A One-Time Deal
Chapter 10 of The Ballad of Abigail Lambert
On horseback, Caliga Hill wasn’t terribly far from the church at Reedy Creek, but on foot was something else entirely. Abigail may have been able to keep up pace beside a horse with how fast she carried herself. The acid that coursed through her veins as she forced every muscle in her body to keep up the momentum could’ve carried her across an entire continent. The sun was starting to rise as it became clear she was no longer being followed and she finally slowed down upon reaching the town. Disheveled and covered in dirt, she wandered into the dusty town and approached the first building to her right with a step she could take a seat on. She fell upon it, struggled to catch her breath and rested her head against the post.
Her stomach growled. Her first impulse upon entering the general store was to steal something she could eat, but if she wanted to walk a different path than the one Sid had led her down, she’d have to earn her way to a meal. She asked for work, but the proprietor had none that was ‘suitable for women.’ Every building she walked into in Caliga Hill, be it the blacksmith, the pelt trader or butcher; all turned her away, citing a lack of work she was qualified for. Even upon offering to dig ditches for the undertaker, something the dirt on her body was evidence of her previous experience in, she was rejected purely on the assumption she had no utility.
The consistent rejection did not do anything to undo the number Sid did on her perception of all she was good for. Despite being a crack shot and pulling her weight on every heist she rode along for, she often found herself only rewarded for what her body offered to the gang. She sat on the porch of the saloon and quietly cried to herself, sure enough that the dearth of ‘women’s work’ in Caliga Hill might very well exacerbate her starvation and eventually kill her. Maybe I’d be better off, she thought to herself as she sniffled.
“You alright?” She heard a woman ask behind her. Abigail turned to see a prostitute standing in the doorway to the saloon smoking a cigarette.
“I’ll be fine.” Abigail wiped her nose. “Probably.” Her stomach roared.
“What’s your name?” Abigail hesitated when she answered. She hadn’t gotten far enough with anyone she begged to work with to bring up a name.
“Clara.” If she was to lay low and avoid attracting the attention of anyone whomsoever should come looking for her, at the very least a layer of obfuscation might protect her identity. This wasn’t lost on the prostitute smoking her cigarette, a woman who went by the name of Dolly which, much like Clara, was not her God given name. Nadine, the head mistress of the brothel may have been the only woman who worked within its walls that had no desire to conceal her identity. Everyone in Caliga Hill knew Nadine, she’d been in town for nearly as long as the town had been around itself, and even if she didn’t know it at that moment; it would be Abigail’s turn now to make her acquaintance. Her stomach bellowed once more.
“You want something to eat?” Dolly asked her.
“I don’t have any money.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
Dolly tossed her cigarette and shepherded Abigail inside. The saloon was quiet; no one had stopped in for a drink just yet. The building’s plain exterior belied the regal quality of the décor within. It was a nice place, run by someone who clearly took pride in their business. Dolly pulled out a chair at one of the tables for Abigail and she took a seat. She retreated into a room behind the bar, and emerged shortly after with a bowl of soup in hand. She laid it on the table before Abigail and took a seat across from her. Abigail wasted no time at all in drinking as much soup as her mouth would let her swallow. Dolly looked up to the second floor, where a hefty older woman in an ornate dress that matched the rest of the place stood, watching down on them. She nodded, and Dolly as well. Abigail was too busy hardly tasting her food to notice.
When she finally finished the soup, she sat back in her chair, and thanked Dolly for the meal. By now, Abigail noticed a couple of other prostitutes that lingered around the saloon. Abigail offered to clean as repayment for the meal, but Dolly rejected her offer.
“There’s someone that wants to meet you,” she suggested instead.
Abigail agreed and Dolly escorted her upstairs. The other girls all stared her down as Dolly marched her to the dressing room. The sound of muffled excitement on the other side of the doors lining that hallway peaked Abigail’s curiosity, but nothing matched the sound coming from the door at the end of it. Dolly knocked on that door, and another whore answered the door. Inside, Abigail spied at least half a dozen girls prettying themselves up, with the stocky woman that had been spying on her earlier at the center of the room, wiping make up off one of the girl’s face.
“You’d make more money in the circus looking like that,” she said.
