You Can't Choose Love (17 page)

If anybody thought that one year in the Mojave,
through summer, autumn, winter, spring, and then summer once again, would
dampen the spark of Alma, would reduce her beauty, would in any way diminish
the wonder with which she was held, they were disproven. Each morning, she and
Wallace Saville made their rounds of the mines, Alma like a queen atop Roach,
looking down at her subjects. The miners, when they saw her, gazed up at her as
though she was more than a queen, as though she was a goddess. Alma, for her
part, was impatient, but knew that this would take time, knew she had to make
herself a fixture in this place before she tried to fundamentally change it.

She did not love Wallace. She knew that in her
bones. She enjoyed their sex and she enjoyed exploring his body. She liked the
feel of his cock, his breath on her neck; and how he grunted when he spilled his
seed, she felt a sort of satisfaction. But when it came to love – that illusive
emotion she was not familiar with – she did not feel it. Wallace often asked
her how she did not become pregnant. She would answer that she was lucky, for
the true reason – Father’s abuse, a curse, or something even sicker – she had
never known.

She spent her days with Wallace and her nights with
Elise or Beryl or Solomon. Solomon, most of all, was her crutch. They kissed
and hugged, but that was all. That was enough. By day she was a seducer, a
siren. By night, she was allowed to be a woman in the first whispers of true
affection, holding and kissing. By night, she was allowed to be a person.

And so the Mojave once again blazed with summer
light. Sweat once again flecked every inch of every person. Life shone on.

Alma knew that she had to do something, had to
further her goals, had to act. She had not come this far to stop now, to rest
on in this position. She had not come this far to become complacent, lazy. No,
like a shooting star she would blaze across this town, up, up, until she became
somebody important.

Never again would her past define her.

The future was all.  

“You deserve more. It’s been a year, my love.”

My love. Has there ever been a less appropriate
term for what we are?

“I know, I know,” Wallace said, in the tone of voice
which told her he was not interested. He folded his legs under his chair and
leaned his elbows on the desk, the result being he looked like a scared,
chastised schoolboy. “But what am I to say to him?”

“He is old and tired,” Alma said. “Tell him that he
has had his time. Tell him that you are thankful for everything he has done.
Tell him that it is time for him to pass the torch to you.”

Alma touched his forearm, moved her hand up to his
hand, and interlocked her fingers with his. He gave her hand a squeeze and then
let out a long sigh. Alma knew exactly how this conversation would go. She had
spent enough time with this man to get the true size of him. He was not as
ambitious or power-hungry as she had first judged him. But he did not want to
appear pointless, either. “Perhaps you could . . .”

“Of course,” Alma said.

She left him, then, alone in his office. She was
discovering that watching him mope and self-pity was the most infuriating thing
in this town, even more infuriating than the way Elise the whore licked her
lips, or Beryl raised her eyebrows in judgment each time Alma looked at
Solomon. She returned to the hotel and waited in her room for evening, when
Abraham would return to the offices. When she heard the men returning from the
mines, she went to the offices and up to his door.

She knocked. He answered: “Come in!”

Abraham looked five years older, though it had only
been a year. His beard was stringy and thin and he no longer shaved the top of
his head so studiously, so thin wisps of fuzz sprouted all over the place. He
had lost more teeth. “Alma,” he breathed. “Hello. It’s good to see you.”

“And you, sir,” she said, taking a seat without
asking.

He had lost much of his aura of power. He seemed
like a tired old man more than anything. Alma waited for a few moments to see
if he would talk. When he didn’t, she got into it: “Look at you, Abraham.
You’re breathing so heavily I’m afraid you might blow this whole office down!
Think of your legs! Your back! You must be in monstrous pain.” Alma’s voice was
full of sympathetic, caring tones: tones of a woman who is genuinely distraught
by what she is seeing. “You need to stop this,” she said, now pleading.
“Please, Abraham, I care about you too much to see you in this much pain. Let
Wallace take over. There is no shame in it. He is your son. He is ready. You
have trained him well.”
I have, anyway
.

For a moment he regarded her as though he would
throw her out of the office. Some of his old fire came into his face. Alma half
expected him to smooth his hand over his wispy hair and exclaim: “I am not an
old man yet!” But he didn’t. As soon as the fire entered his eyes it left. He
deflated before her, his shoulders slumping, and let out a heavy sigh. “You’re
right,” he said, and Alma felt a moment of triumph. This last year had been
worth it, then. She did not let it show on her face; she would never make that
mistake.

