A/N: Contains some sexual connotations in this piece—nothing graphic. 

The first hour was pure misery. By the second, I’d almost gotten used to strange hands cupping my backside or brushing against my breast. Almost.

Then it rained. 

Leaning against the window, my nose was all but pressed to the glass pane. Damp air made the sateen dress cling to my body, outlining curves that shouldn’t be shown. I tugged at my waist, wishing for all the world it was my cotton shift and I was somewhere else.

A mid-summer spurt of showers. Rain always reminded me of the meadow just behind the barn, with its tall grasses so green and sweet smelling. Male sweat and stale tobacco were welcome then, and honest in their coming. 

A man rushed in out of the wet, taking off his hat and slapping it against his thigh. His movements wasted no motion—the confidence of someone who knows his place in the world. My Samuel was the same—before. 

Lil brushed against my shoulder. “Now that would be Scott Lancer.” She huddled in and pulled on my capped sleeve, like a sister with a big secret. “You missed the big doin’s a month ago. They say he and his brother rousted out Day Pardee and his gang.”

The names meant nothing to me.

“Like some fairytale, him and his brother comin’ here. This one went to some fancy school. Johnny now…” Lil’s rouged mouth formed a wide “o” and she let out a small moan of want. “Well, he’s dark and wild-looking. I’d sure like to see what he’s got to offer a girl.”

The heat rose to my cheeks.    

“That Scott Lancer paints a pretty picture, too, don’t he? Real…watchable.” Lil shrugged her dress down, exposing the deep cleft between her breasts. “But I wanna do more than watch.”

Taking off with a determined strut, her hips swaying, Lil slowed and stopped by the man’s table, one hand casually going to the side, pulling her dress tight. She leaned over, bulging out of her bodice. “What can I get for you, honey?”

The man shifted in his chair, fighting a grin. “I’ll take a beer, Miss.”

Lil ran a ruby-tipped finger from his shoulder down to rest atop his wrist. “Just a beer? Now we’re a real friendly sort in here, Mr. Lancer. And I like to be friendly, especially with such a handsome man.”

He eased his hand from under her fingers. Gaze lowering, he scanned what was in front of him, then his eyes lifted. “Just the drink.”

Stalking back to the bar’s edge, Lil hissed in anger. “I’ll be goddamned. That high falutin’ son-of-a-bitch turned me down.”

Blinking, I swallowed a tickle of laughter. Fire still smoldered in Lil’s eyes when she grabbed my elbow. “Think you can do better, Rosie? Go on. Maybe he likes his women green. Break you in real nice, I bet.” Lil cocked her head to the far side of the counter. “Or maybe his fancies run to the pig across the room.”

Carlson was standing in the corner with folded arms. Shuddering, I remembered the hard press of his desk against the small of my back, then retching all over his tidied papers when he reached for his trouser buttons. It earned me a back-handed cuff—and the satisfaction of watching him wilt. There’d been no one except Samuel. Not yet.

Lil pushed me forward. “Go on, earn your keep.”

The man was tall, even sitting down. And sunburned, a small span of freckles marched across his nose under the peel. He looked up with a wry expression as I approached.

“Are the General’s reinforcements being deployed already?”

“The General? Who…Lil?”

“Is that her name? We never ventured into real…conversation.”

Glancing at the frowning Carlson, my voice went crisp. “They don’t like for people to just come in and sit. You have to order something.”

He tilted his head, assessing. “I thought I’d ordered a beer.” Lifting a shoulder, he shrugged. “But perhaps not. I’ll have the wettest you can find, to complement the weather.”

Nodding, I hurried to the task, and side-eyed him from the pock-marked bar. The pistol on his hip rode too high—he was no shooter. He had an easy way of walking that caught a woman’s eye. Dashing in a rumpled sort of way. The kind of solid fantasy a woman might fashion to dress up a pawed-over, end-of-the-line life.

