The Last Crossing (29 page)

“I remember a river of blood,” says Potts.

LUCY
The moon is bright tonight, so I have to sneak out of camp behind the wagons, keep them betwixt me and the men gathered round the fire, hug the coal-black shadows hanging off the big dune.

I need to tramp the fuss and fret out of me, lose my bother.

I keep to the dark side of the dune until even Ayto speechifying like a circuit rider is lost to my ears, step out into the brightness, let that wall-eye moon goggle me. It’s grim as winter all about. Cold blue
light, sand banked like snow, litter of dead leaves, scrub and grass dying, the life choked out of it. Makes me shiver.

It was such a night that Madge’s and my trouble started. The night they came, there was a big bald-faced moon riding high too. Madge and me woke from our slumbers by the sound of horses moving outside, sniggers, whispers.

Madge sitting up on her pallet, asking, “What’s that, Lucy? Who’s out there!”

“Don’t you mind. Just some drunks lost their way home. I’m here beside you.”

Singing commences when they hear us. Nasty singing, like drops of dirty water running down the back of your neck. “ ‘Buffalo Gals, won’t you come out tonight, Come out tonight, come out tonight. Buffalo Gals, won’t you come out tonight, and dance by the light of the moon!’ ”

Madge clinging so tight to me I can feel her heart pounding, me roaring loud as I could, “Clear off! Begone! Hear me?”

A teetery whisky-soaked voice calling out, “Don’t be like that, girls. Why’s old Custis got to hog all his candy to himself? Why can’t he let his kin have a taste!”

I knew it was the Kelsos outside. Madge had told me Titus Kelso had been hanging round her. Cantering by the wagon, mean and rat-faced, handing out winks and smirks, doffing his hat. It made her mighty uneasy, she said.

“Titus Kelso, scat! Clear off my property!” I shout.

And his slippery voice answers, “Hear that? Miz Stoveall gone and laid claim to the mud flat she’s setting on. She’s a prope’ty holder, Joel,
and
a woman of business.”

His brother’s laugh. No merriment to it. Weak and forced out of him for fear of Titus, so’s to please a bully boy. But it was enough to egg Titus on, because on he came. “Now tell me, Miz Stoveall, why do you and your sister got such a taste for them no-class old fellers? That dusty old husband of yours and then salted-down, over-cured Straw who gets sweet young Madge. Why does your little sister have
to settle for dried-up jerked meat when she can have it fresh, with a powerful lot of juice in it?”

It started Madge to sobbing. I can bear a lot, but never could I bear her anguish.

The Kelsos crowding their horses up against the wagon, bumping it, making things shake inside: everything going shifty, unsteady. All at once somebody slapped the canvas top hard, and the loud pop made Madge jump and shriek.

She tried to hold to me, but I plucked away her hands, untangled myself, went digging through our gear, determined on Abner’s pistol. But the dark hid it, and when a glint of moonlight pointed me to something else I snatched it up.

“Stay put,” I said to Madge. “Just you see if I don’t run those scoundrels off in short order.” Madge shook her head no, I mustn’t, but my mind was set.

I shouted, “Leave off rocking this wagon! We’re coming out!” Madge took me at my word, started to push aside her blankets, but I held her down, put my finger to her lips.

They quit their thumping when I said we were going to show ourselves. I unhooked the tailgate, let it drop down on its chains. Once I was clear of the canvas I could stand tall on it, look down at them. I held dead still, one arm behind my back, didn’t allow myself to shiver in that thin nightdress as they stared up at me.

That big shiny moon behind them. Funny to think, but I found it beautiful. It won’t ever be so again. Like food you have sickened on, the moon’s eye doesn’t sit right with me no more. But that night it drew my gaze, tipped up there in the sky like one of those beaten brass plates on a mantel, hammer dents plain on its sheeny face. A breeze flapping my nightdress and wrinkling the river, scattering silver on the water like thousands of half-dimes spilled from the storeman’s till. For two breaths I almost forgot why I had come out.

