By Air Mail Ch.03

And of course to most of the folks around town back then, that was the good part of her background.

Her mother was trash and her father ...

She'd only had her father in her life for a couple of years at most, an interlude which most might find strange, but to Emmy, a lot of it had been profound. She'd never seen her parents together in one place and she'd always had such trouble even imagining it.

As far as Emmy knew, her mother had been out on the street and needing to do something to get some money after all, and the one whose seed had taken had been the man that she'd liked the most, but it didn't last long before he figured out that he didn't want a crude, loud bitch in his life for very long.

That was the surmisal that Emmy used herself a lot of the time, though she knew that it wasn't correct. From knowing what she did about both of the individuals involved, her mother had likely driven her father out with her almost constant and usually mean-spirited shrilling.

What she'd learned of it years later was something that still haunted Emmy to this day.

But Emmy-Lyn bore the signs of that ancestry as well. Her eyes might be a thoughtful and subdued jade color, but her long, shining, coal-black hair and a few of her facial features along with the color of her skin said all that needed saying.

Yessir, cattleyards, all kinds of bars and saloons, a shit-ton of gunslingers roaming it's streets working on BOTH sides of the law oftentimes, gunfights, knifings and Longhorn fever. What a place.

And that had been the high point, long ago.

Who couldn't want to come here eighty years ago? Who wouldn't want to grow up and live right here?

Emmy-Lyn was trying to leave it.

And she had more than a few good reasons to want to.

About all that she might have been truly guilty of was being in possession of a set of slightly confused hormones to her mind, a little curiosity, and far too much trust in an old schoolyard friend.

Well, those things hadn't happened all at once.

She was barely twenty-one now, but back when she was nine, she'd met Janey Carver, just moved in from Wichita, since her father worked for the railroad. Janey had been shy and unsettled and had been picked on a lot by the other kids at school.

Emmy-Lyn was nobody – even back then, but she didn't see it as right. So she's stood up for Janey many times until the bullies finally figured out that it was just easier to leave her alone. But they had long memories and now that they were all pretty much grown, Emmy-Lyn no longer possessed the edge that she'd had back then. She'd been able to put up with the garbage, for the most part anyway.

But starting a friendship with Janey hadn't been top of mind to her especially back then. It had been Janey who'd begun that and after a little time, Emmy-Lyn found her existence as a loner and an independent one at that overtaken by Janey's persistent offerings of friendship.

It got her a few visits to the Carver home and there, Emmy-Lyn grew to know how the better folks lived. At least the ones a few levels above her family in the pecking order around this shit heap.

Emmy-Lyn wasn't a beauty and never had been, to her mind. She dressed in clothing that would stand up and wasn't necessarily made to compliment her looks. People in her class tended not to own the finer things. As a kid, she'd been a bit chunky and that was still on her to a degree – though Emmy-Lyn herself could see that it was fading slowly, now that she was staring adulthood in the eye. She just wondered how far that would go before the rest of her blood drew the line.

There'd been a few birthday party visits and due to the distance separating their homes ...

Well, it might be more accurate to say that stepping across the wide gap in class structure separating Janey's pristine life as the daughter of a railway section superintendent and Emmy-Lyn's much poorer way of life wasn't a trip that even Janey's father was willing to make well after dark. And there was nobody coming at all to walk Emmy-Lyn home. There never had been.

Emmy-Lyn had never known much about her father until she'd turned twelve and he was out of her life by the time that she was thirteen and a half. Her mother – when she worked – was a rather alcoholic short-order cook and waitress in a working man's diner on the other side of the many, many tracks. The rest of the time, her mother – when she wasn't working – was just a drunk.

Over time, and as the two girls grew older, it had been Janey who had professed a desire in her for Emmy in ways which had surprised the hell out of the taller girl. And by the time that they'd gotten out of high school, Emmy-Lyn Parker was in the love of her life.

She might have been confused as hell about it until she came to accept it for the way that it felt to her heart, but that had been the first love of her life.

But girls from families even a little better off never think of things like that as they begin to think that it was getting to the time when a girl finds herself a young man. With a little help, it had happened and Janey was engaged, just after the end of the war and now that the economy was ready to boom without the drain of the war effort dragging it down any longer.