“Rosie! Beer’s up.” Jim’s voice, full of irritation at my daydreaming, pealed out from behind the bar. The glass was almost half-full of head. A week ago, I didn’t know there were rules: beer mostly foam, liquor under the bar—watered down. Give the customer what he wants, upstairs and down, but only if it profits the house. The litany of rules rang like a bell in my head. Ding! Ding! Ding! An echo of the slaps that went along with the learning. Not meeting Jim’s eyes, I took the beer. 

My hands trembled and the drink tipped from rim to rim, dribbling onto the man’s sleeve. Rearing back, I waited for a grab and pinch that never came.

A quicksilver of a smile crossed his face instead. “You’re not very good at this, are you?”

“I’m…new.”

He leaned in and a raindrop fell from the point of his chin. “Someone watching?”

My eyes flicked to Carlson, confirming it.    

“Then sit. We’ll give him a good show.”

He swept a long finger under his chin and wiped the rest of the rain away. Ignoring the spillage on his sleeve, he held up his beer in a mock salute. “In the city, rain has the common decency to let you know when it’s coming and it lasts for hours. These short spurts only serve to agitate, and make more mud.”

From the looks of his pant cuffs and boots, he had encountered mud sometime this morning. A lot of it.

His right hand was gripping the handle of the glass, big and raw-looking, the knuckles scarred with red and cracked. The kind you get from repeated washings—or a fight or two. He brought up a pair of new hard-leather gloves from his waist band and placed them on the table. Butter yellow, they seemed out of place in all his brown.

He caught her smile. “The last pair at the store in my size. Not exactly the color I was looking for in gloves.”

“They look real pretty.”

His jaw tightened as he felt along the ribbed seam of the left glove.

“What I mean is, you’ll stand out with them.”

He sagged back in the chair. “I seem to stand out a bit too much already.”

A flash of blisters crowned the meaty part of his palm, when he pushed damp bangs out of his eyes. So he was no cowboy, either. Just like Samuel hadn’t been a farmer. At least starting out. Oh, how his fingers and hands blistered that first month!

Without thinking, I took hold of his hand and turned it palm upwards, fingering around the sore spots. “My husband used to get these. They’d sometimes fester if he didn’t take care of them. A good practice is to soak them right away in warm water then keep them dry and clean. In time, they callous over and you’ll be as good as new. Better, even.”  

He watched me, but I couldn’t read his expression. Maybe he was staring at my own calloused hands and chipped fingernails.

He captured my left hand and traced the white outline of my wedding band where it still showed against brown skin, his touch light, soothing.

“How long ago?”

The ring was warm against my chest, pinned into the folds of my chemise. “One month.” But Samuel had been dead inside long before his funeral ever took place. 

“So you are…new.” His words hinted at things I didn’t want to relive. Instead, I concentrated on the rain as it tip-tapped against the window beside our table.

Mindful of what Lil had said when he entered the saloon, and of the fact I needed to earn my keep, I looked at him. Rule number three: Keep the customer engaged. It wasn’t hard. “How long have you been here?”

He ran a finger around the rim of his glass. “Thirty-three days. But then, who’s counting?”

He was. Counting the days, just like me. And pulling my old dress out of its hiding place in my pillow case, running my hands along the soft, blue cloth to remind me of where I came from, who I once was. My pillowcase dreams.

“As I was saying, the rain in Boston has presence, not like this mere smattering.”

Back east, then. Should have guessed. Casey Wentz, the drummer who used to stop by the farm every fourth Tuesday sounded just like him. Samuel always admonished the boy—“Talk right! You’re in a new country now!” This man looked like he could withstand some good-natured ribbing, but there was serious side to him. Maybe he’d had enough lately, if those marks on his knuckles were any indication.  

“So you’re new, too.”

He nodded. “A very long and complicated story. Suffice to say that I found a father…and a brother. And I don’t know what to do with either of them.”

