Hour Glass Read online

  HOUR GLASS

  Michelle Rene

  Amberjack Publishing

  New York, New York

  Amberjack Publishing

  228 Park Avenue S #89611

  New York, NY 10003-1502

  http://amberjackpublishing.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, fictitious places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Michelle Rene

  Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, in part or in whole, in any form whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

  Names: Rene, Michelle, author.

  Title: Hour Glass / by Michelle Rene

  Description: New York, NY; Eagle, ID: Amberjack Publishing, 2018.

  Identifiers: ISBN 978-1-944995-49-2 (pbk.) | 978-1-944995-50-8 (ebook) | LCCN 2017946539

  Subjects: LCSH Calamity Jane, 1856-1903--Fiction. | United States--History--1865-1921--Fiction. | Deadwood (S.D.)--Fiction. | Autism--Fiction. | Brothers and sisters--Fiction. | Western stories. | Historical fiction. | BISAC Fiction / Historical

  Classification: LCC PS3618.E57485 H68 2018 | DDC 813.6--dc23

  Cover Design: Faceout Studio

  Dedicated in loving memory to my grandmother Marieta.

  This is also for my grandfather, my Pa.

  Sorry about all the cussing. Jane said it, not me.

  “I figure, if a girl wants to be a legend, she should go ahead and be one.”

  -Calamity Jane

  1

  1894

  In the corner of the bar, a gaggle of fellows crowded around an unseen victim. Some poor bastard, no doubt. Tension radiated in a way that signaled someone was very near to death. People grouped together, afraid to say a word. Every person in the place held their breaths with the gravity of the moment. A single laughing voice cut the air. It was a laugh I recognized.

  “Yer mighty big for yer britches, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so! What are you planning to do with that shotgun?”

  As soon as I laid eyes on her, things went sideways.

  There was no mistaking that voice and the person behind it. I pushed through the folks crowding around the men. Most clung to the fringes of the fray, but a few of the braver ones had closed in, hoping for a better view. There she was, as always, in men’s buckskins, swaying back and forth a little, using the bar to keep upright.

  “Call me a coward again, Jane. Do it so all the folks here can hear it fer themselves.”

  Jane snapped her head up and looked at the red-faced man holding a shotgun to her chest. She smiled. Nothing had changed. I nearly laughed like an idiot.

  “I’m sorry, Randall Foster, did I offend you? I mean—and forgive me fer speakin’ plainly here now—I was just callin’ a spade a spade. If you beat on a lady, that automatically dubs you a fuckin’ coward.”

  “Whores ain’t no ladies,” Randall sputtered.

  “Well, there you go now. I reckon half-wits like you aren’t known for havin’ the mind to tell man from woman. I mean, let’s face the fact that it don’t matter much when yer favorite partner is of the livestock persuasion.”

  Enraged, Randall Foster lifted the shotgun and cocked it. The action cracked the air of the room but didn’t seem to affect Jane. She slurred and wavered on her feet, then laughed into the barrels of her possible demise.

  “See there’s the problem now,” Jane taunted. “Yer always pointing that there piece at women, or did you not notice that part?”

  He faltered, sweat running down his face in little beads. I moved closer to him, so close I could smell the salty sweat collecting in the hair behind his ears. Killing a person in a flash was one thing, but staring someone down long enough to talk? That was another thing entirely. Especially when that person was Calamity Jane herself.

  Everything was still. Jane looked relaxed, courting death at a ball only she seemed to be invited to. Some damn things never did change.

  “Yep, that’s what I thought. Coward.”

  Rage rippled through Randall’s torso and into his shoulders. One squeeze of the trigger and the deed would be done. Jane, my friend, would be gone forever.

  I pulled my pistol out, cocked it, and pointed at his temple.

  “Drop it,” I said.

  Jane laughed and slapped her knee. “Ha! I tell you Randall, this ain’t yer fuckin’ day!”

  “I said drop it,” I repeated, pressing the pistol harder to his temple.

  Randall slowly lowered the shotgun and placed it on the floor. Behind me, the rest of the room relaxed just a touch.

  “You the law?” he asked, turning to look at me.

  “I ain’t. But the sheriff is on the way.”

  “Why do you care about an old drunk like her?”

  He nodded his head toward wobbly Jane, bent over laughing. The whole affair was nothing more than entertainment to her.

  “That ain’t none of yer concern,” I said with all the menace I could muster.

  “She ain’t worth yer life,” replied Randall making a move toward his gun again.

  “I think she is.”

  Before he could reach the gun, I turned mine and cold-cocked him with the butt on the back of his head. The fight went out of him instantly. Just as he hit the floor, the sheriff came racing into the saloon, mistaking me for the problem.

  “Don’t move! Put the gun down!”

  I did as I was told, holding my hands up for the law to see. Jane slapped the bar, laughing for all she was worth.

  “What happened here?” asked the sheriff.

  “Well you see here, Sheriff, this cowboy you’re yellin’ at saved my life. All these good folks can testify to it.”

