The Wicked Redhead

“Stinking Coast Guard,” I say.

“It ain’t the law I’m thinking of, Miss Kelly. The law plays fair, most days, and they got a job to do, I understand that, and if you want to break that law you might get arrested and your booze took away. But the pirates.” He shakes his head. Waves away the gathering smoke. “Pirates just as soon kill you. And when a fellow’s taking a few bottles from ship to shore, and he’s got ten or twenty miles of lonely ocean to cover, who do you think is going to find him? Coast Guard with a few little boats and a stingy Congress behind ’em, or a fellow with no conscience and a nice profit dangling in front of his nose? Why, already they’re getting greedier.” He turns to Anson. “That gang you was taking down the year before last, the Wilson boys. They was killed in ambush a few months ago, and what do you think happened? Do you think the trade went away? Got any softer?”

“I’ll guess it didn’t,” says Anson.

“No, it did not. Got worse. You can’t cough out here at night without some pirate hears you and flies on in with his machine guns. Sometimes mounted right there on his boat, like the Coast Guard itself. And he ain’t there to arrest you. Oh no. He ain’t worried about your constitutional rights. Why, we brought in a crate full of guns just last week, armed every man on board. Had no choice. Some ship got boarded a few miles south, and they killed everybody, everybody, dumped the crew over the rail, and left behind nothing but the captain’s head. Just his head, Marshall, just his head sitting there on the deck by the wheel. Now what kind of fellow does that?”

“Who was it? Which ship?”

“Aw, it was some new outfit, I never knew him. Maybe he was muscling in on somebody else’s neighborhood, I don’t know. But the whole thing shook us up. Put everybody on edge, up and down the Row. Sometimes you can hear the gunshots at night, and I don’t know whether it’s—”

Pop-pop-pop-a-pop-a-pop, comes a noise from outside, like somebody is making popcorn, like somebody is setting off some distant fireworks.

12

NOW I am already gone cold, already froze up and sick at the image of that dead captain’s head standing guard by his wheel, so what do I do at the sound of those fireworks but shriek. Shriek and startle and spill my whiskey all over the floor, the deck as they call it, while Anson lifts his arm away from my shoulder and puts his hand inside his jacket. Draws out a revolver. Logan jumps to his feet and swears. Heads right out the cabin door, and Anson turns to me.

“Stay here, for God’s sake!”

“You know I won’t.”

Anson is not a man who speaks profane, not the kind of man who takes the name of his Lord in vain, but he does now. Swears good and loud, better and louder than the captain himself, and hands me the revolver.

“You keep under cover at least, all right? You do as I tell you. And if you need to shoot, you just shoot. God knows you can fire a gun straighter than any man here.”

I stare down at the revolver in my palm, and then I look back up at Anson. Blazing, bruised face full of trust.

“Jesus God, how I love you,” I say.

He snatches my hand and commences to bolt straight out that door, pulling me behind, and I move my legs after him so fast as I can, because I will not be left behind to discover Anson’s blank face staring sightless, no sir. No more than I will be left behind to die in some dank cabin.

13

BROAD DAYLIGHT, and the deck of this Rum Row schooner reminds me of nothing so much as a good old church picnic brawl back in River Junction, except that nobody is drunk. You can chew on that irony if you like. I got more vital things to do.

Anson is all business, you understand. He has done this kind of thing before. He waves me back to the stern, behind some tall stacks of wooden crates, and because I did swear to follow his commands in this fight, I dive right into place, fixing myself a station by which I can watch the deck and fire that gun if I need to. The fear has fallen away from my skin, like it does in a set-to when your blood turns hot and your mind sharp, and only later do you start to shake and cry, only later do your insides curdle up and go cold. Now you’re just nothing but an animal, just a creature bent on keeping alive.

Seems the attack comes from the starboard side. Sound of bullets firing from my right, sound of bullets whizzing dead ahead. Some of them catch a mast or something, and the splinters go flying. Not twenty yards away, a man cries out and goes down, clutching his side. Idiot standing there in plain sight, no wonder. Anson’s ducked under the starboard rail, holding a rifle. Jumps up, aims, fires, ducks back down, all in the space of a second or two. His flat newsboy’s cap remains on his head, good solid plaid wool. I stare at that cap and pray.

