He didn’t approve of John Van Order, but John was a generous distance beyond Mr. Rodriguez in value. He pondered: Did this not make him and the delicious widow Juana coparents? Was this one of those plural marriages the Saints of Deseret had engineered for themselves? He’d have to look into that. Juana Van Order was, no doubt, still a fine girl, sweet as pastry. He might yet have a few pokes in him. He sighed and shook his head.
To the letter, with the full fire of his attentions! Cajoling, arguing, shaming, demanding. It was a classic Tomás Urrea production. He blew on the ink and folded the letter and slid it into a heavy envelope. It was good. By God. He could still write a letter even if he couldn’t ride a horse.
He pulled open his bottom drawer with his boot tip and bent, grunting, to withdraw an amber bottle from the files. He sat back and enjoyed the small sea sound of the gold cap coming unscrewed and the rolling fingerlings of scent cutting under the pipe smoke. He tipped the bottle and felt the color burn in his mouth where his gums were raw and sore. It stung. He winced. But when he swallowed, it hit his belly like his own mother’s love. One more, he told himself, and it went down smoother than the first. He puffed the pipe and smelled the edible smoke and enjoyed the liquor fumes coming back up his throat to join it on his tongue. He was in a world of benevolent essences, in the air and in his body. One more! He took a longish pull and gasped in delight.
The clock struck midnight before he knew it was late. He had been sitting there like a brain-fever patient, happily smoking and staring into the dark. He tapped out the glowing plug of tobacco and put the bottle away and blew out the lamp and creaked to his feet.
Gabriela would be up there in their bed, deep asleep. He went to step up on the stair and found his leg wobbling and weak. The front of his thigh refused to support him. Oh, well. That wouldn’t work. He was so lamed up he didn’t imagine he’d be climbing those stairs. He looked up. To be honest, she just snored anyway, snored so loud she kept him awake. He shrugged one shoulder and wandered to the front room and stretched out on the small couch. His feet went up on the arm, but he didn’t care.
New York.
Who had ever heard of such a thing.
Why—
But he was already asleep.
Forty-Nine
AFTER MR. SUITS LEFT St. Louis for far California, Mr. Smith wormed his way back into a managerial position. Field agent was his commission title, since he was the only Consortium member with personal experience in dealing with the formidable Van Order dreadnought. In telegrams, the clients were referred to by code. Teresita was the Soprano, for she was now handled like a prima donna of the stage, if not a diva; John was Wild Bill, for in spite of his pretensions, he appeared a swaggering cowpuncher and possibly a shootist. In fact, none of these men could tell what he was, except that he was Herself’s partner in intractability. “Highfalutin calf wrestler,” Suits had called him as he departed.
Names. It hurt John’s heart, afterward, by dawn light, when they lay naked in the snowy sheets, stunned and afraid of what they had done, still wet with each other, already wondering what tomorrow and the next year and the years thereafter might bring, that Teresita called him companion.
Companion? Not lover? Not darling? Not even John could know what that word companion meant to Teresita. He might come close to understanding her solitude, her years of exile within her own life, but who could really understand such a thing? Teresita herself barely understood it. In her mind, she and John had been united, at least by history, since they were nineteen. She kissed him, yes. And she kissed those years as well—those years and that connection to him, no matter how tenuous, for she knew no connections but the most ethereal. She had learned that life on earth was a dream, and not always a good one, and that the morning would come and she would awaken into death and she would be among her lost ones and the deer of the flower home and she would wonder what had happened to her and why it had happened. And she knew that God would never answer her.
Teresita and John’s delights were in small things. Shy turning from each other, his glimpse of her bare back as she bent away from him to retrieve her clothes, his using the sheet as a wrap to hide himself from her. Her freed hair swishing back and forth across her milky skin, the curves of her side, her arm covering her chest and her hair hiding half her face—her one visible eye regarding him with a joyous gleam. His hair standing on end from the pillow, and how he had no idea he looked insane.
For a moment, clothed in night, they had been free and laughed and cried out and moaned. They had swum in each other, waves of every year and every yearning and every loneliness and every sorrow breaking over them, crashing around them. She felt herself held tight as a fist, and felt that fist pried open by pleasure. For her to open the buttons of her dress for him, how she shook, how she had to silence all the dread warnings and cries of outrage welling within her and seeming to whisper from all around, the act of faith it took for her to see him before her, see his bare chest in that low light and not think that again an unexpected beast would burst forth, some devil would take this man and twist his face into the countenance of a wild dog, and the blows, the cries, the blood would come again. It made her cry. And John felt like he was lifting into the air as she felt like she was sinking below the earth and he opened his eyes to make sure she hadn’t sent him floating in the air with one of her Yaqui spells. In that swoon, the smell of roses faded, surrendering under him, to the smell of flesh and woman and sweat and honey. Slowly, it eased back as they slept, their arms and legs entwined, her hair over his face, in his fists, in his mouth. He could not get her close enough. He wanted their ribs to interweave and hook them together. Then, as he started to snore, he kicked away from her and took most of the bed like a slumbering bloodhound. She scooted to the edge of the bed and lay on her side and fell asleep smiling and dreamed of a small hummingbird—a hummingbird too small to be seen whose body was made of sky and whose wings were made of words.
