But that afternoon was hotter than the hinges of hell, so I had no qualms about going around half-naked. There was no one around to see, anyway, Sam having volunteered to drive all our other guests into town in the wood-paneled Chevrolet. Margaret was busy with the endless chores inside the house that came of taking care of the eight ladies, give or take, we had in residence at any one time. Max had gone to the courthouse to stand witness for a departing guest, swearing on a Bible that Suzy had not set foot outside Nevada for the past six weeks. As soon as the judge proclaimed Suzy Nevada’s newest legal resident and Reno’s freshest grass widow, she’d board a train for her real home, Chicago.
Emily, as it turned out, had stayed behind while the others went into town. She’d arrived at the ranch a few evenings earlier behind the wheel of a Pierce-Arrow she’d driven solo the two hundred or so miles from San Francisco, sitting on top of a big square pillow to make her tall enough to see over the steering wheel without getting a crick in her neck. She’d pulled into the barnyard just before dusk, the top of her convertible lowered for the breeze, her uncovered hair whipped into a rat’s nest. Darkness fell around 9:00 p.m. that time of year, so Emily’s arrival had raised quite a ruckus among our guests and also the chickens, both groups just starting to make noises about settling in for the night. By the time her luggage was unloaded and the cooling engine had stopped ticking, some of the poultry had roosted on the Pierce-Arrow’s windshield and the barn cats were sharpening their claws on its upholstery. I shooed the critters off and put the sedan in an outbuilding next to the stagecoach, then covered it with the Mixmaster’s antique tarp.
The other women congratulated Emily on her bravery for undertaking such an epic voyage alone. “Not brave,” she said. “Desperate. If I hadn’t left when I did, I wouldn’t have left at all.” She had the plummy accent of women who cycled through the Seven Sisters colleges back East, but her voice was surprisingly deep and gravelly for such a little thing.
“My dear, your voice,” one of our older ladies said. “You sound absolutely exhausted.”
“Oh, I always sound like this,” Emily said. “I’m sure it was cute when I was five years old, but now—” She shrugged and shook her head. “Fingernails on a chalkboard. According to my darling husband, anyway. But yes, I am very, very tired.”
A couple of days in Margaret’s care, however, had perked Emily up considerably. Just as I was hitching up the last of the horses to head over to the airport, she appeared at my elbow saying, “Well, if it isn’t Cary Grant in cowboy boots.”
She had on a pair of cowboy boots herself, with a loose summer dress, a look I’d never seen back then that I’ve noticed some of the young girls go for now. Emily always put her own spin on the rich-lady uniforms our guests wore at the ranch: the tight-legged, baggy-seated jodhpur pants and tall English boots they all brought along for horseback riding, for example, that they’d replace with cookie-cutter fancy western wear bought in Reno, which they’d abandon as soon as they were home again. There was a sameness about our guests’ coiffures, too, lacquered into submission usually and blond more often than could be natural from a statistical standpoint. What Sam used to call “suicide blondes,” as in “dyed by their own hands.” Emily’s hair, however, was an untamable mass of dark ringlets, the bedspring kind that begged to be pulled straight and released back into coiled spirals. She had huge, wide-set brown eyes and a Kewpie doll’s little curved mouth, which, along with her small stature, gave her the appearance of an unusually wise and solemn child. Until she spoke, that is, in a rasp that suggested her vocal cords had been freshly tuned up on a cheese grater.
As I’d thought Emily had gone into town with the others, I like to have jumped out of my skin when I heard her voice. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“I confess you got the drop on me, ma’am,” I said. While I was hitching up the team I’d fallen to brooding about a departed lacquered blonde just a year older than I was who I’d risked my job to be with the summer before. Now, what was her name? Rachel? Mitzi? Laura or, perhaps, Laurie? Funny, there was a time I believed I’d never forget that woman. Go figure. I do remember she always wore door-knocker-sized emerald earrings, day and night, that matched her green eyes. I know that because I remember thinking she must have paid as much for those earrings as my parents’ house was worth before the Crash.
From the way Emily had her eyes fastened on the bandana I had knotted at my neck, I suspected my naked chest was making her uncomfortable. I untied my shirt from around my waist, wiped my face on the sleeve, and pulled it on. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”
“So this is the stagecoach I’ve heard so much about,” Emily said. “Where are you taking it?”
“To pick up a guest.”
“Can I come, too?”
“I’m not going to the train depot, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I said. “The airport is in the opposite direction. If you wanted to go into Reno you should have gone in with Sam and the others when you had the chance.”
“I’ve been into town already. Yesterday. I bought these boots.” Her boots were red, intricately embroidered, and possibly cost more than a semester of Ivy League tuition. Emily seemed surprised to see them on her feet. “I didn’t think I needed cowboy boots, but the salesman said I had to have them if I was staying on a ranch. He told me they were the best insurance there was against rattlesnakes and other varmints. He used ‘varmint’ in a sentence. How could I resist that? My daughter’s feet are as big as mine are already, so I thought there was a chance she’d insist on taking these boots from me when I get home. I’ve already sent her a postcard telling her all about them. I figured she’d read a postcard whether she wanted to or not before tearing it up and throwing it in the trash, which is what she said she’d do with my letters so I shouldn’t waste my time writing any.”
She cleared her throat, then cleared it again and swallowed hard, all signs I’d come to recognize by then as precursors of a come-apart. “The other ladies said they were either going in to shop or gamble this afternoon,” she added with forced cheerfulness. “I decided not to go with them because I don’t like shopping much and I really don’t like gambling.”
And yet you got married, I thought but did not say. By the summer of 1938 I’d seen plenty of evidence that matrimony was about the biggest crapshoot going. There’s nothing like working a divorce ranch to make a person question the likelihood of happily ever after. I dug a bandana from my pocket and offered it to Emily just as her brimming eyes spilled over. Max equipped each of his ranch hands with an endless supply of these brightly patterned cowboy hankies for moments just like this. “What’s your daughter’s name?” I asked.
“Portia. I tried to get her to come with me, but—” She shook her head and looked away. “She’s thirteen. You know how that is.”
I didn’t, not then, but I nodded anyway. “Portia,” I said. “The pound-of-flesh girl in Shakespeare.”
“Oh. You know that play?” Emily asked, surprised. “It’s one of my favorites. All the characters get what’s coming to them. It almost makes a person believe there could be justice in the real world. What’s your name, cowboy?”