SHERIFF GREGG
&
THE RUSSIAN COUNTESS
By Hank Florentine McLoskey
Copyright 2011 Hank Florentine McLoskey
Smashwords Edition.
The Butterfield Sequestrian Society might have been a whole heap more effective if those girls hadn’t always been fighting amongst themselves. Every so often some member would storm out in a huff only to come back six months later, mainly on account of how the society was the closest thing they had to a life. And then we got people staying in town for a while before moving on and if they was prone to looking down their noses at others, they’d join the society.
So many women came and went down through the years I’ve forgotten half of ‘em, but I still remember the countess and Derry Bordieux. Like so many others in that society, they used to be the best of friends, for all that they was chalk and cheese.
Until they fell out, that is.
It was hot that Summer. Lord, it was hot. I’ve never cared much for heat and I rarely set foot outside my store if I could avoid it. One particular morning Abigail Crabworth comes into my shop in a terrible state. “Charles, you won’t believe what that Charlene Bartlett’s just gone and done!”
Needless to say this was back in the days when Charlene Bartlett was still head of the society. If memory serves me correctly Alicia Debenham had been off visiting relatives around that time, leaving Charlene in sole command. “What’s that Abigail?” I asked.
“Had my store shut down. Claims she’s got the mayor’s say-so and all.”
Abigail was close to tears. It made my blood boil just to look at her and know Charlene was responsible.
“Why in tarnation would that meddling busy-body want to shut down your store?”
“I don’t know, Charles. She’s outside it right now with the countess and Derry. Why don’t you go ask her?”
So I followed Abigail out onto the street. It was still early. The courthouse opposite Abigail’s was bathed in morning sunshine but the other side of the street was still sunk in cool blue shadows. Sure enough, there was a small crowd of woman gathered outside her store and even from a hundred yards away I could hear a lot of angry muttering. As I got closer, I saw a couple of planks nailed across the door and the winders and Charlene Bartlett facing the crowd with her hands resting on her parasol, a big fat smirk on her face, her two lieutenants standing on either side of her.
The countess was from some place in Russia and been in the neighborhood maybe four or five months. She and her husband had money to burn and they traveled a lot seemingly. He’d come into my store once and asked all manner of questions about grain and yields and what sort of implements the local farmers used. He had some crazy idea about buying hisself a big spread and planting wheat no less – some Russian variety he reckoned would survive in our climate, which he said was very similar to Russia. Me telling him prairies were only good for growing grass to feed cattle made no difference. He was dead set on the idea.
That said, coming to Butterfield had mostly been his wife’s idea. Her family were old Russian nobility same as his, but they’d had to leave Russia after offending the Tsar in some fashion – he could be a prickly fellow apparently. Countess Anastasia Kuragin had spent five years of her life – until she was sixteen years of age – living not ten miles from Butterfield. Then her family had got news they was back in favor and gone home. But the countess still had fond memories of Butterfield and her best friend, Charlene Bartlett.
Now I never cared for the Butterfield Society or anybody who wanted to be a member of it as a matter of principle, so I should have disliked the countess on sight – but boy, that woman was a class act! No matter how hard you tried to remind yourself about the company she kept, the moment you set eyes on her, none of that stuff seemed to matter. Beautiful? Darn right. Most beautiful woman I ever seen, I reckon. Big brown eyes you could get lost in, skin as pale as milk and a mass of dark curls piled up ontop of her pretty little head.
As always she was dressed in the height of fashion – well, what passes for the height of fashion in gay Paree, or so I’ve been told. She had on a dress of deepest blue, twin rows of buttons down the front, with gloves and a scarf to match and a little hat the same color perched ontop of all those curls. No wonder Charlene held her up as an example to the women of that town as to what a real lady ought to look like. Maybe that’s why the countess ended up a member of the society: she was flattered. That, and how she and Charlene had been friends, way back. But I also reckon the countess hated any sort of ugliness or unpleasantness so even if she didn’t hate whores the way Charlene and Sheriff Gregg did, she found them an affront to how life should be.
Not that I think she had a point, mind. Life ain’t all petals and perfume. It’s got thorns, too.
