...

ASHES TO ELLA

Cinder swore as he swept out the ashes, again. His stepfather Bart never seemed to do this chore anymore. He also never seemed to stop and think about the ashes he was wasting away in the fireplace inside their small, shared house, or really anywhere a fire might burn down into a small and ashy ember.
It had always been this way, as far as anyone knew, even from Cinder's youngest appearances in this town. Sweeping the ashes away was what he did, and that was why they called him Cinder.
Seven years ago, Cinder and his mother (her name long forgotten to the townsfolk) arrived in town, her dress green, appearing to be made of the very fabric of the bag she wore, adorned with all white fleur-de-lis patterns. Her dress, rumpled and ruffled, puffed out, and she seemed to be of a finer degree than most who had moved to this town, though the tears in her stockings and the runs in her hair, along with the wildness behind her eyes, showed that she had at least fallen on hard times.
She arrived on the westbound train, with her young son following behind, gripping tightly onto his dear mother's hand. They moved into the blacksmith’s house, accompanied by many boxes. Many traders took the boxes to Bartholomew Hands' old house at the edge of Shady Lane, just down from Main Street in Ruddy Creek. After all, Bartholomew, a widower and father of two, needed, it was said, some kind of woman to take care of him as much as he needed to remain close to his business, the town blacksmith shop, where he provided all sorts of metalworking. He could bend into shape a gun, a horseshoe, or a plowshare, as he was an expert at making or mending anything at all metallurgical.
Somehow, this coarse blacksmith, a hollow man lately depressed with the death of his daughters' mother, bent the ear of this new arrival. They were soon seen walking together in the rising shade of the afternoon. Still, even as the woman walked beside the blacksmith, her young son walked behind her, clutching to her like cold iron.
The boy seemed overly frightened, scared even of shadows. He barely peeked out of his assigned room when at home. On top of his trembling fear, like that of a beaten dog wary of any new master approaching, he received no favors from his new step sisters. Eudora Ophelia and Temperance Callahan, teenage girls dealing with a sudden new family member, began to spread rumors through the town. The sudden arrival of this new brother was peculiar, they said, and him more peculiar still. They claimed they found him day after day playing in the ashes of the fire, and so they began to call him Cinder.
With the Callahan sisters as his codifiers, the whole town began to use this name, and the nickname stuck. Whether Cinder had a name before this was lost to the reminiscences of time, and even he himself quickly took to the name, responding and snapping to attention whenever someone called out, "Cinder, I need you to do this," or "Cinder, I need you to do that."
He was quite obliging and often ready to lend a hand, as best as a young child could.
Even before the tragedy, this boy was marked as quite strange. He would wander into town, tugging on dresses, sometimes looking up at the women sheepishly, as if they were his mother. Other times, he made the same mistake, and no woman looking down at him seemed able to shoo him off or curse him out, as his interest seemed to be of genuine curiosity. It was said of him, with no hint of malice, that these were strange proclivities.
From time to time, the subject of the boy's behavior was a small topic of conversation in the barroom when news from the East or glimmers of hope for gold in some strange vein or pony race results from California had worn out their welcome.
"The boy is odd," everyone said, "but he seems a good sort and has a very good heart."
When not otherwise engaged in these entertainments, Cinder spent his time beneath an apple tree near, just outside a farmer's field. This dark orchard managed to give only a few fruits per year, and the tree resting on the lane was deemed by all as public property. Yet, the folk of the town called the tree "Cinder's Tree," and everyone left the fruits of this tree alone for the farmer and Cinder only to taste.
Once, a weary traveler, not knowing of this tradition, stopped and took a bite of one of these apples. He found it quite sweet, yet also somehow sour at the back part of his tongue, and threw the apple into the dirt just as Cinder arrived and began bawling at the sight of his apples being treated this way. It was only through the merciful arrival of Clara, the town's general store owner, that this wandering newcomer to the town of Ruddy Creek got away without a further confrontation from the boy.
“I didn’t know, I didn’t know,” the traveler tried to say, being dragged to town for a pat on the head, an explanation, and a conciliatory shot of rotgut.
When not tasting the apples of his tree or laying under it, his head drooping dreamily into something like sleep, Cinder would stare up into the sky, whether at stars or clouds. At times, as if the whole world had begun to spring up in song, with clouds or stars as a twisted ballroom backdrop, he would raise out his arms and twirl around, going faster and faster, his head looking upwards in a delicate ballet between himself and all the surrounding forces of nature. He would spin so hard that he would eventually gain so much force he could not stop himself from tripping, whereupon he would fall back down to the ground, skin his knee, or rub his face against the bark of the tree.
When overcome in such a way, he did not go home and could not even be brought out of this trance unless Eudora Ophelia or Temperance grabbed him by the waist and dragged him home. When he realized each time that he had been removed from his whimsical spiral dance, he would begin to cry.
"Don't cry, boy," one or the other of his stepsisters would say.
He would then cry more, dig his heels into the dirt, and even pound on their backs to try to get them to let him go. But they would drag him back inside, whether he wanted it or not.
He had his share of inside chores as well. For hour upon hour, when in the comfort of the small country house, he would darn socks, mend clothes, and trace his fingers through the pretty dresses that his sisters had worn out. He fixed and patched every piece that was faded until it was perfectly wearable again.
