Hat and Boots
Thirteen year old Louise McCloud walked stiffly from the stage station, looking around the unfamiliar sights of St. Louis. She flinched as the passersby glanced curiously at her. A look in the plate glass window of a nearby shop showed the reason they stared plain enough. Her long dark hair was tangled around her shoulders, unbrushed since yesterday. Her frightened looking face was bruised and her eyes red-rimmed from tears. As painful as the bruises on her face appeared, they were nothing compared to the bruises hidden under her clothes, and the scars he had left on her heart. The little girl she had been yesterday was gone now, forever, her innocence ended.
She kept wandering aimlessly, nowhere to go and only a few dollars in her pocket, as night started to fall. Though she hadn't eaten since … since before it happened, she wasn't hungry, just tired and thirsty. As she wearily trudged along the sidewalk past a saloon, a young man called out to her. "How much for a quick one, sweetheart?" he asked. As she looked dimly at him, he mistook her reaction and started over toward her. "You look like someone was pretty hard on you tonight, little lady. Don't worry I don't like that rough stuff. Where do you work out of, the saloon or just the alley? Either way's fine by me." As he placed his arm on hers, she realized what he thought of her, a disheveled girl wandering the streets unescorted at night. She burst into tears and started backing away, shaking.
The man, embarrassed and realizing at closer range that she was younger than he had thought, probably no more than twelve or thirteen, dropped his hand. "Sorry miss. I reckon I made a mistake." He started to turn away, then turned back, holding out some money to her. "Take this, miss, and go find someplace to stay the night. And honey, stay off the street. It ain't no place for a little girl to be… you could get hurt." The kindly fellow ambled off as she stood there numbly looking at the money, then up at the hotel down the street. Relieved to have enough to stay somewhere until she got a job, she approached the entrance.
The manager of the hotel looked suspiciously at her, demanding to know where her parents or husband were, where her bags were. "I don't have anything", she admitted. "Please, I'm so tired. Just let me have a room, I need to sleep." The manager demanded a week's payment in advance. "And no men in the room, either. This is a respectable establishment, not a whorehouse, got it?"
Humiliated, Louise nodded her head, handing over the money Charlotte and the kind stranger had given her. She had nothing left now, would need to find a job if she could tomorrow. Limping upstairs, she undressed quickly and fell into bed.
She was surprised to open her eyes and find it was morning already. She got up and washed her face and hands, and tended to the dress she'd taken off and hung in the corner the night before. Finally hunger was setting in; she was shaky and weak with it now. Luckily the hotel served a breakfast, meager as it was, and she ate hungrily before setting out to try to find a job.
But everywhere the young girl went to find work, the answer was the same. Nothing right now, she kept being told, with a number of the male business owners giving her leering looks that chilled her. She couldn't work for a man, never again, she thought. But the women in the boutiques and dressmakers shops had no use for the lonely young girl either.
The week went by too quickly, as she desperately sought honorable work. But each time she went in to another business where men worked, she felt herself growing cold and clammy with fear. It seemed as if Wicks' touch still burned on her skin, each time a man even looked innocently at her.
The last night of that week, she was out late looking for something, anything, to make a little money to pay the hotel for another week. As she returned in despair, a group of young men saw the little girl and began hectoring her, following behind her catcalling, their faces leering. She stiffened and tried to ignore their remarks, but was growing more and more frightened. She broke into a run to escape them, and turning a corner by a haberdashery, leaned against the wall panting in terror.
Damn them, she thought bitterly. They're all the same, all thinking of just one thing. It's the only thing I can do to make money, looks like… the only thing I'm good for now, and what difference does it make? I'm damaged goods anyway. Why not make a little money at it? But the thought of it nauseated and shamed her. She couldn't. She wasn't that desperate… not yet anyway.
She tried to calm her rapid breathing, think of what to do. If only she could get a job in the livery or for the stage company taking care of the horses. She always loved riding and taking care of horses, but it was no use. The sign at the livery had read "Boy Needed", but they would never hire her. She glanced up, suddenly, listening intently; the boys who had been following her were just around the corner, talking loudly as they walked. "Let's find that little guttersnipe and have some fun with her," one was saying, and her heart dropped to her feet.