But aside from Anson, nobody seems to possess the least idea what he’s doing. How to defend against a surprise attack from a shipful of what has got to be pirates, seeking to hijack Mr. Logan’s valuable cargo. Anson shouts out to a couple of Logan’s crew—Take cover! Wait and aim, goddamn it!—and they drop down and clutch their guns, but I can see they don’t know what to do with them. Me, now. I was reared up inside a mountain holler alongside three sturdy brothers, and I can shoot an acorn off a squirrel’s paws if I need. I can shoot a worm from a robin’s beak. I cradle that revolver in my palm like a diamond. Bring it to the level of my eyes and lift the safety latch, while Anson rises and fires again, rifle aimed at a more acute angle now, like to a boat drawing so close you might could count the noses of the men inside. He turns his head over his shoulder and calls out, and this time those two nearby men are paying proper attention. The deck is full of noise, guns firing and men shouting. I don’t know how you stay calm in a circus like that. He counts off on his fingers—one, two, three—and they rise together and aim down and fire, and maybe they hit a few men, I don’t know, because in the next second a small black ball flies over the railing and wobbles across the deck.

I don’t understand how it doesn’t hit anybody, but it doesn’t. Just wobbles there like an egg while the men carry on, while no one sees it except me, and I scream Anson’s name, scream, Grenade! so loud my throat seems to split, but I can’t even hear myself in that din.

So I run out from behind my crates toward that thing, that black ball fixing to murder us all, and now Anson sees me, now Anson sees what I’m after.

He shouts and motions the men back, dives forward and grabs that thing and tosses it over the side, and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t explode a half second later in an almighty boom, right there in midair, smacking everybody backward, even me, straight on my backside on that hard wooden deck.

I crawl forward, calling Anson’s name, but he’s already picking himself up from the deck, staggering a little, while a pair of hands appears over the side and then a man, skinny and blood-streaked. Anson’s lost his rifle—anyway, you can’t fire a rifle when a man’s that close—so he grabs the fellow by the shirt and hauls him back over the side into the water, and I yell with relief, except I can’t hear anything now, ears all stuffed up with cotton wool.

Yet already there are more men climbing over, five or six at a time from some rope ladders hooked over the rail, and I lose sight of Anson in the jungle of slinging arms and tangled bodies. Pick myself up and reel back to my crates and look for my gun to fire, but it’s gone. Clean gone.

Cold wave washes over me. No gun, Gin. Nothing between you and some pirate fixing to murder you, nothing between you and some pirate fixing to murder your beloved. I catch glimpse of Logan, punching at some fellow while another one comes up behind, lifting a knife, and the world just kind of tunnels around me while I hunt for Anson among all those fighting men, all those flying bodies. Start to climb up those crates so I can see the deck better, and that’s when I spot him, some kind of dervish, hauling men back over the side as soon as they pop over the ladders, and so great is his strength, so immense is the animal momentum in those arms and shoulders, the attack starts to falter. I don’t know how to describe the way everything changes. Just that these men are falling back, the center of gravity rolls toward the rail, the attack just thins and starves without new flesh to feed it. Anson’s cap is lost, his hair flashes in the sun. His skin seems to blur into his clothes, and I realize it’s my own eyes blurring. Blink blink. Perspiration stinging the corners. Perspiration slick on my palms. It’s over, it’s over. Men groaning on the decks. Smell of blood. Anson pausing, casting about, chest heaving for air. Picks up a rifle.

And I am so drenched with relief, so weakened by it, I don’t even notice the fellow who comes up behind Anson, not until the blade of his knife catches fire from the sun.

14

ICLUTCH THE edge of a wooden crate. Throat too dry to scream. Each muscle frozen against its ligament. Gun, where is the gun? Anson whips around last second. Grabs wrist. Somebody help. Help for God’s sake. Nobody helps, nobody sees, fists still swinging all over the place, and there comes over me this strange sensation like I am looking upon this scene from somewhere else, I can’t possibly be living inside this present moment, clinging with my one good hand to these wooden crates, standing here on this damned ship on this damned ocean while a pirate fights Anson with a knife.

