Pamela Morsi (5 page)

Pete Davies, a slight-framed, balding man in his mid-thirties, was pacing the floor and waxing eloquent upon his decidedly unpleasant marital union. He and his wife, Loralene, were currently living separately. This was not shocking news. Pete got mad and moved out
about twice a year since they’d wed. Usually he was on his own for only a few weeks at a time, but occasionally the disagreement lasted for months.

“The thing about women,” he was declaring with authority, “is that they don’t understand the world at large and have an exaggerated idea of their place in it.”

The response included a few chuckles and a couple of nods and a hearty “Amen” from old Penderghast, who was almost stone deaf, generally confused and had been happily wed to his childhood sweetheart for nearly fifty years.

“No smoking. No drinking. No card playing or dominoes. And the Lord Almighty help you if you so much as even catch the eye of some other woman on the street,” Pete continued, shaking his head. “I wish somebody would tell me how the home that I built, every board, nail and bucket of paint paid for from the sweat of my labors, every stick of furniture and length of drapery come by the same way—how did that place get to be
her
house?”

“Well, Pete,” Amos said quietly, not looking at him but concentrating upon tying the cutting cloth around the neck of Reverend Holiday and reclining him in the big red-leather-upholstered, metal-and-mahogany chair, “it might have something to do with those five children the woman bore you.”

A few of the customers snickered.

Pete turned to the barber and shook his finger at him in warning.

“You don’t know how lucky you are, Amos Dewey,” he said, “to be a man on your own without some woman constantly stepping in to ruin every pleasure you hold dear.”

The words were cruel to a man who had doted upon his pretty, delicate little bride. His sweet little Bess,
sickly from childhood, had passed from this world much too soon.

Amos chose not to take offense.

His grief was intense and at times all-consuming. But it was his and his alone. He never shared it, not in word or in deed. Not so much as a whisper. No one could know. Because he could never bear to speak of it.

Amos carefully wrapped a hot, steamy towel upon Reverend Holiday’s face as the discussion in the room turned to the president’s handling of the coal strike. Most said bully for Teddy. Texas was not a state much friendly to unions, but there was always sympathy for the workingman.

The subject changed abruptly when Perry Wilhelm breezed in with a bit of hometown gossip.

“I saw Pansy Richardson come to town this morning for groceries,” he said.

A little titter of knowing laughter made its way around the room.

“Just how much did you see of her?” Clive Benson asked.

That question really amused the crowd.

Perry shook his head. “Not nearly as much as I was willing to,” he replied. “But more than my wife would probably appreciate.”

The fellows liked that answer as well.

Wade Pearsall added his own news.

“My Vera told me that Mudd’s ice wagon was parked in front of her house today for nearly a half hour.”

That was a scandal for sure.

“Akers or old man Shultz?” somebody asked.

“Maybe the both of them,” another suggested.

There was lots of laughter all around.

Benson shook his head, disbelieving. “Your wife
does have a tendency to exaggerate, Wade,” he reminded them all. “And she hasn’t had a good word to say about the Widow Richardson since that little incident of yours.”

Pearsall bristled. “The woman was sitting out on the second-floor porch practically naked,” he told them. “I just happened to glance up in that direction.”

“And the field glasses just happened to be perched on your nose at the time,” Perry added.

That statement produced more loud guffaws. Not everyone, however, found it so humorous.

Reverend Holiday pulled the towel from his face and sat up in the barber’s chair.

“That woman is a Jezebel,” he proclaimed with equally loud fervor. “She is vile and wicked and a blot of shame upon this town.”

His declaration effectively silenced the room. To a man, the occupants looked uncomfortable and guilty.

Amos spoke up for the first time as he eased the preacher back in the chair and began brushing his face with a lavish amount of shaving soap.

“I suspect that most of the things that are said about Mrs. Richardson are untrue,” Amos assured him. “A lovely young widow like her, alone all these years and so … so spirited. People will talk.”

The pastor wasn’t completely placated.

“People may talk,” Pearsall pointed out, “but Madeline Barclay did name her by name. If the woman lived more modestly and turned her attention to good works, a good deal less would be said.”