  The sheriff eyed Jane, recognizing her. She was, after all, very memorable, if not by sight then by reputation. He scanned the room of bystanders. Several nodded in agreement to her statement. He took this for truth, moving his revolver back to its holster.

  “Who have we got here?” asked the sheriff, motioning toward the unconscious Randall.

  “That hunk of cow shit is Randall Foster,” said Jane, leaning against the bar. “Works as a hand at the Buffalo Bill Show I’m currently travelin’ with. Beat on a girl. Now, he’s wantin’ to shoot me fer callin’ him yella. That’s the whole story. Anyone’ll tell you the same.”

  The sheriff looked as though he smelled something funny and gestured to the bar behind Jane. “Fred? Fred Whittacker, you back there?”

  A timid, balding man slowly rose from behind the bar. He wore a striped shirt and the ugliest set of suspenders I’d ever seen outside a theater. “I’m here, sheriff. Right here.”

  “It all happened like she said?” the sheriff inquired.

  “More or less.” Fred said, his eyes glued to the bar.

  “Good enough fer me. Get him to his feet.”

  The sheriff and his deputies lifted and dragged Randall out of the saloon. He moaned and protested, but there was nothing to be done. It was off to the holding cell with him.

  Jane slapped the bar like a thunderclap. Fred jumped straight up at the sound, and then flinched when he saw Calamity Jane had turned her scowl on him.

  “All righty, Fred, you lilly-livered rat. A bottle of yer finest Reverent. Hand it
over.”

  “Jane, you ain’t paid fer the last bottle o’ whiskey you drank . . .”

  “Don’t you sass me, Fred. You didn’t come to my aid once. You hid back there like a skunk. Hand it over, else I tell everyone in town ’bout it.”

  Defeated, Fred retrieved a bottle of Reverent Whiskey from underneath the bar and pushed it toward Jane. She grabbed the whiskey and walked toward me, slapping me on the back.

  “Come on, stranger. Let’s have us a drink on ole Fred here.”

  Stranger. She called me stranger.

  Like a duckling, I followed her out into the light, past the crowd outside the saloon, and into the thoroughfare. She didn’t say much of anything, and I didn’t either. There was no sign at all she recognized me. It had been eighteen years since we had last seen one another, more or less. I had the face of a twelve-year-old the last time she looked at me.

  Jane led me just outside of town where a makeshift camp of painted wagons and crude stages constituted the Buffalo Bill Show. People milled about, aimless, in various stages of dress. Some in costumes and others painted to look like the clowns that taunted bulls for sport. I couldn’t tell if they were setting up shop or tearing down.

  We stopped at a wagon parked under a tree. The wagon was painted purple, and along the side a homemade sign advertised Calamity Jane, Famous Pioneer Woman. She plopped down in the shade, pulled the plug on the bottle of whiskey, and drank a hearty share.

  I stood and watched her.

  She tipped her hat enough to look up at me with one bloodshot eye. Little red spider legs infected the edges of her nose the way they do with habitual drinkers. There was a haze about her, but, apparently, not enough of one to soften the dubious glare she cut at my formality.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “The infamous Miss Calamity Jane, I reckon,” I said, motioning toward the sign.

  “Miss Calamity Jane sounds too official. Only salesmen and snake oil vendors sound like that. I already got my whiskey fer tha night. I have a reverence for Reverent you might say. Don’t need much else, and you’re welcomed to fuckin’ partake with me.”

  I sat down near her, suddenly nothing more than a boy again. A kind of hope filled me after seeing her in that bar, but pinholes were being poked through it, and the light of truth was shining through them. She slurred a little as she spoke, keeping one eye on me but not entirely registering my face. Jane hadn’t recognized me, and the idea pained me more than I could have guessed possible.

  Still, I went ahead and asked like a fool. “I was wondering if you remembered me.”

  The legendary woman sat up and pushed her hat back enough to fully take me in. Even though she swam in a fog of Reverent, I thought I saw a glimmer of recognition in her eyes. A flash of color. Regardless of glimmers and their nature, she shook her head at me.

  “Sorry, cowboy. I’m thankful fer yer help just now, but I don’t know yer face.”

  My heart sank. What had I expected after all? Calamity Jane might have changed my life, but I hadn’t registered in hers. To mean something to a person like that? Who was I kidding? With a heavy soul I lowered my eyes and nodded to the woman. I replaced my hat and stood up, meaning to leave with all the silent dignity I could muster.

  “Thank you for yer time, ma’am.”

  “Tell me, cowboy, what did I do to make such an impression that you’d stand up for me like that? Did I know you in another fuckin’ lifetime? Or did you just like the stories?”

  I smiled but not enough to seem mocking. “Stories?”

  “That’s what I do these days. Tell fuckin’ stories. Thought you might’ve seen the show.”

  I shook my head. “Just got in today. I haven’t seen yer show. I woulda figured you’d be ridin’ or sharp shootin’ like you did back in Deadwood.”

  The name “Deadwood” seemed to stir something in the woman, and she looked at me a little harder. Her eyes were sharp despite the heavy drunk weighing down her head. I could tell she was trying to cut a clear path through the whiskey haze to the truth standing between us.