The boy worked for the railroad too, thanks to Janey's father and his future as well as Janey's looked rather bright indeed.

It had bothered Emmy-Lyn, sure, but what do a pair of girls from a cow town in the middle of nowhere do? What sort of opportunities are there then? None that either one of them could see for damn sure.

The second blow to Emmy-Lyn's heart had come when she'd proposed leaving Dodge City together and Janey had refused – which, no matter how Emmy-Lyn looked at it, was Janey choosing life with someone else over love with her.

That led to a long period of darkness for Emmy-Lyn Parker.

She'd withdrawn and was just getting over it when she'd run into Janey one day.

Emmy-Lyn hadn't known of Janey's impending wedding the next weekend and Janey hadn't said a word. She'd acted like they could be together again, though she'd been a little foggy about just how.

They'd ended up going for a walk out in a vacant field full of scrub brush out behind Janey's house and well, one thing led to another , since they hadn't seen each other in a while and Emmy-Lyn had just been so relieved and happy and ...

They'd been caught by Janey's younger sister who'd been sent to bring her older sibling back so that they could leave for the wedding rehearsal if she got changed right then.

The sister had come along with their eighteen year-old weasel-faced cousin and ...

Janey had instantly made it all Emmy-Lyn's doing, as though none of it had been her idea at all.

Emmy-Lyn could remember standing in shock and a considerable amount of hurt as Janey had accused her directly when the whole thing had turned into a screaming match.

Now, Emmy-Lyn's own mother wouldn't even speak to her and - not that she'd ever had much of a reputation in Dodge City before that point or anything.

But she sure had one now. The things that she'd been called and ...

The only thing they hadn't accused her of was molesting the kitchen sink.

She'd gotten out her small amount of money; all that she'd saved over her life thus far and been able to hide from her alcoholic mother. It was a little more than what she'd had when she'd suggested leaving town to Janey.

Now, she supposed, it might get her a little farther away. Maybe twice as far.

So with a small suitcase filled with a very few clothes and things, she'd been trying to get to the train station, hoping against hope that Janey's father or her beau wouldn't see her. She'd thought to go about as far as a train ticket might get her and then try to ride her thumb, which wasn't a thrilling prospect either.

But it was all that she could think of.

She'd gotten to the near side of Wright Park and could see the station, already wet to the skin from a sudden cold downpour which she took as Dodge City's send-off to one of it's lesser daughters when she'd been set upon by this bunch of quarter-wits, who were shouting and threatening her.

They'd tried to pull her grip out of her hand and she'd already been kicked a few times. Janey's cousin had some friends just as dim-witted as he was apparently.

Emmy-Lyn could handle herself most times and she wasn't either terribly small or weak, but she had to defend her suitcase because they kept trying to get it away from her and so she was limited in what she could do. She wanted to swing it as a defensive weapon, but the handle was on the verge of giving up and one of the latches was already iffy to start with.

Things were about at their lowest for Emmy-Lyn by then and in spite of herself, she was almost in tears. She'd never in her life thought of herself as what they were yelling at her. The truth be told, it had been Janey leading her descent into whatever it had been. Emmy-Lyn sure hadn't had the imagination for a lot of those things.

She'd just been hit with a fist against her cheek and it had rattled her pretty badly, more so because the way that it looked to her now, it had been the crossing of a barrier and she feared – with good reason as far as she could tell – being on the receiving end of a beating at the hands of six young pricks. Janey's cousin stepped up to get his licks in for all sorts of reasons which made no sense as he almost screamed them out at her. In fact, the thin little bastard did hit her once and drew his fist back again.

And then he was gone.

He was reeling and falling over into the rain-slicked grass holding his face. At that point, he instantly reverted to more of a boy for the way that he sounded and he began to cry as he found two teeth loose in his bloodied mouth.

The biggest one who had connected with Emmy's cheek was shocked to find a gloved hand clamped down on his shoulder. He winced as that hand closed like a bear trap, taking secure hold of his jacket, his shirt and even his skin very painfully before he could think to try to squirm away.

