Lem was as good as his word and, from that night on, I stopped existing both for the Sergeant and for him. Back at the fort, he paid Tea Cake three dollars to switch bunks with him. Neither he nor the Sergeant would so much as glance my way. The misery and loneliness of the year that followed, I do not care to return to even in memory and will say only that the days were long and the nights were longer.
I came to many a cold dawn during those long months with my mind set on deserting. A couple of times, in the dark of night, my saddlebags stuffed with stolen potatoes and salt pork, I actually skinned out. Once Bunny and me made it all the way into the nearest town, Matanza, but then, coming upon that grimy settlement, I thought of the faces I would see there. And that put me in mind of all the faces I’d see for whatever remained of my miserable life.
Realizing that there would never again be even the slightest chance that the Sergeant’s would be among them caused me to turn around and head back. Though, once again, the Sergeant might regard me as the worst sort of sissy degenerate, a twist who’d taken advantage of a man when he was out of his head, I’d rather of died straight-out than live without ever seeing his face again. Though there wasn’t the speck of a hope of a chance for a future, I could not stop how I felt. Wager Swayne or Levi Allbright, I was devoted, heart and soul, to the man and would be until the day I died.
Only thing that kept me from killing myself during that awful year was knowing that Iyaiya was waiting for me on the other side and I couldn’t endure an eternity of the wrath she would rain upon me if I took my own life.
After months of no one speaking a word to me that wasn’t an order, I got so lonely I rode into Matanza just to have a bit of company. Matanza had livened up considerably since I’d last passed through. Five saloons, four with whorehouses upstairs, had sprouted along the single street, an avenue of either choking dust or hoof-churned muck. Chubby thighs collared with lace garters, dainty toes pointing, poked out of second-story windows luring white cowboys into one of the whites-only establishments.
All this growth among fancy houses and watering holes, to say nothing of a dry-goods store, a bank, and a hotel was because of the ranch owners who’d turned their herds loose when they went off to kill Yankees for the Confederacy and had come back to find that those beeves had gone forth and been most astonishing fruitful. Quick as the army and the slave owners could set their men free, the ranchers hired them to gather up the herds and drive them to San Francisco along the old Emigrant and Butterfield stage trails. Covering about twelve miles a day, the first big herds out of San Antonio arrived in Matanza during my second spring, my second at Fort Arroyo, when I was a friendless outcast.
The black cowboys, who made up about a fourth of this army of saddle tramps, had to straggle on past the saloons to a rickety, two-story structure, set off a ways out of town. I’d of been shot or lynched if I’d set foot in any of the white establishments. So, on that lilac-skyed evening at the end of a particularly lonely day, near the end of a particularly lonely year, I headed for the one place in town that catered to my people, The Last Chance Saloon.
The Last Chance was a mean, bare-walled place barely better than a barn in construction but considerably worse in aroma. Everyone inside was black except for a few of the girls and the white owner and bartender, Barney, a two-time Confederate deserter who left the Army of the South for good after being branded with a D on his hip. Most of the customers were cowboys with a sprinkling of soldiers. All of them were talking loud and acting like jackasses.
The Last Chance smelled like old beer, sawdust, sweat, wet leather, and every form of chewed, spit, and smoked tobacco you can imagine. It was packed that night as a large herd up from the Valley was bedded down outside of town. A couple of men waited in a line on the stairs leading to the four rooms on the second floor where the daughters of Eve plied their trade. All six of the card tables were filled.
I was sorry to see that Vikers, who’d risen over the past year and was more powerful than ever, sat at one of those tables with Greene and Caldwell guarding his back. But, since Vikers was a card cheat and had a table full of cowboys eager to get swindled, I didn’t think he’d notice me much, so I went on ahead and took a place at the crowded bar.
I’d just ordered a beer and settled in when I spotted a face reflected in the mirror that ran along behind the bottles. The mirror was so cloudy and spotted and cracked that the face came to me like a faded memory. It was Lem and he was staring back with none of the hostility he usually directed my way when I encountered him at the fort. Hoping he’d finally forgiven me, I smiled and raised my hand. Lem picked up his drink and turned his back to the bar. I finished my beer in one long swallow and ordered another.
