Flight to Freedom, page 7
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am,” Cletus told Rose. “And Purgatory’s a good place to get out of.”
Rose smiled – it certainly was. “Pleased to meet you too, Mr. Morris.”
“Aw, let’s have none of that – Cletus will do. Around here, folks are on a first-name basis – none of us can afford to put on airs.”
“Saw you were gone yesterday,” Miss O’C … Reese commented. “Making a supply run?”
“Yep, up to Fort Dodge. Had to stay overnight on account some Indians were prowling around – Pawnees, the commander thought. Headed home at the first light of dawn, got back, oh, a half-hour ago, unloaded, then thought I’d relax with a smoke before opening the store.”
“And knowing you, you left a sign in the window saying ‘out for a smoke – be back when I’m done,” Reese chuckled.
Cletus laughed too. “Pretty much those words.” He leaned back in his wing chair and closed his eyes.
Reese nodded. “That’s Cletus – he always makes sure the paperwork is done and the bills are paid.” She’d unpacked a bag while she was talking, putting a ham roll and a lemon muffin on each plate. Now she turned to one of the coffee urns on the stove behind her. “I just got a new type of bean in, from the Dutch East Indies – care for a cup?”
“Okay.” Though Rose was feeling nervous even without caffeine – all this easy familiarity with store owners, and her just a … well, she wasn’t used to being treated as an equal by folks like this, and certainly not being invited to a semi-private lunch by one. She felt more naked here that she had while throwing herself at Calder the day before.
Reese must have sensed her unease as she sat down and placed in front of Rose a mug of the best-smelling coffee she’d ever encountered. “Something wrong, hon?”
“Well … it … um …” Rose frowned. Maybe she just ought to say it, get it out of the way and if Reese took a mind to throw her out, that was the way it went. She leaned closer and whispered. “Are you sure you want me hanging around?”
Reese reared back like she’d been slapped. “What?” Then she leaned close too, recognizing that maybe Rose didn’t want everyone to hear this. “Why would I not?” she whispered. “You got cholera or something?”
“No, nothing like that. But you have a business, and you’re part of the community, and I’m … I was just …”
Reese looked sympathetic. “Just a what?”
Here it was. “Reese … Miss O’Connor … I’ve been a prostitute my whole adult life.”
Reese froze for a few seconds, and Rose thought she was in for it. Then the businesswoman reared back and belly-laughed, her sharp nose pointed at the ceiling, shaking so hard she almost fell off her chair.
“What’s all that about?” Cletus said, sitting up.
Reese worked to compose herself. “Women stuff, Cletus … nothing you’d want to hear about.” That seemed to mollify him, and he went back to puffing away while she leaned toward Rose again. “You too, huh?” she hissed.
Now it was Rose’s turn to freeze. This successful shopkeeper had been a …? Then she took another look at the woman – the face paint, the colorful dress that was shorter and with a lower neckline than most folks’, the breezy manner. You could drop Reese in the middle of Daisy’s Dovecote and she wouldn’t look entirely out of place. She couldn’t imagine Reese putting up with the likes of Lucullus Pope, but maybe in the past … “You were?”
Reese nodded. “Not my whole adult life, but for a few years until my brother pulled me out of it and showed me there were other ways to make a living. I don’t make as much money now, but my life’s better.”
“And … and nobody knows?”
“Everyone around here knows, Rose. But most of them have their own pasts, so they’re in no position to judge me. And some of those who thought they are have come around and realized I’m just folks now. That’s Redemption Bluff for you – almost everyone here was in the gutter one way or another, so it doesn’t make sense to pick on the folks who are still climbing out.”
Rose nodded, thinking of the Bauers and Gavin, ex-outlaws turned fill-in deputies, or Custis, who ran the livery despite being unable to speak two sentences. She wondered what skeletons were in the closets of Cletus, or Pastor Nelson, or Davis Almond, or … well, she knew something about where Calder came from. But … “I can’t see Calder doing anything bad,” she said without thinking.
