The woods finally thinned and a commercial center appeared. They sat astride their stolen Cleveland Bays, staring at people moving around. The town was bustling with activity. All seemed so ordered: colored and whites walked the same streets, and people waited their turn to purchase goods from the abundant pushcart vendors.
Douglas jumped off his horse first, followed by John. They tied their horses to a hitching post near a sweet gum tree and sat under the tree’s wide canopy. The shade of the pine trees in the woods was good while it lasted, but for the last hour, they had lost that cover and had ridden exposed to the open sun, sucking them dry. They were parched; their mouths felt like they were eating cotton. The last of the water-filled apples Rick had given them had been sacrificed to get the Bays moving.
The Bays drank from a lake, or a creek here and there, and chewed on vegetation here and there; they were ready to go for another few hours before needing to refuel. But not John or Douglas.
John stood up and panned his surroundings. He locked onto a toddler boy drinking from a cup of water. He thought about his mother’s smile, and he smiled back at her.
“Be right back,” he said to Douglas. “I need to wet my tongue. Don’t wander too far. We don’t know no one around here.”
While standing at the water fountain for whites only, John removed a flask from the poke sack and used a narrow dipper to fill the flask with water. He put the cap on the flask, then filled the other flask. As he put the flasks back in the poke sack, a dog barked. He dropped the poke sack to the ground.
A well-fed brindled canine snarled at John in a low rumble. John maintained eye contact with the predator, worried he’d soon sink his teeth in the fleshy part of his legs.
A man behind the dog bellowed, “Boy, you can’t read?!”
John raised his eyes and saw a short white man who was dressed like a country squire; he wore a brown Norfolk jacket and short baggy breaches. The predator growled as if to tell John not to look away from him. The county squire gave a quick tug of the leash, and the canine calmed down a bit. The squire pointed to the WHITES ONLY sign above the cooler.
“Sorry, sir,” John said, tipping his Stetson to the squire. He picked up his poke sack and skedaddled to the sweet gum tree, happy that the squire was only a Billingsly ghost.
As John approached the tree, Douglas was looking in the direction of a buxom, walnut-colored woman dressed in a dark green empire waist dress that hung just above the ground. She was strolling, as though looking for a target. Douglas stood against the tree, his back resting against the trunk, right leg firmly planted on the ground, and the sole of his left foot resting against the trunk just below his buttocks.
“Hi, good looking,” he said, smiling broadly, revealing long, gapped front teeth. He was ready to make nice.
She returned the smile, then looked at John drinking his water. She winked at him and batted her eyes at him, but it was Douglas’s more mature face that demanded her attention.
“Hi, yourself, handsome. What’s your name?” the harlot asked as she stood about a foot away from him, well within range for Douglas to smell her mingled scents of tantalizing perfume.
Douglas’s eyes were as dreamy as his mind. “Whatever you want it to be,” he said softly.
She inched closer, close enough for him to see the scales on her rouge-colored full lips. She stood tall and confidentially emitted an urbane smile as though she possessed a grand delightful secret. “Know what I’m thinking?” she said.
Douglas was distracted by looking at her high-rise bosom.
“How abouts I call you Lucky?” she said, stroking Douglas’s lips with the underside of her left index finger.
“That’ll be right by me.”
She jiggled her jugs for him and said unctuously, “You wanna play? I know a place we can go.”
“Go?”
She moved closer to Douglas, pinning him up against the sweet gum tree, then whispered “You know.” She grabbed his crotch, an effort to give him a bit of an appetizer before the main course. Her tongue scraped Douglas’s left earlobe. She said, “Got anything for me?”
Douglas felt the moisture on his ear and the warmth of her breath. “Like what?”
“A girl needs something to help pay her obligations,” she said.
“I can’t offer you no money.”
She refused to give up. “How abouts your friend?” she said, looking at John who was smiling and looking strikingly handsome in his trophy hat.
“He’s with me, and I know he got nothing.”
She looked at Douglas in his soft, dreamy eyes, able to see her reflection. Her mouth moved closer to his. As he closed his eyes anticipating a kiss, she grabbed the bulge in his pants with her right hand, then squeezed hard, digging her fingernails into flesh; Douglas hollered and winced. As he bent over in pain, she flounced away and sashayed off to another target.
John laughed at the sight of Douglas massaging his genitals. He was relieved Douglas did not give her any of their lucre, which he knew they’d need to last awhile for the long, arduous trek ahead.
“Be on the lookout for women like her, pretty and all. They can mess you up,” Douglas said, sounding winded as though he’d been punched in the stomach.
“Here,” John said handing Douglas the other flask that he had filled with water.
Douglas removed the cap from the sterling silver flask, took a swill of water, and another, and another, until all the water was gone.
No sooner had they stopped in town than two omens had greeted them. After John’s encounter with Billingsly’s ghost, and Douglas’s painful experience, it was time to move on.
Onward to Alabama.