“Whose freedom?” Renata asked.
“Any man’s if he wishes to sell his labor as he sees fit. It’s more than a freedom. It’s a God-given right.”
“What about women?” she said as they filed down the aisle toward the door.
“If they possess any intelligence at all they will find a man worthy of their support.”
“Oh yeah?” Tracy said. “Well, we’ve come a long way, baby.”
“We’ve come a long way, baby,” Cree mimicked as they walked to the depot. “Tell me about it when you’re freezing your buns in a boxcar or getting them fondled in a whorehouse. They’re not going to liberate women for years. Men can’t even join unions freely. Have you noticed it’s winter here? We’re in a whole lot of trouble, ladies.”
Bulkeley Wells rode a horse behind them. Bob Meldrum walked ahead, and Duffer and Maynard to either side. The streets were a hardened corduroy of ice ruts in the shady patches and mud ruts where the sun had worn through.
“When are you going to do your stuff?” Duffer asked Aletha.
“What ever happened to Lennard Pheeney?” she countered.
“Somebody shot him. We owe you one, right? And for two years in this fuckin’ place.”
“But if you get us home, all debts are off,” Maynard added hastily.
Bob Meldrum strode ahead, deaf and oblivious of the low voices behind him. Wells seemed not to hear them over the noise his horse made. Many hats were doffed in respect to Captain Wells, many greetings called to him by women and children. He seemed to know everyone by name. When he sent Aletha off on a train, would that end her connection to her own time? Did she have to be where Callie was to move back and forth between worlds?
She recognized several of the modest homes in Finntown that would withstand the years and the inroads of condominiums. Tracks ran past the depot now and boxcars lined up on sidings. The windows on the depot were not boarded over, and inside, a potbellied stove made some of the wooden building dangerously hot while corners still held the chill of outdoors.
“You must’ve lost your stinking coat,” Bob Meldrum said to Aletha. “Audrey said you just disappeared into a fog. You should’ve stayed with Leona when I took you there. See all the trouble you’re in now?”
Bulkeley Wells drew Renata apart from the others and stood talking to her for some minutes. When he took his leave, Renata joined them on a bench along the wall. “Did he offer you a job?” Cree asked. “Better stick with Aletha. If there’s any way out of this, she’s it.”
“He’s one chauvinist-pig hunk,” was all she would say.
“I don’t know when your train arrives, so relax.” Meldrum leaned against a wall and chewed on his chaw. Duffer and Maynard perched close by. Cree’s stomach gurgled, Aletha’s burned. Tracy wiggled. Renata seemed preoccupied. Across the room a man in a visor watched them through an iron grate and then turned as a clacking noise started up behind him. Meldrum sauntered over to talk to him and when he returned he said to Duffer, “Leaving you in charge. I’m going to go eat. I’ll be back to take a turn. Looks like it’ll be a while.” He handed Duffer one of his guns. “Don’t look away from them.”
“You don’t have to take a turn here. We’ll stick with these bummers all day.”
“Yeah, we ain’t hungry,” Maynard said. When Meldrum had left, he looked at Aletha. “Okay, now we’re alone. Get a move on.” But the day wore on and no threats brought the hole with shimmering edges. Antique people in antique clothes came and went. Aletha felt buzzy with hunger and terror that leaving Telluride would be leaving behind her only link to home. It grew dark outside the unboarded windows but the man behind the grillwork came out to turn on weak lights.
“What if I start killing your friends off one by one?” Duffer whispered. “All we need is you, right? What if I start with Mackelwain?”
“If you kill my friends I won’t ever be able to concentrate.” The buzzing in Aletha’s head grew in volume when Duffer turned the weapon on Cree.
“Evening train’s passed the junction,” the man with the visor called out, and then, as if he just noticed Aletha’s group was all that remained, added, “Won’t have another vagrant train together till morning.”
