CHAPTER 11
Dinner was more exuberant than Louise would have anticipated. It was like the group had come to a decision to focus on the immediate victory and not the coming danger. Louise was found alive, after so many months. They were reunited and that was something to celebrate. The Fathers had brought some wine out of the root cellar, yet to be blessed, and so they drank as they ate their simple dinner of roasted vegetables and smoked meats. The tears were gone and there were many smiles around the table as they recounted some of the more humorous adventures of the Pony Express.
Louise heard about the other riders that couldn't be here - Ike, Cody, Noah, and Kid, and even about Sam and Emma, the sheriff and station mistress before Teaspoon and Rachel replaced them. Louise silently contemplated that not only had she, a young woman, been one of these riders but also a mute, a black man, and a Kiowa. She didn't know that a place so accepting of so many existed in the whole country nevermind that she could have been a part of it.
She had very little exposure to other people. Alexander was the center of her world, Jack and Cara were the only other people she even knew. Things may have occupied her time - reading, drawing, music, even sex, but this wasn't the same as having real relationships. It occurred to her how truly lonely she had been. Her wonder turned to anger as she thought about what Alexander had taken from her. She was supposed to be grateful for the material things he lavished on her. She was supposed to be happy that he kept her isolated, in captivity, that he raped her every single night, that he controlled her very will.
The rest of the table noticed that Louise had stopped listening. She was breathing heavily, her glassy eyes stared at the plate before her, and her right hand twisted her fork into the wood of the table beside her. The silver warped and the table bore the indents and scratches caused by the pressure with which she bore down.
"Lou." She snapped out of it as Jimmy, who was at her right side as he had been all night, placed his hand over hers and attempted to loosen her grip so he could take the fork away. She blinked and looked at him but continued to grip the handle of her fork with white knuckles. "Lou," he prodded softly, "let it go sweetheart." She finally opened her hand and let him take it from her.
Her chest rose and fell as she tried to control her breathing, little beads of sweat appeared across her forehead.
"That anger is justified," Father Tomasi told her. "And it is useful."
After dinner was over and the table had been cleared, Father Tomasi pulled Louise aside from the rest of the group. They sat in a corner of the room, talking in whispers. Rachel offered to make a pot of tea but Teaspoon asked for something stronger. When Jake pulled out a bottle of whiskey that he'd bought in the city, no one thought twice before accepting, even Father Bohannon. As a distraction, they decided to get a poker game going. They played their cards glancing every now and then at the young woman on the other side of the room.
After a few hands of going through the motions, Jimmy tapped out and got up from the table. Lou was still deep in conversation with the Father so he decided to do the one thing he could always do when he needed to clear his head; he'd clean his guns.
On his way to the room he was sharing with Buck and Colter, he saw Lou's door ajar. He caught a glimpse of lacy things laid out on the bed and without thinking he crept up to peak inside for a better look. There was a corset that had been discarded on the floor and on the bed there were other things, white and lacey underpants and sheer camisoles, silk stockings. For the first time in a long time he felt desire swell low in his gut.
He scanned the rest of the room till his eyes fell on the drawing of Jack that was propped up on the table. It was clear that he was in bed and naked. The heat that had started to burn under his skin was quickly doused by reality. This was the man that had loved her while he was on the opposite side of the country. This was the man that had tried to protect her and failed. This was the father of the baby that was occupying her womb this very moment.
He always knew he would share some part of her heart with Kid. He was her first love, it made sense. Would he have to share it with the memory of this man too?
She had all of him. There was no one that even came close. He recalled the words she had said to him after their first time together, "it's less like making love and more like being made whole." He was only ever whole with her. He wanted the chance to make her feel that way again, second only to wanting to kill the thing that took her from him in the first place.
"Guns," he reminded himself. "That'll help."
He went to the room across the hall, got out his guns and his cleaning supplies and went to work.
Jimmy had just finished putting away his guns when he heard footsteps tromping up the stairs, Folks were getting ready to turn in. They split the four bedrooms amongst them. Teaspoon was staying with the two priests. Rachel and Cara were sharing a room. Lou had her own room. That left the three younger men as bunkmates.
"Who gets the floor?" Jake asked, pulling a coin from his vest pocket. "Flip for it?"
"I'll take it," Jimmy said. "Doubt I'll sleep much anyway."
"Fine by me." Jake plopped down on one of the beds.
"Lou's sitting by the fire alone. She didn't want to come up yet," Buck told him.
"Maybe she wants to be alone."
"I don't think she really knows what she wants or needs right now, Jimmy. She's pretty lost."
Jimmy knew about that. He'd been adrift ever since she disappeared.
He found her by the fire, as Buck had said. She sat on the floor, legs curled under her, staring at the flames. She looked up when she heard him come in.
"You feeling alright Lou, ah Louise?" He was suddenly flustered. She had removed the pins from her hair and her auburn locks fell around her face and over her shoulders. The firelight caused her skin to glow and, for the first time, he allowed himself to notice the inviting swell of her breasts in her low cut bodice. Her boots sit next to the hearth and her stocking clad feet stuck out from under her skirts. She was a vision. It brought back memories.