He looked and saw that the grip of that hand was so tight that rainwater was being squeezed out of the wet leather of the glove. No wonder that he had trouble drawing a breath for the pain.

He had the chance at a look under the brim of a dripping Stetson hat and the cold, steel-gray eyes that he saw there frightened him; the thriil of that sudden fear leaping right through his body like an electric shock.

Emmy-Lyn watched as he was hit twice, fast as anything – once in the gut fit to lift him onto his toes and once with a vicious right cross that spun him around pretty good to land on his face already beginning to puke.

"You should run," a low and deadly-calm voice came to him out of the rain.

The rest stood in shock and were taking a step back from somebody. Emmy-Lyn tried for a good look at him and saw a man there that she didn't recognize, even sure after a moment that she'd never seen him before.

He wore a long cattleman's coat, the sort that very few men now wore – except the odd cattleman on a shitty fall day as he rode herd into town the way that it was still done a little by some groups who drove their herds up from the south to sell into the stockyards. But she didn't see those things behind him, no cattle and no horse. Just an old Ford farm truck fifty feet away.

He wore a dark Stetson pulled down low against the rain and she could only make out the line of his strong jaw and the twinkling of a few day's growth of blonde stubble on his chin and cheek.

He told the others to leave while they could and then he stepped over to Emmy-Lyn.

She looked up at the gloved hand, as dark and wet as everything else on him, "Take my hand, Miss. I'll get you out of here, but we have to go now."

Emmy-Lyn was hurt emotionally as well as physically. She was shaken and afraid, confused, and flat-out struggling now.

But she took his hand.

As he helped her up, the other goons had gotten over their shock and were regrouping if it could be called anything like that, though the stranger didn't appear to be bothered by it very much. To him, they were just clumping together in uncertainty – which is what it was, of course.

As he straightened up to help Emmy-Lyn onto her feet, his long coat fell back on his right side and the boys who could stared and took off running. They left their companions where they'd fallen.

Emmy-Lyn wanted to look up into his face to at least thank him, but she'd seen their expressions and the direction that they'd been looking so her eye slid along only about halfway up on him and stopped.

Not that she knew all that much about it, but to Emmy-Lyn's mind, Dodge City couldn't exactly be easily confused with any place that might have been termed a cultural center. Even so, not many men there walked around with a six-gun strapped to their legs.

Not in this day and age, anyway.

He looked down and then back up. The upper part of his face was still hidden by his hat, but she could see the frown all the same. "Now I've got even more of a want to leave this shitpile," he said in a low and even tone.

He pointed at the old Ford truck idling nearby, "Where are you going? I can maybe give you a lift if it's not too far – that is, if you're alright. I saw a couple of them clip you, so I stopped."

He sighed, "I was already trying to stop as it was. I couldn't think of a single good reason for a pile of assholes to be threatening a girl like what they were doing to you."

Emmy looked over her shoulder, "I was tryin' to get to the station so I could buy a ticket and get out of town. But I can see the stationmaster from here and those guys are already heading over to him."

"More reason to go now," the stranger said, "Come on if you want a ride. I can't stick around here much longer. Train stations have telephones and even this place just has to have some kind of cops."

Emmy picked up her small suitcase and began to walk with him. It wasn't as easy as it might have seemed at first glance. Emmy had a pair of legs on her, but he was some lean and tall. And he walked with long strides.

"Why are you carrying a gun?" she asked.

He shrugged, "It's not the kind of thing that I can exactly leave lying around loose, so I took it with me. It's illegal to carry in a lot of places a lot prouder than this one pretends to be, but I don't know if it is here. Put your bag in the cab on the floor if you can see a spot for it and get in."

She nodded and as he got the old truck into gear and began to drive off, she asked him where he was going.

The cowboy smiled a little, "That's what I was gonna ask you.

Can you think of a place you'd want to go? I'd kind of appreciate it if you could decide a little quick. I was headed out of town on that road there. It leads to the airfield. That's where I'm headed."

