Red Mary

This lake was once part of the sea.

On warm nights, salt and brine’d carry upon the breeze like a ghost.

Pulling off her coat, Mary loosened her corset and flopped down on the gray, pebbly beach.

It wasn’t much, this sliver of woods, but it was home. Wilfred, her dusky colt, was tied loosely to a juniper tree close by, grazing on dandelions. The kettle bubbled and hissed atop the lowly fire Mary’d hastily constructed, around which, fireflies danced like fallen stars between the cottonwoods she’d come to call friends. Cicadas and katydids droned on into the night, their high pitched hum moving through her blood in waves as they swooned over the opulent moon.

Mary took Lala— her trusted revolver— into her palm. She laid a kerchief upon the ground beside the tin tub of grease and brushes, then setting about cleaning the gun.

“Good girl...” she cooed, wiping a smear of grease from Lala’s barrel, still warm from the boiling water she’d run through it.

She wiped her hands clean and pulled her hair pin loose, letting a curtain of red curls tumble freely down her back, releasing the mild tension headache that’d gathered at her temples.

It was the weekend, the town’d be in their cups tonight— they never did learn— and the moon was full, so the howlers’d be out too. If it weren’t for Father Lanham, perhaps she might’ve handled the damn beasts by now…

“Watch out for them angelicas, boys— lest you meet a witch. Sooner tie a good man up in his sleep an’ offer him to the devil. That’s what happened to young Dan, rest his soul, found his body at the bottom of the lake, heart missing an’ all. I recommend y’all keep yer rifles close, an’ plenty a dry wood an’ sage branches, case you suspect bad blood.”

“An’ how’d you know they got bad blood, Father, an’ that they ain’t just plain fillies.”

“Well, it’s a look they got in they eyes… Like they know too much, like they laughing at you. Make your blood boil, sure enough.”

Mary leaned against the large cottonwood beneath which, she’d buried her valuables— Madáme Mindy, she’d named the old wood. She dusted the ground with her hand, pulling up the lid of a small wooden chest she’d hidden among Madáme Mindy’s roots, rummaging around for the old drinking horn her Aunty Mae had gifted her.

“Your great grandaddy’s grandaddy drank from this horn. They say he were a Viking King, an’ he had a head of red like you, Red Mary.” Aunty Mae laughed, stroking Mary’s crop of fiery curls. “They say he wrestled the bull with his bare hands, great beast too, had magic in his bones…”

“Who needs whiskey when you got the moon, eh Mindy.” Mary grinned, blowing a kiss at the full bellied pearl in the sky and lifting the bull horn into the air. She wrinkled her nose, catching a whiff of herself through her ruffled blouse— the one with the lace trim on the collar that Aunty Mae had sewn, before… well, before things changed.

“Time for a wash,” she bounced to her feet, throwing a couple cedar branches onto the fire to keep the insects at bay.

The breeze off the lake was a magnificent and welcome treat as Mary carried the large pile of laundry to the water’s edge. She undressed, adding her blouse, skirts and petticoat to the pile. In the moonlight, her scars looked like thin blue tattoos, criss-crossing her pale skin. Mary ran her fingers over them, the newer ones felt like rough sandpaper, gnarled and bumpy beneath her fingertips. All in a day’s work… she grimaced.

The lake glittered like diamonds in the light of the moon.

Mary sighed, “Shame I can’t sell moonlight, if I could I’d be outta here faster than you can blink, I’d buy me a boat and sail to Paris… Hell, who am I kidding, I can’t leave Wilfred. Maybe I’d go to California instead, an’ live by the sea,” she dunked the clothes into the lake, scrubbing them thoroughly with plain water, for she couldn’t procure soap from town this time around.

If only I’d kept my mouth shut, married the damn fool…

She pinched herself, she’d sooner wed a rat than that pinch nosed liar, Bainbridge. Anyways, even if the townspeople thought her the devil’s mistress, she couldn’t leave them, not when she knew what was in these woods…

Mary hung her laundry on the line by the fire and wandered back to the water. She’d grown used to this life, learnt to keep the grief and exhaustion at bay. Closing her eyes, she opened her arms to the winds, her white chemise brushing against her goose pimpled skin as she walked into the water. The pebbles were smooth and slippery, but the soles of her feet knew them well.

She wanted nothing more than to stay there, lying on her back in the perfect water, drinking in the sky full of stars… Of course, nothing in Red Mary’s life seemed to go the way she wanted...

*****

To be continued.