Past All Dishonor (3 page)

She was kneeling in front of the fireplace when I came back, the trunk open beside her, combing her hair over her face to dry it. “Guess what I did.”

“...Fell overboard?”

“I took me a bath.”

“Where?”

“In the river.”

“I’ve got a tank and sprinkler.”

“I wish I’d known. But I’m so dirty from traveling that I just felt awful. I knew my little shrimp was all washed up, and I couldn’t come in here unless I was as clean as he was.”

I was behind her, and she gave my leg a pat, and I was just opening my mouth to say she wasn’t coming in here or anywhere until she handed over that money and we figured a way to send it back. But just then she lifted her head and began combing in the opposite direction, and a big swatch of her hair hit me in the face, soft and warm and heavy, then went slipping down over my hands to the floor, and a clutch came in my throat so nothing would come out of it. “Did you say we’re going to eat?”

“...Yes, I’ll get busy.”

I had taken the rabbit off the fire when I went out looking for her, but I had left the potatoes half on, and they were boiling now, so I put the rabbit back, and set a pot of beans up there to heat, and she came out to keep me company, braiding her hair in one thick snaky coil that she kept throwing around my head like a lasso while I was digging into the beans with a spoon to keep them from burning. “Got a skillet?”

“There’s one under the coffee pot.”

“I’ll cook those beans.”

She took up the beans with the spoon, patted them into little cakes, and fried out a little bacon grease. Then she put in the bean cakes and fried them up brown. By then the rabbit and potatoes were ready, and I got to say those beans were pretty good. Come to find out, she didn’t learn that trick in New Orleans at all, but in Caracas, where she lived the last couple of years before she came west. “What did you do there?”

“Oh, this and that.”

“What you doing here, Morina?”

“Oh, these and those.”

“Of course, it’s not really my business.”

“I’m doing you, that’s my business.”

She was leaning close, over the little kitchen table I had back there, biting at a leg of rabbit with her big white teeth, and getting her cheek a little greasy down near the chin, and I thought of a way to get back to the money again, by saying “the business you got before any other business is to let me send back that money or do it yourself.” But instead I said: “There’s a jug of wine in that bin there, but all we got to drink it out of is tin cups.”

“Oh you’ve got something else, haven’t you?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“How much you want to bet?”

“... A night’s bed and board.”

“Bring on the wine.”

I got out the jug, a gallon jug with a big cork in it. She threw it over one shoulder, pulled the cork out with her teeth, then rocked it a couple of times to listen how much was in it. It was about half full. Then all of a sudden she fell on one knee and give it a jerk, and the wine poured in her mouth like a hose was doing it. Her throat throbbed like a canary bird’s does, and the wine gurgled down it for three or four seconds. Then she snapped the jug up again, swallowed three or four times, gasped, and said: “Did I spill any?”

“Not a drop.”

“Don’t I win?”

“I owe you a night’s bed and board.”

We went in and sat by the fire. “Does my shrimp smoke?”

“Not out here. The tobacco’s bad.”

“Wait.”

She got out a little green package of black
cigarrillos,
she called them, gave me one and took one herself. “
You
smoke?”

“Course I smoke.”

“That’s new to me.”

“Maybe a lot of things are new to you.”

She blew smoke in my eyes. I puffed my
cigarrillo
but I didn’t inhale it, because it was thick, white, sweet smoke I was afraid would make me sick. Mixed with the wine it just made me lazy. She kept blowing smoke in my mouth, looping her hair around my neck, and looking at me through the smoke. I put my arm around her, pulled her to me, and pushed my mouth up against hers. Then we were stretched out on the bearskin, the fire just a red glow all over the room, our faces hot, looking into each other’s eyes. I knew then I wasn’t going to say anything about the money that night, and that I wasn’t ever going to do it.

Next morning I woke up wondering if any of it was true, but I looked over and her black braid of hair was looped all over the pillow, and the blankets went up and down with her breathing, though she was so slim you could hardly see anybody was there. I didn’t make any move, but pretty soon a hand slid over and touched my hand, and I put my arms around her and we lay there a long time with the sleepy smell all around us. “I say what let’s do today.”