When they were robed and combed in the morning and seated at their tiny round window table with tea and toast and melons and sweet cream, they fumbled, they looked at their hands, they laughed, she wept—not sobbing, simply slow, rolling tears that she didn’t even seem to feel. He wiped them from her cheek with one finger, sore afraid that he had come into her world and violated the temple. Surely the likes of John Van Order did not lie in the bed of a saint. Though his faith waxed and waned and he never could get the truth of the situation bucked out to his liking. Some days, she was just his silly little girl from the Arizona backcountry.
“Are you upset?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked.
She reached her hand across the table and put her cold fingers over his lips.
She stared into his eyes.
“You must,” she said softly, “love me.”
She pushed her fingers hard against his mouth to keep him silent, then rose and went into the bathroom and closed the door. He heard water running. He studied the pattern of the tablecloth. He drummed his fingers.
“Love,” he said, trying that unfamiliar word to see how it felt on his tongue.
John started a ledger of her wonders—he forced himself to attend her healings. He translated for the Scandinavians and Germans. That was a dance, all right—their twisted lingo having to make sense to him in English first before he could roll it over into español for her. Former rebs and border ruffians limped in, their ancient gnarly limbs busted and wrenched by relentless hardships. Irishmen and Scotsmen with their alien accents. Hell, Texans were hard enough to understand sometimes.
John noted each farmer, immigrant, widow, orphan, laborer, riverboat man, whore, salesman, copper, Mexican, Catholic, Indian who came in. The Baptists stayed away and some of them maintained a hostile vigil. “Satan seduces through beauty!” one preacher cried. “He was the morning star! He was an angel of light! No woman can withstand his wiles! God shall not suffer a witch to live!”
Teresita went to him.
“Brother,” she said.
“You’re no sister to me!” he cried.
“Why do you assault me?” she asked.
He held his black Bible before her face and shook it.
John stood behind her, translating this pig slop. He’d be damned if he could understand why she attended to this kind of rabble. He’d heard about the secret powers of his beloved; he wanted to see her paralyze a shouter or two just for his own entertainment.
“This holy book,” the preacher told her. “This holy scripture rebukes you.”
She nodded. Smiled. Raised a hand toward him. Here it comes! John thought excitedly. But she only talked.
“You can stack two thousand Bibles on an ass’s back,” she said. “And he would still be an ass.”
John really enjoyed that.
She went inside.
John stepped up and made his revolver visible, but the gospel sharp was not afraid to go to his great reward and only doubled his shouting when he was threatened.
September 12, 1901—Healings and Appointments
Mrs. Lindstrom ............................... gout
Mr. Pettigrew .................................. carbunkle
Indian male ...................................... bad tooth (sent to dentist)
Vilma S ............................................ whore maladys
Bob-Bob Trews ............................... blind (inconcludid)
Gaitan Garcia ................................... dead (bad luck there!)
Anon .............................................. undisclosed, but it hurt
Molly H .......................................... with secret child (17 yrs. Old)
Helga Buckter ................................. lady trables
Sixteen orphants .............................. barkin cough
Miss N Cangemi ............................. just prayed
“Sometimes,” he said, “they don’t come for nothin’ other than to pass the time.”
“People in America are lonely,” she said.
“They just want to pass the time, do they?”
“They want to be with me. I do not ask why.”
“I know why I want to be with you, darlin’,” he said. “But why do they? No disrespect or nothing.”
“I make them feel better.”
“Feelings, eh.”
“Feelings matter.”
“Feelings are for little girls and kittens. I don’t think about them much.”
“One does not think about feelings, silly. One has feelings.”
“I feel like a drink,” he scoffed.
“Do I not give you feelings, John?”
He smiled.
“You do. By God but you do.”
She rubbed his knuckle across her lips.
“You make me happy,” she said. “That is a feeling… and a healing too.”
He put his lips on her lips. Their mouths stuck together in the tenderest way, and pulling them apart was as delicate a thing as either of them would ever feel. They took the moment, eyes closed, in silence, to note it.
“I swear,” he said at the end of that kiss. “I don’t know how you do it.”
The hotel lobby was shady and quiet.
“Do what? Kiss?”
“Well, that too.”
He raised his ledger of wonders.
“This here.”
“God does it through me,” she said.
“Isn’t that pious.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I didn’t see God in that room. I saw you in there, and I saw a bunch of shuffling sad cases is what I saw.”
“God,” she said, exhausted and slightly bored, as if she were a schoolmarm explaining again the same mathematics problem she had explained to generations of uninterested children, “cannot be seen.”
“What good is He, then?”
“God is seen through the evidence of His presence.”
“That’s rather handy,” John said with a cocked eyebrow. “God’s there because you say He’s there. These are”—he sought the right words—“extravagant claims indeed, Mrs. Van Order.”