Temperance couldn't stand how well Cinder worked at darning socks, at knitting, at mending even her clothes. Did she practice these skills for herself, her efforts never matched up to the almost seamless seams that Cinder could sow into worn pants or a torn-up dress. She would always prick her finger as she tried to thread the needle herself, kissing the small run of blood that trickled down her digits and cursing she could not excel the same way that Cinder did.
"Ain't natural, a boy so good at woman's work," she'd say. She would share a look with her sister and then they would burst out into laughter.
"Now that's not right," Bart would say, "here in the wild we all must know how to do all the things that need must arise. You don't complain that it's un-womanly for y'all to know how to stoke a fire or take a rifle out against a coyote that's coming up on the edge of our land ready to raid the chicken coop,"
“But that’s different,” said Eudora Ophelia, "Why, Annie Oakley - -"
"Well, there you go then," said Cinder's mother. She held her hand to her chest and began to cough, spat out a thin black substance, excused herself, wiped up the grossness, and placed her used handkerchief back in her back pocket. "Y'all do need to pitch in and do what we can; that's the only way we can make it out here in a world like this. In any world, really."
This was perhaps the last full sentence or statement that any of them heard the woman say. She said less and less and appeared less and less downstairs as the weeks went on. Her face went pale. She stopped eating. Cinder just stared, seated outside the doorway of her room, willing her to say something, wanting her to open that door and take his hand again as she had done lately. Dr. Thompson was called. Little by little, part by part, he checked over the woman twice, then another time, then he called for a brandy. He sat down and took a deep drink from the brandy snifter, pushed a little bit of it over to Cinder, and motioned for Bart to enjoy his own fill of the substance. Sighing deeply, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment, his lips quivering, Dr. Thompson chose his words very carefully.
"I have to tell you something difficult," the doctor said. "Your mother will die. Do you have any relations? Anyone back East that you could write to?"
Cinder shook his head. He said nothing.
"I suppose Bart will let you stay here until you are 18. That's not so bad," the doctor said.
"He lets me work the bellows and I can shape a horseshoe fine," Cinder said.
"Well, that's all good news then, Cinder, but this is going to be very difficult. Listen to me and listen carefully because I have to tell you the worst thing you may ever hear. Your mother is not only going to die but you are never going to see her again. Scarlet fever, and we cannot go through this door, at least not without proper preparations, until she has passed. She's going to waste away in there until she is nothing, do you understand? Finally, she will give up the ghost, and there is nothing I nor any science known yet to man can do."
"Yes, I… I understand," Cinder said. Then Cinder let out a howl worse than anything even a trapped fox stuck in a hen house might yowl out. This howling yell, worse than a rebel yell, could be heard reverberating throughout the town, so loud, so painful, so scratched with terror, sadness, and anger all balled up into one powerful, continuing scream. It passed like a shockwave through the town, reverberating the bells in the clock tower and the church tower. This howl was followed by a series of others, smaller howls, no less terrifying in their sadness and force, but even a passing family of pioneers stopped dead in their tracks, and hugged themselves tight, refusing to move forwards into the darkness of night to their camping site until the terrifying sounds finally ceased. It had been a full five minutes of grieving before Cinder finally shut his mouth, and Dr. Thompson offered the boy a lacy embroidered handkerchief with which to wipe away the tears still streaming like inundated rivers from Cinder's face.
In the kitchen, Temperance and Eudora Ophelia worked over a pot of coffee. It was the 7th pot that had been brewed that day, more than usual, to get through the minutiae of their small-town life.
Bart walked in. "I suppose you've heard," he said. "Everyone heard," said Eudora Ophelia. "I think all of nature heard," said Temperance. "I think they'll still be hearing echoes of that scream on the judgment day."
"Nevertheless," said Bart.
"Nevertheless, he'sone of us," finished Temperance.
"It seems so," said Eudora Ophelia.
She drank her cup of coffee quietly and started to pour a cup. "Doug Thompson will want some before he goes."
Her father and sister nodded.
"Who wants some more brandy too," said Bartholomew. "Some of the extra from the cabinet, will you please, Temperance? Let the doctor recover from his ordeal."
Temperance fetched brandy,Eudora Ophelia brought coffee, and Cinder sat in the chair more like a lifeless doll than like a human being, only noticeably alive as he rocked back and forth, murmuring something under his breath, tears pouring like a rushing waterfall down his face, until long after the doctor left and long after Bartholomew went to his bed. Temperance and Eudora Ophelia sat staring at their stepbrother.
"I feel bad, Eudora Ophelia. But I don't know what I can do. Please tell me if you come up with something, Cinder."
She left the room, leaving Temperance to stare at the boy. She tried to open her mouth, tried to speak, tried to say something, but her tongue seemed to trip over every beginning vowel in front of Cinder for a moment. She slowly reached down and patted his hand, leaned forward, and gave him a quick, chaste kiss on the side of his cheek.

Cinder fell mostly into silence after his mother's funeral. He would attend classes at the church, he would write what was needed and required, eke out the scarce air of a word when having to recite back some math problem or some historical answer.
"Oh, who ever needs to know the exact date of the founding of the United States?”, the other children said. “Cinder certainly doesn't. He needs to know how he is going to get through the next years."
Beyond this, though, the other children spent their time in their usual play, almost a dozen of them, leaving Cinder alone to his own devices, maybe stopping from time to time to say “he's peculiar, but it just makes sense, doesn't it? We have to accept that these things happen out here in the West”.
