Renegade Page 3

  He stared at her with a puzzled frown, asking, “You’ll let me stay right here? All day?”

  She laughed and asked, “What’s the matter? You feared I’s after you’ fair white body?”

  He laughed and said, “Hardly. My fair white body was to be hanged by the neck until dead, dead, dead, just about an hour from now.”

  “Yeah, it’ll be sunup soon an’ it’s been a long night. You hungry?”

  “Not really. My stomach’s still knotted up and I’m a little bushed from running.”

  “Well, we’d best git some shut-eye, then.”

  Madame Octoroon stood up and let her red silk kimono slide from her tawny shoulders, then, stark naked save for the red garter, pulled the coverlet of her four-poster open to reveal black satin sheets as she added in a casual tone, “Take off your clothes. These sheets has just been laundered. You want to sleep by the wall or near the outside?”

  “You— want me to get in bed with you?”

  “Where else was you aimin’ to sleep? The floor? Come mornin’ we’ll do somethin’ about your hair an’ I’ll have one of the gals shop for a real flashy suit in a nigger shop I knows of. Shopkeeper will think she’s buyin’ for the professor. He’s a real sassy coon an’ not much smaller than you. You can likely get away with the boots you has. Look funny for a white man to be sportin’ the kind of shoes they sells.”

  She slid her shapely nude body into the bed and reclined on one elbow, smiling up at him as she asked, “What you waitin’ for? I thought you said you was tired.”

  “Uh, could I turn off the light?”

  “What you want the light out for? I thought you said I was pretty.”

  “You are, but I haven’t had a woman for a long time and— oh hell, those new Edison lamps are too damned bright!”

  She laughed and said, “Yeah, I been watchin’ the bulge of you’ britches, I thought you said you was tired. Douse the fool lamp if you’re uneasy ’bout undressin’ in front of folks with a hard-on.”

  He got to his feet and switched off the desk lamp, seeing for the first time how light it was getting outside as dawn peeked in at them through the lace curtains over the one small window. Aware he wasn’t really invisible, Walker hung the gunbelt over the back of the chair, peeled off the tunic and boots, then, facing away from the four-poster, took off the pants. He hadn’t thought to take the dead man’s underwear.

  Nude, he turned around and climbed quickly in beside the madame, pulling the covers over both of them as he lay his head on the slippery black pillow next to her henna-red hair. She giggled and he put a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t pull away, but she asked, “Hey, what you think you’ doin’, white stuff? I thought you was too tired.”

  “I said I was tired. I never said I was too tired!”

  “Do tell? Well, what makes you think I wants you messin’ with me? Did I say you was to mess with me?”

  “Hey, look, I don’t know what this game’s all about and, right now, I’m too mixed up to play games. I thought, when you suggested we go to bed together—”

  “I knows what you thought, white meat! You thought, just ’cause a lady was kind to you, you could take advantage of her. I told you I don’t pleasure the customers no more, didn’t I?”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll behave myself.”

  “You will?” She asked with a puzzled frown. Then, as he took his hand away, she snuggled closer, placing her own pink palm on his chest as she added, “I suspicion you really could sleep with a gal without you messin’ with her. You ain’t cold-natured, neither.”

  As if to prove her point, she ran her hand down his belly, slowly. When she started running her nails through his pubic hairs he sighed and said, “Hey, that’s cruelty to animals! I wish you’d make up your mind!”

  “That’s just what I’m doin’, Lieutenant Honey. You really means to let me have my own way, no matter what?”

  “I’m your guest. The hostess sets the rules.”

  “I like that. Not many men respects my wishes, you know?”

  “I wish you’d move that hand away from there, honey.”

  “I likes honey better’n Madame, too. You really mean to respect my wishes, huh?”

  “Damn it, I said I did, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, an’ I swear I thinks you means it. You forgetful’ who an’ what you’ in bed with, white meat?”

  “You’re not making it easy to pretend I’m here alone!”

  “I’m a whore. A nigger whore. How comes you figure I got all this here respect comin’, white meat?”

  “Because every human being has some respect coming, and it’s your house, your bed, and your body.”