When a couple of hours ago I drove across a sunlit bridge in a Packard roadster, laughing a little.

My fingers slip against the crate and down I go, crash bump crash, sliding along wood, stumbling to the deck. Gun, where is the gun? Anson struggling. Someone in the way, can’t see. Knife flashes. Big hand grabs my shoulder and whips me around, some mad, grinning, red-faced meaty demon, I go down on my back behind the crates.

The impact knocks away my breath. The man comes down on top of me, fumbling, tearing cloth. God no no no. Gun, where is the gun? Hot stinking breath on my face. Hand forcing my leg. You can’t fight a beast like that on strength alone. You can’t just pitch your feminine muscle against his masculine one. Nature favors the conqueror in these matters; Nature wants the strong to populate the earth. You have but one chance, and that’s what he don’t expect. I force myself limp, gather myself together. Bring my knee up hard and dig my teeth into his neck, I mean I tear his flesh like I am tearing meat from a sparerib, and he screams and falls away, screams a fisher cat scream. I roll the other way, toward the crates, spitting out blood and skin, and there in the crack between two stacks of booze lies the barrel of a Colt revolver.

Snatch it up.

Brace myself and heave up to my feet.

Wheel around the corner of that stack of crates.

Gun in my left hand. Raise it. Find that silver flash, find Anson’s white shirt, still struggling, knife surging toward his throat.

Fire.

15

THERE ARE two men dead of bullet wounds and another four injured. Anson piles them into the motor launch with the help of the first mate, who jumps in, too. Logan’s left arm and leg are badly slashed, but he insists on staying with the ship. Thanks us profoundly. Tells me I am a damn good shot. I stick the revolver in the pocket of my dress and acknowledge the truth of this compliment.

I don’t believe Anson and I exchange a single word the entire journey back to shore. The first mate has brought a bottle of whiskey, and he and I take turns. Settle our nerves. Anson just pilots the boat and refuses the bottle. I nudge him with the neck of it. “Come on. Not even your nerves are made of that kind of steel.”

“I’m all right.”

“You threw back two full glasses on the ship. Watched you do it.”

Without so much as a blink, he says, “We’re back inside United States waters now.”

And all at once, I am filled with fury. I fling that bottle into the water. Take him by the arm and strike my good left fist against his chest, over and over, while the boat makes this crazy lurch and the first mate dives for the wheel.

“Why? Why? We were safe, Anson, we were safe at last, and you head out to some ship and near enough get us killed!”

He pulls me right up against his chest while I keep screaming.

“Was it worth it? Was it? That fellow nearly killed you, and for what? What the hell did we learn that was so important as that?”

“We learned that the game’s about to change, Ginger. Learned that more people are going to get killed. More blood’s going to spill.”

I have nothing to say to that. Just fall back into my seat. The engine’s roaring, the boat lurches across the water. Blue sea jumps and spins before me. I think I might vomit. I turn my head over the side and I do vomit, heave the sparse contents of my stomach over and over into the horizontal draft. When I’m finished, when I’m collapsed on my seat, Anson’s hand lands gently on my back.

“All right?” he says.

“I’ll live. You?”

He pats my back once more. Caresses my hair swiftly. Returns his hand to the wheel and says, “So long as you’ll live, I’ll live.”

16

THE SUN’S long set by the time we arrive back at the villa in the blue Packard, and for an instant I’m bemused to see a small figure running from the shadow of the house, calling my name.

Patsy. I plumb forgot my baby sister.

I sink on my knees in the gravel and take her sobbing body against mine. Tell her it’s all right, I’m here, everything’s fine, what’s the matter?

“She wouldn’t go to bed until you came home,” says Mrs. Fitzwilliam, who stands nearby in a pale dressing gown like a ghost, doing her best not to sound reproachful.

I don’t dare look up at her face. The one pressed against mine is bad enough, cheeks all wet and hot, breath coming in tiny, desperate pants. She sticks to me like a burr, like a marsupial, like I am a kangaroo and she is my kangaroo baby enclosed to my chest and belly by some invisible pouch. Her small back shudders under my hand. I keep saying I’m here, I’m fine, I would never leave her, but my words ring hollow, don’t they? Not once did the thought of Patsy enter my head as I took off across the dangerous blue sea with Anson. Not once did I think of her left behind. Not once did I imagine some kindly person telling Patsy that her sister has been split clean apart by a Rum Row pirate, and she has no kin remaining to cherish her.

