Bob looked at me wild eyed.
“Excuse me,” I said, “but he belongs to me.”
It was the first thing I said to her, and when she throwed them gorgeous brown eyes on me, I like to have melted like ice in the sun. Pie was something.
“You can sleep out there with him, too, then, you high-yellow, cornlooking ugler-ation.”
“Wait a second,” Chase said. “I drug her all this way.”
“For what?”
“For the men.”
“She’s so ugly, she’d curdle a cow. Look, you want me to job you or not?”
“You can’t leave her in the pen,” Chase said. “She said she ain’t a nigger.”
Pie laughed. “She’s close enough!”
“Miss Abby wouldn’t like that. What if she gets hurt out there? Let her come upstairs and send the nigger to the pen. I got a stake in this, too,” he said.
Pie considered it. She looked at Bob and said, “G’wan to the back door out there. They’ll fetch you some eatings in the yard. You.” She pointed to me. “C’mon up.”
There weren’t nothing to do. It was late and I was exhausted. I turned to Bob, who looked downright objectable. “Sleepin’ here’s better’n the prairie, Bob,” I said. “I’ll come get you later.”
I was good to my word, too. I did come for him later, but he never forgave me for sending him out the door that day. That was the end of whatever closeness was between us. Just the way of things.
We followed Pie upstairs. She stopped at a room, throwed open the door, and pushed Chase inside. Then she turned to me and pointed to a room two doors down. “Go in there. Tell Miss Abby I sent you, and that you come to work. She’ll see you get a hot bath first. You smell like buffalo dung.”
“I don’t need no bath!”
She grabbed my hand, stomped down the hall, knocked on a door, flung it open, throwed me into the room, and closed the door behind me.
I found myself staring at the back of a husky, well-dressed white woman setting at a vanity. She turned away from the vanity and rose up to face me. She was wearing a long white fancy scarf ’round her neck. Atop that neck was a face with enough powder on it to pack the barrel of a cannon. Her lips was thick and painted red and clamped a cigar between them. Her forehead was high, and her face was flushed red and curdled in anger like old cheese. That woman was so ugly, she looked like a death threat. Behind her, the room was dimly lit by candles. The smell of the place was downright infernal. Come to think of it, I have never been in a hotel room in Kansas but that didn’t smell worse than the lowliest flophouse you could find in all of New England. The odor in that place was ripe enough to peel the wallpaper off the worst sitting room in Boston. The sole window in the room hadn’t been disturbed by water for years. It was dotted with specks of dead flies that clung to it like black dots. Along the far wall, which was lit up by two burning candles, two figures lounged on two beds that set side by side. Between the beds sat a tin bathtub that, to my reckoning, in the dim light, appeared to be filled with water and what looked to be a naked woman.
I started to lose consciousness then, for as my eyes took in the sight of these two figures, two young ones setting on the bed, one combing the other one’s hair, and the older one setting in the tub smoking a pipe, her love bags hanging low into the water, my fluids runned clear out of my head and my knees gived way. I slipped to the floor in a dead faint.
I was awakened a minute later by a hand slapping my chest. Miss Abby stood over me.
“You flat as a pancake,” she said dryly. She flipped me over onto my stomach, gripped my arse with a pair of hands that felt like ice tongs. “You small in that department, too,” she grunted, feeling my arse. “You young and homely. Where’d Pie get you?”
I didn’t wait. I leaped to my feet, and in doing so, that pretty white scarf of hers caught my arm and I heard it tear as I took off. I ripped that thing like paper and hit the door running and scampered out. I hit the hallway at full speed and made for the stairs, but two cowboys were coming up, so I busted into the closest door, which happened to be Pie’s room—just in time to see Chase with trousers down and Pie sitting on her bed with her dress pulled down to her waist.
The sight of them two chocolate love knobs standing there like fresh biscuits slowed my step, I reckon, long enough for Miss Abby, who was hot on my tail, to grab at my bonnet and rip it in half just as I dove under Pie’s bed.
“Git out from under there!” she hollered. It was a tight squeeze—the bedsprings was low—but if it was tight for me, it was tighter for Miss Abby, who was too big to lean over all the way and get at me. The smell under that feather bed was pretty seasoned though, downright rank, the smell of a thousand dreams come true, I reckon, being that its purpose was for nature’s deeds, and if I wasn’t worried ’bout getting broke in half, I would’a moved out from under it.
Miss Abby tried pulling the bed from side to side to expose me, but I clung to the springs and moved with the bed as she slung it.
Pie come ’round to the other side of the bed, leaned on all fours and placed her head on the floor. It was a tight fit down there but I could just see her face. “You better come out here,” she said.
“I ain’t.”
I heard the click of a Colt’s hammer snapping back. “I’ll get her out,” Chase said.
Pie stood up and I heard the sound of a slap, then Chase hollered, “Ow!”
“Put that peashooter up before I beat the cow-walkin’ hell outta you,” Pie said.
Miss Abby commenced to razzing Pie something terrible for me ripping her scarf and causing a ruckus in her business. She cussed Pie’s Ma. She cussed her Pa. She cussed all her relations in all directions.
“I’ll fix it,” Pie protested. “I’ll pay for the scarf.”
“You better. Git that girl out, or I’ll have Darg come up here.”
It growed silent. From where I lay, it felt like all the air had left the room. Pie spoke softly—I could hear the terror in her voice—“You don’t have to do that, missus. I’ll fix it. I promise. And I’ll pay for the scarf, missus.”
“Get busy counting your pennies, then.”
Miss Abby’s feet stomped toward the door and left.
Chase was standing there. I could see his bare feet and his boots from where I was. Suddenly Pie’s hand snatched up his boots, and I reckon she handed them to him, for she said, “Git.”
“I’ll straighten it out, Pie.”
“Skinflint! Dumbass. Who told you to bring me that snaggle-mouth headache here? Git out!”
He put on his boots, grumbling and muttering, then left. Pie slammed the door behind him and stood against it, sighing in the silence. I watched her feet. They slowly came toward the bed. She said softly, “It’s all right, honey. I ain’t gonna hurt ya.”
“You sure?” I said.
“Course, baby. You a young thing. You don’t know nuthin’. Sweet thing, ain’t got nobody in the world, coming here. Lord have mercy. It’s a shame, Miss Abby hollering about some silly old scarf. Missouri! Lord, the devil’s busy in this territory! Don’t be scared, sweetie. You gonna suffocate down there. C’mon out, baby.”
The soft tenderness of that woman’s voice moved my heart so much, I slipped out from under there. I come out on the opposite side of the bed, though, just in case she weren’t good for her word, but she was. I could see it in her face when I stood up, watching me from across the bed now, smiling, warm, dewy. She gestured to me with an arm. “C’mon over here, baby. Come ’round the side of the bed.”