Get
out of here!” There was no answer.
Sam
pounded the door more forcefully, shouting “Fire! The house
is on fire!”
The door opened slightly, and he saw
Pearl’s
frightened eyes.
“Get your client
out! The
house is on fire!” he shouted
at her as he ran to the next door.
Behind him he heard Pearl scream something. Acrid
fumes began drifting up from the floor
below as he woke the people in the next two rooms.
The door to Madame Pleasant’s suite was
ahead of
him. He
wrenched the knob and lunged
forward through the door, trying to not look at the
bed… at the things on the
bed… at the people on the bed… at what they were
doing… at the frozen tableau
of naked bodies in front of him.
His
brain refused to cooperate, so he tried staring at
the picture over the bed and
pretending that his peripheral vision didn’t work. He somehow
managed to stammer “Fire!”
It came out more as a squeak than a shout.
Madame rose up from the bed like an
avenging
goddess. “No! Not now!”
she howled.
He half-turned toward the judge.
“The place is on fire!
You have to get out of here.
The stairs won’t last more than a few
minutes!”
The judge babbled at him incoherently. Sam bolted
for the door. “Everybody
out!” he yelled as he ran toward
the last two doors.
It seemed to take ages to persuade the girl
and her
client in the first room to leave.
By
the time he got to the door of Jadeline’s room, the
smoke in the corridor was
beginning to turn the air into haze.
He
ran, and the ghosts of jaguars seemed to run through
the smoky air with him.
Jadeline and her customer, a lanky sergeant
from
Fort Capril, lay tangled in an ungraceful sprawl on
the bed, surrounded by
empty jars of beer.
The sergeant opened
his eyes and tried to sit up when Sam shouted at
them, but Jadeline simply
snored and rolled over, tangling herself in the
sheets. Desperation
gave him a surge of strength, and
he lifted one side of the bed, dumping them both on
the floor. The
sergeant seemed to finally recognize that
there was danger and fumbled into his pants. Sam
folded the sleeping woman in a
sheet.
The
room was
hot and smoky and the fire was no longer a distant
crackle, but a muted, savage
roar.
“We’ve got to get out of here!
Help me carry her!” he barked as he grabbed
Jadeline’s shoulders.
The soldier, who
was hard-wired to follow orders even when
semi-conscious, numbly picked up her
legs and began following as Sam backed out into the
hallway. He
glanced in the other rooms as he passed -–
everyone had left.
Now it was just the
three of them.
Sparks flickered in the air.
The stairs were just beginning to burn as
the three
reached them. Sam
backed hastily down,
afraid that if he fell, the others would fall on top
of him, and they’d die
there in the heat and smoke.
The office
was completely engulfed in fire, and somewhere
timbers were beginning to crack
and creak. As
he reached the bottom
step, he felt the ground shiver as something heavy
fell. He
stumbled and caught himself as he
staggered backward and then suddenly, they were all
out of the house.
Hands
pulled
them forward to safety as the roof of the Hog Farm
collapsed in a shower of
sparks and smoke.
Sam sat heavily on the
ground.
The Chambers boys shouted and waved their
hats as
the sparks foamed upward.
“Right pretty
fire,” said Jake, sticking his thumbs in his belt
and grinning widely.
Madame Pleasant turned on him, her eyes
glittering
dangerously. “You
–- you IDIOTS!” she
shrieked. “You
were supposed to burn it
down AFTER we left!”
“Nuh-uh,” Jake scowled.
“You said to start the fire after the
accountaint came in.
We done just
that. Just
like’n you wanted.
T’aint our fault if yer plan was plumb
stupid.”
Silence fell over the crowd.
Heads turned.
Madame dropped the purse she’d been
carrying and
pulled a large pistol from the white froth of her
petticoat. “FOOLS!”
she screamed, and took aim at Frank,
who dodged behind one of the girls.
Jason was slower to react. Madame Pleasant
whirled
on him and fired her gun.
He howled in
fear and crab-scuttled backward as she braced her
legs and pointed the gun.
Onlookers later said that she would probably have
killed him on the spot, but
her aim was spoiled considerably when a large lizard
that had been overcome by
smoke fell out of the trees and landed on her head. The bullet
went wild, narrowly missing the
onlookers from the Saturday evening prayer meeting
who’d come to gawk, and
thudding into the ground right beside the sheriff’s
boot.