Derry Bordieux stood on Charlene’s left . Seeing her and the countess together, I couldn’t think of two women more different. Derry was dirt-poor hillbilly stock from the Ozarks, and looked it – a scrawny little women, her brown hair tied back in a greasy ponytail, eyes narrowed so they was just blue slits in her peaky little face, her thin lips set in a determined line.
I don’t think I ever seen Derry wear a dress. I know the society and Sheriff Gregg didn’t hold with women getting dolled up, but Derry was the other extreme. She’d served as a scout during the war by disguising herself as a man and to see her you might think the war had yet to end. She had on a dark blue sack coat, very shiny at the cuffs, over a shabby old cotton shirt, and kersey trousers of the palest blue-grey. Did I mention she was also wearing a pair of Jefferson boots, a black slouch hat and had two Smith & Wessons tucked into her belt? No? Well, as you can imagine the overall impression was none too feminine.
Them guns looked way too big for a woman her size, but Derry could whip one out and hit a weathercock at a hundred yards with it. I guess that’s why Charlene let her be a member of the society, even though it was strictly ladies only. Sure, she had Sheriff Gregg on her side but it’s never any harm having some additional back-up - just in case.
Personally I think Charlene was playing with fire. Derry had taken a minie ball in the thigh at the battle of Nashville and she still walked with a limp. Fact was, she was lucky she still had a leg to walk with, not that it still didn’t hurt some. Derry said she didn’t like to talk about the pain. Maybe so. But she sure liked to talk about how she didn’t like to talk about it – if you get my meaning. That bad leg sure made her cranky. Anger radiated from her tiny frame, like heat from a tiny stove. And that made her unpredictable. Despite having served alongside so many of them, Derry hated men, and probably had good reason to. She hated women for being under men’s thumb, so you can see why she had no time for whores - women who pandered to men’s needs.
Which probably leaves you wondering what sort of people Derry did have time for. That was a subject of some debate, but my considered opinion is that Derry had a thing for the countess, for all they were so unalike. Not that the countess had any idea this was so. She was very fond of Derry, after her fashion. She said Derry symbolized the ‘frontier spirit’, whatever that meant.
I was just in time to hear Charlene Bartlett deliver her little speech to that crowd.
“Why? Because it’s the mayor’s belief – and mine likewise – that the women of this town are far too fond of decorating themselves with all manners of fripperies – ribbons and bows and ruffles. It’s getting so it’s impossible to tell who’s a whore in this town and who’s a decent, respectable god-fearing women, you’re all so taken with this foolishness.”
“The mayor? What’s the mayor care one way or other about Abigail’s?” somebody demanded.
Charlene’s smile didn’t waver for a minute. “I won’t deny it. It was my idea to shut this place down. But the mayor agrees with me. We both reckon that if such things were put out of the way of temptation for a while then maybe y’all might learn to dress properly, like my good friend the countess here. A whore can’t help herself. She’ll put on her feathers and garters and whatnot, but you girls should know better. Can’t you see it’s for your own good? Or do you want to be taken for whores?”
There was some angry muttering at this until one woman hobbled forward to address the rest of the crowd. “Charlene is right,” she said. “You all know who I am. Mildred Pickett is my name and only the other day I nearly put on a feather boa my dear departed husband gave me! What if I had? Some man might have mistaken me for a whore and propositioned me! It’s not like it’d be his fault or nothing. Then I’d have had to oblige.”
This got a pretty lukewarm reception from the crowd, but one person was nodding away at what Mildred Pickett had just said. Both women were customers of mine so I had no trouble recognizing her – Mildred’s best friend, Martha Selznick.
“Ain’t that the truth?” Martha said. “Why, just this morning I was wondering whether to wear my black bonnet – the one with bright red ribbon round its brim! I sure am glad I didn’t, now Charlene Bartlett has pointed out how it might look. We should be thanking her for saving us from ourselves.” Martha sniffed. “All women are whores under the skin, in my opinion.”
Nobody had the bad manners to point out how Martha Selznick and Mildred Pickett could never be mistaken for whores, mainly on account of them both being nearly a hundred. They were just a pair of frightened old ladies trying to keep on Charlene’s good side, that’s all.
