Waltzing With Tumbleweeds

Waltzing
With
Tumbleweeds

Short stories are like rain in the desert. They come further apart now than before. Some days I am all involved in a book and this idea comes creeping in and I stay up past midnight to find out what is supposed to be on this paper.

Maybe like Michelangelo said about the stone. “I carve out what God left me inside the rock.” So goes my writing. I print out what he left me on the paper.

Who knows what good and evil lurks in our subconscious, some larceny, some love, some violence, some kindness, some arson, some passion—the list is endless. Yet a story comes, no doubt from my volumes of research that are set chronologically in the days of the west.

Over the years, I have found the short fiction entertaining to reword and write, short epistles, no major commitment, most of them are intense, most have a message through the main character and the story line. Dusty’s western pulps, you can call them. Peggy Fielding got to reading them and chewed me out for not doing more with them, but books have been my mainstay the past decade so the shorts have fallen into the computer cracks.

— Dusty Richards

The sharp March wind swept the yellow wild flowers and tossed them like a tempest sea. Standing before a window on the second story of Millie’s House of Pleasure, she wrapped the silk duster more tightly around her body. Poor blossoms, so mistreated by the bitter forces, she felt pained for them.

Win-Anne had come to Dodge City in the cold of winter. Anxious to earn the easy money that others spoke of, she joined the girls at Millie’s House. The days had begun to lengthen, but business remained slow.

Most of the cowboys were still in Texas gathering cattle. The new green grass would be headed and brown before the vast herds arrived. All the talk about riches was just that—talk.

Like the flowers, she had been tossed about with less than tenderness, and then some day she too would shrivel and die. There was no justice for her kind. Long ago, she had given up the notion of some gallant knight riding up and taking her away from this place or any other parlor house where she worked.

The Texas boys were mostly young, inept, but sweet. A few were snakes, cruel, deliberately defeating in their actions toward her. A shudder ran up her arms at the thought of such worthless wags. She closed her eyes and tried to shut out the past pain, like the flowers scattered across the fresh green carpet, she too had been bent, whipped and slapped.

Three abreast, she saw them come riding. They waved their hats in youthful excitement. Even tried to get their horses to buck and no doubt were laughing as they approached Dodge.

Would they stop at Millie’s? Her heart quickened. Sometimes boys that age—her age—were too bashful and first visited the saloons for whiskey courage. She hurried down the stairs to be available. In anticipation, her breath caught in her throat when their boot heels clattered on the porch. Her heart quickened at the sound and no matter how hard she tried, there was no way she could turn down her smile.

Within minutes, she was in the arms of Earl. Belly to belly, they danced around the parlor to the piano player’s tingling melody. His firm embrace drove away all her regrets. This was why she did what she did. His closeness, her knowing he wanted her, idolized her and even loved her for the moment. In this brief span of time, she was the flower out of the wind.

A strong breath from the far away Gulf of Mexico tossed and curled the eternal waves of feathered bluestem. Across the endless rolling hills, ten million stalks of tall grass waltzed without a bride. He rested his sweat stained gray pony on the rise. Hat brim cupped in his hand, he mopped the wetness from his brow
to his sleeve. High above him, a red tail hawk soared, challenged this invasion of his land. The bird’s shrill threat drew a small smile on his dark brown lips.

Ready to go on, he booted the gray off the ridgeline. He pushed westward again. The face of the sun grew higher; he rode down a deep draw toward a paintless house and sheds clustered under some gnarled post oak trees. Here a dependable spring flowed out of the mottled marble limestone that underlaid the red cherty soil; he could recall its cool taste. Drawing closer, he watched her clothing dance on the line like puppets on strings.

She raised up from her wash board to make out the rider. With the brown eyes of a wary doe, she studied his approach. Soon Willy New Trees recognized him. If his appearance pleased or shocked her, the bland expression on her smooth, handsome face conveyed no emotion.

He dismounted heavily and then tried to restore the circulation in his numb lower limbs by stomping his run-over boots. Deliberate like, she stripped the suds and water from her forearms; swept the long dark hair from her face with the sides of her hands.