“You do not need to think less of yourself, sir,”
she said. “You have showed great resilience in lasting this long at your age.
Many men would have given up by now. Is it not true that DeBell and Gaston no
longer roam as far as you do? Is it not true that both men have under their
employ men who do that for them?”

Abraham admitted that it was true.

“Is it not acceptable, then,” Alma went on, “to pass
on your responsibility to your son, whom you know you can trust above all
others?”

He looked at her with such gratitude that Alma did
not know whether to laugh or weep. He really thought, poor man, that she had
his best interests at heart. He was truly under the impression that she was
Alma the Angel, selfless in the extreme, a true saver of souls.

“I can finally rest,” he breathed. He nodded, and a
smile broke out across his face. “I had never considered that I could rest but
you, girl, you are something else. What are you? Eh? Tell me that. You are like
no woman I have ever met. You are nothing like my dear dead wife. You are
nothing like any woman . . . you are a goddess, a vixen, a . . . ah! I don’t
know what you are, only that you cannot be a mortal woman.”

Alma found this speech ridiculous, but she bowed her
head as though it was sweet to her ears. “You flatter me, sir,” she said. “But
I am merely pointing out what you are too stoic to see. You no longer need to
work yourself to death. You have built an empire. Now, enjoy it.”

Tears in his eyes, he nodded once more. “I will!” He
laughed wildly and slapped the table. “Yes, yes, I will!”

Alma found Wallace in his office, leaning back in
his chair. “How did it go?” he said, unable to hide the hope from his voice.

“Well,” she said, taking her seat. “You should go
and see him to iron out the particulars.”

Wallace left the office.

Alma studied the chair, the high-backed, fancy chair
that Wallace sat in. It was the kind of chair a man with delusions of his own
power sat in. Alma believed she had robbed Wallace of many of those delusions,
but he still sat in that chair like it was a throne.
Imagine,
she
thought
, a scarred girl from Bristol sitting in a chair like that! An
abused, wretched, fleeing thing sitting in a chair like that!

Wallace returned. Like his father, he had tears in
his eyes. He fell to his knees next to her and clasped her hands in his.
“You’ve done it!” he cried, and kissed her cheek, her forehead, her nose.
“You’ve done it! Look!” He waved a document in her face. “I’m in charge now.
I’m
in charge!”

Alma did not correct him. He could think he was in
charge all he wanted. It may, in fact, help her to let him think it. “Yes, you
are,” she said, returning his kisses. It was a perplexing paradox for Alma that
she could scheme against this man whilst simultaneously desiring him. When she
kissed him, and felt his beard against her lips, her body ached for his body.
She imagined his cock, hard, sliding inside of her, and her cunt became warm,
and wet, and an urgent longing fired throughout her body.

She reached down and grabbed his cock. “Let’s
celebrate,” she said.

*   *   *

Her favorite times were when she and Solomon were
alone in the stables. She would rest her head on his shoulder and he would wrap
his arm around her, hold her close. For the first couple of months they had
hardly spoken. Now, Alma had drawn him out. She discovered that his parents
were indeed slaves and had both died in the years following the war. He had
been raised by Beryl and had come to Calico with Beryl when she heard about the
silver mines and the population explosion (if one-thousand miners can be called
an explosion). He was a hard worker, played the harmonica and was a good, solid
man with a good, solid body.

Though Alma had never been overly concerned with her
body – with what she did with her body and with whom she did it – she did not
allow her attraction for Solomon to move onto anything overtly lustful, to
anything which would change their relationship from one of almost platonic
affection to one of animalism, to the kind she shared with Wallace.

“What are your dreams?” she asked him that night,
the night she had secured for Wallace a third of the company.

“Dreams?” he said, as though he did not understand
the word. “When I was a boy, my dreams were not to starve. Now I am a man I
suppose I have carried those dreams with me. Not to starve, to work hard, to
get on in life.” Quietly, he added: “Maybe find a woman.”

“Nothing else?”

He stroked his knee with his forefinger, as he often
did when he was thinking, tapping his foot as he did so. “I would like to
read,” he said.

“Wait here!” she laughed.

She ran from the stables, into the hotel, past a
bemused Beryl and a half a dozen drunken miners, into her room, and back down
to the stables. “Slow down!” Beryl snapped, but Alma ignored her.

“Let’s edify you, Solomon!” she giggled, and sat
down beside him, novel in hand.