And now it was the countess’s turn. Looking at her it struck me suddenly that maybe Charlene had a point – not that it was any of her business either way – but the women of Butterfield were prone to gilding the lily. That blue dress wasn’t just the height of fashion. It showed off the countess’s figure to perfection mainly because it wasn’t any more complicated than it needed to be. She sure didn’t need no pleats or ruffles to look good!
The countess spoke kinda peculiar, being Russian. Her family had kept very much to themselves while they was staying in Butterfield so I guess this wasn’t too surprising.
“Besides: the things in thees liddle shop. They are so uglee – no? You want to be ladies? Then you dress like ladies. I teach you.”
“We don’t need no foreign lady tellin’ us what we can and can’t wear!” somebody shouted from the back of the crowd.
“You mind your mouth!” Derry yelled in reply. For somebody so tiny, that woman had a voice like a foghorn. You want to see that crowd pull away as she marched out into their midst. They was real scared of her. And with good reason. Already her hands had dropped down to her sides and her thumbs were caressing the tops of her two Smith & Wessons as she scanned all them angry faces with her fierce blue eyes.
“This shop stays closed until further notice!” she barked. “Mayor’s orders! You want to make something of it?” She pulled out them two guns and cocked them, each click real loud and real clear on account of the sudden silence which had descended over that crowd. “Then you got me to answer to! Now disperse! Disperse I say!”
And that’s what the crowd did. They had no choice in the matter.
The countess wasn’t one bit happy about how Derry had come running to her rescue. “Why must you wave those things around in the air like that, Deree? It is – it is so gauche.”
“I was just looking out for you, is all.” I could see Derry was offended by the countess’s lack of gratitude. The countess smiled that sweet smile of hers. “Of course! It was most kind – but how can we make these poor women see sense by waving a gun in their faces? It is not good manners. We must lead by example.”
I was kinda surprised Sheriff Gregg hadn’t come down to supervise things personally. I’d been too preoccupied to glance across the street when I followed Abigail out of my store but I saw now he was leaning back in his rocking chair same as always, squinting over his balcony down towards our end of the street, a sardonic smile playing on his little yellow face.
That was when I knew Charlene hadn’t got the good sheriff to help her out on this particular occasion. Which meant Gregg felt the same as the rest of the town – that shutting down Abigail’s store was plain crazy.
Next morning, Derry Bordieux was still standing guard outside Abigail’s store – just in case anybody got any ideas. Things started out quiet enough with just a few passers-by shouting insults at her, but as the afternoon wore on them insults turned into an angry murmur and next time I looked out my door a large crowd had gathered outside the store and were heckling Derry for all they was worth. Clearly the good women of Butterfield weren’t taking the closure of the town’s one and only drapery store lying down.
Derry put up with it pretty well at first. You got to hand it to her. It can’t have been any fun, facing up to an angry mob in the blazing heat of a Summer’s afternoon. Only when some of them tried to charge her she fired a few rounds over their heads. They scattered pretty quickly then, but inside half an hour they’d regrouped.
And it was like that all day long. I was doing some stock-taking and my work was punctuated by the sound of Derry firing off those guns what seemed like every half hour. Part of me ended up feeling almost sorry for her. It was just like Charlene to issue some order and then leave Derry to make sure everybody obeyed it.
Not everybody felt sorry for her. When I glanced out my window I saw Sheriff Gregg had angled his rocking chair round all the better to watch the fun, and that must have made Derry all the madder. She called it a day around six and the first thing she did was come clumping up to that porch, spit a big brown gob of tobacco juice into the hot yellow dust and sneer – “what sort of sheriff is you anyways? To stand by and watch all merry hell break loose like that?”
“The sort of Sheriff who knows a lost cause when he sees it, Derry,” Gregg said with a grin. “I told Charlene I thought it was a dumb idea, and if you’ve any sense you’d tell her likewise.”
“I ain’t going to let a bunch of crazy women get the better of me.”
