Heaven and Hell (10 page)

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Luis never got close to Ashton without letting her see his sullen fury. Tonight was no different.

He stared at her while he grabbed Rosa's

wrist. He dragged the girl past the door leading to the office and storeroom and pulled her up the stairs. Ashton rubbed her left cheek. I hope he works her like a field hand, she thought. I hope she gives him a good case, too.

A hot wind swept dust under the half-doors. No customers showed up. At half past ten, the senora said Ashton could go to bed. She lay in the dark in her tiny room listening to the wind bang shutters and again entertaining the idea of robbing the sehora. Now and then customers spent a lot at the cantina, and cash sometimes accumulated for over a week. She couldn't think of how to commit the robbery, though. And there was a great risk. Luis had a fast horse and some bad friends. If they captured her, they might kill her or, just as bad, disfigure her.

Anger and hopelessness kept her from sleep. Finally she relighted the lamp and reached under the bed for her lacquered Oriental box. On the lid, bits of inlaid pearl formed a scene: a Japanese couple, fully clothed and in repose, contemplating cups of tea. Raising the lid and holding it against the light revealed the couple, with kimonos up, copulating.

The woman's happy face showed her response to the gentleman's mammoth shaft, half inside her.

The box always lifted Ashton's spirits. It held forty-seven buttons she'd collected over the years--West Point uniform buttons, trouser fly buttons. Each button represented a man she'd enjoyed, or at least used.

Only two partners didn't have a button in the box: the first boy who took her, before she started her collection, and her weakling husband, Huntoon. The collection was growing rapidly in Santa Fe.

For a few minutes, she examined one button and then another, trying to put a face with each. Presently, she put the box away, and examined her perspiring body in the mirror. Still soft where it should be, firm where it should be, and the nail marks on her face hardly showed. Gazing at herself, she felt her hope renewed. Somehow, she would use her beauty to escape this damnable place.

She went to sleep then, enjoying a dream of repeatedly pricking Brett's skin with her little file, till it bled.

Three nights later, a coarsely dressed Anglo walked into the cantina.

He had mustaches with long points and a revolver on his hip. He downed two fast double whiskeys at the bar, then wobbled over to the hard chairs where Ashton and Rosa waited for customers. The third girl was at work upstairs.

"Hello, Miss Yellow Shoes. How are you this evening?"

"I'm just fine."

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Lost Causes 57

"What's your name?"

"Brett."

He grinned. "Do I hear the accent of a fallen blossom from the South?"

She tossed her head, flirted with her eyes. "I never fall unless I'm paid first. Since you know my name, what's yours?"

"You might find my first name a bit peculiar. It's Banquo, from Mr. Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth. Last name's Collins. I may be back to see you after I have a couple more drinks."

He ambled back to the bar, while Ashton gripped her chair to keep from toppling off.

Banquo Collins pounded a fist on the bar. "I'll buy for everybody.

I can spend ten times that much and never worry."

The senora closed in. "Bold words, my dear sir."

"But they're true, lass. I know where to mine some treasure."

"Ah, I knew you were fooling. There are no mines around here."

Collins swallowed all of a glass of popskull. "I don't mine dirt; I mine wagons."

"Wagons? That makes no sense."

"Does to me."

He extended his arms and began to shuffle his booted feet. "Ought to have music in this place, so a man could dance." Because everyone was watching him, they missed the wild look on Ashton's face. This was the man--Powell's guide!

"Gonna be rich as Midas," he declared, rubbing his crotch. Rosa primped furiously. Ashton slid the file from her shoe and beneath her left arm. Rosa gasped when the point jabbed her.

"This one's mine," Ashton whispered. "If you take him, I'll put your eye out tomorrow."

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Rosa was white. "Take him. Take him."

"Gonna have plenty of music when I see the world. Rome, the Japans--" Collins belched. "But not here. Guess I can get pleasured here, though."

He lurched to the girls. Ashton stood. He grinned again, took her hand, and headed upstairs.

After latching the door, she helped him undress. She was so exited she pulled one trouser button too hard. It flew and ticked against f"e wall. He sat on the bed while she worked his pants off. "That was Mtteresting talk downstairs," she said.