“W-where w-were you?” she hiccups out.

“I was with Mr. Marshall. Out in a boat.”

“Why didn’t you take me with you?”

“Because …” Because I forgot all about you, cherub. Because it was too dangerous, anyway. Because there is no sister in the world so bad as I am, nobody in the world less capable of looking after you, poor baby, poor darling, I’m so sorry.

I start to pull away from her, because I can’t stand the weight of her terror, and also I’m starting to cry myself, tears leaking out the corners of my eyes at this terrible, terrible day that started out in such peace. My arm hurts, my back hurts. Maybe every bone in my body hurts, every tendon and joint, every fingernail. A weight falls next to my left shoulder. Anson, crouching beside us in the gravel.

“Patsy,” he says quietly, “do you know what your sister did today?”

She peers out over my arm.

“Your sister saved my life.”

“She did?”

“She saved my life, and her own life, and the lives of a shipful of men. In fact”—he takes his finger and carefully parts her damp hair from her face, one side and then the other, so he can look in her eyes—“I think your sister’s about the bravest person I know.”

“That so?”

“That’s so. Ginny’s the kind of sister who will do anything to keep you safe.”

I let my arm fall away, so Patsy leans against me, turned toward Anson.

“But who’s going to keep Ginny safe?” she asks, terribly small.

“Well, I guess that’s my job, isn’t it? As best I can.” He holds out his arms. “And now I think it’s time you went to bed, sweetheart. You and Ginny, you need your sleep.”

Patsy goes so willingly into his embrace, I think my heart stops. Lays her head on his shoulder while he lifts her up with one thick, exhausted arm and takes my hand with the other. By the time we reach the stairs, her eyes are already half-closed, and her wet eyelashes stick together at the tips, and I can’t help recollecting the way we entered this house not twenty-four hours before. Just like this, except we have fresh, new bruises and hurts atop the old ones, and though the house is exactly the same, pale and peaceful, and our hosts make identical noises of relief and welcome, I am overcome by this swift, terrible vision that we are stuck on a wheel, the three of us, a nightmare Ferris wheel that turns over and over and never lets us off.

17

I STAY WITH Patsy until she falls asleep in her bed in the room she shares with Evelyn. The wee Fitzwilliam sprig doesn’t even stir throughout this disturbance, just lies there under her white counterpane, sweet cheek turned to the moonlight. I stroke Patsy’s hair and count the beats of her breathing. The house around us has gone still; even the slight, worried murmuring of the doctor and his wife has died into silence.

My own room is the one next door. I slip inside and climb under the covers, which smell drowsily of lavender. The window’s cracked open, releasing all the heat of the day, and for some time I listen to the strange, wild music of the Atlantic Ocean and recollect the night I spent in Southampton, when that same water beat against my shore in exactly the same key. Isn’t this supposed to lull you to sleep? Lavender sheets and the ocean noise? Well, it doesn’t. I turn on one side and the other. Stare at the blank ceiling and see visions of violent death, of lifeless faces, though I tell myself I’m safe and sound, safe and sound, nothing to fear.

Start to get angry.

I’m the lucky one, aren’t I? Survived all this trouble to find myself lying in a soft bed by the sea. I ought to be happy. Ought to be sleeping the sleep of the fortunate.

I sit upright. Stare at the billowing curtains. Throw off the counterpane, slide from the bed, and take my dressing gown from the hook on the door.

18

HOWEVER DEEPLY I am attached to Oliver Anson Marshall, I am not bound to him by anything so respectable as marriage. He sleeps virtuously, therefore, on the other side of the villa, in some kind of guest quarters that exist on the other side of the courtyard.

You might be in Italy as you steal through the French doors from the dining room and across the paving stones of that courtyard, breathing in some exotic scent of citrus and spice while a stone fountain rattles happily in the moonlight. The air is soft and still warm, blowing in from offshore, and I can taste the wholesome salt on the back of my tongue.