“I speak for my father now,” Wallace said.

Neither Bill nor Avery looked overly pleased at this
revelation. Bill, whose face was so round it was difficult for him to grimace,
managed it anyway. Avery looked like a skeleton, eyes sunken, hollowed out,
twisted lips ghoulish. Alma stayed at Wallace’s shoulder. These men needed to
see that she was part of this agreement. These men needed to see and accept
that she, a relative stranger, had a hand in their business.

Avery sneered openly at her. “Are you in charge,
Wallace, or is your whore?”

This was dangerous ground, Alma knew. She rushed
forth and made her voice whore-like. “My master is in charge,” she said,
sniveling. “He is in complete and total control; he can do whatever he wants
with me.” She touched Wallace’s hand, carefully, like a slave touching an
emperor’s hand.

“Easy,” Wallace said, brushing her away. “Like she
says, I am in charge. I am your partner now, Avery, Bill. Is that so difficult
to accept? Once, you were like uncles to me.”

“This is business, boy,” Avery said. “And it is not
you we have a problem with. We always knew one day you would take over the
business. It’s
her
. Who is she, anyway? Some ghost, drifting into town!”

“She is my advisor,” Wallace said, but his voice was
somewhat embarrassed.

Alma floundered. How to correct this? But nothing
came to mind.

“Very well, she’s your
advisor
,” Avery
growled. “But must she sit in on these meetings? Must she ride with you, making
a mockery of the men? Must the men endure a trouser-wearing woman staring down
at them? I say – and I think Bill feels the same – she should be your advisor
in private, and should wear dresses too!”

Alma kept her face impartial when Wallace turned to
her, and – with a wave of his hand – said: “That will be all for today, Alma.”

Alma saw in his face that he would not budge and if
she pressed, she would be more than momentarily dismissed. She swallowed,
nodded, and left the room. When she left the building, instead of walking
toward the hotel, she walked out of the town, into the Mojave until the town
was a speck on the horizon, and fell to her knees. She clenched her fists and
smacked the sand until her knuckles were red and raw.

“Goddam Avery!” she screamed, punching the sand.
“Goddam Avery! Goddam him! Bill I can take care of! But him, the skeletal
fuck
!”

Once this outburst was over, she rose to her feet,
rubbed her knuckles, and brushed her knees. She took a deep breath as she began
the walk back toward town. Entering the hotel, she approached the front desk.
“Where is Elise?”

Beryl lifted her hands. “With a client,” she said.
“Is something wrong, Alma?”

“No,” Alma said. “Life is wonderful. Life is one
wonderful moment after another. I have never experienced anything as wonderful
as life!”

She marched up the stairs and into her room.

*   *   *

After around thirty minutes, a knock came at her
door. “Enter!” Alma snapped.

Elise wobbled into the room, her legs as unsteady as
ever. She wobbled to the side of the bed and crashed into the chair. “Beryl
said you wanted to see me, Alma.”

“I do.” Alma sat up in bed and looked at the whore,
at the leathery folds of skin and the hopeless eyes and wondered how far it
would take for Alma to become that.
Not far
, she decided, and knew she
had to fight all the harder. “You once mentioned that you knew Avery DeBell. Do
you still know him? Do you still see him?”

“I do.” Elise’s hopeless eyes became a little less
hopeless.

“And are you still interested in
promoting
yourself
?”

Elise nodded eagerly. “I am.”

“Then, please, find out something about him,
something that will bring him under my power.” Alma gripped Elise’s hands.
“Find out something that will put him beneath me, and I will raise us both above
him. Now, please, turn your back.”

“Turn my back?”

“I need to collect some money.”

Elise dutifully turned her back. Alma lifted her
mattress and pulled out two months’ wages. “Here,” she said, and thrust one
months’ wages into Elise’s hand. “You get half on top of that once the job is
complete. Do you understand? Something serious, Elise. Something damning.”

Elise nodded and licked her lips with a snake’s
flickering tongue. “I understand.” She waddled from the room and closed the
door behind her.

After about an hour – in which time Alma did nothing
but stare at the ceiling and fantasize about the myriad ways she could kill
Avery – another knock came at her door. “Yes?”

“Mr. Saville to see you,” Beryl said.

“He can come in.” She stood from the bed and smoothed
her clothes down.

Wallace walked in with that awful sheepish grin on
his face which made him look simple. He seemed to be expecting something, some
rage, perhaps. He had the stance of a man expecting blows. But Alma did not
rage at him. She knew that would only harm her cause. Instead, she waited.