  “They weren’t too happy about me doin’ them things drunk, so now I only do ’em on the days I’m sober. Pert near blew a fella’s hat off once.”

  Jane pulled the cork on the bottle next to her and took a long swig. I had witnessed grown men cough and spit up on a lesser swallow. The buckskin-clad woman in front of me swallowed it down like cold water from a creek. Mother’s milk took all sorts of forms, I reckoned.

  “What days are the days you’re sober?”

  “What’s today?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Well then, not fuckin’ Thursdays.”

  I laughed without meaning to as she took another long pull from the bottle. Jane wiped her mouth with a lick and cracked a smile.

  “Tell me, son. You know me from Deadwood?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And I should know you?”

  Hurt had filled my guts with poison all over again, and now anger cramped my innards as well. After it all, after everything we had seen and done together, Jane really didn’t remember me? I was just another person in a sea of faces to her, another man in a saloon. A bit of grit caught in my eye, and I pretended it was the reason for water building under my lids. I thought . . . I don’t rightly know what I thought or expected, but it wasn’t this indifference.

  “I reckon you shouldn’t,” I said with a little scorn in my voice.

  I turned on my heel and was about to hightail it away to go drown my troubles at the nearest saloon, when I decided to say some parting words. Even if this drunk of a woman didn’t know me, I knew her, and she would hear about it.

  “I remember you, Jane, but not the person in front of me. I remember the woman who saved my life. You see, I figured a thing like that would have registered with you, but I reckon it didn’t. I reckon none of it did.”

  “By all means, cowpoke, pop your corn. Say exactly what you mean,” she said with a little grin around the edges of her mouth.

  There was something knowing in that grin of Jane’s, but my dog was too wound up at that point to quit its hunt. Had I remembered in full the nature of Calamity Jane, I would have pulled the reins. Had I taken a blasted second to cool down, I would have stopped myself before it was too late and that trap of hers was sprung. Damn fool that I was didn’t see the punch line underneath it all until it was too late. All I saw was hurt from a drunkard.

  “After all that happened, it seems I left less impact than a bit of shit on yer heel.”

  Her smile didn’t falter. “You know, this is a family show we run here. No cussin’. You owe me a copper penny,” she said, holding out her hand.

  Something familiar rang in my head, but the insult of her apathy flustered me too much to recall it with any certainty. For all my years in manhood, I was twelve years old again, angry and rattled at the feet of this woman. The nerve of her was worse than I had recalled. No wonder so many had had it out with her. My eyes were red hot and threatened to flame.

  “You cuss more than anyone I ever knew,” I said.

  “How this life is fraught with ironies. Now hand over that penny.”

  I wanted this to be over. The bottle of whiskey she held reminded me what was waiting for me only two whoops and a holler away. With a sour glare I fiddled a copper out of my pocket and thumbed it to her. The penny hit the ground with a muffled thud just inches from Jane’s boot. It turned up tails, and I began my retreat.

  “I know you, Jimmy Glass,” she shouted after me.

  Her words were a little slurred, but they rang true. She neither stood nor followed me. Instead, she waited for me to come to the proper conclusion on my own. There was nothing for it, so I turned back to the drunken woman leaning against the wagon. Her manner was a patient one, waiting for me to catch up to her. Heaven help the man who made th
e mistake of discounting her as a dull-witted drunk. Calamity Jane was smiling that sideways smile of hers, the kind that could change a person’s life . . . or end it.

  I stared down at the penny in the dirt, the one she wasn’t going to pick up, and remembered that part too. “You know me?”

  “Yeh, I know you. Don’t go pulling a kite at me like that. I knew yer face the instant you showed it in the saloon. Before you even pulled the gun. But yer a might bit uglier than I last saw you.”

  We laughed a little as my back went down. She patted a bit of earth next to her, and I sat as instructed. Everything shone purple now that the sun had begun its retreat for the day. Up close, Jane’s face looked more worn than earlier, like she had lived a few lifetimes since we’d spoken last. Tanned, leathery skin parted around the lines of her eyes like cracked earth around a dying river. Eighteen years wears different on different people. Those steely blues, though, they still rang true when she held me in them.

  “You’re a cowboy now?”

  “Yep. I just brought in a herd. The work’s good; I get to travel my fill.”

  She nodded. “Plagued with a case of the goddamned wanderings like me, I take it?”

  I smiled and nodded in turn.

  “Worse things out there to be plagued with, kid.”

  As if adding to her statement in some iconic way, Jane took a long swig of whiskey.

  We watched the last remnants of the daylight pass beyond the horizon under the cool westerly wind. Somewhere, men laughed and jested at one another. Glasses clinked, and women sang rowdy songs while dancing across the wooden floors of dance halls and brothels. We only got bits of the sounds carried on the air with grit and the scent of cow manure. Off to the east was the Chinatown. We might have smelled the odd incense and opium of the celestials, but where we were sitting was upwind from their camp. Silence was an easy thing for me, but not for Jane, not for long.

  “I saw it in yer eyes, you know. The fear I wouldn’t recall you.”

  “You are the legendary Calamity Jane. I reckoned you might forget.”