“Nadine,” Dolly called out, and the stocky woman turned her attention to them. She spotted Abigail standing just behind Dolly. It would’ve been hard not to, Abigail’s dirty but comparatively conservative wardrobe certainly didn’t make it easy to blend into the fabric of a whorehouse.
“Hello there,” Nadine said. Abigail kept her mouth shut.
“This is Clara,” Dolly said. “She’s new in town.”
“Oh?” Nadine whistled and ushered everyone else out of the room. Dolly was the last one out, and Abigail tugged on her corset as she left.
“You’ll be alright,” Dolly assured her. She closed the door behind her, and left Abigail alone with Nadine.
“Sit down,” Nadine instructed her. Abigail did as she was told in front of the vanity mirror closest to her. Nadine looked over the cuts and bruises that covered her body. “Nothing time won’t heal,” she said. She looked Abigail in the eye through the mirror. “Now I won’t ask you how you got those scars, that there’s your own damn business. But I will say some girls come here bringing trouble, and I ain’t got the room for it. Cutting out trouble is worth ten times the money any of my girls could ever make for me. Understand?”
“Yes ma’am.” New life, new Abigail. Maybe Abigail had trouble, but Clara? She could be whoever she needed to be.
“Good.” Nadine started to play with Abigail’s hair. “This line of work ain’t for every girl,” she warned.
“Well, I ain’t every girl.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” Nadine placed her hands on Abigail’s shoulders. “I can’t give you much. You’ll have to split a room with one of the girls. Goes without saying whatever you get from your Johns goes to me first, and then you get your cut. As long as you keep working, everyone stays happy. Got it?” Abigail nodded. “Girls!” Nadine yelled. They’d all been lying in wait outside the door, gossiping over the new girl that’d wandered in but when Nadine summoned them—they burst inside, some eleven or twelve of them, and swarmed Abigail. “Make Clara feel at home,” Nadine instructed. Abigail was never one to vie for the center of attention, but she certainly didn’t mind her present occupation of such a zone.
It didn’t take long for Abigail to enmesh herself within the fabric of the saloon. Dolly had been kind enough to offer to share her room, and the two became fast friends. The girls were a tight knit group, mostly by necessity, but they welcomed Abigail in with open arms which helped her in finding a place within her new family. As close as she may have become with the girls, when it came to hooking Johns in, she lacked the prowess of the seasoned veterans that surrounded her. She needed more practice in the art of separating whichever John wandered in the door with the money burning a hole in his pocket—and luckily for her, as she often would, it was Dolly to the rescue.
There were plenty of men who came into the joint looking for a girl that exuded innocence. While Abigail certainly didn’t fit the description of innocent by a country mile, the idea of sharing a bed with strangers was still one she needed to break her reservations about. Dolly found and paired her up with a John willing to pay extra for naivety.
“Hey there, little missy,” he said to her.
“Hey yourself,” Abigail replied. She stared at the floor, unable to meet his gaze. He took her hand and kissed it.
“What’s your name?” He asked. She looked up at him.
“Whatever you’d like it to be.” He laughed.
“Take him up to our room,” Dolly suggested. Abigail escorted him upstairs and into her room. As with anything else, whoring was a task that became easier for Abigail the more she engaged with it, and she soon became one of the most popular girls in the whole brothel. This would’ve been great news for her, had word of mouth not spread so vociferously throughout Caliga Hill that it brought trouble careening in through the door.
On an afternoon that began much like any other she worked, she wandered the saloon looking for her next John when a couple of men she recognized from Sid’s gang walked in through the door. She turned her back to them as soon as she figured out who they were, and she walked up to the closest man she could find. He sat alone with a drink at the bar.
“How you doing, darling?” She told him.
“I-I’m doing alright.” He stammered, as he hadn’t ever before seen a whore that roused something within him other than blood flow. Something about her expression was inviting, like he wanted to know more of her than just her body. “How ‘bout yourself?” He asked her.
“I’m feenin’ for a little fun. How’s about a ride?”
“Whatever you’re charging, I ain’t got it.” She looked over her shoulder; they were fast approaching the bar.