When finished with school, Cinder continued to walk the path to the blacksmith and work on whatever metal objects people in the town might need. He found pounding a horseshoe into shape, bending the barrel of a gun into a proper cylinder, or making any number of small nails that might be needed to fix up a post or to hang a picture. In his free time, he continued to visit his tree and continued to gaze up at the clouds and the stars, but there was a marked change in him. Before, he would spin dizzily until he fell down, his head cast heavenward, glancing perhaps into the depths of the Eternal Kingdom, laughing every once in a while as he spun, spun, spun. Now, he spun solemnly and did not engage in that previous dance between himself and the high heavens.
And then he turned 18, a few short weeks after the notorious outlaw Little Red massacred the lawman in the streets of Ruddy Creek.
Finally, he reached the age of his majority, just a few more short days before the Promenade, the social event of the season. Each year, the Promenade would celebrate newcomers to the town, especially the young men and young women who made their way to make their fortunes in the west, and doubly so every time they reached the age of eighteen.
They would be presented socially.
Just two years before, Ophelia had had her coming-out party at the same event, and two years antecedent to that, Temperance had had her party whereupon she had fallen in love with Tommy Trumbo, a local handyman about three years her senior. Tommy Trumbo, it was said throughout the town, had eyes on taking over the blacksmith.
Bartholomew would hear nothing of it.
"You know that even though he is adopted," Bart would say. "The clear person to take over the blacksmith is my step-son Cinder. You should see the way that he can work the metal into any shape that you so desire; he can bend and twist and turn each piece as if it is not heated steel but the course of a running river. It would be a disservice to the people of the town not to allow Cinder to take over."
Though Tommy often grumbled at this, the people of the town nodded with the wisdom that the current blacksmith dispensed. After all, who better to know the ways of working metal than the current metalworker? Many a man repeated what Bartholomew had to say about Cinder as simple gossip over their kitchen table, repeating Bartholomew's statement as settled facts.
Now, from time to time before he became of age, Cinder could be found peering into the windows of the Saucy Puss Saloon. He might stand in the streets and gaze through the swinging doors, hoping that with the next swing, he might see more and more of the revelry that was inside. Minors were only allowed inside during meal times, and only on specific days, or during times of trouble, such as the Little Red Massacre a month prior.
Despite this, the Madam was always watching Cinder and other underage almost-adults in town like a desert hawk, always ready to swoop in around her prey. And on those rare and spare occasions when he thought he might sneak in to order himself a beer and a shot, and stand with the men inside, the Madam always seemed to be just behind him.
She always seemed to know just when to pop out from the shadows around the corner of a support beam and whisk the boy by his collar back out into the street, always telling him "Not yet, you are not ready yet, it's not time for you."
Now, finally, the time had come.
Everything that happened next was precipitated on three specific people: the first being Reginald Fox, lately of somewhere in Louisiana, rumored to have been an old plantation rich in gold, some people saying that he'd knocked it over rather than owned it himself; his handsome son Gene, who seemed poised and possessed of a regal bearing more couth than his father’s own assume gentility; and Madame Abullo, a tall and gentle woman who came into town not on a train as the Foxes did, but in a beautifully painted wagon belonging to the medicine show she happened to be the proprietor of.
The painted wagon was plastered with frescoes of great European moments in history plastered all around it. On one side the Venus de Milo painted in full but wearing modern clothes so as not to shock the sensibilities of modern women, and on the other a depiction of William Shakesepare hunched over a writing desk, staring at a skull, scratching out Hamlet. The wagon also boasted a gold leaf trim that sparkled so finely in the late afternoon that it was rumored to be inlaid with real gold. Some people said (with no source to their statement) that this was the gold her late husband had left to her, now really ringing around her traveling home.
Madame Abullo was wrinkled, her face creased with worry lines, and her hands likewise a mass of folded skin. She held an ear horn to her left ear from time to time, and often told a customer “speak up! I hain’t all day” as she made out an order for this snake oil, or that hair tonic, or even a bit of curative peppermint.
“I don’t like her,” said Doc Thompson, but the preacher patted him on the back and said “you did the same thing with La Bruja and now y’all go treat people together sometimes.”
“Nevertheless,” said Doc Thompson, humphing, as he went back into his clinic. “Some of us have real medicine to do.”
“A medicine show never hurt no one,” the preacher pointed out. “Plus she has items from back east, get us ready for the promenade.” He looked back to the Doctor, expecting Doc Sam to still be there. Instead, he found the shut door of the clinic. He shrugged his shoulders, dug into his pocket for a penny, and proceeded to Madame Abullo’s Miracle Wagon to buy a stick of peppermint for himself.

All of the girls of the town, and the women two, fawned over some of the stock that Madame Abullo brought with her. In addition to the olfactory melange of spices and sourness in the hair tonics Abullo brought, she also brought with her fine silk and lace fabrics, some dresses ready made and some all but needing the sewing.
Cinder too went to see the many fancy fabrics that the Madame had brought in. While the younger children thrilled outside to the dances of the men and women, actor’s all, brought in by Abullo to promote her show, Cinder let his hand run over silk and velvet. His hands danced against damask and brocade, whirling through the textiles like a Dervish deep in meditation. As the band outside stuck up a fiddle tune, Cinder felt the soft mesh of a lace doily.
He sighed inwards, and looked down at his wallet. He dropped the lace. Checking the contents he found only one crumpled dollar. Looking at the prices on the fabrics, he sighed again.
