OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel) (21 page)

"We
've been arrested for prostitution, haven't we?"

Dixie
's eyes went wide. "You didn't
know
? Honey! We just assumed when you walked right up and talked to us like we was decent folks—"

"Oh, don't let her tease you, Dixie," chided Belle. "She maybe had me fooled, there at the start, but she said she was on a trail drive, didn't she? And look how brassy she was with the Major. And her language. She's a working girl too."

And actually, the term "working girl"
didn't
sound foreign to me at all...though I suspected I liked working
woman
better.

Oh no. No no no! Surely I wasn
't in such deep denial I would block out
that
kind of past...was I?

All I could do was ask questions. We had the time, anyway.

Turns out, Belle and Dixie had gone become prosti—become "working girls" as a simple business decision, since they hadn't leaned toward housecleaning and didn't have either the education or reputation to teach school. They'd wanted to be independent.

I wanted to be independent.

Decent folks, they explained, wouldn't give "soiled doves" like them the time of day—though Belle let the word "whore" slip, Dixie corrected her with a euphemism. Still, they didn't care for decent folks, so what did that matter?

I
'd given them the time of day, I remembered, uneasy.

There were expensive brothels, apparently called
"boardinghouses," back East—perhaps as near as St. Louis and New Orleans—which employed educated women who could hold cultured conversations with the high-class customers, along with providing the expected services. But Belle and Dixie had heard that such houses' landlords would take their clothing so that the girls couldn't even go out on the street, making it more like a prison than a job. Out West, at least they had their days to themselves, and they earned far more than domestics.

I was from the East, from someplace with telephones, and I had soft hands that had never plucked a turkey. I was educated. I
'd been found without any clothes.

Oh. My. God.

"Girls," interrupted the young corporal in charge of the little, two-cell stockade. "Your landlord is here."

Belle and Dixie stood. As soon as the soldier unlocked our door, they rushed out, talking over each other. I stood more slowly, and not just because of my sore hip and my throbbing knee.

Was I really a
prostitute
?

By the time I
'd limped to the doorway, Dixie and Belle and the man who'd shown up for them stood on the wooden walk outside the cramped jail, and I could see a shiny buggy behind them. The man—Thompson, their so-called landlord, which I realized now mean pimp—looked at me and said, "She's a bit long in the tooth, isn't she?" He had a nasal, northern accent.
A Yankee accent.

I tried not to take it personally. It wasn
't like I was interviewing for a job, right? Even if I
was
a working woman, that didn't mean I couldn't find new career opportunities. 

"All I need is a ride to town," I told him. There had to be
some
kind of authorities in Dodge City, right? There had to be a police station, or a church group, or a hospital, or maybe a really competent marshal—someone who could help me.
Anyone
who could help me.

Thompson took his time looking me up and down—long in the tooth, was I? I squared my shoulders and looked back. His long coat was clean-pressed, his boots were shiny, his hair was neatly oiled and his long, golden moustache was waxed. He was the best dressed man I
'd run into yet, outside of Major FurFace. Boardinghouses must do good business.

He gave me the creeps. But I wanted to leave.

I really really really wanted to leave.

I hoped I
'd learned not to antagonize the natives by now. "Please," I said, my voice steady. "May I have a ride into town?"

The private who
'd brought Thompson in said, "She doesn't work for you?" He of course said it to Thompson.

Thompson said, "She might.
" Then he looked at me, eyes gleeful, and finished his little knot of control:  "Rides aren't free."

And there he had me—stay in jail, or indebt myself to him. Except...suddenly, like a burst of sunlight, I remembered the bandana shoved in my pocket. Bless those sweet, sweet cowboys!  "I
've got money!" I offered, reaching for it in my pocket. It was there—I hadn't lost it! "Well, change, anyway. It's something."

"It
's not enough," he said, without even seeing how much I had. Which meant he wasn't after money at all. Not
my
money.

He glanced over his shoulder, at the women who
'd climbed into the buggy to wait for me, and he said "We'll try her out tonight; Virginia's room is empty." Then he jerked his chin at me and said, "Come along."

I could see the sky, past him; it had a golden sort of light. I hadn
't spent days in the open, grassy wilderness not to be able to read its color and slant; sunset was approaching, and fast. Lighting around here sucked. If I didn't find a way to Dodge now, I would probably spend the night here. In jail.

But if he gave me a ride, then he would win. I no longer trusted that I could escape. I sure couldn
't trust that people would be nice. So odds were, he would win. If I had the strength to do nothing else with my wreck of a self, I wouldn't allow anyone else victimize me. Not again.

I would victimize myself, before I
'd let that happen.

I turned around and limped back into the cell.

I heard Thompson snarl the word, "Ingrate!" and then the thud of his footsteps on the wooden walk outside.

Belle
's voice called, "Good luck, Lillabit!"

The corporal in the front room leaned in the cell doorway in amazement. Real security conscious, this guy. If I were a desperado I could jump him, steal his pistol...

And do what, shoot him? He wasn't one of the men who'd thrown me in, and even they hadn't threatened my life. I didn't
want
to shoot him. My knee hurt. My hip hurt. I'd already tried fighting and—big surprise—I sucked at it. So I gave up. I slid down the wall, onto the filthy floor, and I just gave up.