He blinked, as if he hadn't heard. "Where'd you come from, Yel°w Shoes? You're sure no greaser."

"I'm a Carolina girl, stranded here by misfortune." A deep breath,

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58 HEAVEN AND HELL

and then the leap. "A misfortune I think we both know something about."

Despite all he'd drunk, and his aroused state, what she said put him on guard. "Are we gonna talk or fuck?"

She bent forward, ministering to him a moment to curb his irritation.

"I just want to ask about those wagons--" He grabbed her hair.

"Collins, I'm your friend. I know what was in those wagons."

"How come?" Furious, he yanked her hair. "I said how come?"

"Please. Not so hard! That's better." She leaned back, frightened.

Suppose he really felt threatened? Suppose he decided to kill her? Then she thought, If you stay here you're as good as dead anyway.

She collected herself and said carefully, "I know because I'm related to the man who owned the wagons. He was a Southerner, wasn't he?"

His eyes admitted it before he could deny it. She clapped her hands.

"Sure he was. Both of them were. And you guided them from Virginia
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City."

She dragged the shoulder straps down to show off her breasts, red and firm already. Lord, she was all worked up over the mere thought of the gold. "Do you know where those wagons are, Collins?"

He just smirked.

"You do. I know what was in them. What's more, I know where it came from--and how to get hundreds, why maybe a thousand times, more of the same."

She detected a gleam of interest and pushed the advantage.

"I'm talking about the mine in Virginia City. It belongs to me, because one of the men who died, Mr. Powell, owned it, and I'm related to him."

"You mean you can prove it's yours?"

Without hesitation or change of expression she said, "Absolutely.

You share what's in those wagons, then help me get to Nevada, and I'll split an even bigger fortune with you."

"Sure--an even bigger fortune. And there's seven cities of gold waiting to be found round here, too--never mind that nobody's turned them up since the Spanish started searching hundreds of years ago."

"Collins, don't sneer at me. I'm telling the truth. We need to pool our information. If we do, we'll be so rich you'll get dizzy. We can go all over the world together. Wouldn't that be exciting, lover?" Her tongue gave a moist demonstration of her excitement.

Seconds passed without a response. Her fear crept back.

Suddenly he laughed. "By the Lord, you're a canny lass. Canny as you are hot."

"Say we're partners and I'll treat you to some special loving. Things Lost Causes 59

I won't do for anybody else, no matter how much they pay." She whispered salacious words in his ear.

He laughed again. "All right. Partners."

"Here I come," she cried, dropping her dress and pantaloons and falling on him on the bed.

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She kept her word, but after ten minutes his age and his drinking caught up with him, and he began to snore.

Ashton pulled up the covers, toweled herself and slipped in next to him, her heart thumping. Finally, patience had been rewarded. No more whoring. She had the man who had the gold.

Imagination painted pictures of a new Worth gown. The grandest hotel suite in New York City. Madeline cringing while Ashton slashed her across the face with a fan.

Delicious visions. They'd soon be real. She fell asleep.

She woke murmuring his name. She heard no answer.

Daylight showed through slits in the shutter. She felt the bed beside her.

Empty. Cold.

"Collins?"

He'd left a penciled note on the old bureau.

Dear Little Miss Yellow Shoes,

Keep shining up the story of the V. City ' 'mine.'' Maybe somebody will swallow it. Meantime I already know what was in the wagons because

Ive got it and I dont figure to share it. But thanks for the special stuff anyway.

Goodbye,

BC

Ashton screamed. She screamed until she woke the whole place-- Rosa, the third whore, the senora, who stormed in and shouted at her.

Ashton spit in her face. The senora slapped her. She kept on sobbing and screaming.

Two days later, she found the button that had popped from Banquo Collins's pants. After examining it, and crying all over again, she put it in her box.

Hellish heat settled on Santa Fe. People moved as little as possible.

Every evening she sat on the hard chair, not knowing what to do, how to escape.

She didn't smile. No customers wanted her. Senora VasquezReilly

^gan to complain and threaten her with eviction. She didn't care.