“What is it my dear?” asked Madame Abullo
“I can’t afford this,” Cinder said, looking down at the ground.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” said Madame Abullo. “Well, nothing can be done for it.” She turned around and though the wagon was quite small in all she seemed to disappear into the density of fabric, dresses, cloth, and snake oil tins. Cinder sighed and started out the door, his head.
“Unless,” said the madame just as Cinder started descending the makeshift wooden staircase, feeling it creak and crack under his wait.
“Unless?” Cinder wondered, turning his head around.
“Unless you want to make a deal with me, a fine young woman like you,” the Madame said.
“I’m not uh a wom–” Cinder started to say. But he held the rest of the word in his mouth.
“Well, whatever you are, don’t you think you deserve a pretty dress? And after all, there is a large social event soon if you want to go.”
“Why do you think I would want a dress?” Cinder asked.
The Madame brought the boy over to a mirror. She held up a blue dress with a golden trim. “Because it suits you, my dear,” she said. “Don’t you like what you see?”
Cinder considered. Even though the fabric felt right, soft and silken against his skin, and he smiled a slight blush to think of it, he shook his head.
“Bart would never allow it,” Cinder said.
“Who’s Bart?” said Madame Abullo. “Is he here with us?”
“No,” said Cinder.
“Then let’s make a deal between the two of us. If you take time to help me sew some fabrics for those in the town, I will give you this dress or any other clothing you would like, just in time for the Promenade.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” said Cinder. He quickly turned, and made a hasty exit.
“I’ll be here when you make your decision,” Madame Abullo said.
Cinder broke into a run, running fast and furiously away from the medicine show wagon. The men and women danced outside, still whirling, looking not so much now like dancer’s but like lamps or stars spinning freely in the night sky.

Meanwhile, in a newly crafted mansion, done in an old style that reminded one more of a small castle in England, perhaps a folly-style like the great Gardens at Stowe, Reginald Fox and his son sat down to dinner. Eugene was perfectly composed in a smart suit with a wide red cravat. His father, Reginald himself, wore a gold striped vest to which a likewise golden chain had been affixed. At the end of the chain, every few moments out of the pocket, checked by the older man, as a masterwork pocket watch.
“Dinner must be regimented, Eugene,” Reginald said. “I know that the West often lacks structure, but it is our duty as the privileged to give it form. To impose the correct moral structure on the unstructured land.”
“Yes father,” said Eugene.
“To that end,” Reginald continued, “I know that you are taking some time to get to know the local women. That is of course fine, but remember that you are soon to be fully marriageable and though you are with me now it will very soon be time for you to make your way back east, to Harvard.”
“Yes father,” said Eugene. He cut into a choice steak, juices running across his fork. He slowly brought the meat up to his mouth and masticated. The two men sat in their wide dining room, each at one end of the table, a silent distance like a prairie wind between them.

Back in town, far away from the fancy ranchlands recently purchased by Mr. Fox, Bart and Cinder sat at their own dinner table.
“Good day today?” asked Bart.
“It’s fine,” said Cinder. “I saw the medicine show in town.”
“How was that?”
“Some fine dancers. There was some fine fabric there too.”
“I could give you some money, if you would fix something up for your sisters.”
“Actually,” Cinder said, drawing in his breath, “I was hoping you’d lend me to the Madame of the show.”
There was a pause.
Cinder continued, “she said she could give me a dr– a good pair of clothes too, if I worked for her. Could I?’
“Well,” said Bart, leaning back in his chair. A bit of chili dropped from his beard. Bart wiped away the remains of the food with his hands, and then wiped his hands on his pants. “No need for decorum without my daughters,” he said. Cinder didn’t respond.
“Well,” Bart said again, “I suppose we might be able to get a deal then, with this Madame. Are your chores done?”
“Yes. sir,” said Cinder.
“And the shop is fit for tomorrow, anything I might need laid out and ready the way I like it?”
“Yes,” said Cinder. “I even brought your bucket back from where I rested it.”
“Good good,” said Bart. “I suppose that I can lend you out for an evening or two.”
Cinder smiled.
“Don’t smile that wide,” Bart said, “it’s unmanly.”
But Cinder didn’t stop smiling so wide. He brought his hand up to hide it, finished his dinner, and excused himself to the backyard. There he sat down in the grass and gazed up at the sky.
“Mother,” he said, “I wonder what would have happened had you lived?”
When he had finished watching the stars like far away lights of a distant town sparkle and dance, and seen several shooting stars streak across space, he came inside. In his room he sat down and began patching one pair of his work pants, but made a slight miscalculation and dropped it to the floor. The needle rolled under the bed and Cinder bent down to grab it.
He did so a bit too quickly and hit his head as he came up from under the bed. As he rubbed his head and looked forward, he saw a small box of clothes. This room, his current room, had been his mother’s room so many years ago. He’d been moved in there after the first few weeks beyond her demise as he began sleeping in their anyway. From time to time his step-sisters did remark that he kept the room as feminine as his mother had kept it, but their teasing tone had died down in the face of his loss.
“We lost out mother too,” said Eudora Ophelia, “it makes sense to want to hang onto something about her.”
Temperance said nothing but shook her head. Temperance, always the loudest of the two sisters, seemed to say less and less to Cinder. She did, however, give him a beautifully bound edition of John Kantner’s “Poems for All Occasions”, with a certain poem in his “Songs of Grief” section highlighted. The poem read:

“Death is not fixed, but wears hard on our hearts,
When bodies sink and become again soil
We tear out our hair, cry deep from our souls
And try reanimate arts.