“Why do you need to do anything with them?”

“Quite right. The saving grace is that they don’t know what to do with me, either.” He said it with a sad smile and looked out the window. “What would you do if you weren’t sure you could make it?”

Now there was a question. A hundred times I told myself it would be all right to come to this place. And a hundred times my little voice yelled back that it was a lie. By the second day of having a roof over my head and some semblance of food, I learned to tolerate it. After a week, I’d begun to believe it. The little voice had gone quiet—it scared me.

Those blisters on his hand came to mind. “I guess I would keep trying.” 

A raucous laugh—Lil’s—came from the back corner of the saloon. Carlson moved from his perch beside the bar and slithered to where the noise was worst, one hand fanning the butt of his six-gun. My new family. It made my stomach hurt. Run, I wanted to tell him. Get away now. Our topic of conversation needed to be changed.

“What was Boston like?”

A smile, just a small one, graced the corner of his mouth, and grew until it reached his eyes. “Green and blooming. My grandfather would be cursing the golden rod about now.” His smile wavered a bit over the word grandfather then returned. “He would keep the windows closed during springtime; sure of the fact it would stop his sneezing.”

“Did it?”

“Never. Especially since I kept mine open.” He winked.

His eyes lit up telling me about the big harbor, his school, even the beginning of his Army life. It was small talk—family talk—and it made me ache inside.

“What about here?”

He sobered. “My father is bigger than I envisioned. Louder. My brother, Johnny? He’s difficult to describe so you would get a good picture. Colorful, maybe? I’ve never met anyone quite like him. Hard to figure out and there hasn’t been much time….”

Restless, he picked up his gloves and put them back down again. “The land here is wild and wonderful. It will take a lot of taming to make it work. My father has aspirations, you see.”

“And you?”

“A few, in Boston, before the war. Things came about that forced changes, and now I’m not sure they’re the same anymore.” He pinned me with a stare. “It’s been difficult coming out west.”

Searching. Trying to find his way. That’s what he was doing.

Tipping his glass, he swallowed the last bit of beer. “What about you?”

“We had dreams in the beginning.” The disease wasn’t so much to start, but watching him waste away was terrible. My tone became bitter. “All the west did for my husband was to send him into an early grave. And when the bank took over the farm, it was like losing him all over again.”  

His expression went unreadable again, eyes dark and troubled.

“A footstep behind my chair made me cringe. Carlson was there. The smell of urine and cigarette smoke preceded him. 

“You been dallying over here too long, Rosie. We got paying customers you need to attend to. Now.” He hauled me up against his hard chest, a smile splitting his face in two. “Upstairs.”

My lips pressed together—something, anything to stop them from trembling. Heat crept up my neck; my table mate’s eyes were probing.  

“Wait.” He dipped his hand into his shirt pocket and slid a few dollars across the table. “I’ll pay for her time.” 

“Mister, I’m thinkin’ this whore ain’t up to your standards, but it’s your money.”  Carlson reached for the greenbacks.

“I said I’ll pay…for her time. Not yours.” He divided the lot and pushed half of them towards me.

Eyes narrowed, Carlson looked down at the money, then back at me, his grip lessening. “Suit yourself. Bed’s up the stairs.”  

Something twisted in me as I stared at the man across the table. He wanted the same thing every saddle tramp that came through the swinging doors wanted, back east manners or not.   

Lil smirked at me as we walked past her. “What’s the matter, Rosie? Halo get tarnished a little? You just call if you need help. Maybe he’ll tip big for a little extra entertainment.”

My heart pounded with every step. Whether it was rage or the harsh sense of something good lost, I couldn’t tell. How could I have been so wrong?

The closed up room was dark, oppressive with the humidity, but he wasn’t going to see me, not in the light. Somehow that just made it worse.

“Set the lamp.”

