Rose (9 page)

“That man’s at the door waiting to take you to the station.” The woman boomed out the announcement and stared at Rosa as if she were the oddest of creatures.

“Grazie.”
Rosa nodded in Bertha’s direction and straightened the high collar of her dress. She stooped to pick up her valise and paused before the mirror above the washstand to appraise her appearance. This morning she’d braided her hair and wound the plaits around her head. There would be no more jaunty styles, for there was no one to try to impress. Giovanni was not here to appreciate her newly acquired sophistication. It was better to return to her old ways. Simple ways. Besides, there would be no loose pins or tumbling hair to battle. The style was practical, if not plain.

Her skin looked pale as alabaster against the dark ebony of her hair and the equally black sheen of the hat and dress. The weather outside was warming with each passing hour, and the heavy dress would soon become unbearably hot, but she was determined to wear black. Besides, she thought, her other dresses—gowns of more serviceable weight—were packed in her trunk at the station. The velvet would have to do. Muted purple shadows lay beneath the red-rimmed eyes that stared back at her from the mirror. Rosa decided she had never looked worse.

She shrugged at her image. What did it matter?

Silently she followed Mrs. Matheson down the stairs, stared at the woman’s wide girth, and wondered if the landlady ever feared getting stuck between the wooden banister and the wall. Rosa tried to glance around Bertha, but did not see the man standing in the doorway until they reached the bottom of the stairs and the matron nodded and went back toward the kitchen. Rosa stood silent, staring up at Marshal Storm. Even in her sorrow, she noted that her memory of his striking good looks had not been exaggerated.

As he stood framed against the light in the open doorway, he towered over her, his hat in his hand. When he nodded politely in greeting, a thick shock of his straight black hair fell across his forehead. He shook his head and the stray lock fell back into place. His clothes were well fitted, almost too closely fitted against his wide shoulders and well-muscled arms. The soft fawn-brown material of his shirt appeared fragile and out of place on him, as if with a sudden movement, the seams would burst open and he would be freed of the encumbrance. He was wearing the sturdy blue denim pants that he had worn the day before.

“Ma’am.” He nodded again and waited.

“Buon giorno,
Marshal.”

“Are you ready?”

She wanted to tell him that she would never be ready to walk out of this house and face the truth that waited beyond the door. Instead she whispered, “
Siì.”

He stepped aside and let her pass through the door before him. “Can I carry your bag, ma’am?”

“No. Is all right.”

“I’d be happy to.”

“I can do it.”

“Fine.”

The anger in his tone made her glance up at him from beneath the brim of her hat. His jaw was set and his eyes were trained on the street ahead of them. She wondered what had set his temper off, for surely she had done nothing to offend him. Rosa was thankful that he did not yell at her as if she were deaf, as had the other Americans she encountered.

This morning the thoroughfare seemed to bustle with life in comparison to yesterday’s empty scene. A farmer was loading a wagon drawn up before the mercantile store, and farther down the street she could see two small Negro children darting back and forth along the boardwalk. As Rosa and Kase moved along in silence, neither of them bothered to use the walkway, but chose to continue down the middle of the dusty street. Determination lengthened their strides.

Rosa was hard put to keep up with him.

“That her, Kase?” A woman with bright red hair standing with both hands on her hips called out from the opposite side of the street. She stood before a gaily painted building, her skirt swaying from side to side like some huge magenta bell made of satin. Rosa glanced up at the evenly lettered words painted across the front of the building: Flossie Gibbs’s Hospitality Parlor and Retreat. She did not understand a word of it.

She glanced up at the marshal in time to see him acknowledge the woman’s greeting with a casual wave. Kase. The woman’s words had nudged her memory. His name was Kase Storm.

“This is her, Flossie. On our way to the depot.”

“You got time to stop and introduce her, now, don’tcha?”

He stopped dead still and Rosa followed suit. The marshal turned to look down at her for the first time since they had left the boardinghouse.

“Would you mind?” he asked. “Flossie’s a friend.”