“Lucky for you, I ain’t charging.” He shot her a quizzical look. She took him by the hand. “Come on, now.” She yanked him off his stool at the bar, and bumped into Sid’s goons as they went to take their seats. “Excuse me!” She said as she kept her head down.
“Well excuse you, little lady.” One of them said. Nadine stared her down the whole time as Abigail went straight up the stairs and dragged the man into her room. She locked the door behind her and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Truth be told, I just needed out of there,” she said.
“I hear ya.”
“A promise is a promise, though.” She sauntered over to him. “At least you’re kinda cute.” The blood rushed to his face. “You’re blushing,” she said with a smile.
“Is that what I’m feeling in my cheeks?” He fanned his collar.
“Most likely.”
“That’s a first.”
“Being caught blushing or laying with a whore?”
“Well—both.”
“First time for everything.” Henry may have been just another John in a long line she’d already screwed since she arrived in Caliga Hill, but for him? Clara was a godsend. As if she’d been put on this Earth for him and him alone. As they laid back on the bed, he turned to her.
“A woman’s never made me feel that way before.”
“You must lead a very frustrated life.” She lit a cigarette.
“That felt like more than just physicality.” Abigail got up off the bed, and crossed over to the divider to put on her robe. “You don’t think so?” He asked, piercing the silence.
“I think you’re still drifting up in the clouds.”
“Maybe when you do it enough times, it doesn’t feel nearly as intense?”
“Maybe.” Henry rolled out of bed and dressed himself. He walked over to her and took her hand.
“Thank you.” He kissed her hand. She rolled her eyes. “Take care,” he said, and saw himself out.
Abigail looked down at her hand, and scoffed. She took a drag from her cigarette as she watched him walk out of the saloon and disappear down the street. Abigail kept working the rest of the day, and that night when the girls lined up to give Nadine their earnings, she realized Abigail was short.
“I saw how many Johns you took upstairs, this ain’t enough,” she reprimanded her in front of them all. “You trying to steal from me?”
“No.” Abigail said, finding it hard to face Nadine’s fury. Nadine shot up to her feet and smacked Abigail across the face.
“Let me make this abundantly clear.” She smacked her again. “There ain’t no free rides in my house. Do you hear me?” Abigail nodded. Nadine slapped her again. “Talk!”
“I hear you!” Nadine grabbed her by the jaw.
“Don’t ever fuck me again. And that goes for all of you! You only fuck the Johns.” She released Abigail from her grasp and retired to her room. Dolly approached Abigail.
“Why the fuck are you giving out free rides? Are you crazy?” She asked her.
“I need a smoke.” Abigail took out a cigarette, and kept striking the match on the box, but her hands were shaking too much for her to get a clean strike. Dolly took the matches from her and lit the cigarette for her.
“You’re lucky she gave you a break,” Dolly said.
“You call that a break?”
“I’ve seen her do worse. A lot worse,” Dolly warned. It’s not like Abigail got a thrill out of the job, it was purely a consequence of the circumstance, but Nadine’s No Trouble policy made it seem to her as the only option in the interest of keeping the peace.
The next day, Abigail worked the floor as she had any other day. She was picking out her next John when she got a tap on the shoulder. She turned to meet the same man from yesterday.
“Back again,” she said.
“I couldn’t get you off my mind.”
“That might be cause you haven’t given yourself a chance to.”
“I’d rather avoid that, if I can.” He smiled.
“You got a name?” Abigail asked him.
“Henry. Yours?”
“Clara.”
“That’s a beautiful name.” Repeat business is the name of the game, but she had her hesitations.
“Let’s be straight—that was a one-time deal. You pay from now on.”
“Understood.” Abigail told him her price, and he handed her a wad of bills. When she counted it, she realized it was double what she asked for. “You earned it,” he said.
She took him by the hand and initiated the ritual once again. She went through the motions as she did with everyone else, but Henry would not tire of the ride. He would return to the brothel as often as he could, only absent when he was working so he could earn a little more to give her. This went on for a period of months, and it was hard for Abigail not to form a bond with him, even if she did her best to keep him from ever learning that. Nadine had been very clear about keeping distant from the Johns, but Henry was making that exceedingly difficult. He had a good heart, even if he was thinking with the wrong head.