It was difficult to argue that.

“I can’t imagine what Grover Richardson was thinking,” Harry Potts, editor of the Cottonwood
Beacon
said, shaking his head. “To marry such a capricious young woman and then to leave her all that money.”

“Richardson seemed to like her youth and vitality,” Amos said. “She was a good wife to him while he lived. And I’m sure that he never expected to leave this earth as early as he did.”

“But what a way to go,” Pete Davies whispered under his breath.

Everyone heard his words, but not all were able to stifle their snickers.

Perry couldn’t resist adding his own twist to the joke.

“It gives new implication to the longing of most men to die in their own bed.”

Most everyone laughed at that. Reverend Holiday did not. And neither did Amos.

“Grover Richardson is probably rolling in his grave to see his wife become such an object of speculation,” the preacher told them, shaking a finger at them in warning. “He should have left his fortune to the church or charity. His widow would have been forced to behave herself so she could remarry.”

The pastor shook his head. “Instead she is running wild, dressing like a young woman, loud, immodest and hasn’t darkened the church door since the day of her husband’s funeral.”

Reverend Holiday had the discretion not to mention the numerous illicit liaisons the woman was rumored to have.

Amos wondered how she could have done it. Richardson had died only shortly before his own Bess. The widow’s reputation was called to question almost immediately.

So soon after the loss, Amos couldn’t have … well, he still couldn’t.

Perhaps it was simply the nature of the man’s death that had set the gossip hounds against her. Richardson had been stark naked and in full rut when he succumbed
to apoplexy atop his young wife. It was rumored that she’d been trapped beneath his dead body for hours.

An image like that stays with people.

But where there was smoke, there was usually fire, and Pansy Richardson had done little or nothing to quell gossip about her alleged affairs. And the way she looked at men, as if she knew them unerringly and could size them up. It was disconcerting, at the least.

She’d looked at Amos more than once. He had been completely befuddled. His sweet Bess was gone. His life partner was six feet under, rotted and gone. He no longer even thought about the temporal, the carnal. But then, as he reminded himself, he tried not to think at all.

That’s why he had not thought about Gussie. He’d not thought about what she might want. About what she might want from him. She had been forced to state those needs to him directly.

And he had rejected her. Clumsily, hurtfully, he had rejected the woman who had been a kind friend and companion to him for the past three years. It was a terrible thing to do. Uncompassionate and ungentlemanly.

If he allowed himself the truth, however, he was relieved that he had done it.

What in the world was wrong with him? he wondered as he scraped the whiskers from Reverend Holiday’s chin. He genuinely liked Miss Gussie. She would make a fine wife. And he needed to remarry. He was still young enough to start again, to have children, to live once more.

He wasn’t living, and he knew that. Inside, he was as dead as his beloved Bess. He merely continued to work every day and she did not.

“Here comes Rome,” Clive announced, capturing Amos’s attention once more.

He’d pulled the ice wagon to a stop by the front door. Amos didn’t use ice in the shop. Obviously Rome’s errand was personal rather than professional.

“Maybe we should ask him how long it takes to make a delivery to the wicked widow,” Perry suggested.

The patrons in the barbershop chuckled at that. But when Rome came through the doorway, not a one of them had the audacity to voice the question. Akers was notoriously touchy about women on his route. He spent his days going in and out of the kitchens of other men’s wives and mothers. It was bad for business if folks began to dwell upon the inappropriateness of a man, any man, being inside a woman’s house without her husband at home.

“Good afternoon,” Clive offered in greeting instead.

Rome mumbled a reasonable if distracted response.

His expressive face was a map of purpose, concern and confusion. He definitely looked as if he had something important to say. So much so that he made an unscheduled stop in the middle of the afternoon.

“Hello, Rome,” Amos said to him. “You need something this afternoon?”

The man looked ill at ease. He walked to the mirror and gave himself a thorough perusal.

“I need … I need the works,” he said. “A shave, haircut, the sideburns trimmed.”