From the loud remarks the men were passing back and forth, I figured out that Vikers had lured in a couple of wranglers and one big, fat pigeon. This last was a cook they called Frenchie as he was a Creole-type fellow out of New Orleans. Next to the trail boss, the cook was the most important man on the drive and he pulled down sixty dollar a month. Though Frenchie’s words were sweetened with the honeyed accent of his region, he was as surly as any other cook I ever knew right back to Solomon.
“Soldier boy!” Frenchie yelled at Vikers, who was studying his cards in a way meant to show he was worried. “Feels better in, man. Ante up! Ante up!”
Vikers fidgeted, acted uncertain, and played the greenhorn.
“Got a hunch, bet a bunch!” Frenchie urged, his nose wide open, smelling the pot he thought was his.
At the top of the stairs, Beulah, a heavy white woman corseted up like a battleship with her bosoms heaved high, bawled out, “Who’s next?” She kept her doughy face angled off, presenting a profile that featured a high forehead, thin lips, and a minimum of two double chins, as well as the aforementioned bosoms. Though there were three men waiting on the stairs, no one stepped forward.
“What’s wrong with you smoked Yankees?” she roared. “Ain’t you out here, standin’ in line for pussy?”
“Not off no half-nose woman,” a corporal with a haystack bush of dusty hair yelled back.
She howled insults of a racial nature, turned to advance on the man, and exposed the other side of her face, revealing a nose had been et up by the pox.
In the silence that followed, the sound of moist, snuffling breaths being sucked into and blown out of that black hole left every pecker in the place soft. This being bad for business, Barney flew out from behind the bar, holding a quirt, which he used to threaten Beulah back into her room. Lust brought folks to a low state. It was a sad business all around.
The only other one of the soiled doves I’d heard of was Mary the Murderer. Stories had passed around the barracks that Mary had opened a drifter up from his tail to his scuppers with a straight-edge razor after he beat her up then passed out. Scariest part of the deal was that Mary had no remorse for filleting the lout. Mary was a laudanum addict, and it was said that she’d dosed her victim the night of the murder. I’d never set eyes on the girl and had no desire to do so.
Back at Vikers’s table, one of the wranglers, a long-headed dimwit from somewhere back in hookworm country, prodded Vikers. “Push in or push off.”
Finally, Vikers, who was still acting hesitant in spite of the aces and kings he was known to keep up his sleeve, matched the pot, and cards were dealt. The long-headed wrangler picked his up and yelped, “Ooo-wee! Hell broke loose in Georgie!” The boy was as country as red flannel gravy and twice as thick.
“What you say?” the dealer asked the other wrangler.
“Hit me,” he answered.
The dealer flipped him a no-account up card. The Creole cook cackled and told the boy, “Eat acorns, son.”
The long-headed boy said, “Pull off again,” and drew a down card that made him say, “Shee-yit.”
Upstairs, doors opened and closed as the ladies did their business and boots clopped in and out as the men did theirs. Vikers kept fumbling and acting like he wasn’t sure how to bet. The pot built. Pretending to be fidgeting over his poke, counting the bills, Vikers slid one of the cards waiting up his sleeve into his hand then pushed his whole roll into the pot.
The two wranglers folded, throwing their cards down in disgust. Frenchie didn’t bother to hide a self-satisfied smirk as he believed he’d suckered Vikers. The cook matched the bet and raised. Vikers pulled out the wad he kept tucked into his boot for just such occasions and slapped that down.
The cook all but licked his chops for he was holding three aces. Vikers laid down a jacks high straight.
“Well, just goes to show, don’t it,” Vikers said, pretending amazement as he scooped up the pile. “Even a blind hog’ll get him an acorn now and again.”
Frenchie, seeing the way of it and that he’d been cheated, was going for the derringer tucked into his boot when he heard two revolvers being cocked. One at each side of his head where Greene and Caldwell had him boxed in.
Since Vikers wasn’t occupied anymore, it was time I left before he noticed me. Staring at the back of Lem’s head, I downed my beer and headed for the door. I wasn’t quick enough.
“Hey, Stanky,” Vikers hollered. “What’re you leaving for? Fun’s just starting.”
I was shoving the door open, could see Bunny hitched up outside waiting for me, was all but gone when hands fell on my shoulders and stopped me.