Reese gave her an interesting look. “I don’t know much about Calder’s past, except he was a slave before the war. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he was running from something he’d done. You never can tell.”
“No, not Calder! He’s so nice – he would never …” Rose caught herself. He’d known the man for four days – why was she so eager to jump to his defense?
Reese smirked. “You like him, don’t you?”
“Um … well … he’s, he’s treated me well … I …” Rose’s brow furrowed. She’d spent all these years dealing with one man after another, some of whom were fairly generous, and had learned quickly that one thing you didn’t dare do was form attachments. It was just business for them, so it had to be just business for her too. But none of those men would’ve opened his home to her, let her stay with no responsibilities, feed her, give up their bed and go sleep in the kitchen, take her to church with them.
Calder was like no man she’d ever met, or at least acted like none she’d ever met. But it hadn’t occurred to her to think how she felt about him, until Reese asked. “… I don’t really know,” she finally finished, picking up the muffin from her plate so she’d have something to do with her hand.
“Well, if you’re not sure, you take a bite of that and you will be.”
Rose looked at Reese in confusion, the muffin almost to her mouth.
“Rumor has it Millie puts a secret ingredient in her muffins that makes folks fall in love.” Reese made a face. “Hasn’t quite worked for me so far, but I keep trying.” She took a bite of her ham roll.
Rose looked at the muffin for a while, then shrugged and had a nibble. It was a good muffin. And really, regardless of how she felt about Calder, what were the chances of Calder falling for her? Why would he choose an Irish whore when there were plenty of sweet unspoiled Negro girls out there, perfect for someone as kind as him?
Chapter Seven
Rose came home from lunch with Reese feeling a lot more relaxed about some things, and a lot more nervous about one. They’d spent almost two hours talking about their old lives in the “sisterhood,” the follies of men, the history of the town and whatever else came to mind. Oddly, whenever Dane Parker (formerly Drake Bauer) came up, Reese quickly changed the subject. Was there some bad blood between her and the self-made doctor ? Or was it the opposite – some good feeling – and she didn’t want to think about how Rose knew him from before?
Rose suspected the latter, mostly because every time Reese mentioned Calder, Rose did her best to find another topic. She didn’t know how she felt about Calder – again, she’d only known him for four days, and not even full days. And she’d spent time with so many men – thousands would not be an exaggeration – but never like this, being pampered and told to rest and helping around the house and …
… and running away from her taking off her clothes. All the others had moved toward her. Yes, indeed, she’d never been around anyone like Calder Owens.
So what did it all mean? She liked how he treated her – gently, with respect. But was that just him showing Christian charity to the stranger in his midst? Was he just obeying God like he’d said before? Or was there more to it? Did he like her as men liked women? Would he even think of her that way?
She didn’t know, but her best guess was no. Look at the differences between them – he was a Negro, and she was so pale she couldn’t spend too much time in the sun or she’d boil red as a lobster. He had a business to run, and she was a stranger with no job skills and not a penny to her name. She’d spent most of her life as a woman of ill repute – and Reese had mentioned in passing that she wasn’t sure Calder had ever been kissed. Why would he go for someone like her?
But be that as it may, was she going for him?
She hadn’t the foggiest idea. How would she know? She’d barely started noticing boys at the time she started serving them. Some were okay, some were nasty. A few had given her nice gifts … before going home to their wives again. Certainly none had pledged their undying affection for her, not even the ones who came back again and again. And how could she fall in love with them? That wasn’t allowed in her profession. So maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t, but she had no way to tell.
Maybe she shouldn’t even consider it. Reese had put the thought in her head and it had stuck like a cocklebur, but she probably shouldn’t dwell on it. Her best course of action was to either plan to head elsewhere (where? And how could she afford to travel?) or find a job in town and earn enough money to get her own place or leave. She couldn’t presume on Calder’s generosity forever – it wasn’t fair to him.