If only– we scream they’d never depart,
Wishing the missing would not leave a hole
That drips out our eyes, the water’s turmoil.
In memory we keep revisions of them
Who frolicked and frustrated us by turns.
The falling of star angels, I suppose, burns
In memories, envisioning again
The rack and the rhythm as the world turns,
And again we let them live on.
Plant well your dead. And seek to the dawn.”

White chrysanthemums, pressed against purple hyacinths and white lilies, all twirled and entwined ito one blended flower, were pressed dried into the book at this point, and this poem was circled with a small broken heart symbol next to it.
“Helped me when my mom passed – T.H. – Sis.”
He’d read the book of poetry cover to cover, taking care in all of the sonic delights of the constructed symphonies of syllables, especially loving the descriptions of dawn in the early part of the book, the quiet of night near the end. He’d read and reread the book until he could look at it no longer but shutting his eyes he could immediately call up a page in front of him as if the book was open and ready to be read.
He’d stashed the book in the box of belongings, with his mothers old clothes, the few that had not been in her room when she’d passed. The rest had been burned to rid the house of the spirit of sickness that dwelled around her, as the preacher said, or just to get rid of the bacteria as the doctor said. Now he dug his hands into the box and felt a soft velvet feeling of fabric against his skin. His mother’s old visiting dress.
He held it up to his body. It fit his form like it had been custom-tailored for him. Beneath the dress were bloomers and other clothes.
Cinder looked at the door. He took the trunk, propped it against the door, and locked it as well. He set his key on the bureau. Then he stripped out of his work clothes, out of his wool trousers. The clothes fell to the floor in a crumpled pile, like trash and refuse in a junkyard just ready to be thrown away.
Slowly, furtively, Cinder put on his mother’s old bloomers. He gasped to feel the silk touching lightly against his skin. The underskirt was next. Then the brassiere. Cinder struggled to put it on, having a difficult time fitting his arms through it. When he finally put the bra on, he found it was backwards, and had more difficulty taking it of and putting it on rightwards. A light shirt followed, and then the dress.
His hair, grown long over the past few months, lightly caressed his neck. As Cinder looked into the mirror he bit his lip.
“Mom?” he said, looking at his own reflection. He was so taken back that he stumbled back onto the bed and gave a little yelp.
Bart knocked o nthe door.
“Cinder are you okay?” he called. He kept knocking.
“Yes, yes sir,” said Cinder. “Just a little tumble. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Well, it didn’t sound like nothing, boy,” Bart said, “leet me look.” He tried to knob, and found it locked.”Are you doing something you shouldn’t in there?”
Cinder looked at himself in the mirror. He felt the fabric gently brushing against his skin. He blushed, his face flushed as deep red as any early spring paintbrush flower bursting into bloom.
“Did you block this door? Did you lock it?” Bart said.
“Wait!” Cinder said. “Give me a moment I’ll be right there.” Cinder, quick as he could, stripped off all the female clothes.
Bart kept knocking.
“It felt right, so why do I feel ashamed?” Cinder said. Bart continued knocking.
“Come on, I need to see if you’re okay.”
“I’m fine, I told you,” CInder said. He kicked the dress and the underarments under the bed and tried to quickly pull back on his underclothes, his pants, his shirt. He brushed himself off, and moved the chest of clothes out of the way. He tried to open the door, but found it locked.
“Cinder, come on, don’t make me break down a door in my own house,” said Bart. “I promised your mom I would take care of you, whether you like it or not.”
Cinder looked around the room. He spotted the key he’d laid down but a few moments earlier. He quickly scurried over to the key, picked it up, and unlocked the door. He leaned uneasily out into the hallway.
“What did you want, Bart?”
“I wanted to see if you were okay,” Bart said. “Can’t have you dying in this house, not when we have so many nails to make, horseshoes to bend, orders to fill.”
“Yes sir,” said Cinder.
“Old man Lemmy down the other side of town wants a weather vane. Can you do that? When you aren’t sewing?”
“Yes da– Bart.” CInder stopped. He rested his hand against the frame of his doorway. “I can get it done.”
“Good,” said Bart. He headed downstairs to sit in his chair. Usually he would pull from a bottle until he fell asleep. Sometimes, when he thought that Cinder was already asleep, Bart would in his drunkenness let out tears and cry that it was unfair to his wives to be taken from him and his only crime against god loving them and his daughters.
Cinder stood staring, watching the older man descend to the first floor. “Strange,” he said to himself. I’ve never even thought of calling him dad before. I wonder why that happened?” He retreated back into his room and tried to find sleep.

Meanwhile, at the Fox Mansion, Eugene looked out the window. Behind him, as servants came and placed object after object, the Fox house began to fill up with imports from the East Coast, Europe, and further abroad. Eugene stared out, open jawed, at the nothing that now surrounded him. Miles and miles and miles of it. Just meadows, dirt, and dust. Sure, there was an orchard attached to the house with wide lanes that would make good places to hide or stroll with in the company of some fashionable woman. And there was a nice fountain, with carved marble made in Italy imported directly by train and wagon to this location.
Behind the house was the ranch itself, which held housing for the servants, and cowfolk as well. They worked at the behest of Reynard Fox. Their small houses attached to the ranch seemed like so many small model houses compared to this large mansion.