But Titus Kelso brought me back to it. “Miz Stoveall, let me compliment you on your nightdress. I admire how it sets off your titties.”

Cool as you please, he was sitting slouched in the saddle, his brother Joel hanging a little to the rear off his flank.

I sprang down; the startlement of it sent their horses jittery, to throwing their heads, to champing their bits. “Easy there, Missus,” Titus said, tucking his reins. “This stud horse of mine been sniffing mare on the air all night. It makes him feisty.”

“I won’t say it again. Pull foot.”

“Folks says you and your sister does washing for gentlemen. What’s it cost?”

“Make yourself scarce, you dirty little field tackie.”

“Me and my brother need washing awful bad. What say we pay fifty cents above what you charge old Straw? I’m willing to go that high.” He flashed a grin. “Just so long as the young one soaps my sock. Joel will have to make do with a rough scrub from you. But I’m fine, delicate material. Nothing but gentle hand-washing for me.”

Madge sent up a pitiful cry, calling me back to her in the wagon.

“There,” said Titus, “I believe she thinks you’re getting the pick of the litter.” He called over my head to Madge. “Just hold on, darling. Titus will be there to comfort you in a wink.”

Joel was looking uncomfortable. I spoke direct to him, hoping to sway him to do good. “Listen, son, why do you boys want to scare her? She never did you any harm. Why do you want to upset a young thing like her?”

“Oh, she ain’t too young,” said Titus. “If they’re old enough to bleed, they’re old enough to butcher.”

Maybe I ought not to have done it. Taken that one step forward, swung the reaping hook I’d pressed to my back. But it was a fine, relieving sight, that sickle blade streaking in the pale light, slashing through his off rein, the stud horse rearing. Titus yanking back on the lines and the cut rein unfurling like a girl’s hair ribbon in the wind. Down he thumped, hard to his back in the dirt, the stud galloping off. And me over Titus, reaping hook raised.

He got a fright put into him then, same as he’d put into Madge. He stuck up his hand to fend off the next blow and cried out, “Mercy, woman! No need for this!”

“You scamper,” I said, stepping away to let him up. He scuffled to his feet, backed away. Joel was just sitting his horse, all agog. Titus
swung on him. “Goddamn, catch my horse!” and Joel went pelting after the runaway.

There was only the two of us then, him still retreating slow through the buckbrush. When he reckoned he was out of reach of my blade, he stopped to have the last word and put a judgment on me. “I’ll be back. Don’t think I won’t. A woman don’t run Titus Kelso off from what he’s set his mind on.”

Then he hitched his shoulders, trotted off into the night, shouting after his brother.

A big dune blocking my way starts me out of my thoughts. How I came to be here I can’t fathom. I go at the steep pitch of it, digging with the toes of Mr. Charles’s shoes, scrabbling with my hands as I climb until I’m atop it. Looking down, I see a deep crater in the sand cupping a few scrawny bushes, scraps of grass, jimson weed, tumbleweed. The moon paints them with white hoarfrost.

Something is tugging panic in my guts. I fight the tightness in my chest; take quick breaths that don’t fill my lungs as I slide myself down into the hollow.

I should have chopped that weed Titus Kelso. I should have made his days grass. But I didn’t. That was my mistake and Madge paid for it. Now I have to hold to my purpose, keep Madge and what they did to her shoving me on until the day comes I can put the muzzle of Abner’s pistol on the two of them.

Last night I dreamed Madge was alive, but there was no comfort in it. I’m walking by a house, one that’s tiny small, like it was built for children. Oh, it’s lovely and perfect. I stand in the street admiring it, windows of crystal glass, neat green shutters standing open to let the sun in. Slowly it dawns on me this is where Madge and Mr. Charles live as husband and wife.

I have to stoop to get through the door. I hallo the place but nobody answers. In the parlour, there’s a window open, curtains stirring in a breeze. I smell peonies. I smell salt, which makes me think the house stands near the sea, that maybe this is San Francisco.