She nodded. “
Va bene.
”

They waited for the farm wagon to rumble by, and Rosa covered her mouth and nose against the swirl of rising dust kicked up by the horses’ hooves. The man and woman seated upon the high bouncing seat of the wagon waved to Kase Storm as they rode past.

On the other side of the street Rosa and the marshal were greeted by Flossie Gibbs’s wide welcoming smile.

“Howdy, ma’am.” She reached down and grabbed Rosa’s hand and began pumping it ferociously. “Kase here told me the sad news about your comin’ in to town and havin’ to leave again so quick. Too bad you can’t stay a spell.” She smiled down at Rosa, and the girl smiled back.

“I have no place here.”

Rosa watched the other woman’s smile fade.

“Only met your husband a few times, Miz Audi, but he seemed a real swell gent. Workin’ so hard to set up that little store o’ his. You can be right proud o’ him. It’s a real shame you can’t stay and make a go of it.”

“We gotta be moving, Flossie,” Kase warned, his tone edgy.

“Don’t be throwing that black look at me, Kase Storm. You got more than enough time to get this little gal to the depot.”

“Mi scusi,”
Rosa interrupted, “you say my husband had a store, and this he wrote to me in a letter. Is all right I see it?”

“Don’t see why not. Do you, Kase?”

Rosa thought she saw the woman’s mouth twitch as if she was teasing the marshal in some way. His face showed no hint of a response.

“Sure.”

Although he nodded in agreement, Rosa sensed he was none too happy with the outcome of their conversation with Flossie.

“Listen, Miz Audi, you decide not to leave town, you come to me and I’ll see that you don’t go hungry, hear? You can always work for me.” With a boisterous laugh, the gaily dressed woman turned on her heel and waved them on.

“She is a nice woman,” Rosa commented.

“Yeah.”

“I can see the store?”

“Sure.”

Used to men who were never at a loss for words, Rosa took the marshal’s silence for anger, but curious to see the place Giovanni had hoped to turn into a store, she picked up her pace and kept up with him as he moved on down the street. They passed a large building with swinging double doors before the marshal stopped in front of a small, squat building with one large window that fronted Main Street. The door was of solid wood, the entire place whitewashed. No lettering adorned the front at all.

“That’s it.” He stood his ground in the street beneath the boardwalk and nodded toward the empty storefront.

Rosa ignored his coolness, gathered up her skirt, and stepped up onto the walkway. She moved toward the building and tried the knob. The door swung inward.

In the eerie silence, she tried to feel her husband’s former presence, but there was not a trace. In fact, there was nothing in the room except two bushel barrels, one filled with sprouted, overripe potatoes, the other half full of onions. A thick layer of dust from the street traffic covered the pine plank flooring, and beyond the empty front room, Rosa could see a smaller room through an open door.

Her footsteps rang out hollowly against the floorboards as she crossed the room and stood staring at the small place Giovanni must have called home. A greasy stove stood against one wall, the wood box yawning empty except for a few splinters of kindling. A cot, barely wide enough to accommodate a child, was pulled up against another wall. Hooks that she assumed once held Giovanni’s things were lined up above it. The place was barren in its emptiness.

Rosa turned to leave and ran headlong into the solid wall of Marshal Storm’s chest.

He stepped aside quickly, as if she had drenched him with boiling water. She, too, increased the space between them.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Mi scusi,
I—”

They both spoke at once and immediately fell silent.

Rosa put her hand against the crown of her hat, afraid it would come loose and fall off as she stood gazing up at him.

Neither of them moved. The stillness expanded and enveloped them in the dim interior of the small, stuffy rooms. Rosa wondered what kind of a wife she was that even now, only hours after hearing that her dear Giovanni was dead, she stood staring as if paralyzed into the fathomless blue eyes of this strange, silent man. A man who obviously held her in very little regard. She heard him clear his throat, and watched his lips as he parted them to speak.

“Ready?”

“Sì.”
She shook herself. “For what?”

“To go.”

She started. And licked her dry lips. “Oh.
Sì.
To the train.”

He turned away and began to move toward the door.

“Marshal...?”

He stopped and turned back again to face her. “Ma’am?”

“Where is my husband... how do you say it?”

“Buried?” He made a swift motion with his hands.