  She sighed wistfully and took his shaft in her palm firmly as she said, “Oh yeah, I really am a fool for sweet-talkin’ men who can show it hard. You sure you respects me, just a little?”

  “Hey, are you crying, for God’s sake?”

  “Oh shut up an’ fuck me, you fool!”

  He did. With a great sigh of relief he put both arms around her and kissed her moist, hungry mouth, rolling atop her as she opened her brown thighs to him and guided his erection into place with a skill he preferred not to think about. As he entered her he gasped in pure animal lust, not really aware, until that moment, how long it had been and how good it felt to be inside a woman, any woman. Madame Octoroon locked her ankles around his buttocks and crooned, “Oh baby, baby, baby, do it! Do it to you’ mamma’s pussy! You like you’ mamma’s pussy, baby?”

  “It’s the nicest little pussy in the world!”

  “It’s you’ pussy, baby. I givin’ you pussy money can’t buy ‘cause I only does this for pleasure, now! Yeah, yeah, it pleasures me fine when you pounds like that and— oh shit, I think I’s coming!”

  He hooked his toes under the rail at the foot of the four-poster and drove himself deeper, shuddering in almost unendurable pleasure as he joined her in a long, lingering mutual orgasm. Then, as he lay atop her sweat-moistened body, her wet nipples crushed to his chest, he started to chuckle. The woman stiffened defensively and asked, “What’s so funny, white meat?”

  “A few hours ago a man teased me as I stood on Death Row. He said I’d be dead by now and that I’d never get to come again. It just came to me that my execution would be over about now, and that his pants are over there on that chair. He’s the one who’ll never come again, and as for me—”

  “Oh yeah, I can feel it gittin’ hard again! You want a French lesson to work it up or is you still in the saddle?”

  “Honey, I am going to screw you ’til you beg for mercy! You’ve no idea what it feels like to be in bed with a beautiful woman at the very moment Uncle Sam was fixing to hang you!”

  She laughed and moved her hips provocatively, saying, “Shit, that’ll be the day any one man can make me beg for mercy, but as long as you thinks I’s beautiful, you is purely welcome to try!”

  Chapter Three

  Dick Walker sat naked in the half-filled washtub as Madame Octoroon ran the henna rinse through his wet hair. To keep from staining her clothing, the madame was also nude. The afternoon sun illuminated both their bodies in raw desert light shaded only slightly by the lace curtains, but he’d gotten over his initial shyness with her by now. In fact, he’d spent the morning getting over a lot of inhibitions he’d never known he had. Madame Octoroon was a woman with lusty appetites and an amazing imagination. They’d done everything he’d ever heard of a man doing to a woman and a couple of things he’d never heard of and it had been broad daylight before they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms, the satin sheet under them stained and torn a bit.

  She’d moved around in front of him now, as he sat cross-legged in the tub, soaking his genitals in the soothing, soapy water as she worked the henna into the roots of his hairline. His head was tilted down, but he was staring right at her thighs and the dark triangle of pubic hair between them. Goddamn, she really knew how to move that nicely put-together pelvis. He noticed a pallid scar on one hip
bone and without thinking, asked her how she’d injured herself there.

  She said, “Oh, that’s a whip mark. Have another one on my back. Used to have more, but they’s mostly faded.”

  “Whip mark? Come on, the Civil War was nearly thirty years ago. You must have been born free.”

  Her voice was bitter as she answered, “I was born damn near white, too. You think folks needs a bill of sale to whup a kid?”

  “Who was the son-of-a-bitch? Some unreconstructed Johnny Reb?”

  “The son-of-a-bitch was my momma. I was birthed sort of light, as you sees, an’ I suspicion I reminded her of the white man who knocked her up that time. She was a slave, you see. They tolt her she was free after General Lee surrendered that time, but in ’Bama they never took it all that serious. My daddy was the white overseer Mamma’s kin worked for an’ she was a mite light to start with, so … Shit, I don’t like to talk about it. I run off as soon as I was old enough to screw. My Daddy had his way with all the gals on that spread an’ once I started to grow some tits, he started lookin’ at me funny so—”

  “My God! You mean he tried to seduce his own daughter?”