"Mm hm," she sighed. "I'm not used to, that is, I don't usually sleep at this time of night."
"Of course. Do you want some company?" She shrugged and he decided that was enough. He took a seat next to her on the floor. She held a small book in her lap. "What's that?"
"Proof, I guess. It's Alexander's journal. It has his…plans for me in it." She looked like she might be ill.
"Plans?"
She stood abruptly, letting the book fall to the carpet. She stared down at it. "Go ahead and read it. You can burn it when you're done. I think I will try to sleep."
He watched her walk away, and when he heard her door open and close upstairs, he opened the journal and read.
I cannot even recall how many decades it has been since I have found my curiosity peaked in such a way. I find myself thinking upon Louise even when she is not with me, anticipating the next opportunity I will have to taste her, in every way possible.
He went on about her body, her mind. He wrote about how he compelled her, how he fucked her, the things she told him once she was under his control. Things Jimmy already knew and things he never wanted to.
He read about the night Grayson made the decision to take her away.
Tonight when I visited Louise at her hotel, she reeked of another man's sex. It enraged me in a way I did not think possible after all this time. It's an emotion I can only describe as jealousy. Ludicrous!
Alexander went on about how he weighed the decision of whether to drain her dead then and there or take her with him. His so-called affection for her had won out and he absconded with her that night.
This was his fault. Jimmy stumbled around the living room, not knowing what to do. He made it to a small trash barrel just in time to throw up into it.
After he had been sick, he curled up into a ball and cried.
Louise was the only one awake in the middle of the night to hear Jimmy's muffled sobs. She
tiptoed down the stairs and into the sitting room. She looked at the grown man in the corner, curled into himself like a child, quietly crying. She saw the book that lay open on the sofa next to the fire, which had dwindled to next to nothing. She stoked the embers and added more wood. Picking up Alexander's journal she looked at where he had left off.
"You didn't get very far," she said. She turned several pages and when she found what she was looking for, she read aloud.
"Her will is both infuriating and invigorating. I find nothing more satisfying than our battles for control. She clings," Louise paused to steady her voice, "she clings to this familial love and her love for this man, Hickok. These memories make it impossible for me to fully possess her. I will obliterate every last one until she knows nothing but me."
She put the book back down and crossed the room to him. She was in her nightgown and Jimmy could see practically all of her through the sheer white cotton. She had no shawl and showed no modesty. Like Eve in the garden, before the apple.
"He says I fought him over you, fiercely, and that I told him we were in love. Was that true?"
Jimmy, who had sat up when she began to read, tried to straighten himself, though he remained on the floor, still feeling weak. He nodded. "I love you with every piece of me." Tears rolled down his cheeks, cutting paths through his stubble.
"Then you cannot break down, " she told him. "I need you to tell me what is true and what is lies. I need your help." She offered her hand and helped pull him from the floor, When he stood, she looked up at him with something that was not quite recognition, but akin to it.
Lou moved through the room, pouring them both drinks from the open bottle of whiskey (a tiny amount for her, two fingers for him), adding logs to the fire. Jimmy watched her take control, noted the look of determination written across her face and smiled. It reminded him of how she'd been before. He realized this is how it would be now, a before and an after.
"Tell me." She sat down next to him on the small sofa. Very close, in her thin nightgown. He swallowed and put those thoughts aside. She seemed oblivious to her state of undress and her affect on him.
He began, "Well, I think I always loved you, if I'm being honest. There was this other rider, Kid. He found out first, about you. The two of you kept your secret for a bit. I guess that's when you fell in love with him, when the two of you fell in love." He sipped his whiskey. "After a while you started sleeping together. The rest of us knew but there was no judgment, Lou. You and Kid were, well we all figured you'd end up married. But then, I dunno. Kid had his ideas and you had yours. Kid believed there was a right way of doing things. You didn't want to lose the freedom you'd been able to make for yourself. So you two just kind of went back to being friends after a while.
"Even before the two of you called it quits, I loved you. But after, we just grew closer and… So this one night we ended up alone in the bunkhouse together and we made love." There was no other way he could describe it. "That's what it was. I knew it was the start of something amazing. A life together. The next morning, I kissed you goodbye before you rode off, and you never came back."
Tears rolled down both their faces as they stared into the fire. Lou finished the little bit of whiskey in her glass and wiped the tears from her cheeks. Jimmy just let the wetness soak into his stubble.
"I never should have stopped looking for you. I should have searched the whole damn country. I'm sorry, Lou. I'm so sorry."
"I never expected anyone to come for me. I didn't think there was anyone that cared. He made it seem like I was nothing before, like my life was nothing." More tears came and she wiped them away.
"That was never true. You mean so much to so many. And everything to me," he added.
She collapsed into a fit of real tears. Jimmy pulled her into his arms and they cried themselves to sleep together.