Brimstone

6

ALLIE LOOKED LIKE A KID. Her hair was clean and straight. She wore no makeup, and she sat barefoot and cross-legged on the bed, wearing one of my clean shirts, like a dress, with the sleeves rolled.

“I could step out for a while,” I said. “Get me a drink. Let you folks talk.”

Virgil shook his head. So I sat on a chair in the corner of the room and was quiet.

“You run off,” Virgil said to Allie.

“I was ashamed,” she said.

“You sick at all?”

“No, honest to God, Virgil,” she said. “I haven’t got nothing.”

“All this time you been whoring?” Virgil said.

“I know, but I been lucky. I haven’t caught nothing.”

Virgil nodded.

“You been whoring since you left.”

Allie nodded slowly.

“Mostly,” she said. “I had to live, Virgil.”

Virgil nodded.

“You did,” he said.

There was nothing in Virgil’s voice. The single oil lamp next to the bed lit Allie pretty good, but it left most of the room sorta dark. The silence that hung between them seemed heavy.

“I was ashamed,” Allie said. “And after Everett shot Bragg, I was scared.”

“Of what?” Virgil asked.

“You,” she said. “That you’d find out about me. Me, maybe, maybe I was scared of what I was.”

“What were you?” Virgil said.

“I was an awful woman, I wanted everything, and being a woman, alone, out here in this country with no rules…”

“I had rules,” Virgil said.

“And I was breaking them, Virgil. Only way I knew to get what I wanted, feel like I wanted to feel, be how I wanted, only way for me was to fuck somebody.”

“Fucked a considerable number of somebodys,” Virgil said.

“Yes,” Allie said.

It was a child’s voice, piping out from the fresh-scrubbed child’s face. Virgil was silent. His face was in shadow. I was nearly invisible sitting away from the light in the corner.

“I shoulda stayed with you, Virgil.”

“Yes,” Virgil said. “You should have.”

“But I was bad, just bad, all I can say. I run off and I tried but I could never find a decent man, never nobody like you, Virgil. And they passed me around and I kept going down, down, and down, and…” She stopped talking and took in a deep breath, and let it out very slow. She did it again.

Then she said, “I had to do some awful things, Virgil… awful things with awful men.”

Virgil was silent. Allie looked down at her hands folded in her lap.

“Awful,” she said.

Virgil stood suddenly and walked to the window and looked down through the darkness at the ugly street.

“And now?” he said.

“I guess I’m awful,” she said. “I look awful. I feel awful. I ain’t worth no man’s attention. I ain’t worth anything.”

“You changed any?” Virgil said.

“I don’t know,” Allie said. “I’m at the bottom, Virgil. I can’t go down no further.”

“Think you could change?”

“I’d like to. I can’t stand this no more. I’d surely try.”

“What you think we should do?” Virgil said.

He was still looking down into the street.

“I don’t know,” Allie said in a really small voice. “I might just die.”

Virgil didn’t move from the window.

Still looking down into the street, he said, “Sooner or later. Everett, you got a thought?”

“I don’t, Virgil. I don’t believe it’s mine to think about.”

“You believe her?” Virgil said.

“I believe what’s happened to her,” I said.

“Think she can change?” Virgil said.

“Believe she wants to,” I said.

“Think she can?”

“Don’t know, Virgil.”

Virgil turned slowly from the window and looked at me in the near darkness.

“Everett,” Virgil said. “You killed a man for her and me. I want to know where you stand.”

“You know where I stand, Virgil,” I said. “Been with you near twenty years. Plan to be with you as far as we go.”

“Think I should take her back?” Virgil said.

“Don’t recall that she asked you to,” I said.

“You think I should?” Virgil said. “I need to know what you think.”

“We don’t have to leave her here,” I said. “We can take her someplace where she gets a decent chance.”

“But you don’t think I should take her back.”

“She is what she is,” I said. “Been what she is for a long time.”

“And you don’t think she’ll change,” Virgil said.

“Don’t think she’s got anything to change to,” I said.

“You don’t think I should take her back,” Virgil said.

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

Allie’s breathing was shallow in the silence. She seemed like an injured sparrow, sitting cross-legged on the bed in a shirt much too big for her, staring at her hands.

“No,” Virgil said. His voice sounded hoarse. “I don’t think so, either… but I got to do it.”

I stood.

“It’s yours to say,” I told Virgil. “I’m going to bunk in the livery stable tonight.”

Neither Virgil nor Allie said anything. Neither one moved as I left the room and closed the door behind me.