My shoulders slumped. Lighting the wick, I watched our shadows jump against the wall, then turned from the lantern—and him—and reached for the buttons on my dress. Fumbling with the first, the second popped free from its threads.

“Rosie.”

My chin tilted upwards. “It’s Rosemary.”

Boot heels were muffled by the braided rag rug. His hand was on my shoulder. It was warm, burning straight through me, souring my stomach.

“Rosemary, stop. I don’t want it this way.”

Twisting around, my dress gaped apart. His eyes stayed even with mine—I had to give him credit. “Then what? You want me on my knees?”

He startled back, staring at the wadded-up blanket on the bed.  

Bile rose to the back of my throat. Once just a farmer’s wife with simple worries: counting the number of broken eggs in the henhouse, working through a summer storm that wreaked havoc with my root garden, finding cloth to make bedroom curtains. Once I’d slept in a hand-carved oaken bed, instead of this short cot and straw-stuffed mattress.

The sting of tears made me flinch, but he wouldn’t see me cry. The past few hours had meant nothing to Scott Lancer—and the world to me. Why did I expect him to give me a second thought?

My dress was open and the tops of my breasts showed full under the corset as I sought the laces. “You gave good money.” 

“Not for this.”

I wanted him to hurt, just as much as I did. “Why? Not good enough for you? Not like those fancied-up madams on the city streets, I bet. How much did you pay them?”

“God, just stop.”

My hands fluttered then stilled. Betraying tears, the same ones cried so many times before, threatened to spill. “You paid, damn you.” Clutching my dress together, I looked away.

“I’m no saint, Rosemary, but I don’t want this.”

My eyes brimmed. “Then what?”

He stalked to the far corner of the room and stood. “I want it to be tomorrow already.”

Barely spoken aloud, it stopped me cold.

His shoulders came up with a shrug and he turned around. “A man likes to feel needed, that he’s contributing—a part of a bigger whole.”

He was miserable, not seeing it. Men and their pride. Samuel was the very same. “Your family is here.”

“A family who I don’t know.”

“Still, it’s family.”

He blinked. It was wearing at him, I thought. Even the strongest of men had chinks in their armor. He wanted to be good at what he did. 

“It may just be a silly female desire, but you build dreams—together. You shore each other up.”

That silenced him. He was dead-on serious, thinking. Something passed over his face and the taut lines eased a bit. “I’m an idiot.”

“No, just hard to see past the blisters. This time will pass.”

“I’ve never been good at waiting.”

“Isn’t it worth it?”

He was thoughtful again. Maybe that new brother and father would turn the tide. He looked at me with solemn eyes. “What do you want Rosemary?”

“To be safe.” And to find myself again—the woman that got lost somewhere between sickness and hell. A hot lick of anger swirled, but I realized it was for me, not Scott Lancer. I stared down at my rumpled dress. What in God’s name was I doing here?

“Then do it.”

My own words were flung back at me, but they didn’t hold any meanness, just quiet resolution. My cheeks were hot with unshed tears. Completely alone—I never considered such a time, not until after the burial. The few people who attended had drifted off days afterwards, leaving me to the fields and the debt collectors.

“You can quit this place, Rosemary. You need to leave…as much as I need to stay.”

Grunts and groans of coupling grew louder behind the thin walls. A cold finger punched my spine. Sounds so foreign a week ago, but now commonplace. When had I given up?

He moved from the wall and dug into his back pocket. “Here.”

Men weren’t the only ones with pride. “Your family?”

He shook his head. “It’s not needed.”

“But I bet you are.”

His head canted to the side and he eyed me. “Perhaps.” Then softly, “You don’t belong here.”

There was a time, in the evenings especially, when Samuel would gather me to his side and we would stand together looking out over the meadow behind the barn. Building our dreams.

“Let me help, Rosemary.” 

Half-expecting him to pull his hand back, I looked at the crinkled bills in his palm, considered them for a long time. The money was there, just waiting…and so was my pillowcase.

The End