Gregg sighed. “Suit yourself. Things really get out of hand you holler and I’ll send the deputy here down to help you out, all right? Can’t say any fairer than that.”
Both men bust a gut laughing at this, even though I think Gregg’s offer was well meant. Derry just scowled. “Thanks a bunch.”
She must have been even less happy the following day when it was even hotter again and the women gathered outside that store started throwing stuff at her, and neither Sheriff Gregg nor Deputy Dawson were even within earshot – that was on account of how Charlene and the countess had pulled up outside the sheriff’s office in a big black carriage not half an hour earlier.
“We was just passing by and the countess was saying how she heard all these stories ‘bout you but never been formally introduced,” Charlene said gaily.
“Is that so?” the sheriff said. He didn't look one bit happy to see either of them – he never cared much for visitors anyway, but it was how he looked at the countess that struck me as especially peculiar. He was staring at her as if he’d just seen a ghost. He’d turned real pale and his eyes seemed even blacker and brighter than usual. And I could see him breathing in and out, which wasn’t like him at all.
Not to say he didn’t make a good show of hiding how he felt. He was ever so civil to the countess. He came down them steps, took off his hat and bowed real low. “A pleasure makin’ your acquaintance, ma’am” he said gruffly. He even took her hand and escorted her inside.
Things were just starting to hot up down the street, but not one of the four people on that porch – the sheriff, Deputy Dawson, Charlene or the countess – paid any heed. Derry Bordieux was on her own, as far as they was concerned.
They was in there for hours. It was already turning cool when the countess decided to leave – Charlene must have been intending to make her own way home – and that carriage had barely rumbled off out of sight before Derry comes storming up. She’d got a nasty cut over her right eyebrow from something one of those women had thrown at her and she was in a right old temper. Fighting off them women all day long can’t have been much fun especially when she knew Charlene and Gregg was inside and out of the heat. “Ain’t much good saying to just holler when you’s inside entertaining, Sheriff!” she snapped.
Seeing as how Gregg had never invited Charlene or the countess in the first place, it’s no wonder he got riled. “It ain’t like I asked them to come round, Derry,” he says. “And as for helping you out – to be honest I’m not so sure any more I should be getting myself or Skip involved in such nonsense.”
“Nonsense you say?” Derry scowled. “I bet you wouldn’t dare call it that in front of Charlene!”
She was reckoning on how the Butterfield Sequestrian Society paid a big chunk of Gregg’s wages, but Sheriff Gregg didn’t seem too bothered.
“Course I would!” he retorted.
“Is that so? Then here’s your chance!”
Charlene Bartlett had just appeared behind Sheriff Gregg, all busy with her gloves. “What you two squabbling about?” she asked.
“Sheriff here reckons that what we’s doin’ is just a waste of time,” Derry retorted.
“Well maybe he’s right, Derry,” Charlene said unexpectedly. “The whole thing is getting out of hand. You know that better than anybody, being in the front line an’ all.”
“You want me to step down?” Derry was incredulous.
Charlene coughed – she was more than a little scared of Derry and juss playing for time, I reckon. “Maybe it would be for the best.”
“Step down?” Derry said, her face turning very red and her eyes fair near popping out of her head. “You gotta be kidding me!”
Charlene was too scared to stand up to Derry so she threw the sheriff a look. He just grinned and shrugged. That was when I guessed Charlene had reached this decision sitting in Gregg’s parlor. How else could he have known to call Derry’s bluff?
Charlene took a long time putting her gloves on then, and she didn’t look up at Derry once. Not even when she said – “suit yourself, Derry. Just remember – you wants to stand outside that shop with your six-shooters, then you’re doing it without the support of either myself or the good sheriff here.”
“Fine by me!” Derry snapped.
Later that same evening I was getting ready for bed when I saw the Sheriff was sitting out on his porch. Whatever intimacies he and Delilah shared, it was that time of day they was most likely to share them, on account of how there was nobody else around. Gregg must have known I’d been party to one or more of those conversations but it didn’t seem to bother him none, maybe because I never went round telling anybody about them. I didn’t care for Gregg but you can hate a man and still respect his privacy.