Caldwell and Greene shoved me back to Vikers, who looked me up and down, and said, “Well, well, if it isn’t our old friend Stanky. You’ve been laying pretty low. Hiding out. Don’t recall seeing you about much. You boys,” he asked Greene and Caldwell, “you recall seeing Stanky much? Like, oh say, the washroom?”
Oh, Lord Jesus, not again.
“Sure don’t,” Caldwell chimed in.
“Nope,” Greene agreed. “Never knowed anyone as soap shy as this here nancy boy.”
“Maybe it’s time we give him that bath was interrupted before. Allbright’s not here to save his pet,” Vikers said. “Strip him down, boys.”
I struggled, but there wasn’t any point. Vikers’s game had caught on with the drunk cowboys and they’d all joined in. I thought about how they nearly quirted a white woman in this place just because she showed the disease that had been shoved into her by these very men, and I did not want to think on what they’d do to me once they got my britches off.
I fought like a cougar, but my jacket was half off when Lem drew his sidearm, pointed it at Vikers, and said he’d burn him down unless I was turned loose.
“Look who we have here, boys,” Vikers said, happy as a cat with a new mouse to torture. “It’s Mr. Fancy’s wife, Mrs. Fancy. I thought the happy couple’d broken up. But here he is ready to defend his sweetheart’s honor. Is that what you’re doing, Mule? Defending your sweetheart’s honor?”
“Leave him be,” Lem said.
The drunk cowboys crowded in, waiting for Vikers to give the word. Knowing Lem didn’t have it in him to pull the trigger, Vikers said, “Have at him, boys,” and they lunged for my pants. I was grabbing around for a gun or knife to kill myself with when Lem fired off a round, and the mirror behind the bar shattered.
Everyone halted. The jackals dragging at my pants and the fellow with his fist cocked back ready to chug Lem in the face, they all froze.
“You want to know why Cathay don’t wash with us?” Lem demanded. “Because I know. I know something none of y’all know.”
Of course Lem knew my secret. He probably figured it out while he was trying to have his way with me. If he was ever going to throw me to the wolves and tell my secret, now’d be the time. The mob was about two seconds from finding it out for themselves anyway. I hoped that telling on me now would help Lem a mite. That’d make what was to come worth the dying.
Vikers, seeing a way to stretch the torture out a bit, said, “Tell us.”
“It’s because…” Lem looked over at me with so much hurt and betrayal in his eyes that I near accepted what was coming as my due. “It’s because…”
He’s a woman. Say it. Get it over with. Least I won’t have to face Iyaiya as a suicide.
“It’s because,” Lem started again then paused until the men holding him turned him loose. “It’s because he’s been cat-hauled.”
The hands dropped off me like I was on fire. Every slave had heard the whispered tales of cat-hauling, the most wicked of all the wicked tortures visited upon our captive bodies.
This worst of penalties was reserved exclusively for the slave who could not be broken. When whips and chains failed, the blackhearted master would tie the rebel to a tree, bare his back, and drag a furious tomcat across his naked skin. And that is only where the pain started. The true agony began when every cut made by that filthy, shit-burying animal inevitably went bad and festered. The smell, that’s what they said was the worst. The smell of a man rotting to death.
Lem had every ear when he spoke again. “Cathay never wanted anyone to see those terrible scars.”
The men turned us loose and, eyes averted, they backed away. Though shame bowed the others a bit, Vikers continued staring straight at me, eyes narrowed, trying to figure out what angle I was playing. Finally, he said, “That being the case, Cathay, I would like to apologize, for you have suffered enough. In addition, I would like to do something to make it up to you. I would like to give you a reward for surviving the cruelest of tortures.”
I did not like the way his lips twitched in the start of a smile. I tucked in my shirt, grabbed my hat, said, “No need,” and was heading for the door when Caldwell and Greene grabbed me again.
“No, I insist,” Vikers said. “It would be my honor. I, Justice Vikers, insist upon treating you to a poke.”
This idea caught on fast and the soldiers crowded back in around me.
Lem was the first to grab me. He slipped his gun into the deep pocket of my sack coat before I was swept upstairs. Vikers led the mob that halted outside the last door at the end of the hall. Vikers hailed the occupant inside the room. “We’ve got a customer for you, Mary.”
“Not Mary!” I screamed as the mob shoved me into the room of Mary the Murderer.