“You’ve been awfully quiet this afternoon.”
Rose looked up at Calder’s comment. He’d started a pot of beef stew and tidied up the house while she was at Reese’s. With nothing else to do until dinnertime, they’d both buried their noses in books to while away the hours, but Rose realized she’d been reading the same page over and over, not really looking at the words. “I guess I have,” she mumbled.
He set his book aside. “Something on your mind?”
“Oh, you don’t want to hear about my problems …”
“Course I do. Maybe I can help.” He shifted in his chair to look at her better.
She couldn’t see how. “I was … thinking about my past. You can’t help my past.”
He seemed to consider that. “But sometimes it helps to talk about it. I mean, I told you about mine … some of it, anyway.”
“I, um …” She rubbed the back of her neck, feeling her cheeks warm. “… my past might be a little shocking for you.”
“Try me. If I’m too shocked, I’ll let you know. I mean, I already know you …” He waved his hand around.
She nodded. “Yeah, I was a whore.”
He winced at the word. Yes, he was a gentleman, and gentlemen usually used other words – “soiled dove,” “lady of the night,” “fallen woman” – to soften the blow. But she knew what she’d been – someone who men (and not only men) paid to copulate with. In the sisterhood, no one bothered with euphemisms. “Did you want to be?”
Rose barked a laugh. “Ha! No, no, no – who would ever want to be?” Well, Reese had, but she’d said she thought it was her only way to make a living – and she seemed happy her brother Seamus the pub owner had convinced her otherwise. “No, it was either that or starve.”
Calder looked sad. “What happened?”
“You sure you want to hear my sad story?” She said it with a smile, but knew she was “joking on the square.”
“Like I said, try me.”
“Well … I was born in Ireland, county Donegal, in ’37. Mum and Da had a little patch of farm and did the best they could. Then in ’44 the Famine hit and the potatoes turned to mud, and they decided to get out before they ran out of food. They had just enough money to take us to America, and they settled in – well, outside of Philadelphia then, though it got added to the city in the Consolidation in ’54. This is funny – the town we settled in was called Bridesburg.”
Calder smiled and nodded, seeing the irony.
“But things weren’t much better there. Mum started a laundry, since our house was by the river, and Da worked at this and that. But the only thing he’d ever done was farming – he wasn’t any good at anything else. He’d always been a drinking man, and soon drinking was all he did. Then one day when I was nine, the police came to the door, said they’d found his body in a rubbish tip. He’d probably gotten in a bar fight …” She shrugged.
Calder screwed his eyes shut. “That’s awful.”
“Yeah, and it didn’t get any better after that. I quit school and helped Mum with the laundry – I knew my sums and how to read and write, so I could take care of the books for her and help with folding and suchlike. She worked so hard to keep a roof over our head – up before dawn and slavi … er, working past sundown every day. She only took a break to fix meals and go to Mass on Sunday. I was fourteen when she just collapsed. She’d worked herself to death.
“Well, there I was, just a slip of a girl with no family, not much money, not much education. No suitors were knocking at the door of some poor Irish washerwoman’s daughter. We did the washing for a House a few blocks away called Miss Margaret’s, so I knew there was one place I could go. I buried Mum, got the last few washing orders done, went to see Miss Margaret and hired on.”
“At fourteen?!” Calder said in shock.
“Miss Margaret didn’t care. Neither did the men. And what else could I do – beg on the streets? Most of the factories wouldn’t hire girls, and those who did hired them a lot younger than me. I knew it was a sin, what I was doing – I’d listened to the priests – but the Church wasn’t going to give me a place to live and three meals a day, and Miss Margaret was.” She shrugged.
