Twenty-nine

 

After they’d dropped Jean off at her cottage and palavered with Fibber again, they left Ease at the Bonanza where he had to pull a rare night shift. Gillom managed to drive the wagon back up Tombstone Canyon. The mules scented their bed ground and pulled the now lighter freighter with some urgency, anxious for their nightly feed.

Anel was still with him. Gillom picked up the blanket and slipped the half-empty bottle of tequila into her dessert crate while the stablehand was unhitching the animals.

“Come to my rooms up Youngblood Hill. There’s a nice breeze, so the smelter smoke won’t linger. The stars should be pretty.”

“Need my esleep.”

“Tomorrow’s Monday. You don’t work Monday night, right?”

“Hokay. For a leetle time. Then I walk home.”

“Sure. We just got to be quiet. My landlady doesn’t want me entertaining guests late.”

They hiked up Youngblood Hill’s wooden stairways, whispering to each other in the milky moonlight, giggling often from a long afternoon of beer, wine, and tequila tasting. They climbed off the stairway halfway up to the highest landing, to cut across the grass hillside and sneak in behind Mrs. Blair’s house. Anel tried to keep her high-buttoned shoes from thumping the planks to Gillom’s back door, when he burped. The rude eruption set off more giggles and whispered sssshhh’s while he keyed his lock to slip inside his sparsely furnished rooms.

He lit a coal oil lamp and made sure his window curtains were pulled, when he spotted Mrs. Blair next door, peeking out her lit window now she realized Gillom was home. He lit another coal oil lamp, showed his girlfriend his built-in living room and kitchen.

“Nice home for you, Gil-lom. I need use, outhouse.” She squinched her eyes. “Too much wine.”

“Me, too. But my landlady’s up, listening. So no light, no talking.” A finger to his lips, he opened his back door, but the dark-haired beauty had plopped down on one of his kitchen chairs to unlace her calf-high boots to lessen any noise. Gillom didn’t wait for her but left the door open as he tramped up the hillside in the dark to the one-hole privy, doing what his landlady might expect.

He clomped back down to his doorway where his Mexican miss waited, backlit by smoky lamps.

“Wait.” Following her inspiration, the kid from El Paso sat down on a chair to pull off his own boots and socks, dump his holster and hat, so that he could join his girlfriend on her barefoot trip up to the little privy. There he patiently stood guard while she relieved herself, then led her over to a grassier slope the other side of the wooden structure, far enough away from Mrs. Blair’s back door so they could quietly converse without being overheard.

“Beautiful night.”

“Sí.”

“Full moon. Make a wish.”

She was silent a moment, thinking of something good. She could hear change jingling in his pocket. “You’ve gotta jingle silver coins, to make it come true. Whatcha wish for?”

“Us.… Just us.”

Gillom smiled and nodded. “Breeze is freshening, blowing that smelter smoke away. A big, dark cloud headed this direction, though. Smells like rain.”

The Latina followed his pointing finger. “Rain? You smell eet?”

“Moisture freshens the air and a charge builds in the air from the lightning. Oh yeah, I can smell rain. It’s comin’.”

She shook her head. “We weel see.”

Gillom sat down and pulled the cork from Ease’s bottle of Mexican cactus liquor. He took a swallow to wake himself up.

“Hooo. Care for a little more tarantula juice?” He passed the bottle over. Anel took a tentative sip of the yellowish liquor and gasped. She handed the bottle back, wiping her nose.

“Why did you come to Bisbee, Anel?”

“In Estados Unidos, I can make monies. I wish more to see. If Jean say right, Bisbee shut Red Light, I move. In Mexico, Zacatecas, the señors dig silver, drink, the women take care niños. I wish more.”

Gillom took a pull on the bottle. “Feel the same. I was bored with high school, wanted to see more of the world. Then I had some shooting trouble in El Paso. Got out of Texas quicker than I planned, but here I am.” He bowed facetiously, but could hear her frown in the dark.

“Guns bring mucho problema.”

“They got me my bank job. I don’t want to shoot anyone, Anel. Really, I don’t. I was just showing off this afternoon, tricks.”

“You play with guns, be fast, shoot good, you weel use them.”

“Only to protect you, missy. Or the bank’s customers.”

“You weel bore soon, estanding that bank house all day.”

“Not with you as our prettiest customer.” He reached an arm tired from all the gunplay and pulled her into him. This time their kiss was more urgent, forceful. Whether it was the foreign liquor, the sudden chill in the night air, or the heat of their skin rubbing, they got into each other’s essence, entwining in the dry grass like snakes in heat, running their hands all over, inside each other’s clothes, nuzzling necks, arms, any bare skin. Gillom was sweating, moisture on his forehead, running down his underarms, staining his cotton shirt.

Or maybe it was the electric charge in the night air? He came out of his sex haze to catch a breath and realized it had started to rain. Gillom stuck out his tongue to catch big fat drops on a stiffening breeze.

“Rain.”

She opened her eyes, trying to get her bearings, breathless. Anel rubbed her moist face.

“Eet is!”