The sheriff, who seemed to feel that the
law needed
to have some say in the event, promptly arrested
Madame Pleasant and the
Chambers boys to prevent further mayhem. He
also arrested the judge as an afterthought,
much to the satisfaction of the judge’s wife and the
onlookers.
After that, the scene suddenly seemed to
wind
down. Sparks
flickered through the air
as the house began collapsing.
Smoke
drifted through the crowd, but it was clear that the
fire wasn’t going to
spread to the town.
Satisfied that
everything was in good order, the onlookers wandered
back to their homes,
leaving the cook and Sam and fifteen women standing
in the chilly early morning
air, with nothing left but their lives and whatever
clothing they managed to save
as they fled.
Shapes moved in the darkness as the women
from the
cribs came up from their tiny shacks carrying
blankets and old clothing for the
nearly naked women shivering in the night air. There
would be no other sort of
charity for them, Sam realized –- no food, no
shelter, no help anywhere in the
town for them.
The prettier ones might
marry soldiers and get away from the life, but the
rest were simply stranded to
die or leave as best they could.
Something gently tapped his boot.
He looked down.
Madame’s purse was lying beside his
foot. He
nudged it experimentally, and
Tchalak scuttled out from underneath. Three bright
silver coins fell to the
ground.
Yaxha peered out of the long grass.
“You oughta be able to settle accounts with
that,” she said. “Madame’s private record book is in
there, too. It
shows how much she took from each person
in the last year or so.”
Tchalak poked his head out.
“An by some just amazing stroke of luck,
that’s the exact amount of money that’s in the
purse.” And
then the lizard spirits were gone, leaving
Sam with a bag full of silver and hope.
He looked southward.
In the deep shadows of a cottonwood tree
beside the river, the
smoke-like form of a jaguar sat.
Sam
picked up the purse and wandered down to
the water’s edge.
“So. The
answers
are all in your hand, Sam,” the Cihuateteo said.
“What will you do
now?”
“What I want to do is sleep,” he grumbled. “What I
have to do is decide who gets how
much of the money.
The place is a
complete loss –- but Madame can sell the land after
she gets out of jail.
There’s nearby ranchers who’ll buy it. Most of
the women in the Big House will find
husbands or protectors.”
“Then Rosa is free.
You have fulfilled your obligation.”
“Technically.
There’s still the matter of the money.”
“I only asked that you free her.
Nothing was said of your money.
You can walk away now with all of it.”
“I could.”
He
rose stiffly and sighed.
“But…?”
“But it’s not my money.
It belongs to the women who worked here,
and
to Greasepaint, too.
She stole from all
of us.”
“What will you do?”
“I divided it up into twenty-seven equal
piles –- we
all get the same amount.
If I started
trying to give people what they were actually owed,
it wouldn’t be long before
someone would mention how much they got, and
someone’s feelings would get hurt
and it’d be a big mess.
So I’m telling
all of them that they will all have an equal share,
and if they really want to
feel insulted, they can argue it among themselves.”
The Chiuateto made a small purring sound. “Well,
then, my hero, my spirit friends tell
me there is a horse in the willow breaks.
It belongs to the man who stole your watch -–
a man who will be in jail
for a long time.
It is a friendly animal
and it has no one to care for it now.
Perhaps you and it can go see the world
together and learn some stories
to tell?”
He smiled tiredly.
“After I make sure that everyone has gotten
their money.”
###
It was mid-afternoon when he walked up to
Rosa’s
crib -- the final stop on his rounds.
She
was standing on the porch, surrounded by a tattered
suitcase and battered
boxes; the driftwood of her life.
He
poured silver and gold coins into the palms of her
hands, and she looked at the
money with the same grave expression as the others
had. He
felt a sense of sadness wash over
him. They
had won -– they were free of
Madame and the life they’d led, but the future
didn’t magically brighten.
In place of the dreadful certainty, they
were
left with a confusion of too many choices and no
easy answers. It felt like a
dry and bitter victory.