Anyhow, Gregg was rocking back and forth and shaking his head. “Hell, I know it’s not fair, Delilah. You don’t need to tell me that. I’m just sorry she spotted that daguerreotype up on the wall. Now she’s liable to come back asking all sorts of awkward questions.”
Next morning I was sweeping the floor when I heard a rap on the window. It was barely eight o’clock and I hadn’t planned on opening for another hour at least, but the countess was standing right outside, so I let her in.
“I am so sorry, but it is – how you say? – an emergency. Ach!”
Suddenly there were sheets of paper fluttering all over the place. I helped her pick them up off the floor. They were letters, old, yellowing letters, all written in the same flowery hand. “Thank you,” she said once we were done. “A leedle black ribbon hold these letters together. Twenty long years it hold them! I am just getting out of my carriage and the ribbon break! Most annoying.”
“Well I don’t stock ribbons,” I said. “That would be more Abigail’s line, but seeing as she’s closed and all –” I couldn’t resist teasing her a little on account of how she’d played her part in bringing that to pass.
“Yes, yes. But you have something, yes?” She was searching my face with big, anxious brown eyes. I never seen anybody get so worked up about a bunch of old letters.
“I’ll have a look.”
That was when Derry Bordieux came into my shop. “Morning Charles, morning Countess,” she said casually.
“Hi Derry. You looking for your usual?” I knew Derry was on her way to stake out Abigail’s shop but didn’t see no point in getting into a row with her over it. She was just doing what she felt was right.
“Yep. Five ounces if you have it.”
“Sure thing. I’ll be with you in a minute.” I was looping a bit of string around that bundle of letters trying to be as careful as possible on account of how fragile they was, the two women watching me – the countess doing her best not to seem anxious, Derry slouching against the counter, toying with her guns as per usual, when Derry says – “you hear the latest, countess?”
The countess didn’t even look at her. She never took her eyes off them letters. Not for one darn minute. “And what is that, Deree?”
“Charlene reckons I’m wasting my time standing guard over that damn store.”
The countess shrugged like she had more important things on her mind. “Maybe she is right.”
She wasn’t looking at Derry Bordieux, so she didn’t see Derry frown and stick out her jaw. “It was all your idea, weren’t it?”
The countess looked over at her then. “Sorry? I do not understand –”
“The hell you don’t,” Derry snapped. “You put her up to it, saying how I was setting a bad example just ‘cos I was trying to do my job.”
I held out them letters and the countess practically snatched them out of my hands. “Calm down, little one –”
“Don’t EVER tell me to calm down!” Derry bellowed. Boy, that woman had a temper! Not that I blame her in this particular instance.
The countess hugged those letters to her bosom and drew herself up real straight. “Very well. It was me. Just like you say.”
Derry stared up at her in disbelief. “I thought we was friends.”
“We are friends, Deree –”
“Friends don’t stab one another in the back. Not where I come from.”
“We talk later, yes?”
And with this the countess swept out of the shop in a rustle of silk, leaving just the faintest whiff of some fancy French perfume in her wake.
“Goddamn!” Derry said to nobody in particular.
Well she bought her tobacco and went storming out of my store without saying another word.
Right then she must have felt like the loneliest woman in the world.
Well needless to say, the countess’s behavior had got me real curious. Why was she in such a godawful hurry? And what was the deal with them letters anyways? Somehow I wasn’t surprised to see she’d just gone straight across the street. She rapped on the door of the sheriff’s office. A few minutes later he comes out without his jacket or his hat, looking like you’d expect a man to look if somebody interrupts him while he’s having breakfast. If he was surprised to see the countess, he sure didn’t let it show.
“Countess, it’s a mite early for a social call – ”
“I brought you these,” she said, thrusting them letters into his hands. “A gift.”
Well the sheriff made a big show of looking surprised when he saw what she’d given him, but something made me think he was just play-actin’. “Well thank you very much, Countess. That’s real considerate of you.”
“You know what they are?”
“Can’t say as I do.”
“They are letters. Letters my sister wrote me.”
“Is that so?” Gregg was still doing his best to look surprised but his act was starting to wear a little bit thin now, and there was a dangerous glitter in his dark eyes.