“What we going to do, live bait?”

“Go on a picnic.”

“Fried chicken picnic?”

“Fried chicken picnic and catch fish.”

“That sounds all right.”

After we fried up some eggs and ate them for breakfast I got in the boat and crossed over to the water front and got a chicken and some more eggs and other stuff. Then I cut off the chicken’s head and we picked him and fried him and boiled up the eggs and peeled them and packed all that and some bread and butter and fruit in a basket, and started out. I put some fishing lines in and a couple of miles down I threw out the anchor and we baited up with some worms I had dug the week before and put down our lines. It was one of those days you get once in six months. Everything was biting, from cats to perch, and we must have pulled in two dozen fish before we decided it was time to quit. It’s bare country down there, with mud flats all around, and no woods or anything, but here and there is a green grove of willow trees right down to the water’s edge. We shoved in there and went ashore, and there was an old hulk of a sailboat not far off, that had some short timbers in her I could prize off with the anchor prong, and in a few minutes we had a fire going and were broiling fish and getting out our other stuff, but saving our chicken for tonight. Then we lay on the bank and talked about the war. I hinted around I was for the South, to see how she felt, and of course she was for the South too, and I told her a little of what I was doing and she thought it was wonderful. “We going to have a separate country out here with Sacramento the capital and a whole passel of admirals and generals and ambassadors and ministers sashaying all around and horses and carriages and soldiers?”

“You got it all figured out.”

“I been in a capital.”

“Caracas?”

“Well?”

“For admirals you got to have a navy.”

“In San Francisco Bay, isn’t there enough room?”

“You’re way ahead of me.”

“And you, I bet you’ll be President.”

“Oh no, not me.”

“You’re the prettiest, why not?”

“You’re the prettiest. What’ll you be?”

“... Don’t you know?”

“Mrs. President.”

But that didn’t seem to go down at all, and she kept asking me didn’t I know what she’d be, and seemed surprised I didn’t know, and upset. She kept staring out at the sun, where it was sinking into the river, but when I mentioned we ought to take a swim, she brightened up, and we took off our clothes and went in. It was too cold to stay very long, but we paddled around and splashed water on each other, and her breasts drew up tight so she was so slim you could hardly believe it. Then we dressed and decided to eat supper back home. All the while we were in the grove, the boats had been clunking up and down, and the fishing sloops, and just as we got our basket packed, here came a steam launch going upriver and I hailed her and offered the Chinaman at the tiller a buck to tow us up to town and he caught my painter and we sat back and took it easy. It was pretty out there with the lights shining over the water and the launch engine panting and the Chink’s face showing red every time he opened his firebox and threw in a few chunks off his woodpile. A new moon was up there, but when I said let’s make a wish she began acting funny again and curled up against my shoulder without saying anything.

Next day she was restless and didn’t seem much interested when I said something about another picnic. We rowed upriver to the mud bar where my placer was, and she watched while I rocked out a spoonful of color, but then we rowed back and just sat around. After lunch she came back to where I was pumping up water into the shower tank and said she wanted to go out that night. “All right, if that’s how you feel about it. But I warn you right now it’s not the smartest thing you can do. They’re looking for you, and those officers, they circulate. Soon as they win five dollars on a wheel, and lap up a couple of drinks on the house, they’re off to the next place, and if we’re circulating too, it’s a hundred to one you’ll be seen.”

“Only one of them knows me.”

“That deputy you vexed so? Isn’t he enough?”

“I have a veil I can wear.”

“You can’t veil the shape, and unfortunately you uncovered so much of it for the captain that it’s probably impressed on everybody’s mind.”

“Well, listen at him.”

“That’s something I don’t forget in a hurry.”

“The shape’s on your mind too, then?”

“Looks a little that way.”

“Then act like it.”

She put her arms around me and I carried her inside, and after I acted like it a couple of times we lay there and she kept curling my hair around her finger and I said: “There’s only one way it’ll be safe for you to go over to Sacramento tonight and strut those places.”

“What way is that?”

“If you’re not wanted any more.”

“I am wanted, though.”

“Not if there’s been some mistake.”