Rosa dropped the coins into a pouch that
hung from a
stout leather cord around her neck and tucked it
into her shirt.
“What will you do now?” he asked.
She looked southward to the river.
“The best time of my life was when I worked
my uncle’s house, baking bread and cakes for the
ranchero. This
here’s enough for a stagecoach to Del
Rio, where nobody knows me.
I can find
someone with an oven. Start
new.” She
smiled at him then; the first genuine
smile he had ever seen from her.
“And
you got a train to catch and stories to write.
Be well, Sam Voss.
Mebbe someone
will read me one of your stories someday.”
She bowed her head and turned back to the
river and
it was clear that staying longer wouldn’t change
things -– though he wasn’t
sure what sort of ending he’d hoped for.
“Goodbye, Rosa,” he said as he put his hat on
and turned back down the
road toward the horse he’d “inherited” from Jason.
Beady eyes blinked at him from a vantage
point
between the horse’s ears.
“Y’know,”
Tchalak whispered, “this whole story’d be somethin’
you could sell to them
monthly story papers, or even the dime novels.
An’ when you done that’n, we could go see
about some ghost stories. I
know some ghosts around here….”
Sam gathered the reins and clucked to the
gelding as
Tchalak scrambled down to sit on the saddle horn.
“You could become world famous.
C’ourse, ya might wanna change yer name to
somethin’ catchier.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“I think all the good ones like
Bramthatcher
Bumgeezler have been taken.”
“Yes, that will make it harder.”
“It’ll turn out real good.
You’ll see.
We’ll be podners.”
###
In the pale, aqua skies the Great God
Coyote, whose
left eye is the yellow moon and whose right eye is
darkness, turned his face
away from Earth and eyed the spirit lizard who stood
in front of him.
She waved at the blue arc of atmosphere and
put her flute in the pouch that hung underneath her
throat.
“Well?”
Coyote stared at her.
"Too much happenin’ to make a good song of
it," Yaxha said. “Can’t do it with less than forty
verses. Not
even Grandfather Rattlesnake would sit
through it.”
"Maybe I'm getting old and complicated,”
Coyote
sighed. “Past
my prime. I
did it better back when the world was
younger. Maybe
Fox was right -- might be
time to go walk among the stars with the Old Ones."
Yaxha flicked a tongue over her eye.
"There’s
drama, an’ there’s really bad Coyote-drama,” she
observed cynically.
“You’re the worst liar around.
You don’t want to leave.
You just want people to pay attention to
you.”
He rolled to his side, melodramatically
limp among
the dust of the galaxies. “It’s not like the old
days when people lived in
canyons. Simple
lives, simple stories –-
it was easy to make songs about them.”
Yaxha pulled herself onto his paw.
“A city is just a canyon with a lot of
people. Humans
still need stories and
songs and gods to help them deal with their new
concrete canyons.
They still need gods."
His ears drooped.
"The last time I helped a city, no one
appreciated it."
"As I recall, they had to rebuild the west
side
of the city after the circus clowns rioted and the
elephant broke down the
stockyard fences and cows ran loose all over the
neighborhood," Yaxha
suggested acidly.
"It was good for the lawns."
"Maybe you should stick with helping people
instead."
"Helping people.
It's what I do best, isn't it?" he
mused.
"Considering what happens when you help
cities,
yes," Yaxha muttered.
The Great God wagged his tail as he pointed
to a
small track in the middle of a vast sea of grass. "Look down
there. That
small figure walking by that lame mule.
Woman pretending to be her brother.
She's been brung down, thrown down, tossed
around, flamboozled, and bamboozled until all she's
got is one suit and the
wrong directions to Kansas.
We should go
help her."
"Do you think she can survive a serving of
your
help?"
"It'll make a man of her," he grinned and
faded into wind-blown dust.
The woman walked on, head down, limping
with the
mule. Half
a mile ahead of her, a small
dust devil traced circles and then collapsed,
leaving behind the form of a lean
and scruffy dog with bright yellow eyes.
The making and unmaking of worlds was nothing
that interested the Great
Jester God, but the making and unmaking of justice
delighted him, for it was
often the biggest joke of all.
He sat in the dust, ears pricked, tail
wagging, and
waited.
--[30]-