you're too young & eager to love

I'm not sure if this is necessarily a piece, per say, or just a bunch of stand-alone bits. It almost runs together when read as a whole, so maybe it can be a disconnected piece? My tenses also jump around like crazy, fair warning.

Side Note: In my attempt to get into the Western mindset, my limited supply of applicable movies just make me sad. The Assassination of Jesse James - sad. Cold Mountain - sad. Tombstone, which I am waiting to watch with my clever wife, is also sad. At least, I think Doc's death scene is sad.

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Everything is in discord, harsh, and jangling. Her stomach is very empty.

There is no scar (vainly, Clementine is thankful – she couldn’t bear another one) but she remembers gloved hands and so much blood. Tastes copper in the back of her throat.

When she can, she purchases a supply with a long-stemmed pipe, and she smokes until her eyelids are too heavy to keep open.



Sometimes, soldiers amble into town. One tips his hat to Clementine from the street, grins and drawls out a “How d’ya do, Ma’am?”

She laughs like a stork.



If Peter belonged to anybody, surely it was his wife. He was not the type of man to remove his wedding ring, and Clementine was accustomed to a clientele of husbands. But she liked him in the soft, simple way she liked a cool drink on a warm day. He was consistent and clean, attractive with his calloused hands smelling of the hunt, and he would hold her face while she braced herself above him.

Broad and gilded beneath the sun, he was not what she was used to. He spoke and drank little but, sometimes, there was an urgency to his actions. A heavy hold on her hips and a strangled, husky cry from a seldom-used throat. He would linger then, palms on the sides of her stomach, like he was waiting for something to happen.

She’d swipe a hand across his forehand and say, “Sugar – this ain’t ever gonna be what you need.”

Most times, he’d kiss her scarred cheek goodbye.



“Falsehood ain’t blotted away, no matter how much incentive.” She says this after three quick shots, the whiskey a burning spreading from her chest. Careful to smoke her cigarettes by the open window, Peter she lets stay a while - even though he’s charged less due to the frequency of his visits. While he doesn’t lower his eyes, Clementine thinks he knows what she means.



She throws herself onto her singular chair, all arms and ripped stockings and laughter. It’s the opium again; she still smells of the den, but Peter’s disapproval is something she does not notice. It is of no concern to her, and she is too forward sometimes, her fingers in his hair, twisting his beard fondly, or whispering into his ear words that make his strong chest flush.

He is a good man, better than the most that frequent the saloon, and he can’t help but object of his own actions. After all, his honor was Hannah’s honor. But she would bite her tongue, and Peter would keep his habits.



“Have you had many of those cowboys? Or squaws?” This, Clementine thinks, is Peter’s only chance at cruelty. She wonders if it comes around whenever his wife’s monthlies do, spurred on by some bitter disappointment.

Sucking air through her teeth, she twists the ends of her rusty hair around her fingers. “I don’t put much stock in the opinion of others, Peter. You know that.” She rubs her hip, adjusts the garter that’s gripping her thigh like a noose. “It ain’t gonna matter to you, anyways. A quim’s a quim.”

Peter’s jaw tightens. “Must you talk like that?”

“How would you have me talk?”

The Indians, like the Chinese, don’t bother her. But they tend to stray from the town, unwelcomed by the ignorant cowboys. Little piss ants, the lot of them, walking around with their chests puffed up like roosters strutting through a barnyard. They pay though, that’s what matters – silver and gold coins, paper bills that they like to shove against her skin, like they’re doing her a favor after she’s done all the work. A tip, they call it. “You planning on asking me if I’ve had that Jesse James guy too? Or Doc Holiday?”

Peter laughs, a sound more infrequent than any other. It makes her raise an eyebrow, turning. “Well now, I reckon that noise warrants a reward of some sort.”

And, for the second time of the day, she crawls over him.



“You are glowering, Peter.” Hannah’s voice is soft but not meek. She speaks slowly over dinner, the first words of the evening.

He stirs, an action displayed only by the cut of metal across the plate. “I am thinking, there is a difference.”



There’s women hanging from the windows, naked arms and dark eyes. Loud, braying laughter – the type tainted by too much alcohol. And at this early an hour? Hannah pushes her school supplies closer to her chest, like a barrier, and sweeps her eyes across the street. Some of her male students are close to the saloon, whistling like wolves between their teeth. She has a desire to shelter them, to usher them away from a world they are all too quick to enter.

She’s paused too long, and someone hits her shoulder. Startles her. She gets a glimpse of very red hair, long and full, on a face that’s pretty in an unusual way. Weak about the chin, and then Hannah sees the scar. She stares, unintentionally really, because her father brought her up good and proper, while the woman purses her mouth. “You studying me enough to do an impersonation, sugar?”

Hannah flushes, stumbles over what she intends to be a well-mannered apology, but the other’s already moved on. Saunters into the saloon with her hips rolling beneath her skirts, pausing once only to pat a student’s shoulder affectionately.

It isn’t until after she’s left, disappeared behind swinging doors, that Hannah thinks she recognizes a smell. Something staunch like vinegar.