Tag Archives: historical fiction

Like a Rodeo Bull

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From The Last Bordello (1901). Madam Fannie Porter talks to Reba, her best friend and co-worker.

 

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Miss Reba (as I picture her)

Reba’s voice brought me out of my doldrums.

She stood just inside the kitchen, her hip holding open the screen door. “Freshness growing from the ground up. Picked and served like He made possible.”

“You woke up from your nap.”

“Thought I died of a soft underbelly?”

“You? Hell, you might be eleven years older than me, but you’ve got more vim and Vigor than a rodeo bull. Just as stubborn, too.”

“Speakin’ a that. Tell ’em, Fannie. You don’t wants to beat a path around that ponderin’ bush. They needs to know.”

I followed her motion to come back inside. “You’re right, Rebie. We’ll tell them when they come down to eat.”

“We tells ’em? Ain’t no we about it. No, ma’am. That jawin’ session be yours.”

This time, it wouldn’t be a regular house meeting that consisted of reminders about chores that needed doing, client appointments, and Reba’s nagging them to douche and keep their pee-shes clean. This powwow would be different.

 

 

 

 

 

Entering the Insane Asylum

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The Pungent smell of an insane asylum.

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From The Last Bordello (voice of Sadie):

My limbs shook. My knees buckled. The men in white held fast to my elbows and pulled me toward a thick wooden door. When opened, the fragrant air vanished and was replaced with the malodorous smells of urine, vomit, rubbing alcohol, and something else I couldn’t quite place.

I saw only a few women, one being dragged in another direction. “Not surgery, not surgery!” the woman wailed.

The driver unlocked another door and pushed me into a small room that contained a stained mattress on the floor and a bucket for excrement. He told me to sleep well. I heard him laughing down the hall long after they had locked the door.

I thought it was a cruel joke, that my mother had followed behind and would now take me home with an “I told you so.” Before the tears had a chance to come, someone unlocked the door again.

Don’t mess with the Madam

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Madam Fannie Porter vs. Mayor Hicks: Excerpt from The Last Bordello

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“Pull the reins back, Mayor. Sadie’s not evil. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.” He was using Sadie as an excuse, a reminder I hadn’t moved into the mandated zone a stone’s throw down the road.

“If she could pull a knife on a man who harmed a friend, what measures would she take if she thought she had been wronged? It’s no secret she hates the temperance women.”

True. “What are you getting at? Do you still think that just because she found a yellow scarf, she’s guilty of a crime? Had something to do with the missing girl?”

“It’s likely.”

“It’s preposterous. Now, is there anything else?”

“She was there at the meeting. You know it as well as I do.”

“That’s no secret.”

“Too bad for her it’s not.” He stood, approached the front door, and yanked his jacket off the hook. “Not looking good for her. Nor for you and this place.” He waved an index finger around the parlor like a gun. “I’ll be watching.”

I didn’t escort him to the door, but watched him exit at the same time thunder rattled the porch. Good. For all I cared, he could glide back to the office on his own slime.

Two sets of eyes peeked over the swinging doors and into the parlor. “Okay, nosy children,” I said and joined Meta and Reba in the kitchen. “What happened to those good old days when Bryan Callaghan was our mayor?”

“We’s been scorched by a stinkbug, that’s what.” Reba palmed her newly straightened and gelled hair.

Meta’s expression remained grave. I had the feeling she felt a kinship with the missing girl.

Scorched