“All right,” Amos told him. “Both Harry and Clive are ahead of you. The wait will be about twenty minutes, I expect. If you are in a hurry, you could come back tomorrow.”

“No, no. I have to get it done today,” Rome said. “I’m … I’m escorting a lady to that wedding tonight.”

The silence in the barbershop was all-inclusive. Finally the reverend chuckled.

“Well, well, well, this is good news indeed, Akers,” he said.

“Yes,” Rome agreed. “Yes, it is.”

The other men began to joke and speculate. Rome didn’t offer any clues. He had been seen occasionally in the past with ladies who were not necessarily ladies, and more than once his name had been linked to the infamous Mrs. Richardson. But up until now Rome Akers had not singled out any marriageable female for particular attention. It was a novelty. And one that the other men were delighted to tease him about.

“Is this just an evening’s fancy?” Amos questioned. “Or are you planning a serious courtship?”

“Why do you ask?”

“The mustache,” Amos said, pointing to the man’s reflection in the mirror. “Woman hate facial hair. If it’s serious courting, the mustache has to go.”

“My mustache!” Akers looked extremely displeased. He ran his fingers over his upper lip assessingly.

Rome had worn the long red-gold handlebar for years now. It was as much a part of his face as his eyes, nose and mouth.

“He’s right,” Mr. Potts agreed. “If you want to win a woman, you’ve got to do it clean-shaven.”

“Yeah, you can grow it back after you’re wed,” Benson piped up.

“Now, you fellows are getting ahead of yourselves,” Amos told them. “He’s only thinking to walk out with the woman and you’ve got him lovestruck and married already.”

All of them laughed.

“A happy marriage could do you a world of good, son,” the pastor suggested.

The words clearly distressed the man. Amos relented.

“Oh, keep the mustache,” he told Rome. “If she agreed to go with you, then she must not mind it very much.”

Rome gave Amos a strange look that the barber couldn’t quite interpret.

“No, shave it off,” he said. “If that’s what it takes, shave it off.”

Gussie was so nervous her stomach was nearly in full rebellion. Her hands trembled and her voice cracked. And this was before she’d even left the house.

Rome showed up, a little late and a little nervous. His hair was shiny and slicked down in the latest fashion for dapper gentlemen. The width of his shoulders in the gray three-button cutaway coat and the regal grace with which he moved, unencumbered by the weight of a fifty-pound block of ice, made him seem another man entirely from the Rome Akers who was in her employ.

“Will this do?” he asked, indicating his clothes. “I don’t have a full-dress suit and the tailor said the soonest they could put one together for me would be next week.”

Gussie dismissed his concerns. “It is the twentieth century,” she reminded him. “We are not so formal.”

She invited him in to stand in the foyer while she pinned on her hat. Gussie was overdressed for the occasion and she knew it. She was gowned in a claret silk walking dress trimmed in tiny gold braid. Her heart-brimmed straw leghorn was festooned with similar braid and clusters of taffeta rosettes pulled together with three elegant cut-steel cabochons.

Most of the women in attendance would be wearing
simple shirtwaist-and-skirt ensembles. And although all heads would be respectfully covered, many would be done so with scarves and bonnets.

She did not feel a bit uncomfortable. It was befitting for a woman of her social rank and means to be very fashionable when appearing in public for the first time on the arm of a new gentleman. Were she to show up in anything less than the latest in style, it would be as if saying to these people that the fine opinion of the man at her side did not matter to her. As a businesswoman, as well as simply a human being, she understood that a visible impression often overrode all logic and reasoning.

She gazed at Rome curiously. He did not have the dashing good looks of a gentleman, but he was well enough looking and was sufficiently groomed for the evening. She felt a little ill at ease as she surveyed him. It was almost as if this very familiar man had suddenly turned into a stranger.

“You look different somehow,” she said.

“It’s the mustache,” he said. “I had it shaved.”

Gussie was amazed as she recognized the truth. That very long, very red-gold mustache was completely missing on the clean-shaven face that gazed back at her. Rome’s handlebar mustache had been a part of him as long as they had been acquainted.