“Sssshhh. It’s gonna get wet. Storm blew in fast. Come.”

They were up and moving when the first lightning struck the hillside above them, flaring the darkness. They were inside Gillom’s cottage when the thunder banged, smothering Anel’s frightened squeal. He pulled her to him, covering her mouth with his. He hoped his landlady hadn’t heard her shriek? Gillom picked her up in his arms, swung her slowly around several times before depositing her gently atop the feather mattress and blanket on one of the single beds built into the wooden cottage’s wall. He rolled over on top of her, scrunching himself next to the wall. Just in time, too, as another lightning strike and clap of thunder hit the hillside nearby, making them both jump with the sudden bang.

“Can’t go home now, honey. Not until this rain stops. This one’s gonna be a gullywasher.”

Anel nodded in the flickering lamplight. “Scare me.”

Gillom smiled. “We’ll just ride it out here.”

Another thunderclap made her cringe, cling to him. They could hear the rain hitting the roof hard, his glass windows pinging as wind drove the water on a slant. He hoped to God there were no big leaks, wash them down this hillside. Be tough climbing back up here, he thought, through steep mud.

Their wet bodies warmed the blanket and they were quickly kissing, groping one another again through their damp clothing, between moist sheets, helping each other undress. Gillom had to rise to get his jeans off, and he crabbed over her to blow out one of the lamps. Then he got up to take the other lamp around in his kitchen, see if there were any wet spots on the floor. Finding none of consequence, he turned down the coal oil lampwick, returned to their little bed to sink again into her arms. There, on that thin mattress, as the thunder rolled and the rain poured, they salved their lust, consummated their passion under a summer monsoon. He was awkward, not knowing quite how to proceed, not wanting to hurt her, but she helped fit him inside her. It was a little painful for her, but it was beautiful, and it was over fairly quick. No matter, it felt like love.

He awakened in tangled sheets, just before dawn. He could see well enough to see her face, rouge running from her night sweat, her lip paint smeared beyond the corners of her mouth. Gillom did what he’d dreamed of and licked the beauty spot on her right near cheek. It was real, didn’t smudge.

Anel opened a weary eye. “What?”

“Lick you like a cat.”

“Nooo. More esleep.”

“Gotta use the privy. I’ll fill a bucket in the kitchen, you wanna wash.”

“Come back … to me.…”

“Momentito.”

Gillom put on his shirt to barely cover himself, padded out the back door into a wet dawn. He walked up to the outhouse, glad his landlady wasn’t up yet.

Back in his kitchen, he filled a small basin and soaped up for a cold water whore’s bath. Anel was up wanting water so he poured them a couple glassfuls from a ceramic pitcher on a shelf. This was water from his outside barrel he’d taken time to boil, to kill any taint of typhoid from the local well. It tasted cool and sweet in his sex glow. Gillom stroked her bare shoulder like you’d pet a cat, admired her pouty breasts. Goddamn she’s pretty naked, he marveled. Anel padded out into the morning mist wearing nothing at all to hike up the hill herself.

She came back to the bed, which he’d straightened, shaking out the sheets. It was even better this second time. They could see each other for one thing, and their loving wasn’t so rushed, fumbling in the dark. Most of yesterday’s liquor was out of their systems, so they could better feel each other’s hot, sensitive skin. Their coupling was easier and he quickly fell into a natural rhythm with her body. Soft moans inspired him and he built up to his coming by degrees—long, slow, long, fast—and finally, as she urged him on with her feet raking his bare buttocks, spurring and pulling him into her deeper with each thrust, an ecstatic release!

After a moment catching his breath, nuzzling her smooth neck, Gillom rolled off her, fell back on his mattress and laughed. His new girlfriend was confused. “You laugh at me?”

“No, honey. It just feels so great. What love is.”

“Sex. You mis-take, for love.”

“No. Sex. Love. Together. Now I know how love feels.”

“Maybe you change your mind.”

“Maybe. But it sure will be fun to find out.” He tickled her bellybutton, sending her into spasms. “They say making love during a rainstorm will produce a girl, but sex during sunny weather results in a boy.”

“No, no niños. Not now. No need.”

Gillom suddenly turned serious. “How come you stood up there yesterday, let me shoot at you?”

“Because you need help, to show what you do. How good pistoletazo you are.”

“But you could have been killed.”

Anel smiled. “No. I believe you … are the best.”

He could only nod. And give her another kiss.

Ravenous, they dressed to go downtown for breakfast. It was Monday, so Anel didn’t have to work after her weekend shift at the Red Light. But Gillom was due at the bank. They slipped out his back door quietly, then got stuck in the mud trying to cut across the wet grass to get to the long stairway down Youngblood Hill. Anel swore in Spanish about getting her high-button shoes dirty. Gillom looked back over his shoulder to see Mrs. Blair peering out one of her windows into the gray morning mist, watching them leave. Maybe I can excuse my way out of this, he thought. Just providing a wayward miss shelter from a bad storm, ma’am.