Eugene shut the book he held in his hand. It was a collection of poetry. He’d returned to his favorites again, “Death Be Not Proud” by John Donne and the later companion piece, “Death is Not Fixed” by John Kantner.
“Oh god,” said Eugene, as he shut the book so he could feel the weight of its pages squashing his fingers ever so gently. “Day after day is exactly the same. There is nothing here. Nothing to do, no one to do the nothing with neither. I can’t find myself lost in conversation like I might have done back east, none of these women are prim and proper trimmed like a good house, made up for sale like a female should be.”
He turned and watched as his father entered the room. Though his father was gathering papers from a small desk, Eugene turned his complaint on the patriarch. He said, “”I think perhaps the last time I saw a proper woman, one meant to be with a man, was back in Denver just getting off the train. Here there’s nothing. Just a dump. Just dirt and farmers and these wide open empty spaces that are like a blank page waiting for the scratch of a pen.”
Reynard Fox sat down, scratching out a bill of sale on a pad of paper.
Eugene continued his monologue. “The only thing out here is grime, crime, and emptiness. No wonder so many go outlaw and steal a horse. What else is there to do? Mihi in odio est. Every night the winds howl like monster stalking me, blowing loud and wild across these plains. I shake in my boots like a child in a thunderstorm waiting for the wind to take me up and swallow me.”
“Are you done?” asked Reynard, his eyebrows raised.
“Yes… Yes, sir,” said Eugene, standing back from his father, flinching just at hearing the older man speak.
“Good, good,” said Reynard. “That means you can leave this nonsense. Our fortune has taken us here and we will do well. That is the manner of a fox. We adapt, use cunning, and all we ken is how we survive.”
He motioned for Eugene to make a trip to the sideboard. Eugene carefully lifted up the walnut shutter to reveal the wealth of liquor the family possessed. He quickly mixed a small gin fix for his father and one for himself. He handed the drink over to his dad and waited for the older man to drink first before sipping on his own.
“We must be the best of men,” Reynard said, after downing his glass of gin. “Therefore, since you seem to be disillusioned and you seem to not understand just what a privilege it is that's coming out west, where we can create our own mythology, I am telling you to saddle up a horse and go into town on your own.”
Renner pulled out his wallet, a leather work piece with his name RF monogrammed into it in inlaid silver, and carefully drew out $20 which he folded and handed to his son.
"Yes, Father," said Eugene, and within about an hour, bridled his horse and set off the long and winding way through his family ranch, Ruddy Creek, to get into the main drag of the town, to the main street, to find what his father told him to seek.
He stopped at a stage in front of a wagon. He mouthed Madame Abullo’s name, reading the descriptions of the medicine shown on a placard in front of him.
He quietly stood back and watched as the performers did their capers, their tricks, and their dances, murmuring his appreciation for a sword-swallowing, fire-blowing trick, the same sort designed specifically to garner the applause of children gathered around, who had not seen such festival drinking before. He even laughed at the usual and far too old patter of the magician who asked a small girl what her name was and then, when she answered "Briar Rose," said, "Wonderful name, my dear! It was my name when I was a little girl as well."
When all the show was done, the Madame invited people who needed such remedies that she provided, or such fancy fabrics that she could import from great cities of Europe, the far reaches of China, and from the great hordes of Mongolia, and many other places.
Madame Abullo opened the door to the wagon so that her customers might see all that she provided. Eugene stepped ion, curious to see if he might find a nice fabric or perhaps a tie that fir his mood and showed his wealth, not ostentatious but just enough that anyone looking could know he would provide a good time for all. He ran his hand over the collection near the door, saying “I need one that says I am a serious, well off young man, but I know how to have fun.”:
When in the wagon, Eugene's gaze was immediately drawn to a woman working between the fancy patterned drapes and capes, sewing carefully and with skill akin to the workers of Lowell, Massachusetts, girls whose entire pre-marriageable lives were dedicated to the finest of crafts.
Between all that fabric, nestled underneath snake oils with labels indicating that they would be best used for balding men who want to regrow their long-lost hair, beneath intoxicants guaranteed to remove the problems of pregnancy from any woman who needed such relief, beneath pickled baby sharks, beneath fetal pigs, beneath so many yards of cloth and dresses and gowns in silk was a woman whose existence and appearance made Eugene gasp.
She was wearing a lavender chemise, with long and flowing blonde hair, wearing no makeup, no powder, and no expectation, simply murmuring in and out, and singing a little song of the sewing, “in and out and roundabout that’s the way it’s sew and sew you know and know we sew and so and in and out and roundabout Ihink, you think? I’ll tell you sew!”
Eugene whispered to himself, "This, this one thing, is worth the wide open and terrifying emptiness of this land, this woman is who I've been seeking for."
He bit his lip and called out a hello, and the woman looked up, giving him a small smile, informing him that when she was done working on a red dress that seemed of a fashion from about 10 years prior, she might help him find whatever product he sought.
Madame Abullo came into the back of the wagon at this moment and said to the girl, "Don't worry, Cinder, I've got this. I will help the customer, please continue your mending using any of my materials, as we agreed upon."
The woman that Eugene beheld and so immediately fell in love with continued her song and her sewing.
Under his breath, still in a halting whisper, Eugene said, “The entire history of Cupid is prologue to this pitter-patter of butterflies that well up in my stomach now. I’ve heard former girlfriends say the same to me, but I did not believe it until now. Anything else is a meaningless symbol, but I am… I am in love.”