  “Shit, I wasn’t no daughter to him. I was a nigger wench. A good-lookin’ high-yeller gal he thought he owned! I figured as long as men was all the time tryin’ to stick them fool things in me they might as well pay for it, so I went to New Orleans and Honey, you don’t really want to know how a nice gal like me wound up in a place like this, does you?”

  “I guess you’ve told the story more than once, huh?”

  “That’s for damn sure. I generally throw some bullshit in ’bout bein’ a soiled dove solt into a life of sin by wicked parents, but to tell the truth, I never had no parents. We was too poor. Let’s talk about how a nice boy like you wound up in a place like this. You say you is a Connecticut Yankee. What’s it like in Connecticut?”

  “A lot greener, and a lot cooler than the southwestern desert. I’ll probably never see Connecticut again. If I once make the border alive I’ll probably never see any part of the States again.”

  “Yeah, you got you a hard row to hoe. I knows about you killing that nasty officer to git away, but how’d you git in the guardhouse in the first damn place? I means, the boys tolt me you let some Mexican prisoners go and all, but what made you do such a fool thing in the first place?”

  “You know about the Diaz dictatorship down in Mexico?”

  “Heard tell that General Diaz is a mighty mean man.”

  “He’s a total son-of-a-bitch. When he was younger, they say he was a good soldier. Fought for Juarez in the liberation of Mexico. Got a rep for being a hero. Then, after Juarez died, Diaz simply took over the country. He already owned the Army. He’s been running Mexico since the seventies with an iron fist and pure terror. His Rurales shoot first and ask questions later. Sometimes they rape and pillage just for the hell of it. Mexico is the nearest thing to hell on this planet, right now.”

  “I heard. Why don’t Washington do something about this here Diaz? That time the French took over the country Uncle Sam said to give it back to Juarez, right?”

  “You’re up on your history, honey. I guess Washington puts up with Diaz because they want a stable government down there. That’s what those idiots in Washington call a tinhorn dictator with a whip: a stable government. Diaz is two-faced and careful about shooting at Yankees when anyone’s looking. The Mexicans are on their own.”

  “That’s why those Mexicans the Army caught had jumped the border, huh?”

  “Yeah. We got a wire saying Mexican banditos had crossed into U.S. territory one jump ahead of the Rurales. So we rounded them up and were told to hold them ’til they could be sent back to face a firing squad or worse. Unfortunately, I speak Spanish. I’m afraid I talked too much to the prisoners as I commanded the guard.”

  “What did they do, play you for a fool?”

  “Not really. Their leader was a college professor who’d been in the old liberal government before Diaz took over. The others were students and a couple of decent soldiers who’d had enough. There’s a big underground movement down in Mexico, trying to restore democracy. So—”

  “Lord of mercy, you don’t have to tell me. You are about the most friendly white man I’s ever heard of. But didn’t you know you’d git in a mess did you let them Mexican rascals go?”

  “I thought we had a deal. As Officer of the Day it was easy enough for me to see they were left unguarded. The professor promised they’d light out on the horses I left ready for them and head straight for the border.”

  “But the boys say they double-crossed you.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they were just desperate. Maybe there was a bad apple in the bunch. Anyway, they ran into a five-man mounted patrol on their way south. Somebody fired a shot and a U.S. trooper wound up with a bullet in his brain. Most of the Mexicans got away, but one was wounded and taken alive. He talked. At my court-martial they called it treason. How are you coming with that hair?”

  “You is one gorgeous redhead, honey. Just let me rinse it with clear water and you is set. For a few weeks at least. Be blond at the roots shortly, so don’t go marryin’ up with some pretty white gal when you gits to Tombstone, hear?”

  He couldn’t answer as she sloshed water from a pitcher down the front of his face. When she’d finished and he stood up to dry off, he noticed the tears in her eyes and asked, “What’s the matter now?”

  “Nothing. You want to send out for some more food?”

  “No. Steak for breakfast sticks to the ribs and it’s not that late.”