“I will put your horse away,” she said and then she stood on her toes as if to check his back trail. Seeing nothing, she took the reins and led the gray toward the nearest shed.

He pulled the material of his pants away from the chafed skin on the insides of his legs. Then he adjusted his crotch for some comfort. With a shrug of his tight shoulders, he began to look around her place.

Hiding at the corner of the house, six coal black eyes peered at him. Suspicious and cautious, her young children soon drew back. He heard them snicker up their noses as if they knew this man’s purpose for being there. Then the sounds of their bare feet running away carried to his ears. Willy returned from the shed. With a toss of her raven black hair, she led him around to the front door.

“Hungry?” she asked when they were inside. Not waiting for his reply, she began to stoke up the fire in her small cast iron stove. He pushed the hat back on his head, took a ladder back chair and seated himself. From his place, he could study her figure. No longer a girl, her fuller body suited him. She clanged the kettle bottoms placing them on the metal surface. Then she straightened like a willow tree as if satisfied they would heat without any more care.

Her thin soles shuffled on the gritty floor and she took a seat across the paint-chipped white table from him. She rested her olive brown arms on the yellow oil cloth; her ample breasts ready to spill out of the wash worn waist.

“How far behind are they?” she asked.

She meant Parker’s marshals. They coursed this land of the Osage searching for him. To arrest him, to drag him in irons back to Ft Smith, where the red brick courthouse sat perched high on the Arkansas River bank, to force him to look into the fierce eyes of Judge Parker and then that devil-man would stretch his neck on the gallows for killing Charlie One-Dog.

“Maybe a day or two.”

“Not much time?”

“Not much time.”

She understood his predicament. Without a word, she rose to her feet and went to stand beside the iron poster bed. Her long fingers began to undo the buttons on her blouse, then her skirt.

She removed her clothing; next she climbed onto the mattress and pulled a feed sack sheet over her naked form. Above the whistle of the wind at the eves, he heard her clear her throat to summon him.

He rose, dropped his suspenders. For a long moment, he stared down at the glaring rectangle of sunlight on the floor, framed by the door way—with effort he walked over, closed it, shutting out the light. Then he undressed.

In bed with her, with care, his calloused hands molded her body. Her eyes began to dance with the pleasure that he caused her. She giggled softly when his fingertips probed her. At last, she nodded in readiness, rolled onto her back in a protest of springs, raised her knees and spread them apart.

Together they flew like birds of prey—soared as high as eagles. Swept over the land, two alone, joined as one forever. A sheet of sweat lubricated their bellies. The air grew thinner for both of them. Then they fell into an abyss and drowned.

Soon she arose, dressed and went to her stove. She dished out a heaping plate of white beans and cooked green squash, placed it on the table top, then wordless and not looking back, she slipped outside, quietly closing the door behind her.

He sat up, combed his black hair in his fingers. Bone weary, he redressed, then took a place at the table and ate her food. After he finished, he went outside to find her. She was washing on the rub board again.

“Must you go?” she asked, avoiding his eyes.

“Yes.”

“Then I will get your horse.” She dried her hands and forearms. Still not daring to look at him, she started for the shed. With her back turned, he slipped five silver dollars from his pocket into the tub of gray water. Then he went to meet her half way and took the reins from her.

“You are a good woman, Willy New Trees.”

She nodded that she had heard him. They stood in awkward silence, each afraid to touch the other. Only the rush of the wind as their witness. At last, he mounted his pony and rode away.

While the sun traveled westward, his grey horse’s chest parted the sea of blue stem like the bow of a ship. He rode without thoughts. His belly full, his groin at rest. From out of nowhere, a sharp blow struck his back. The force of the .44/40 bullet knocked him face down from his saddle before he ever heard the rifle’s blast or the distant shouts of the men behind him.

Sprawled on the ground, the rich sweet aroma of the tall grass teased his nose, a smile crossed his drawn face, then the copper flavor of his own blood filled his mouth. Good. He would never have to face the devil-man Parker nor his gallows… A red tail hawk on high, heralded his death.