When the doomed sound of the whistle on the evening train moaned closer and closer, Aletha began to imitate it, first in her head and then aloud. Ignoring the startled glances of her friends, she let it grow into a scream. She wasn’t positive she could stop if she wanted to. She wasn’t sure how much was hysteria and how much her desire to keep the stationmaster’s attention on them to make it more difficult for Duffer to shoot Cree without having a respectable witness looking on. Maybe she had flipped altogether, maybe it just felt good to be doing something less passive than she had all day. Maybe it was just the hopelessness of it. Life in either world with Duffer and Maynard likely meant death for them all.
“Here, now, we can’t have that,” the stationmaster said when she’d stopped to take a breath.
“Shut up, dyke,” Duffer yelled when she started in again, and he raised the butt of the gun above her face. She didn’t stop even when he brought it down to strike her. She was shoved aside so suddenly the gun butt hit the wall instead. Aletha really couldn’t stop now. This must be what crazy is, she thought, but oh the wonderful release of it. Renata slapped her. Tracy shook her.
Cree and Duffer rolled about on the floor while the stationmaster stood by helplessly. Maynard circled the struggle, looking for an opening to grab the gun in Duffer’s hand. Cree had Duffer by the wrist to hold the weapon away while he pummeled him with the other hand. Cree’s face was flushed almost blue-red, his lips pulled back in a snarl. He fought disgustingly dirty. Aletha stopped screaming and began a hoarse giggling. She was losing her voice.
Renata motioned to Tracy to help her pry up a loose board off a bench and then tried to sneak up on Maynard with it. But the gun went off and everyone backed away. A hanging light fixture swung wildly. There was a new hole in the reflector. The swinging light bouncing off walls and faces made the whole scene even funnier but Aletha’s giggling changed to tears and the train whistle did the screaming now, very close.
The gun hit the floor and Cree was free to beat on Duffer with both hands. When Maynard made a dive for it Renata brought the board down on the back of his head so hard her feet came up off the floor. Maynard stayed where he was.
A sudden sharp burning on Aletha’s leg made her think she’d been shot too, but the bulge in her pocket reminded her of having stuffed the souvenir pendant in it and she drew it out by the chain. The pink-stained quartz was definitely hot to the touch. The light had slowed its arc but still swung above them. Given the scarcity and weakness of the bulbs in the large room, all the corners were dark but the moving light illuminated a boarded-up window in one corner and a patch of wainscoting with the paint worn and flaked to almost nothing. A ripped cobweb drooped with dust …
“Tracy!” Aletha threw the necklace under a bench and shoved Tracy at the corner. She grabbed one of Cree’s ankles. He’d gone crazy with rage and was no help at all. Renata just looked bewildered as Aletha struggled to hold on to him. Duffer’s nose was bleeding and making the floor slippery. The train had stopped. Steam and smoke fogged the depot windows. The door opened to admit two trainmen. “Renata, if you want to go home, grab a foot.”
Renata came to and they fought together to pull Cree off Duffer and face down toward the corner. Aletha smelled the air change to musty and saw Duffer roll over, crawl toward them on his stomach. “Maynard, they’re gettin’ away!”
Maynard still lay on the gun, unmoving. The lighted area around him, the gaping stationmaster, Duffer straining toward Cree’s outstretched hands, and the top half of Cree Mackelwain narrowed till they disappeared in darkness. Duffer had been about six inches from grabbing onto Cree. They gave a last mighty yank and Aletha ended up on her fanny with Cree’s empty shoe in her hand.
“Shit, I almost had him. I was going to kill that bastard,” h
e yelled from out of the pitch dark … and then, “Are we home? I can’t see a thing.”
“You didn’t bring Duffer along, did you?” Aletha asked.
“The last I saw was the look on his face when he realized I was getting away. Probably better than killing him. Renata?” And when she answered, he called out for Tracy. “We didn’t leave Tracy behind, did we?”
“I’m over here. But you stay over there.” And the smell of warm urine cut through the mustiness.
“Where are we now,” Renata asked, “in limbo?”
“Probably in an ancient, closed-up, abandoned train depot,” Cree answered close to Aletha, and she shoved his shoe at him.
“How’d you do it, Aletha,” Renata said dryly, sounding more like herself, “grab Toto and click your heels together three times?”