Panicking, she turned and quickly smashed the glass on the haberdasher's door, sticking her arm in through the shards, and managed to unlock the door from the inside. She slipped inside and crouched behind the counter, watching as the toughs walked past in the street. Thanking Heaven, she crept out trembling from behind the counter.
Looking around the store, she idly looked over the men's clothes, hats and boots as she waited to make sure the boys were gone before leaving. Suddenly, an idea formed itself in her mind. She could take some boys' clothes, cut her hair, and tell the men at the livery she was a boy, get that job. And if she did, she wouldn't have to worry about anyone bothering her, or doing what Wicks had done, she would be safe.
She hesitated. Her mother and the nuns had taught her never to steal or lie, as she was about to do. But… but Mama and the sisters hadn't ever told her what life was like out here. They hadn't prepared her. Her heart hardened a little, resentfully. She could have used less of their pie-in-the-sky ideals and a little more preparation for the cold realities of life, she thought bitterly. It was this way or something much, much worse, she convinced herself.
She sorted through the clothes, assembling a boy's outfit, from hat to boots, though her guilty conscience still pricked at her and she took the cheapest items she could find in her size. Pulling the clothes on, she looked in the mirror in the back room at herself. Slowly, she reached for the scissors on the worktable where the tailor did his alterations. Just one more thing left, she thought …
|
Do You Remember These
Kid thought back to his days growing up near the Potomac River in Prince William County, Virginia. It wasn't all rosy memories… his childhood had more than its share of hardship, that was sure. But there were lots of good times too. He'd had lots of good friends, some family he'd left behind when he came west. There wasn't any opportunity for him to make a life for himself back east, and he had made the only decision he could. It had been a comfort in many ways that he had his memories, and nothing could take them away, so he thought. Since then, there hadn't been much time for looking back.
But when the word started trickling back that war was coming… he worried about all the places and people he'd left behind. His county was close to Washington, and would be in danger of invasion and destruction if war came. He knew for some folks, like Jimmy and Cody, the war was about only one thing, slavery. But they didn't seem to understand, most Virginians, including his family, never had any slaves. The approaching threat to his homeland had no connection to slavery in his mind.
Slow weekends sleeping by the river, fishing pole slack in my hand. The scent of bay magnolia and bluebells. Memories of a blonde-haired first love, who always would have a special place in his heart, even if Lou's face had turned hers into a distant memory. Even if the graves of his family had been left untended these last years; the memories of those loved ones were green in his heart always. His memories of who he used to be were wrapped up in his memories of home.
He looked across the campfire at Lou, her dark eyes searching his. Kid didn't know where they stood right now, to tell the truth. He knew he still loved her. In fact, he was starting to realize that he always would love only her, no matter where he was or where she was, no matter who she loved or didn't love. The only hesitation in his mind about returning home to Virginia was the thought of leaving her.
But he didn't know how Lou felt. He knew she had feelings for him, but didn't know how to make things work for her, how to give her what she wanted. If he could be sure he could make her happy, that they had a future together, he would marry her tomorrow and never leave her side again. Right now, though, with things the way they were, as much as he loved her, as hard as it would be to leave her, he would go home to Virginia when war broke out. If the war came and his County was overrun, destroyed, his memories from the first fifteen years of his life would have no meaning.
When he told her, he saw the sorrow in her face as she asked, "You'd leave Rock Creek?"
He knew what she meant; and he cleared his throat before telling her. "Leaving Rock Creek… leaving you … would be the hardest thing I ever had to do." He cleared his throat a second time. "But staying would be harder."
She looked back at him, silently, eyes huge in the firelight. He wished she would ask him to stay, to choose her over old memories. Not because he was afraid to fight … but because he wanted to make a new life wherever she was, more than anything in this world.
But she just looked down sadly, and he didn't say any more. Looked like he was going to have to just live to protect old memories now, he thought, staring into the fire with a heavy heart.
|