He stared at Cinder, until the Madame took his hands and redirected him to a pair of woolen pants, Navy-style.

Earlier that day, Cinder’s own male clothes had proved too hot for him during his work. He had asked Madame Abullo for some relief, and she provided him with the chemise and suggested that while he worked in her shop, he might as well wear a dress besides, so that more air could flow in.
"It is," she had told him, "after all, a very hot working environment. I know that you are not used to this, but why not find comfort in those things that comfort us?" She clicked her tongue.
Cinder looked up and asked, “ What do you mean comfort me? Are you suggesting something about these clothes and myself? This is a one time thing… I think.”
Madame Abullo smiled and nodded and said, "Absolutely, my dear, I am saying these clothes are you. Why, anyone with a mind and eyes can see it."
She had waited until after he'd put on the chemise to say this, but she pointed to a mirror in the wagon shop. Cinder studied himself and nodded, and even he had to admit that the comfort of the female fashion made him feel better about himself. “It breathes with me,” he said.
The Madame said, "Soon, my dear. The truth is coming soon. We will transform you into exactly who you want to be before the week is out, and you shall attend the Promenade and gather all the attention you could ever wish for." She said this as a matter of fact, a flat statement of an upcoming truth. Cinder thought little of it until now.
But now Cinder was keenly aware of the eyes on him. Of the attention Eugene was paying. As Cinder sewed, the Madame helped Eugene find a bolo tie, advising him that this was more in the fashion in the west, with a small fox figure tying the strings together.
Eugene kept looking, staring, almost drooling at Cinder.
"Who is that woman?" he asked the Madame, but she put her hands to her lips and whispered in the boy's ear and said: "There's only one way for you to find out, and that is to meet her at the promenade."
Eugene quickly paid and left and went to the Saucy Puss. Though he meant to spend some time with the showgirls, he did not do so. Instead he bought a few rounds, stared into his beer, kicked his legs against the ground and sighed in two different modes. First he would sigh, a happy blushing sigh, that he was in love. But alternately he would sigh a sad and gloomy say, saying “I am out of her favor where I am in love.”
“Romeo and Juliet,” said the Madam, as she wiped down a table near him.
“Know it?” he asked.
“Everyone knows it,” the Madam said. “It’s awful. Teenagers who couldn’;t wait, a preist who didn’t just tell the parents he’d helped their children marry… even Shakespeare didn’t think it was great, that’s why he made fun of it in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“You’ve read it?”
“No!” the Madam said. “It’s not for reading. I go watch plays letting the actors perform it for me, like a normal person does.”
“Ah,” said Eugene, exchanging his beer for a shot and a new glass.
“It’s not my favorite anyways,” the Madam said. “Best one is measure for measure.”
“Why’s that?”
The Madam laughed. “The executioner's name is Abhorson.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Everything in that play could be solved with an abortion.”
Eugene gasped. “Madam!”
“That’s what they call me. Maybe your problems would be solved with an abortion. Or some kind of execution.”
Eugene stared after the woman. He watched silently as she finished cleaning the tables. Other people in the town began to file in, all discussing their struggles of the day. Some he knew from previous forays into the town, some were new to him. When asked “why the long face” he first said “because I’m a horse,” which endeared the bar-goers to him, some shaking his hand and saying they would use this joke themselves and be sure to credit him.
Then they asked him again and he explained his moon-eyed new dedication to a woman he had seen for a scant few moments, who was focused more on her work than the fact that he kept finding himself looking at her and imagining running his hands through her flaxen hair.
“Flaxen?” one old drunk asked.
Others were more supportive. However, much to Eugene's frustration when he described this woman that he had seen, to the people of the town, that he wanted to know so much more about, no one had any idea who he was talking about.

Cinder, meanwhile, was finishing up his alterations on his mother's dress, and was then then tasked with fixing several pairs of bloomers brought in by customers who wanted fancier stitching.
Madame remarked, rather coarsely, "They want to show off the fancy stitching on their cheap dress so that the men they show it to realize just how cheaply each of these women can be bought."
Cinder gasped.
Madame held up one long finger, her many rings sparkling in the afternoon light. She said, "That's a thing to note, and it is not something of a moral question, it is just the way of the world.” She added, “At the Promenade, many people expect romance and plan to lose this, that, or the other state of themselves. They cannot be lost but may be freely given."
"What do you mean?" Cinder inquired.
But the Madame put her hands to her lips in another shushing motion, then she drew close to Cinder, brought her hands around his head, gently pulled it back into her chest, and whispered, "My dear girl, virginity! Though it is a made-up concept. One day I feel you too will soon be worried about."
She paused, surveying the work as Cinder made the last stitch on a pair of the undergarments.
"Now," she said, "as soon as you've finished with these bloomers, I should like for you to try on your mother's dress that you have mended. We can see the full effect."
"Is it not wrong," Cinder asked, "for a boy like me to wear women's clothing, even though it feels correct, comfortable, or just like my skin?"
"Everything is right," the Madame said, "everything at all, if you but be yourself."
Cinder shut his mouth at that, finished the bloomers quickly, and then was helped into the dress by the Madame.
"You're a very pretty girl," the Madame said. "You will soon be a fine young woman."
Cinder stared into the small mirror of the wagon, he flipped his hand through his hair, bit his lip, and couldn't stop himself from giggling. "Yes, I think I am that girl." There was a moment of pause, and then she said, "I think I'll need a new name.”