I start up the staircase, bent over so’s not to knock my head on the
low ceiling. The banister’s polished with beeswax, smooth to my hand. I go down the upstairs hallway and see a door standing ajar on a tidy bedroom. I recognize Madge’s old nightdress folded across the foot of the bed. I finger the cloth, soft from so many washings.

Then I catch footsteps hurrying down the stairs. I know it’s Madge. I turn and run after her, quick down the hallway to the stairs. I hear her steps patter faster and faster, like a shower of rain, and happy laughter. It’s a game to her, she’s playing hide and seek on me.

I put my foot to the staircase and suddenly it turns like the threads of a screw, spins my body round so fast my hand jerks off the railing, I’m swirling in a tornado, heels flying behind me, kicking like I’m swimming the wind.

And then I am swimming, but in water, my clothes gone, purely naked. The water’s peaceful and warm, it’s stroking my breasts and belly, nuzzling between my legs. My thighs drift apart to its touch.

I don’t hear anything more of Madge. She’s gone and there’s just my body. I open my eyes. I’m floating over Mr. Charles. His face is looking up at my nakedness and his hands are touching me, hands light on my breasts and my belly, fingers teasing me. And I feel the wrongness of it because Madge is his wife, but I’ve gone too far to ask him to stop.

Now, even awake, it starts up all over again. The hunger of the body. My sister scarcely cold in the ground, and me in such a shameful state. Feeling choked and burning, a pulse tapping a vein in my neck. Wanting to lift my dress above my hips, fall back on the sand, open my thighs, just like I did in the dream.

But my body gives a jolt, like a body does when it snatches you from the brink of sleep. A wild rose bush at my feet, branches furred with tiny spikes, sharp, cruel thorns, has brought me back to what I ought to be about. I grab it, squeeze it hard, tear at it, twist it, break it free of the ground. Strip the branches until I have a dowsing wand. My hand’s bleeding, speckling my dress with blood.

A long shadow nailed to my toes ripples over the washboard sand, walks me to the middle of the crater. I start to turn, waiting for the
twitch, the bending bough to point my way, bring me back to my senses, lead me to the Kelsos and to what I’m meant to do.

CHARLES
Addington informs me Lucy is missing from camp. Alarm rises. “When?”

“She slipped off an hour ago. Perhaps she has an assignation with her erstwhile beau, Mr. Straw.”

He knows this is preposterous. Straw and Dooley returned to the wagon after supper, have remained there ever since.

“You must help me find her.”

Having incited my anxiety, it gives him great pleasure to blithely dismiss it. “Likely she has gone off to pine. For whom I cannot say. Straw? Grunewald? Barker? Perhaps the inestimable Mr. Moses.”

He is ragging me as he did when I was a child. I long to slap the smirk from his face.

“You are an ass, Addington.” I set off immediately.

Beneath the towering ramparts of the dune, the sand is crisp and firm under my feet, but Lucy’s footprints are not easy to discern until they break out into the sapphire light shed by the moon. Waves of sand calved from the giant mother dune roll away, patchy grass and stunted brush rasps in the evening breeze. Above, an overwrought, pregnant moon presides over all. When one forsakes the magic circle of the fire, these empty expanses deflate confidence. Instinctively, my shoulders hunch. The coyotes sing an eerie, mocking song. Or perhaps it is the skeletons. A howl from an empty rib cage.

Moving as quickly as I can, I still do not lose the sensation of someone following me. I throw a glance over my shoulder. Feeling exposed and vulnerable, suddenly I am covered in sweat, can scarcely breathe. I halt, unbutton my shirt to cool myself, compulsively look behind me. Nothing but two sets of footprints. Lucy’s and my own. I take heart, convince myself it is a premonition of our return to camp, the two of us walking side by side, her teasing, indulgent laughter chaffing me because I was so needlessly worried.