It took a day, a phone call to a friend back in Vegas she hadn’t
spoken to in months and a talk with her irate but slightly understanding
boss to convince herself that the man she saw on the casino floor was
not, in reality, the man she’d been running from for the past two years.
In fact, the friend on the phone said she’d seen him just a few days
ago, and for him to figure out where Carolyn was, hop a flight or grab a
rental car and drive to the middle of nowhere was probably an unlikely
scenario. He wasn’t the type of man who hunted down people.
Carolyn didn’t mention she knew that wasn’t true. It wasn’t a day
before she left for good that he promised to find her and to kill her.
That cut below her left eye–the one that bleed for nearly an hour–was to
remind her that he was in this for the long run. And no, she couldn’t
get stitches.
Thank God she got away when she did.
Carolyn looked up at the crystal blue Colorado sky. She’d been
walking up and down Bennett Avenue for an hour or so. It wasn’t a long
street and while most people viewed all the little shops and ancient
signs painted on century old buildings as quaint, she saw something
different. In fact, she was in love with the area, with the people, with
the serenity that could only come from a town that had died once and
been reborn through an industry she was not only familiar with but would
probably continue to work for until the day she passed away alone and
surrounded by a hundred cats. There was peace in Cripple Creek, even if
that peace felt tenuous to her at best.
Tenuous peace was still peace.
She stopped at the walkway to the Wild Horse Casino, its richly
painted sign contrasted with the deep red brick of the building to shine
in all its ancient glory. A white stallion leapt from the painting,
chased by four other stallions. Perhaps it was a mare; she didn’t know.
But there was meaning in the painting, something she found at nearly
every corner of her life: she was running, hard and fast. Maybe she
could stop one day, find the peace the rest of the painting portrayed,
one of grass meadows, mountains in the distance, a clear sky free of
trouble.
To her right, another painted sign pointed the way to the Red
Lantern, offering food and cocktails. She knew it pointed to Myers
Avenue, a former “Red Light” district if ever there was such a thing at
the turn of the century. Down the steps and next to the Wild Horse
Casino stood the Homestead House, the most famous brothel in Cripple
Creek. She knew the history, even respected the owner and operator Pearl
DeVere. The opulent parlor that bustled with activity was known for its
impeccable service, high-powered customers, its glamorous madams. At a
time when three dollars a day was considered a good wage for a miner,
Pearl charged $250 a night, and got it.
Carolyn sighed. The museum existed to glorify the days of women used
for their bodies by miners who used the earth for its gold. Then again,
what was so different now?
She turned from the sign and tried to exorcise the horrible thoughts
that bubbled up from her memory like deadly gases in a swamp. She’d been
used for her body, perhaps not by a miner but rather by so many men she
lost count when she turned thirty. Now, two decades later, she lived in
regret of nearly her entire life. The man she married a few years back
told her she was more than a body; she was a woman with thoughts and
desires and all the things that make up the soul trapped beneath the
skin.
When he hit her the first time, she still believed he meant it. When
he broke her arm the night she didn’t feel like spreading her legs for
him, she started to have doubts. When he threatened to kill her for
being nothing more than a whore who got a job as a casino waitress to
look for more men–his festering delusion–she lost all hope he had ever
meant what he told her. She was trash, a woman to be used, neglected and
disposed of like a tissue full of snot.
Carolyn shuddered. She didn’t need to think of these things. She
escaped, and now it had been two years of relative peace. Yes, she was
still haunted by the threat and the man she once loved, but it was
getting easier.
She looked back at the Wild Horse Casino sign then down at the ruins
in front of it: a building without a roof, grasses infecting every crack
in the foundation. Bricks were poorly laid out and wrapped around an
unbroken window that reflected her face. She stared at the face for a
moment–weathered, wrinkled, scarred. She was that person she saw: a
beautiful woman now in her fifties, a body that could wrestle large tips
from drunk men at the Spanish Mustang, a face spotted with history. She
hated the way she looked. While her face aged, her body didn’t. She
needed to do something else with her life, something that didn’t require
wearing tight shorts and a blouse that exposed nearly all of her
breasts to drunks. She needed to be a waitress in a café, an accountant
working daytime hours, a bus driver for little kids. She needed to do something,
but that something was elusive. You don’t get real jobs unless you have
an education, and her father–the motherfucking sexual predator who got
his due in prison–made sure she never even finished high school.
“I heard a fly buzz when I died,” she said. They were the words her
mother used to comfort her as a toddler, to soothe away the demons in
the night. She never knew where the words came from or why her mother
would even use them, but she didn’t need to know. The words were a
blanket.
Carolyn wanted to cry right there on the street, surrounded by
history. Who lived in these buildings, worked the mines, sold their
bodies? What was their history? Did they leave a legacy? Her body
quivered with shame, with regret, with so many feelings built up in her
life since childhood.
Life was a disaster waiting for an ending. Life was a quest without a goal. Life was a thing of beauty ruined by others.
Life was hell.
She turned away from the window and walked up the street toward the
Spanish Mustang. She didn’t have to work that night, but she was damned
if she was going to sit in her house all day and let the memories creep
in. A walk was what she needed, complete with fresh air, the wonderful
smells of fudge coming from the General Store and the peace of a street
filled with strangers.
As she passed the General Store and reached an intersection, she
noticed a woman on a bench with what looked like a sketchpad. The woman
stared at something or someone in the distance while her hands worked a
pencil across the paper. She was a small woman, frail, with light brown
hair draped across her shoulders and gently tossed by a March breeze.
Her hands–naked of gloves despite the weather–seemed to shake more than
glide across the sketchpad. If Carolyn had seen the hands first, she
would have sworn the woman was in her seventies, maybe older. However,
the artist’s face countered that assertion.
Curiosity welled up inside Carolyn and she crept up behind the bench
to get a look at the sketchpad. She’d always wanted to draw–as a little
girl, a teenager, a woman bouncing from job to job, casino to casino–but
outside of doodles on cocktail napkins or notepads meant for taking
orders, she never produced much. Still, the act of sketching
something–anything–was liberating to her, and those who did it more
professionally or with more conviction interested her. They were
creative souls who saw the world with different eyes, eyes not tarnished
by men who beat them, men who leered at them, men who reduced them to
nothing more than disposable objects.
She shuddered. Where did that thought come from?
The woman on the bench didn’t notice or seem to care that Carolyn was
now directly behind her, looking down the sketchpad. Her hand still
shook, but moved effortlessly while her eyes appeared to be locked on
whatever was across the street.
It was hard to discern what the woman drew at first, but the longer
Carolyn stared the more she recognized a form, a man with brute strength
buried under what might have been a heavy winter jacket. The curves,
the shading, even the stippled whiskers of a week-old beard were
impressive if not alive. She leaned in a little closer to see the detail
in the man’s face. . . then froze.
It was him.
In a split second, naked, bitter fear crashed down around her body
like a wave against an exposed cliff. Her body shook, her lips quivered,
her heartbeat escalated. Carolyn slowly raised her eyes from the
sketchpad and looked across the street.
It can’t be.
http://bxwretlind.com/blog/2012/04/19/an-excerpt-of-the-independence-of-carolyn-woltkowski/
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