  “I got Ruby ironing the creases outten that suit I bought you. Store-bought clothes looks too new ’til you get the creases out. Where you gonna carry the gun? Them big Army .45s make an awful bulge.”

  “I’ve been thinking of that. I think my best bet is to shove it in my waistband and let the grips show, right out. A lot of men still go armed out here, and a gun a lawman can see attracts less attention than one he spots hidden.”

  “You’re learning. If you don’t want to eat, what does you want to do to pass the time?”

  “I don’t know. What do you want to do, honey?”

  She didn’t answer. He went over to the bed and sat down. Madame Octoroon remained standing, quite lovely in the harsh light of the little room even though, by broad daylight, one could see where time’s cruel teeth had faded what must have been a really ravishing younger beauty. By lamplight he’d take her for about thirty. Less gentle daylight betrayed her to be a bit older, or, perhaps, more worn.

  He asked again what she wanted and she came to sit down beside him, saying, “Would you just sort of hold me?”

  He did as she asked. They lay there for a time, until he noticed she was softly crying, and he asked, “What’s the matter?”

  “Don’t ask damn fool questions. One of the boys from the post was downstairs before. He says the Army figures you’ve made it to the border some way. They’ve wired the Mexican Rurales to be on the lookout for s you.”

  “That’s nice. The Rurales know I helped Mexican rebels. Save Uncle Sam another attempt at hanging me if Diaz shoots me, right?”

  “That ain’t the point. The point is that they ain’t lookin’ for you down at the station no more. I’ve sent someone to buy you a ticket to California. Your train will be pullin’ out just after sundown.”

  “I wish there was some way I could thank you, Honey. Twenty-odd dollars seems pretty miserly, but—”

  “Now, did I say anythin’ about your fool twenty dollars? I tolt you the madame don’t even screw for no twenty dollars! ’Sides, you’ll need all the money. I’d give you more, but you know what them fool niggers pay, and—”

  “Damn it, you have to at least let me pay for the clothes!”

  “I don’t have to do no such thing. The storekeeper is a customer. He can take it out in trade when business is slow downstairs. I ain’t put out no cash for you, white meat. All I’ve given you is a train ticket, some
food, and a little ass. It’s my food and my ass, and the ticket is on the house, so let’s hear no more fool talk about you paying me, hear?”

  She turned her head away and added, softly, “ ’Sides, you can’t pay me what I really needs. Nobody can.”

  They lay together for a long time and after a while he dozed. He had no idea how long he’d slept, but when he awoke, Madame Octoroon was sitting up, staring down at him.

  He smiled up at her and said, “Hi. What time is it?”

  “Sun ball’s almost down. Did you mean it when you said I was pretty?”

  “Of course I meant it. I wish— I mean, I’m going to miss you and … Would you tell me something? What’s your real name? Madame Octoroon’s a silly thing to call a lady.”

  “Shit, some lady. They named me Willy when I was birthed. I never liked it much.”

  “I’ve never liked Richard. I guess we all want to be somebody else, huh?”

  “Yeah, but it don’t work out that way. Some of us grows up to be whores and others grows up to be wanted for murder. Is you really gonna miss me?”

  “I said so, didn’t I?”

  “You really like me, a little?”

  “I like you a lot, Willy.”

  “Well, damn it, let’s say good-bye right! You want another French lesson to get it up?”

  He laughed and said, “You know it’s halfway up already!”

  But this time, even as he made love to her, there was a gentle sadness to the motion of their bodies, as if neither wanted it to end in anything as banal as a mere orgasm. He made love to her skillfully, trying to give her pleasure rather than taking it only for himself. She knew, of course, more about sex than any man could hope to, and she crooned, “Oh, you is such a nice man! But will you do me one last silly favor?”

  “Anything, Willy. Anything you ask.”

  “Just let you’self go. Just come.”

  “I don’t want to leave you behind.”

  “Do as I ask an’ just lay there, not saying a word. I wants to git up and git dressed. Then I wants to go downstairs. I wants you to put on the duds when Ruby brings ’em. Then I wants you to just leave.”