John believed in God—maybe not in the church version of God, but he accepted the idea. What he was having trouble with at the moment was the thought that the woman he was tussling with at night was representing the presence of the Lord by day. Could you be naked in front of God? Well, if you wasn’t Adam and Eve?
“Through His effect, He is known,” she said. “Not seen directly.”
“How do I know it’s Him then?”
“If you have the eyes to see, you will see the evidence.”
“If I believe God’s there, I will see God?” By God! Was that declaration sufficient?
God would be a great poker player, he thought.
They were seated at a quiet lamb-chop dinner. She didn’t like lamb and remembered he’d tried to fool her into eating it the first time she met him. She spread the mint jelly on her toast and busied herself with the roast potatoes and the green beans. He watched this and shook his head. His gal was too skinny by far. He’d have to get her to eat some beeves if she was ever going to round out. Get some color. Lately, she was pale as a lunger, seemed wan. It was these healings of hers, he was certain. Those shuffling peons and dirt farmers. Whatever she was doing to them, they were suckling her dry.
“Did you not see the evidence today?” she asked.
He took a good long swallow of beer.
“Okay,” he offered, trying out this newest exclamation heard at the docks. “I saw something. I see it every day.”
“Well?”
He shrugged.
“Sweet… heart,” he said, uncertain about how to make those words tumble into conversation. “That dead fellow…”
“Yes?”
“He stayed dead.”
She smiled and tried not to. She blushed. She shrugged.
“It doesn’t seem given to me to raise the dead,” she noted. “However, in those situations, I minister to the family and try to send them into their lives with peace.”
“They had old granddad in a cart like a fire log!” John said. “Lucky the coppers didn’t see that.”
“Stop,” she whispered. “You’re so bad.”
“Tell me I’m lying!”
Her uneaten lamb sat in a small bay of grease like a burned island; the waiter took it away.
“May I have tomato soup?” she asked.
“Certainly.”
“Gracias.”
“I am cursed with practicality,” John confessed.
“You think me false,” she said.
“Nope,” he said. “Didn’t say it, didn’t mean it.”
“Why do you criticize me?” she asked.
“Not you. I’m with you, not nobody else. It’s this whole… thing… I can’t quite feature. Maybe that’s my test of faith, as you might put it. But, look—if you’d been able to grow my pop a new leg, then for sure I would believe it and kneel to you.”
“No, no, no. Kneel to God, do not kneel to me.” She patted his hand and looked at him sadly.
“You admire these electrical lamps,” she said, placing her hands flat on the table.
“I do.”
“What powers them is invisible. You can’t see electricity. You can only see its effect. Light.”
She smiled. Spread her hands before him.
“This is what God is like. You never see Him. But you see what He produces. You see what He causes to ignite and burn.”
The soup arrived. She floated small crackers upon it and bent to the bowl. He sat and watched her. He rubbed his temples. God the electrician was beyond him right then. His skinny gal was something to ponder, though. He might not be able to track the divine by the light of day, but John could feel God when they made love. There was no way to broach that in polite conversation. It sounded crude, but it was the least crude thing he had ever thought. He sat on that on
e.
He smiled at her through his headache.
“Time for more beer,” he said.
No one ever entered their suite except for maids and waiters. Thus no one knew that he tossed shirts in corners and she picked them up and folded them. No one knew he liked to lie on the bed with his boots on and that she scolded him every time. No one saw where he liked to kiss her—along the soft hinge of her jaw, just beneath her ear. Or where she liked to be kissed—on the forehead, a child’s kiss, a kiss she had never felt. It sent shivers down her back, and it filled her with an illusory warmth, a nostalgia for tender years that had not happened.
Perhaps intruding observers would not have been so shocked at their nakedness if they’d seen the couple late at night, lying spent and sweated, her head upon his bare chest. Oddly, Teresita felt most pure when she was with her new husband, most free, most herself.
Or would they have been more shocked by her whispered confessions and pleas? When she gripped him fiercely and said, “If I could, I would quit”?
His great hand on her spine—how it curved, how elegant and long it felt in the dark. He admired the way it led his hand down to the swelling of her hips and her bottom.
“Don’t quit yet,” he advised. “We aren’t there yet.”
“Aren’t where?”
“Why, New York.” He patted her rump. How friendly it felt. How comfortable. His. “Quit after New York.”
She nestled against him and dared to imagine the sin of retiring.
“New York,” he murmured. “You won’t be sorry.”
He waited till she was asleep. He extricated himself from her arms and rose silently. He dressed in the dark and picked up his boots so he could put them on in the hall. He bent to her and kissed her dear, troubled face. He put his lips to her earlobe. She squirmed and laughed in her sleep. He touched her face. Before he went out, he opened her bag and fished out a few dollars. Just one drink. One drink, or two. And a game of faro or poker. That would do it. He let himself out and sat in the hall to pull on his rose-stitched high-heel custom-mades.