“It wasn’t so bad, most of the time. The madams would stick up for you if you got a bad customer, and if a man tried to hurt you, they’d throw him out. I was able to get nice dresses, and I never starved. When Miss Margaret decided to go west to St. Louis, I went with her. She died in ’63, and I went to Kansas City and worked there, then Topeka. That’s where I met the Bauer boys. They invited me to come with them, and I thought that sounded kind of exciting – besides, the Topeka police were raiding the houses more often, so I got while the getting was good.
Calder nodded. “Yeah, they told me you were … with them for a while.” A lot remained unspoken in that sentence.
She thought she’d better let it. “After that blew up, I made my way to Ellsworth and got back to work. Maybe I should’ve stayed there, but … well, the Bauer Gang were my friends, and the girls with them, and I missed them. So last April I figured I’d take a few days off, catch the stage to Purgatory and see if I could find any of them. Unfortunately I did – a girl named Sarah Pittance, who worked at a House called Daisy’s Dovecote. I went to see her, and they never let me leave. Not until I escaped the night of the storm.” She shook her head.
Calder had tears in his eyes. “So really, you ended up a slave too.”
“I suppose I did. I’m just lucky to get out.”
“I’m glad you did. I’m so sorry all that happened to you. No one should have to go through what you did.”
The compassion in Calder’s voice almost knocked Rose flat. Not since Mum died had anyone shown such concern for her, not even Miss Margaret (who cared for her girls, but was always business first). She didn’t know how to handle this. But she did know that she’d better be careful, or she’d fall for him and fall hard … and get her heart broken when he turned her away.
Calder had noticed he hadn’t seen Vespasian since that first morning he came to town, so after dinner and the dishes he left Rose reading Little Dorrit and walked over to Annabelle Lawson’s boarding house to see how he was doing. That wasn’t his only reason for going – he wanted to think about what Rose had told her about her life, and that was easier to do when she wasn’t in the same room.
Yes, he’d been through some terrible times – after all, he’d been a slave from birth, and wasn’t free until he was almost 28. But it was one thing to never know anything better, and another to be born free and then be forced into a kind of slavery. For that matter, while he’d had to work hard in bondage, he’d never had to give the mistress of the house his body. He shuddered at the very thought.
It bothered him that she’d been with so many men, including the Bauers and Gavin, but … well, that was the past. That was the only law in Redemption Bluff, if you could call it a law: you didn’t hold someone’s past against them. That was the only way a town of outlaws and renegades and orphans and widows and prostitutes and slaves could stay together – you let go of your own past, and everyone else’s too. You forgave, you forgot and you moved on.
Although no one in town knew everything about his past. One event, he’d kept to himself for fear of a noose if he didn’t. It was easier to sweep Rose’s history aside than his own.
He arrived at the boarding house to find Vespasian sitting in the parlor by the fire, a blanket across his lap. “Hey, brother,” Vespasian said heartily. “Good timing – I think I’m finally in shape to receive a visitor.”
Calder sat on the love seat opposite him. “In shape? What happened?”
“Caught a cold from being out in the rain,” Vespasian replied, then laughed, a big booming laugh. “Serves me right, being in such a hurry that I was traveling on a night like that. Haste makes waste, the old man says.”
“I’m sorry you were sick. Where were you heading that you had to get there so fast?”
“Back to Texas, to find another ranch to hire on at. I’m a cowboy, don’t you know?”
“I didn’t know that. You come up north with a cattle drive?”
“Sure did – from the K-Bar-O Ranch near Fort Worth all the way up to the railhead in Ellsworth. Twenty-four hundred head. And half of us cowboys colored boys.”
“That many?” Calder had heard a lot of Negroes had found jobs as ranch hands, but not the extent. “And you all got along with the whites?”
“Most of the time. Sometimes not – which is why I was going back alone to look for work. You know Ellsworth can get a little wild. Well, the second night after we arrived, all of us were visiting various establishments, and two crackers from the ranch – the Bailey brothers from Alabama – got some fightin’ whiskey in them and decided to see if they could take down that old black man at the other end of the bar. And I had to defend myself.” Vespasian raised his hands helplessly.