They wandered into cobwebs, tripped on debris, assured each other their eyes would adjust soon and they’d find a way out before time switched them back to a murderous Duffer. Then Tracy found an open space between boards and Cree helped her pound out a window hole.
It was still dark outside and wood smoke still hung heavy on the air, but the lights of a much smaller Telluride winked around them. Cree and Tracy went to Mildred Heisinger’s, she to gather Charles and go back to the crib and he to collect Renata’s jeep and get Aletha out of town as fast as possible. When he returned he was breathless. “Mrs. Lowell was out at the gate talking to the doctor. They hadn’t missed us. Seems it’s still Thursday. They claim we all left the old lady’s house not more than two hours ago.”
47
Unable to solve the disappearance of the four disturbing vagrants and with John O’Connell and the others deported once more, Bulkeley Wells decided to lift the curfew. Even the residents down at Mrs. Pakka’s boardinghouse could hear the rejoicing in the streets when the saloons and Pacific Avenue opened for business again. A ball was to be held at the Sheridan and a group of Shakespearean actors brought in to entertain the town. Bram emerged from the bottling works to find two men awaiting him on the dock—Thomas Sullivan and Shorty Miller. Bram hadn’t seen them since their hospital days in Denver. They too had regained strength and flesh since then, but both had aged a good bit.
“Sure but you’ve come back fit, lad.” Sully had to stretch up to embrace him. “Good to see you.”
Bram couldn’t forget Shorty’s calling him a bastard at that awful time in their lives. But when Shorty stuck out his hand, Bram shook it. They slapped each other on the back. There is an undeniable bond forged between those who almost die together but don’t.
“Got us a message from your pa,” Sully said. “He’s in Ouray. Said to tell you not to be losing your temper and acting the fool. Just take care of the family for him till he gets back. Things’ll be right between the union and Telluride soon. Ain’t that what he said now, Shorty?”
“That and one more thing, Sully.” Shorty showed all the extra spaces between his teeth.
“Oh, that’s right. You go on home, boy, and clean up, have your supper, and then meet us at Van Atta’s by seven o’clock.”
“Van Atta’s? I don’t need clothes, Sully.”
“Now, don’t argue, Bram. You just mind your pa.”
Audrey couldn’t believe it when Diamond Tooth Leona told her who Bob Meldrum might bring to the party that night at the Pick and Gad. “And I want your word you’ll behave yourself. Anybody knows how mean that man can get, it ought to be you, Audrey. Say one wrong thing to her ladyship and he could kill you.”
While Leona and the girls fussed about with frills, Sarah and a raggedy group hired from Stringtown for the occasion strung streamers, inflated balloons, and arranged platters of fancy candies and sandwiches. Wagons delivered cases of champagne to the back door and a small ensemble set up in a corner to practice playing together for the first time. Telluride’s tenderloin had been raucous a good part of the day but when the Pick and Gad opened its doors for a preannounced party, one and all cordially invited, the mountain valley seemed to explode. There was standing room only in the champagne parlor, the waiting parlor, the dining room, and even the kitchen.
At Van Atta’s Sully and Shorty rented Bram a suit of clothes and outfitted themselves as well. “Shorty and me just got paid at the Maggie Breen, up out of Ouray, and the evening’s on us.”
“Your pa said as how he figures your education’s been suffering with him gone so much.”
“Shorty and me ain’t union so we thought to get work here.”
“It’s not like we’re scabs … just that we don’t happen to see eye to eye with John about certain things. Exceptin’ your education.”
Bram walked down the street between them feeling ridiculous in the suit and hat. He knew what they were up to and couldn’t believe Pa would condone such an evening for him. But then again … His two companions were short men and walked with their hands in their pockets, their hats pushed back, and jaunty swaggers. Bram walked stiffly. His coat sleeves were too short. He felt like a bear someone had dressed up to make fun of. He wanted to claim his rights to manhood and leave the embarrassments of boyhood behind, but then again, the transition could be the most embarrassing of all. Bram dreaded embarrassment more than most proud people because of the torture he’d endured from his schoolmates when he was a scarecrow with no hair.
