I rode out of town the next morning, wondering what had happened to Johnny and Frank since I'd run away that day. Had they joined the army? Hunted buffalo? Ridden with the pony express? Ridden shotgun on stagecoaches? Apprenticed to a printer? Played the piano in saloons and brothels? Sold corsets, guns, whisky, patent medicines, barbed wire? Been a deputy sheriff, a trail cook, a railroad gambler, Lady Macbeth and Desdemona and Viola and Rosalind? How many women had they known and loved the way I had?
The wind changed, and I could hear the player piano churning out the only song it knew, a slow sad song… I spurred my horse on to a gallop and headed for the river.
She wasn’t there, but I was prepared to wait for as long as I had to: after all, she’d been waiting for me for years. If I’d known her name, I would have called it out, but we’d never actually spoken.
She appeared just as the sun was setting and stared at me across the river with eyes the same color as the water. She was as beautiful as I remembered and I wondered how I’d ever ridden away that first time.
I wore much the same outfit as I had when I was with the Pony Express, blue jeans and red shirt, but no guns. I slapped my horse on the rump and sent it running back to town, then pulled my boots off and threw them away. My Levis and my shirt and my long-johns went into the water without me, then I unbound the bandage around my breasts and let them free.
I heard what sounded like laughter as I stepped naked into the river, though it might just have been water flowing. The woman looked at me, then down at her breasts. Her dark nipples were swollen, and a drop of water balanced on one like a magnifying lens. We walked towards each other; her brown body glistening with moisture, mine sheened with sweat. She stopped when the water was just above her knees. She had the broad, strong features of an Indian, but I had a feeling she was much, much older, maybe as old as the Sweetwater itself. The black tangle of hair at her crotch was dripping, and I wanted to fall to my knees and catch every drop in my mouth. “It’s me,” I said, stupidly. “Josie.”
Silence, then, where have you been some mortals have been here here in the water some were young and strong and i thought they were you but they weren’t I removed their disguises looking for you but they still weren’t you they LIED
I reached out and touched her; she was warmer than the water, and sweeter. “Don’t worry about them,” I said, softly. “There were things I had to do, but I’ve done them and I’m here now.”
The river seemed to rise and engulf me as she kissed me, and I realised that not only could I do almost anything a man could do, I could do at least one thing they couldn’t: I could give comfort to the weeping woman, and more than comfort.