“Yes, I had a sister, Sheriff. A twin sister. You did not know?”
He shook his head but he kept meeting her gaze steadily as if to say – sure I do, but you can’t make me say so.
The countess turned away from him then, looking out across the street. I wasn’t sure if she could see me, standing in the gloom of my store or not. Even if she could, I doubt if she cared much one way or the other.
“When we came here – my parents never let us leave house. We were prisoners. Natasha was like a caged lion – lioness. One day she run away.” Tears welled up in those beautiful eyes. The countess dabbed them away with a hanky. “She…she never come back. My father not care. She disobey him, so she not his daughter. Not anymore.”
Gregg leant against the doorway and started fumbling around for a cigarillo. “I’m guessing this story don’t have a happy ending.”
The countess didn”t look at him. “You guess right,” she said flatly. “I get letters. Her English bad. Then good. She say she have a new name. That she fall in love – some boy working with his parents on the railroad. An oriental gentleman. Then…nothing.”
Gregg had lit his cigarillo by then, and was blowing clouds of blue smoke into the still morning air. “Is that a fact?”
“Edward. A funny name for an oriental gentleman, yes? Most peculiar. That is all she tell me.”
“You mean she never told you his surname?” Gregg didn’t seem too bothered by how upset the countess was.
“No.” The countess heaved a deep breath then turned to face him. Gregg just looked right back at her. There was nothing to get a hold of – nothing about his expression that might tell you how he felt about the countess’s story. “Hell, Countess you don’t think –”
She didn’t say anything. Just stood and stared at him. After a minute Gregg’s face darkened into a scowl. That’s when I knew he hated the countess – hated her with every fiber of his being. And it’s when I knew why. Because the countess was still alive while her sister was dead and buried this twenty years.
Heaven knows what had happened to Natasha: life is hard out here and it could have been any one of a hundred things, but I knew Gregg had no part in her death – kill the only woman he ever loved? Nah. But the countess still deserved to know how her sister had passed on.
I know what Derry Bordieux would have done– just whipped out her gun, pointed it at Gregg and told him he better tell her everything or else. Only of course that wasn’t the countess’s style. She just kept staring at him, hoping maybe that there was some small scrap of goodness in that black heart that would respond to her pleas.
Only what happened instead is Gregg tosses them letters onto the rocking chair, puts out his cigar then walks right up to her and grabs her by one arm. ‘You listen to me,’ he says real low and soft and mean. “You pack your bags and you get out of here by the end of the week. Understand?”
The countess whimpers. He must have been squeezing her arm real tight. Too tight. I was just abouts to intercede when I hears Derry shout – “get your greasy mitts off the countess, you mangy dog!” Followed by a shot that passed so close to the top of the sheriff’s head it mussed up all his slick black hair.
It was enough to make him jump back and let go of the countess. She seemed to come to her senses then, just as Derry came running into view. “Deree!”
“Countess? You all right?”
“Put that stupid thing away! How many times must I tell you?”
Funny what a difference twenty or so yards can make, ain’t it? Derry would have seen Gregg escorting the countess in the day before and – being in love with the women – reckoned she had a rival. And watching what had just happened (but not hearing a word) it would be easy for anybody to assume Gregg was making some sort of unwanted advance upon the countess’s good person. The countess’s tone made Derry stop in mid-stride.
“What I do wrong now?” she asked plaintively.
The countess just glared down at her with brown eyes that were suddenly flat and cold as a muddy pond on an icy day. “You have no manners, Deree. You will never be a lady. Never.”
Well, the countess did just as Sheriff Gregg asked. Skedaddled. He took Derry’s guns off her too, on account of how she’d nearly killed him. And without her guns, Derry was nothing.
I guess the main thing is that Abigail got her shop back.
Hindsight sure is a wonderful thing, though. I thought the sheriff had looked like he’d seen a ghost, that day the countess had first turned up outside his office, only I’d got it all wrong. That wasn’t what had got him so frightened. He was already the best of friends with the ghost. It was seeing the living, breathing copy of that selfsame ghost that had got him so scared!