He stood to the bar at the Cosmopolitan Saloon and downed a beer with them. Beer didn’t bother Bram much after sampling the product at the bottling works for several years, but the pictures of naked ladies on the walls around him did. Next they stopped at the Brunswick, then at the Senate. Bram began to relax a little. At the Silver Bell he even bought a round. But the next stop was the Gold Belt Saloon and Dance Hall, and what the ladies did there, alive and moving, was worse than anything hanging on a saloon wall. He sat on a wooden folding chair at the back of the room. Sully and Shorty craned forward to see better. Bram’s vision was excellent and he cringed backward, but he watched.
Five not very pretty ladies pranced about in what he assumed was a dance, to the accompaniment of a fiddler and a piano player and a man shouting a story no one could hear over the hooting and stomping of the audience. The bright lights made the dancers’ bodies look creamy and smooth and their faces clownish with the exaggeration of applied color.
“Plump and pretty,” Shorty yelled into his ear, and spit tobacco juice at the floor. The middle of the five was more than plump and the cheeks of her backside flopped and jerked with every step. Her smile was fixed no matter what the insults directed at her from the audience, as if she had not escorted her body to the stage. All the ladies wore their hair down and all wore the same costume, a costume similar to those favored by schoolgirls at poetry recitations—wreaths of paper laurel leaves on their heads, draped Grecian gowns. But these gowns were transparent. It was horrible and impossible to look away, to ignore the swelling ache of himself in his rented trousers.
“They were ugly,” Bram complained, but he stuck his hands in his pockets and tilted back his hat as they left the Gold Belt. Is this what Pa did on his off days in town? Why would those ladies want to make such undignified spectacles of themselves?
“Didn’t notice you sittin’ there with your hands over your eyes.”
“Now, you’re not to be making fun of the boy, Shorty. If he likes ’em pretty, I sure know where there’s some pretty ones, don’t you?”
Audrey watched Mildred Heisinger and Bob Meldrum in the champagne parlor. She sipped champagne and he drank from the bottle. As the evening progressed Mildred relaxed her stiffness and Meldrum got slowly but definitely drunk. He introduced her proudly and then gave anyone so much as brushing against her a chilling glance. The next time Audrey noticed them Mildred was being entertained by some actors from a traveling troupe that had performed on Colorado Avenue earlier. Meldrum played poker nearby and kept looking over at Mildred’s rapture.
Audrey couldn’t understand the attraction between them. Mildred’s throat and shoulders were bared daringly in a
ball gown that drew much attention and put the resident finery to shame. There were no bruises on the perfect skin. Later Audrey found Meldrum sitting alone in a corner of the kitchen, still swigging from the bottle. He grabbed her skirt and pulled her down on his lap. She’d thought to be free of him tonight. “What’s the matter, your fancy lady run out on you?”
“She’s still in there, beautiful and fine as ever. She doesn’t swear like you trollops. Plays the piano and reads poetry. I run out on her.” He wiped a tear off his cheek with the thumb of the hand that held the bottle and spilled champagne down his vest. “She’s too good for me, Audrey.”
“Oh yeah, she’s a real sweetheart, teaching little girls how to work Pacific Avenue.”
“What? You know I can’t hear.”
“I said she seems to like you a lot, Bob.”
“Millie deserves someone fine and young and innocent like she is. Never has any fun, poor girl.”
“That poor girl deserves a lot, all right.”
“She deserves something like him.” Meldrum pointed the bottle at a big kid standing in front of them. The kid had just accepted a puff off a cigar from the man next to him and was coughing up a storm, much to his friend’s delight and derision.
“You gotta help me, Audrey.”
“I’d like to, Bob, but I have a date in a minute and—”
“Not that.” He wiped away another tear and took a swig. “Get him for Millie. Here.” He let go of Audrey to reach into his pocket, and dumped her on the floor. He held out a large gold coin. “Where’d you go?”
She reached up and took the coin. “You mean you want me to—”
“Yeah.” He nodded and stood to get a better look at the kid. “Yeah, he’s just the ticket. Can you do it for me, Audrey?”
“Long as you don’t change your mind when you sober up and come after me for it, I can try.” She had to repeat it for him and he actually reached a hand down to help her up.