He walked to her, laid his hands on her shoulders.
“They are laughing at me, Alma,” he said. “They think I am not my own man. They
think
you
are my puppet master!”

“What have you agreed to?” Alma whispered. His voice
hid little.

“You are no longer to ride with me round the mines,”
he said. “I will keep you on as my adviser, but only in the office.”

“What am I to do when you are at the mines?” she
said.

“Go over the accounts,” Wallace said, with a
dismissive wave of the hand. “Organize the files. Anything. But I will not be
laughed at.”

She could have said:
You would not be in this
position if it were not for me. You would not have this power if it were not
for me
. But that bullet could wait. She was not the kind of woman to fire
too soon.  

He looked like a pouting little boy. Alma had to
resist the urge to slap him across the face. She had been talked down to by men
her entire life, starting with dear deserted Father and never ending, really,
all throughout her life: old men, young men, in-between men, trying to claim
her just because she was born with a slit and not a cock. She would not let
this man talk down to her; neither would she reveal herself too soon.

Swallowing something sickly, she rested her head on
his shoulder. “I understand, my love,” she said. “How awful it must be for you.
You are so, so much better than them. Oh, my love,” and here she wrapped her
arms around him, stroked him, caressed him, “you are a god compared to them.”
Inwardly, she cringed. How could he believe this?”

But he did, and they stayed like that, hugging, for
a long time.

*   *   *

They met in the stables, as they always did. Alma
paced up and down, wringing her hands, kicking the walls, every so often
muttering a curse so vivid that Solomon shrunk away from her. “Who do they
think I am?” she muttered, wishing the stables were bigger. They were no good
for pacing. “Some whore? Some fool to be laughed at? Nobody knows me, Solomon.
You don’t even know me.”

“I know you better than they do, anyway,” Solomon
said quietly, picking his nails with his small knife. “I know that you’re not
this – this – temping sort of woman you pretend to be.”

“Ha!” Alma sank down next to him in the hay. “A
temptress, you mean. Oh, Solomon, I am a temptress. Just look at you. Instead
of resting for your early rise tomorrow, here you are, in the hay with me. Why
are you here, if I have not tempted you?”

“I am here because I want to be here.”

“Ha! Men never know what they want. They think they
want something and then, magically, they want something different. You’ll
discard me soon. Or else they want unnatural things, like Father, and they
force the women around them to adapt. Do you imagine I was born this way,
Solomon?” She took his hand, ran her thumb along the ridges, the calloused
fingertips. “Do you imagine I was born with a bonfire in my belly? I was quiet,
meek,
womanly
, once.”

“I can’t imagine that,” Solomon said, squeezing her
hand. “If your fire disappeared I think I’d be mighty scared.”

“So would I, now,” Alma said. “But it wasn’t always
like that.”

She took a deep breath and went on: “When I was
younger my father tortured me. I tried to think of different words to describe
it for a long time, but it was torture, Solomon. Rape, if you insist on being
explicit. For a long time, I mean . . . for a hellishly long time. Day after
day, and my mother knew, and she did nothing. Once, my mother tried to kill me
with a broom handle. Out of jealousy, I think. She was an ugly woman. I ran
away, and ran and ran, and seduced and yes – once – I killed a man, a man who
tried to rape me. He was on top of me and fumbling at his britches and instead
of just letting it happen I reached and I found a bottle and I smashed it on
his head and he fell and I hit him over and over and he bled and he died.” She
breathed through her teeth. “I met his wife, you know, and she thanked me.
Thanked me! And now I am here. My name is Rebecca Hardy, but I have had many
names since then. Today I am Alma.”

She knew she was ranting. She had no clue why she
told Solomon. She thought he could be trusted, but she had thought the same
before only to be betrayed. Something warm and wet was on her cheeks. She
lifted her hand, brushed away tears. “Say something,” she urged.

Solomon kissed her on the lips. When they moved away
from each other, he smiled softly. “Do you imagine this changes anything, Alma,
Rebecca?” His smile grew wider. “I killed a man once, too. A white man who
called me nigger and tried to make me shine his shoe. Out on the road, in the
middle of nowhere, this man thought it was a good idea to stop and ask me to
shine his boot. And when I said no he fought me—and I won.”

“Here we are, then, just two devils.”

“Here we are,” Solomon agreed.

“If I win, Solomon, I’m taking you with me.”

He nodded, and kissed her again.