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6o

HEAVEN AND HELL

MADELINE'S JOURNAL

July, 1865. To the city yesterday. Shermans insisted Andy drive the wagon, to protect me. Strange to ride that way, like a white mistress with her slave. For a few moments on the trip it was easy to imagine nothing had changed.

Impossible to imagine that in Charleston. Cooper's firm on Concord Street overlooks vast empty warehouses where turkey buzzards roost. He was absent, so left a message asking to see him later. Could not guess how he would receive the news.

Little has been rebuilt from the great fire of'61. The burned zone looks as though Gen'I. Sherman visited it. Rats and wild dogs roam amid the ruined chimneys and weed-choked foundations. Many homes near the Battery show shell damage. The house of Mr. Leverett Dawkins on East Bay untouched, however. . . .

If there was a fatter man than the old Whig Unionist Dawkins, Madeline had never met him. Fiftyish, with impeccable clothes specially tailored for him, Dawkins had thighs big as watermelons and a stomach round as that of an expectant mother of triplets. On the parlor wall behind him hung the inevitable array of ancestral portraits. When Madeline entered, Dawkins was already seated in his huge custom-made chair, gazing across the harbor at the rubble of Fort Sumter. He disliked having anyone see him walk or sit down.

She asked about the Mont Royal mortgages. There were two, totaling six hundred thousand dollars and held by Atlanta banks. Dawkins said his own Palmetto Bank would open soon, and he would ask his board to buy and consolidate the mortgages. "Mont Royal is fine collateral.

I'd like to hold the paper on it."

She described the sawmill idea. He was less encouraging.

"We won't have much to lend on schemes like that. Perhaps the board can find a thousand or two for a shed, some saw pits, and a year's wages for a gang of nigras. If you can find the nigras."

"I had thought of installing steam machinery--"

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"Out of the question if you must borrow to buy it. There are so many wanting to rebuild, begging for help. This is a wounded land, Madeline. Just look around the city."

"Yes, I have. Well, you're very generous to help with the mortgages, Leverett."

"Please don't consider it charity. The plantation is valuable--one of the finest in the district. The owner, your brother-in-law, is an es Lost Causes 61

teemed member of the community. And you, as the manager, are an excellent risk as well. An eminently responsible citizen."

He means, she thought sadly, I am not a troublemaker. How responsible would he think her if he knew the nature of her next call?

¦ So we will not proceed as fast as I Hoped.

Took myself next to the Freedmen's Bureau, on Meeting. A pugnacious little man with a harsh accent met me, calling himself Brevet Colonel Orpha C. Munro, of "Vuh-mont. ' His official title hardly less grand than "caliph" or "pasha' '--is sub-assistant commissioner, Charleston District.

I made my request. He said he felt sure' the bureau could obtain a teacher. He will notify me. I left with tHe feeling of having done some criminal deed.

Noting the time, I sent Andy off by himself and walked to Tradd Street to call on Judith before my meeting with Cooper.

Judith surprised me by saying he was home, and had been since returning to dine at noon.

"Instead of going back to the company, I stayed here to work on these," Cooper said. At his feet on the dry brown g:rass of the walled garden lay pencil sketches of a pier for the Carolina S hipping Company From the house came a hesitant version of the central theme from Mozart's Twenty-first Concerto, in C, played on a piano badly out of tune.

Cooper turned to his wife. "May we have some tea, or a reasonable substitute?" Judith smiled and retired. "Now . Madeline, what prompts this unexpected and pleasant visit?"

She sat down on a rusting bench of black-painted iron. "I want to start a school at Mont Royal."

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In the act of bending to gather the penciled sheets, Cooper jerked his head up and stared. His dark hair hung over his pale forehead. His .

sunken eyes were wary. "What kind of school, pray'?"'

"One to teach reading and arithmetic to anyone v*. ho wants to learn.

The freed Negroes in the district desperately need a few basic skills if they're to survive."

"No." Cooper crushed all the sketches and threw the ball under an azalea bush. His color was high. "No. I can't allow you to do it."

Equally emotional, she said, "I am not asking your permission, merely doing you the courtesy of telling you my intentions."