Emmy looked over and saw that he had a handsome face, half-hidden under his hat and inside the turned-up collar and ... well, this wasn't maybe the best place to be in, looking at a man that she didn't know from Adam – who carried a gun, she reminded herself.

"I just have to get out of town, but the train's off the list for sure now and without being able to buy a ticket to somewhere, I don't have any other way out of here besides my feet," she said, "And not that it makes much of a difference anymore, but I'm soaked."

He nodded, "If you go on foot – even if it doesn't rain a drop anymore today, which I kind of doubt, you'll be freezing cold in about a half-hour or less. Well, if you want, I'm headed out of town too. But you oughta know that I'm not coming back for a good long while – if ever, now. Why do you want to buy a ticket at all? You could catch a freight from here. They don't pick up much speed until they're out of town."

"I've lived here all my life," she said, "I've seen what's left of the hobos that the railway cops drag in – and those are only the ones that they didn't beat half to death first and then throw them off the train - and they don't exactly stop for that.

Try to think of the fun that they'd have with me. Nobody even listens to me over the way that I look – and that was before."

"Before what?" he asked her.

Emmy-Lyn just shook her head, "Never mind. Just leave it alone."

She sighed, "Where are you headed, Mister? I don't know which way to go. I just want to get away from here. Right now, I can say that I've never been anywhere, but if it's the name of a town where they don't hate me and I can get a job, then Anywhere, USA sounds just fine to me."

He smiled thinly as he tried to peer through a sudden downpour that overwhelmed the single windshield wiper on the old farm truck, "I'm headed west and then north. You can come along if you want to and you think you can trust me a little. But I have to tell you, if you do decide to come along, the next place that you'll even have a chance to start walking will be Pueblo."

Emmy-Lyn blinked at him for a moment, "You mean Pueblo, Colorado?"

He nodded, "You know of another place with that name? I want to get to the field and if you wouldn't mind, I'd like it if you could give me a hand to get the things from the back of the truck into my plane.

Emmy-Lyn almost gaped, "Your plane?"

He nodded, "Yeah. I have to return the truck then. It's only borrowed, but it's only a hundred yards or so from the plane. After that I'm gone – with or without you, uh ...

You've got a name, don't you?"

She'd been looking out of the windshield in shock over what he'd said about an airplane. She'd seen aircraft lots of times up in the sky, but she'd never met anyone who could fly one. That made them like unmanned things to her – at least a little.

When she looked, he was smiling at her, "Well?"

"Emily," she said.

He accepted that, but only for a moment, "Just Emily?"

"No," she shook her head with an impatient expression, "Not just Emily. My name's Emily-Lyn Parker – sometimes, and Emily-Lyn Looking Cloud some others, since you're so nosy."

"Which one am I supposed to know you as?" He asked, "Which one do you want me to use for you?"

"It depends," she said looking upwards and a little sideways at him, "A lot of people treat me a certain way if they hear one. A few treat me a little better if they hear the other one, depending."

She touched her cheek a little gingerly over her cheekbone where she'd been hit the hardest. She asked herself who she thought she was kidding. Most people took one look and ...

They always had.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, "You can take your pick if you like. My momma gave me Parker. The other one is my father's. Use whatever one you want."

He was silent for a few seconds, "Was your birth registered?"

She nodded, "Momma told them to use Parker. I only found out about my other name later. My mother's name doesn't get me spit, most often. I don't use Looking Cloud much, but it makes me think of my father when I do and it feels good to me." She looked at her feet for a moment, "Sometimes that one gets me spit at."

Have YOU got a name, Mister?"

He almost laughed, but he nodded, "Thaddeus Quinton Fairbairn if you please, Miss Emily-Lyn Looking Cloud Parker – and I really like your name."

She looked startled, "You do? Whydja put it together that way?"

He shrugged, "Parker is your registered name. I like Looking Cloud better myself, but you seem reluctant to push it out far enough to let yourself be known by it. I don't care all that much, Emily. I was just curious. And I put it together that way only because it sounds nicer to me that way, more powerful and I like the way that it rolls off my tongue. You might want to keep it that way, you know."

She didn't know whether to laugh or what. She cranked her head around, "Thaddeus? Did you say –"