He lay beside her after another one of their sessions, possessed by thought. He was typically chatty as their sessions wound to a close, often looking forward more to the chance at peering into her mind than he was with the sex. All Abigail could hear were the muffled sounds of the bar beneath them, and she knew something was amiss.
“What are you thinking about?” She asked him.
“What is the worst thing I could tell you right now?”
“That you’re in love with me.”
He found it difficult to meet her gaze.
“That’s not it, is it?” she asked.
“I’m married,” He admitted.
“And?” It’s not like he was the first married man she’d worked with.
“I’m married… and I’m in love with you.”
This was it. If she was going to keep him at a distance, like she knew she needed to, she would have to tell him to collect his things, leave, and never return. Her primary concern wasn’t Nadine’s warning against getting too close to the John’s; it was far from her mind. It was that there was something in the way he looked at her that cut through every cynical presupposition she carried of how the world worked and restored to her a sense of childlike enthusiasm for whatever surprises life might bring, as long as he was at her side when they materialized. That just his presence was enough for Abigail to ignore the red flags made him dangerous by her estimation, but she also wasn’t sure if she cared. She had come to love having him around, if only for the sense of peace that he carried with him into her room.
She had been silent for a while.
“Do you want me to go?” He asked.
She shook her head. “I can’t imagine ever wanting that.”
They spoke for hours that night. He regaled her with stories of his childhood, growing up under the thumb of an abusive father, a man Henry’s own mother apologized for burdening him with. As soon as Henry could slip away from them, he did, and he’d been on his own ever since. He found it difficult to connect with people, but his current wife had been the first person that quieted the anxieties his upbringing had hampered him with and inspired peace within him. He was quick to commit but even quicker to realize the severity of his error in judgment. He found himself unwilling to let go of the reliable stability he found in her familiarity and forced himself to live in denial of the contempt that it was breeding between them. Despite how stable she may have made his life, he’d become so deadened from years of emotional starvation that he suffered from the same sense of desperation for intimacy that Abigail was plagued by. Perhaps that was the only thing the two of them ever really had in common.
All Abigail could see when she looked at him was a wounded creature, someone she wanted to nurture and care for. He admitted to her that he’d told her things in two months that he hadn’t told his wife in two years, and she felt honored to have borne witness to the piece of his soul that had been neglected for so long. What she saw was beautiful, and the only thing she wanted in that moment was to care for him in every way his wife wouldn’t—if only because she couldn’t bear to see the man hurting. She would keep this to herself, however. The dream of this man whisking her away from the life she’d fallen into was an impossible one, she determined, and thus she could not allow herself the luxury of vulnerability. The job would consume her alive if she did.
She still felt the physical sensations, sure, and even enjoyed herself on a handful of occasions. However, the spiritual sensation that comes coupled with the act—indiscriminately passing herself around between Sid and his goons burned that out of her years ago. She became adept at portraying feeling synthetically; the nature of the profession demanded it. As she retreated further inside herself and allowed her needs to be obscured by the performance, the girl she’d trapped within herself grew emotionally emaciated from the lack of intimacy—a necessary sacrifice if she wasn’t to fall into the arms of another Sid. She had a pretty good handle on keeping her most vulnerable parts hidden beneath the hardest parts of her shell, but she could never have anticipated that the girl she’d locked away all those years ago would be strong enough to claw her way the surface if only to be present in the few moments Henry laid beside her after sex. Motivated by a naïve sense of hope, perhaps, but she didn’t have much else to sustain herself with down there.
After another session, Abigail smoked her cigarette by her bedroom window, stark naked. He sat on the floor beside her, naked much the same.
“Clara?” She turned to him, and felt something slide up her left hand. She looked down, and spied Henry slipping a wedding band onto her finger.
“What do you think you’re doing, Henry?”
“Marry me.”
“You’re insane.” She stood up and crossed over to the other side of the room.
“I don’t want to live without you, Clara. I can’t.”
“You don’t want to be with me.”
“How can you presume to tell me how I feel when I know what’s in my heart?”
“Henry, you’re married.”
“I haven’t felt married in years.”
“Look, I’ll admit I’ve enjoyed our times together. But you don’t know the first thing about me. My name’s not even Clara.”