“Sì.
Buried.” She looked at the floor and fought off a wave of dizziness.

“Outside of town, ma’am. In the graveyard.”

“There is a church?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Oh.” No priest to offer her consolation. No one to pray for Giovanni. No hallowed ground in which to bury him. Rosa sighed.

“Anything else, ma’am?” he asked after a pause.

“
Sì
. I would like to see it.”

“The grave?”

“Sì.
The grave.” She nodded again. Didn’t she owe Giovanni this much? As much as she did not want to see his grave, as much as she wanted to hold to the dream she once had, she knew she could not deny him this. Now when she told his family of his death, she could tell them honestly that she had seen Giovanni’s grave and that she had prayed for him.

The marshal seemed hesitant to answer. She waited patiently as he made up his mind. He squinted into the sunshine and stared off down the street for a moment; then he sighed.

“You won’t make the twelve o’clock,” he said, disgruntled. “Have to take the two.”

She assumed he was mumbling about the train. “Is all right for me.”

He turned and stared down at her with a brow arched. “Is all right for you?” he repeated. He looked as if he was about to say more and then shrugged and said, “Then I guess is all right for me, too.”

Rosa had the distinct impression he was mocking her in some way, but she was uncertain how or why he would do such a thing.

He turned on his heel and started walking down the street in the opposite direction. “Come on, then,” he said over his shoulder without breaking his stride.

Rosa clasped her valise to her and hurried after him, afraid to ask him to slow down.

Fine, he thought as he led her back down Main Street. She demands I drive her out to the graveyard, but she won’t let me touch her precious valise. He had caught her eyeing him over and over and assumed she had never seen an Indian before. Let her look. All white women did, although some were more circumspect than others. He had been an exotic oddity in Boston, someone the women speculated about, some with fear, others with sexual curiosity. He had become aware of this attraction as soon as he was old enough to view women with the same regard.

No woman had ever piqued his interest romantically. His law studies and subsequent career had taken precedence over any lasting entanglements of the heart. He had had his share of affairs in the East, but had never taken them seriously because he could never rid himself of the notion that he was nothing more to any of his partners than a taste of forbidden fruit.

Besides, he could never ask a woman to suffer the prejudice that his mother had faced, and for that reason he never imagined himself in a lasting relationship with any woman. For the time being, Flossie’s girls sufficed.

As they neared the livery, Kase checked the time and then repocketed his watch, determined to have Rose Audi on the two o’clock out of town. He glanced around the empty street. This was no place for a girl like her. Not even with a husband. Any man who brought a woman to live in a watering hole like Busted Heel deserved to be shot. She would face nothing but backbreaking work and unrelieved loneliness in a town whose only luxury was a whorehouse. She deserved better and he took it upon himself to make sure she was on the train at two, come hell or high water.

They entered the cool darkness of a huge shed at the end of the street. Rosa stared up at the sign that read G. Matheson’s Feed, Livery and Blacksmith. She recognized the name Matheson as the same as the owner of the boardinghouse and wanted to ask the marshal about it, but thought better of it when he ignored her and walked up to the blacksmith working over a smoldering forge.

“I need to hire a rig, Decatur. Just for an hour or so.” The marshal tipped his hat back and looked around the shadowed interior of the livery.

The burly, well-muscled black man was the first of his race that Rosa had ever been so close to. She stared up at him, mesmerized by the deep ebony of his sweat-sheened skin and his tightly curled hair. He stared back.

“That her?” Decatur Davis spoke to Kase Storm as if she were not even present.

Kase nodded. “Yep.”

“She speak English?” the man wanted to know.

“Yep.” The marshal glanced at Rosa and then away.

The other man’s curiosity seemed to be appeased, for he wiped his hands on a rag at the waistband of his apron and left Rosa and Kase to wait while he readied a rig.

Rosa looked around the huge barnlike structure as she waited patiently. Sunbeams cut through cracks between the wooden ceiling, highlighting the dust motes that drifted among the rafters. Occasionally a horse nickered or stamped. Flies buzzed lazily on the warm, close air. It reminded her very much of an Italian barn. Not so different from home, she thought.