There is just enough glow to guide me to Anson’s door, which opens directly into this enchantment, and—to my vast surprise—the handle turns easily. Wouldn’t a fellow like Anson lock his door as a matter of course? Then he says my name as I enter the room, and I understand the oversight. I shed my dressing gown but not my nightdress and climb into the bed. Lie on my side, facing him, while he gathers me close. His skin is so hot as a fever. I press my forehead into his collar. “I can’t do this anymore,” I say.

“Do what?”

“Can’t go out into danger with you. Can’t keep watching people get killed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just stop. Give up.” I bring my good left hand up to cover his jaw and his ear. “Just stay with us, where we’re safe. A nice, quiet life.”

“Is that what you want? A quiet life? You, Ginger?”

“I’m done. I’m done.”

“Shh. It’s all right. You’re shaking.”

“Of course I’m shaking, you damn fool. Nearly died out there, the two of us, out there on the ocean. What’s my sister going to do, if we’re killed?”

“It’s over, it’s done. We’re safe. Won’t happen again, I promise.”

“Won’t it?”

He is silent for some time, resting his left hand upon my hip, his right hand up around my head, inside my hair. He’s bathed and shaved, I can smell the soap of him, and also the faint reek of antiseptic. I guess the doctor saw to him. Clean and dry and warm, bursting with bone and muscle and adventure. Pitching villains into the ocean one minute, carrying my baby sister tenderly in his arms the next.

“Just let me clear my name,” he says. “That’s all I want.”

“Why? Why does it matter?”

“It just does. So we can live honestly. No shadows behind us.”

“I’ve got news for you, bub. It’s too late for that. Why do you think I came down here tonight?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

I start to answer him, but my throat hurts when I try to make words. So I just breathe, breathe him in, breathe his soap, breathe the faint note of antiseptic and the particular scent of a warm bed and a warm man inside, like no other smell in the world. My heart slows. “I had this dream,” I whisper.

“What kind of dream?”

“Last night. Just before I woke. Dreamt I was trying to find you, and you were on a ship. A ghost ship, nobody on board until I went below decks. And then I found you, and you were dead. Everybody was dead.”

He sighs. “I see. Is that what all this is about? Some dream?”

“Wasn’t just a dream. Too real for that. Back home, we would have called it a vision.”

“A vision? You mean like a premonition?”

“I mean a vision, Anson, a glimpse of some future scene. A prophecy.”

“You don’t really believe that?”

“Don’t I?”

“Ginger, it’s a dream, it’s nothing more. You’ve never believed in that kind of thing. It’s a figment of your imagination, that’s all.”

“Why, you think I’m neurotic, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t. I think you’re exhausted, you’re—you’re full of nerves. Look at you, you’re shaking. It’s because of what happened in Maryland. Naturally you’re having nightmares. God knows I am. But it’s not real. There’s no such thing as visions, second sight, all that magical nonsense.”

“Isn’t there? Those men liketa murdered us tonight, out there on that damned ship, and you think it’s just a coincidence?”

“But we weren’t murdered. I’m alive, and so are you.”

“So maybe we got lucky. Maybe it’s a warning, I don’t know. What I do know is someone’s trying to tell me something. Someone’s trying to make me listen up.”

“Who, exactly?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Well, what, then? You want me to hide forever, just because of some foreboding?”

“Yes!”

“Ginger.” He shakes his head. Strokes my hip. “Ginger.”

I lift my face, so our lips nearly touch as I move them. “You’re going to keep going out there, aren’t you, and I can’t go with you. I’m done. I can’t follow you anymore. I’ve got my sister to rear up. I’ve got to love her and keep her safe.”

“Don’t say I, Ginger. Say we. We will love her and keep her safe.”

“We? There is no we, Anson. Not so long as your heart is out there on that ocean, out there on those highways at night. This fight, it’s in your blood, like Patsy and I could never be.”

“That’s not true. You’re in my blood. You are my blood. Heart and bone and everything else. You have no idea, Ginger, no idea how much I—”

I lay my hand quick over his mouth. “Don’t say it.”

Anson reaches up and picks my fingers away. Holds them inside his palm. “Tell me what you want.”

“You tell me first.”

“I want you. That’s all.”

“Really? What about the rest of it? Family, kids, house in the country? Dog lying on the hearthstone?”