“Then what is it?” He asked. She looked down at the ring on her finger.
“What would we do?”
“We buy a ranch. Something modest. Work the land and raise our children there.”
“Buy a ranch? How could we possibly afford that?”
“You’ve been saving, haven’t you?” He was right, she may have brought it up in a conversation or two, but that he was actually listening was another quality Abigail found it hard to ignore.
“You would really want me for that?” She asked.
“I couldn’t imagine asking anyone else.”
She stood there in silence for what felt to Henry like an eternity. Could she really allow herself what she wanted? She crossed back over to him, and sat beside him on the floor.
“My name is Abigail.”
Henry smiled and they kissed.
“Get your things,” he whispered as he rose to his feet to dress himself.
“You want to leave right now?”
“No time like the present, don’t you think?”
Abigail smiled and flicked her cigarette out the window.
When she was absent from the roll call at the end of the night, Nadine stomped up the stairs and beat down on the locked door to her room. With no answer, she kicked it down herself and found no one inside. She crossed the room and stared out the open window as the drapes fluttered in the breeze. She stormed out of the room and out of the saloon. In the dirt, she found a cigarette butt with Abigail’s choice of lipstick staining the butt. She shook her head, and returned inside.
Abigail and Henry would be married shortly thereafter in the very same church overlooking Reedy Creek. Family on neither side would be in attendance, one of the qualities they bonded over was the lack of family in their lives, even if on one end it was self-imposed. That fact mattered little to them. They had all the family they would ever need in each other. They bought a small plot of farmable land at a considerable mark up, Henry incurring a heavy debt with the bank to cover the cost. But as it often was with young love, it mattered little to the pair lucky enough to find themselves mired within it.
Henry nearly kicked the front door off its hinges when he kicked it in the first time they entered, his arms occupied by his holding of Abigail like a coveted prize. The place was in a state of severe disrepair, but it was a project the two of them took on in earnest. God had brought them together and blessed their union; this home that they would rebuild together would be a testament to that sacrament.
As winter rolled in and Abigail’s pregnancy grew closer to being due, she felt the little one kick inside her. She rubbed her belly in an effort to sooth him, or at least, she thought it might be a boy. She certainly hoped for one. She had gone for a walk around the snow covered property, expressing gratitude to God for blessing her with all she currently had. Despite straying so far from the path, and all the horrors she both endured and inflicted upon the world, things were finally starting to look up.
She stopped in her tracks when she got a sharp pain in her belly. She tried to take another step, but the cramping pain only intensified. She fell down onto her hands and knees in the snow, and crawled back toward the house, leaving a trail of blood on the snow in her wake. It was on that day both Abigail and Henry realized God had other plans for their family, and the son Abigail knew waited to be born inside her, never had the chance to do so. She cried for days, only quieting down when her face stung from the tears. When the pain finally dulled, she would start all over again. It was bearing heavily on Henry to see his wife like this. No amount of assuring her they would try again would soothe her pain, and he refused to see her like this any longer.
One morning, she awoke to find herself alone in her bed, and alone in her house. She waited for Henry to return, bearing two weeks of his absence. Without so much as a note, it became clear that he wanted nothing to do with her and she’d been abandoned once again. Whatever hope she had left finally shattered. She took the gun she’d been carrying with her since the raid on her home all those years ago and shoved the barrel in her mouth. She pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. She tried, again and again, but the gun refused to fire. She looked in the chamber, the thing was fully loaded. She aimed the gun at the floor and it fired. She yelled in agony and flung the gun across the room.
She later tied a noose around her neck and suspended it over one of the rafters in the house. She dragged a chair underneath it and stepped up onto it. She tightened the noose around her neck and after a deep breath, she kicked the chair. It wasn’t longer than a second of thrashing when the knot she tied went loose and she fell to the ground. As she lay there with her cheek pressed against the hardwood floor, she burned with rage at the thought that Sid was right. Life was suffering, and there would be no simple way of escaping it. She lifted herself off the floor and returned to the bedroom. She took her pistol off the floor and exited the house. She lumbered away from the ranch where she once thought she would begin her family again. Instead, she wandered away in search of a death that would never come.
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