The creek running from the spring at Castle Rock down Tombstone Canyon rushed by wider and faster, muddy red water racing toward the mouth of Mule Gulch. The two got off the bottom of the stairway and made their way slowly toward downtown, slogging along the muddy hillside, trying to keep from slipping and falling over. Anel’s yellow dress was muddy at the hems and Gillom’s jeans were spattered with dirt. They saw tree limbs and wooden siding floating by, even a soaked dog paddling hard for the far bank in the rushing water. Bisbee’s hillsides had been denuded by woodcutters and every heavy rain now caused a mudslide. Sulfurous smelter smoke had killed the canyon’s root plants as well. This flash flood was dangerously dirty, too. Cesspools overflowed and up Brewery Gulch on the right side of the dirt street, businesses had built their rear bathrooms on stilts over the creek with enclosed structures below. When a flash flood like this occurred, the owners went below and opened the up- and downstream side doors on their hinges to let the storm water give their outhouses a good flushing.

“I cannot go home!” Anel shouted as they neared the downtown junction of the canyon and the gulch, where two flood streams joined to run south onto the floodplain below Bisbee.

“Bank’s not gonna open today, either.” Nearing Main Street they could see the bank’s big wooden doors shut. The sheriff already had his chain gang out, trying to clean up the business streets, supervised by deputies. They noticed carcasses of dead animals washed up in doorways, a cat, a young steer, plus items of discarded apparel, from hats to stray shoes, being sniffed by a foraging mongrel dog that had ridden out the storm.

“There won’t be many restaurants open today, till they get this mess cleaned up.”

He pointed to several hand-painted signs some wag had planted outside the Bonanza, Ease’s saloon near the now sandy, watery bottom of the Gulch. NO FISHING ALLOWED HERE, stated one. FERRY LEAVES EVERY HOUR, another. Gillom grinned in spite of this municipal disaster.

“Let’s go back to my place, till this mess dries out. Maybe I can get my landlady to cook us breakfast. She enjoys my money, if not my female guests.”

“Boil water,” his girlfriend reminded.

“Already am. Now all the town’s wells will be tainted.”

Mrs. Blair did not cook them breakfast. She was so perturbed by the first big rainstorm of the summer and the leaks it had divulged in their roofs, she said nothing about Gillom’s entertaining. But her renter promised to get out the tar brush and help her caulk the new holes, so his premarital sinning was ignored. For the time being.

*   *   *

Next day, when the water downtown had subsided, one of his new duties was shoveling mud off the bank’s cement steps so customers could come in. But Gillom had more important things on his mind. So smitten was he, he arranged to get off early later in the week to meet his lady love at the Atlantic and Pacific Portrait Studio, a small shop just north of Castle Rock up Tombstone Canyon. Gillom told Anel to look her best, but she later had to go on to work at the Red Light, so the red satin dress with black lace trim she showed up in was pretty sexy.

Their photographer, C. E. Doll, was a short man with an overbearing attitude. Prissy, Gillom thought. He posed them just so in front of his compact Pony Premo camera as he adjusted its rectilinear lens. Their backdrop was ornate flocked wallpaper on one wall. Then Gillom changed his mind and asked Mr. Doll to put up a drop sheet of black velvet instead. This set the little photographer clucking his tongue, since he no longer had decisive control of his composition. His paying customer ignored the artistic tension.

Electric lights were rigged in the studio so the portraits didn’t require smoky flash powder often used for formal photographs at the time. Gillom went whole hog, ordering full-length portraits of them together and alone off the five-by-seven-inch glass plates. Plus face shots, from the shoulders up, one of them even kissing! For his solo portrait, Gillom made sure to hike Books’s matched pistols higher on his waist, reversing the gun butts forward, and pulling back his black morning coat he’d brought along so Books’s famous pistols were on display.

The bill came to twelve dollars, in advance. The teenager paid and they floated out the photographer’s after an hour’s hot work.

*   *   *

The couple celebrated, memorializing their carnal togetherness in the fancy Senate Saloon in the Gulch. Gillom ordered a Rocky Mountain Cooler.

“We can have more photographs printed, Anel, if you want to send them to your family and friends in Mexico. I want to send one of us together to my mother. Show her my new girlfriend.”

“Kissing?”

He grinned. “No, not kissing. That’s just for us.”

The young lady smiled and quaffed her Egg Flip.

“That one of me, sporting my guns, I may send to our sheriff in El Paso. Bastard tried to steal these pistols off me.”

“Why?”

“Because these are J. B. Books’s matched Remingtons. He was a famous shootist and I helped him die, so he willed ’em to me.”

She wrinkled her cute nose. “Help heem to die?”

The young gunfighter nodded. “Long story. But his guns are famous now, too, and valuable. No one else gets ’em unless they pry ’em from my cold, dead hands.”

“Why you push thees big men?” Anel punched him in the arm, irritated. “Thees sheriff, thees gambler, from Clif-ton? You wish to fight, get killed?”

“No, no, I don’t want to shoot anybody, or get killed. Sometimes you just have to show your skills, so bad people won’t bother us.”

She looked worried. “No more fights.”

Her boyfriend tried to reassure. “Not if I can help it.”