"Doesn
't she want to go?" asked the private, and the corporal asked, "Don't you want to go?"

"
Can
I go?" I didn't bother to look up, sure that he couldn't really mean it. That would mean things working out for me.

"I could run out and catch him," offered the private. See? They hadn
't meant I could go free, just that I could go with Thompson. I shook my head.

"I
'm not going with him. I don't work for him."

The soldier looked honestly flustered. "I
'm sorry, ma'am. We just assumed.... What house
do
you work at?"

I looked up at the high, barred window at the back of the cell—almost nightfall.

"Ma'am?"

"I don
't work at any boardinghouses."

"Maybe one of the saloons—The Lady Gay?" prompted the corporal, obviously not believing me. "The Green Front?
" He glanced nervously over his shoulder, at where the private shrugged, unable to contribute. "The Commie-Cue Theater?"

"I don
't work in town," I insisted, bothered by how thin and scared my voice came out. "I tried to tell your Major; I'm new here. I'm not like those other women. I'm not a hooker." Not now, anyway. "So what happens when nobody comes for me?"

"Now ma
'am, surely somebody will come! It doesn't have to be your employer," insisted the corporal. "Do you have a father? A brother? A husband?"

The private added, "You must know
somebody
." By which they clearly meant somebody male. I wasn't real without somebody male. Which wasn't fair—but there I was.

I didn
't have much choice, did I? My pride was only so strong; my fear was stronger. "Benj Cooper. A man named Benj Cooper might be willing to come for me." There.

The two soldiers exchanged looks. Then the corporal asked, "Who?"

"Benjamin Cooper. From Texas."

"Don
't recall none of the businessmen in town with that name," murmured the private, and the corporal shook his head.

"He isn
't a businessman, he's a cowboy. He's working a trail drive going north."

Now the soldiers exchanged looks of dismay. I recognized that familiar sinking in the pit of my stomach. Life was about to kick me in the face again, wasn
't it? "What's wrong?"

"Well, ma
'am. It's just...there's a whole passel of Texas cowboys in town; will be all summer. I expect in the morning we could send word around the grazing area south of town, or with one of the buyers, but...."

I imagine my look of dismay outdid theirs. "They aren
't selling their cattle," I said. "I'm not even positive they'll be here after tomorrow morning. They're heading north to Wyoming."

A heavy silence descended on the cramped little jail cell. Then the corporal said, "If a few days go by and no one comes, I imagine they
'll release you anyhow."

And looking pained, he shut and locked the barred door.

I leaned my head on my drawn up knee—the one that didn't hurt—and tried with everything I had to vanish off the face of the earth.

Not surprisingly, I failed.

Chapter 10 – Dodge City

Uncertainties were all I had to occupy myself, and they grew so heavy I had little appetite for the dinner—"with extra pudding"—the corporal brought for me. Night made things worse. The soldiers brought me several blankets and a pillow, but they also shut a second, outer door on my cell, a wooden one that covered the bars for privacy. I found myself in a four-by-six space of complete blackness.

Complete except for the stars, outside a window so high I could see only the sky through it, checkered by a grating like a chessboard. I didn
't get too close to the window. The smelly black hole was somewhere under there.

I found I could cry more after all, much more easily than I could sleep. I tried curling up on the wood floor, as far from the hole as possible...but I still thought I heard things crawling down there. At one point I heard the corporal changing shifts with another soldier, and my combined fears had me rigid—what kind of man was
this
one? If he was like the other corporal, or the privates, or most of the cowboys, I would be fine. But what if he was like the major, or Thompson-the-pimp?

I wasn
't
really
a prostitute, was I?

I hated having no say in what happened to me.

I shivered. I cried. I stayed awake until the square of checkerboard window grew gray, and a bugle sounded reveille. I eventually had to use the damned hole, which made me less afraid of but more disgusted by it. Dizzy with exhaustion, I picked at the breakfast the new soldier finally brought me. I didn't notice what it was, concentrating instead of staying awake.

If it was morning, Benj might be coming for me.

But the sun rose higher. I heard soldiers drilling on the parade grounds. I heard them finish. I began to fall asleep and then jerk myself awake, on and off in fits, as if I had to be awake or risk missing Benj. My original corporal came back on duty, and muttered angrily with the soldier he'd come to relieve, spitting the word "Major" as if it were a curse. When he saw I was awake, he said something about being truly sorry for this...to be honest, I wasn't paying very close attention. I was so tired, and Benj might be coming any minute.

But Benj didn
't come.

I cried again, and finally fell either asleep or unconscious.

The woman has been deleted. There is no boardroom. There is no lawsuit. Attack? Who was attacked? Not she...she doesn
't exist.

Drugs pour through her, always more drugs, bending her reality, nullifying her identity. Although her eyes are covered, she starts to see things. Waving grass. Blue sky. Land as untouched as it was hundreds of years ago. The voice tells her where she is. When she fights the words, struggles to reclaim some hold on her identity, she feels the chill of more drugs in her veins. They are more powerful than she, because she is nobody. Reality fades again, and she
's floating into a tunnel, a void. Everything fades....

A footstep. Something familiar woke me, pulled me from my nightmare in time to hear the footstep. It hadn't even reached the stockade yet—my cell's outer door was open again, and I could see only the corporal through the grating. And yet, something about that single, solitary footstep called to me.