She sat up on one elbow and looked at me a long time, her eyes with a shiny, fixed look to them like the eyes in a Chinese doll. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, you can never tell how things happen. If it was just a piece of foolishness, like you say it was, why maybe she’s found her pocketbook by now. Or the one that took it has maybe got ashamed of themself and sent it back. You never can tell about a thing like that. You could go over there. Row over and go down to the Wells, Fargo office and take one of their messengers and send him over to the Sheriff’s office with a little note or whatever you want to send—and find out.”

She kept staring, then laughed and kissed me. “Roger, you’ve given me the most wonderful idea.”

Around four she rowed across and I lost sight of her behind a dray on the embarcadero. But after a while she was back, and after she tied the boat up she ran in the house and came out with the glass I used when a little looking had to be done. She sat down on the grass and began to watch. Two or three boats were at the piers, ready to pull out for the night run to San Francisco, and I thought she was watching the
Antelope,
that was tied up near the bridge. But the
Antelope
pulled out and she stayed where she was, and then I saw it was the bridge she was watching. Pretty soon a stagecoach clattered over, and she followed it with the glass. Then she let out a yelp like some child that got a rattle it wanted. “Oh, oh, oh! Just look at the old fool!” She handed me the glass, and sure enough, on top of the coach, riding with the driver and messenger, was the deputy. “Where’s he going?”

“To grab me, in Cache Creek.”

“How did he get that idea?”

“From a note, that was sent by Wells, Fargo.” By now, that money and the way they were looking for her were riding me plenty, but I couldn’t help laughing at the slick way she had cleared the ground for a good time that night. The only people in Sacramento that knew what she looked like were the deputy and the woman. It didn’t look like the woman would be in the fast places, and that left the deputy. But there he was, chasing his tail in Yolo County dust.

I clipped out some stuff to mail, and when I went in the bedroom it was a sight. She had taken her dresses out and hung them up, to pick out which one to wear. But how so many clothes could come out of one small trunk was something you couldn’t believe. There were red ones and blue ones and green ones and silk ones with ruffles and satin ones with nets to go over them. They caused me to go on one or two more trips across the river before we started out. One was to get a white shirt in place of the red flannel ones I’d been wearing, like they had in ’49, and most of them haven’t been washed since, if you ask me. The other, once I got into the gray suit and topper I brought from Annapolis with me and hadn’t even unpacked, was to get a cab. She decided on a black lace dress, with a great red flower pinned to the belt, and a little bonnet with ribbons, like a poke bonnet except it was all black lace, and I just couldn’t bear fetching her there in a rowboat. The driver whistled when we pulled up at the shack, and she was something to see all right, as she came stepping out, holding up her skirt with both hands and looking so slim a breeze might blow her away. Talk stopped when we went in the Western for dinner, and all over the dining room you could hear them whispering about her and asking who she was. I tried to think about the money, but I couldn’t, and all I could think of was how proud I was of her and how much I loved her.

We hit the gambling halls as soon as we put away some Hangtown fry and bear steak. She had a system gambling, and I never forgot it and it’s made me plenty since. She’d stand at the roulette table as icy cold as something made of marble, and look at the wheel and yet not look at it, and never show any feeling at all, whether she was winning, losing, or just yawing along. She’d bet a buck on the first twelve, then as soon as she was playing on their money she’d up the bet to two dollars. Then when she got a little ahead she’d keep betting two dollars on the first twelve, but put one dollar on the first four. Then when she cashed her first double bet, she’d up the bet on the first twelve to five dollars, on the first four to two dollars, and lay a dollar bet on number one. That way, instead of coppering her bet, the way most of them do, she was lining it up for a killing when she really got one. The bets on the first twelve, when she cashed one, paid enough to keep her nearly even. But when she cashed on the first four, that was good odds, and she cashed on the first twelve too. And when she cashed number one, which she did a couple of times, it was real odds, plus good odds, plus some odds, and it wasn’t long before she had a pile. It surprised me she could figure it up like that and didn’t just trust to luck. Between those dresses and the silver that was stacked up so it touched her breasts, I began to see something I hadn’t known was there.