“Oh my dear girl, you'll find one,” said the Madam, as she helped the woman who had been Cinder adjust the skirt of her mother’s hand-me-down-dress. She helped her sewing assistant pin back strands of hair, and then brought up mascara, eyeliner, lipstick to her face.
Finally, she placed a yellow-red wig on the woman who had been Cinder’s head. Cinder stared into the mirror.
“This looks like me,” said the woman. “That other thing, Cinder, whoever, was never me. This is my self. My real self. That other person is just that… the other.”
“Other? Hmm,” Madame Abullo said. She scratched a bony finger against her chin. “Alia… perhaps. Do you like the name?”
The woman gave a frown. “Alea I–”
“No no, don’t tell me, I can tell,” said Madame Abullo. “But I can tell from your twitching eyebrows we’re close. Alia, Alea, Leah…. Lee? No no no, that’s not right.”
“Liz Steele?” the woman guessed, still looking at herself in the mirror.
“Maybe,” said Madame Abullo, but that seems more like–”
“Red, that outlaw,” said the woman. “If I was here. But I am myself. Newly myself. I look right, I look real. But I am nervous about this, nervous as hell.”
“And Hell followed with her,” the older woman said. “I think I’ve got it.”
The old woman took out a sheet of ledger paper, whetted her quill pen, and then spent some time carefully making loops and slowly inching out a word in perfect calligraphy. Other than the totals and figures underneath, and the helpful guidelines, the page looked like something out of a mideaval manuscript.
“That’s it,” said the woman, looking down at the paper. Her new name was provided, with a large and fancy E, followed by two L’s, and finished with a diminutive A. Ella. “I am Ella. Ella Hands.”
“Your stepfather’s name?”
“My father’s name, if he’ll have me,” said Ella. “Though I am nervous as Ella about that too.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” said the old woman. She opened the door, and Ella, slowly at first, descended the stairs out into the world. The people still around, still watching a violin player saw away at a version of Schubert’s Arpeggione which seemed to be progressing into a flashy, if sloppy, interpolation of “Old Dan Tucker”, turned and looked at the woman they had formerly known as Cinder.
Some gasped.
“What a beautiful young woman,” said a father, holding his daughter’s hand. He smiled with his teeth showing a bit too much, and Ella had to turn away from the sight.
“Are they all watching me?” asked Ella.
“Yes,” said Madame Abullo. “But that is your power, Ella. You are a beautiful young lady. You can do anything with it.”
With that, the Madame abruptly shut her door. Ella turned to say a goodbye, but the door was shut firmly.
“I guess I’ll go for a walk,” Ella said, and headed from the outskirts of town, where the medicine show’s camp was made up, right down into the heart of Ruddy Creek.

As Ella marched into town, smaller steps than usual, spinning about as she danced over each moment of path before her, the townsfolk took notice. She smiled, curtseyed, and said hello to those who passed her. She gave a smile, not like that of the father’s at the medicine show, but a slim smile showing only a little tooth. Her eyes sparkled like they were carrying a fire within them.
She stopped to talk with Eudora Ophelia and Temperance. Both had brown wicker baskets stuffed with items from Clara Johnson’s shop. At first they only smiled and waved, but then Ella stood in front of them. Eudora Ophelia also held in her off hand a small fan, of the Chinese style, made out of paper fabric, which she fanned against herself from time to time.
“Eudora Ophelia! Temperance!” Ella’s mouth opened too wide, a goofy smile. “How are you today? I finally feel… real.”
The two Hands’ sisters looked at each other. Temperance peered at Ella. She furrowed her brow and stared at the woman’s face.
“Oh!” she said. “Cinder?”
“I… I don’t think that’s my name any more,” Ella said.
“Not with that look,” said Eudora Ophelia. She stepped back, as she watched Ella spin around again, showing off her outfit and new look. Eudorra Ophelia leaned over to Temperance and whispered, “I didn’t mean for that to seem mean. Did it?”
“Only as mean as you usually are,” said Temperance. She added, “Why is she so much better at this girl stuff than we are?”
“She had to study,” said Eudora Ophelia. “We got in as legacies.”
Temperance nodded. The two Hand’s sisters looked at Ella finished twirling.
“I feel really free like this,” said Ella. “Could you… could you call me Ella?”
The two sisters looked at each other. There was a tense pause. Temperance stepped forward. Ella bit her lip.
“Ella,” she said, “we’ve been sisters to you longer than we haven’t been.”
“You becoming yourself isn’t going to stop that,” added Eudora Ophelia.
“Really?” said Ella. Her lip began to bleed, just a little, and she opened her mouth up wide as one small drop of blood fell to the dusty western ground. “You mean it?”
“Yes,” said Eudora Ophelia. “Of course. We’re the three Hands’ sisters after all.”
Temperance laughed, and drew Ella close to her bosom. She whispered into her newly discovered sister’s ear. “I’m sorry sis, if I’d known this was you a long time ago I might have… well I probably would have teased you more, but not such from a distance. And you know what they say: ‘Idle Hands are the devil’s workshop.”
She winked.
Eudora Ophelia lightly slapped Temperance with her fan.
“Ella,” Eudora said, “I am so glad to know you, Sis… and now maybe Dad will take me hunting instead of you. I’m the better shot.”
“Oh, I wish,” said Ella. The three sisters , newly discovered confidants, tittered and spoke in gossipy whispers. Ella provided information about all the previous hunts she’d been dragged on by Bart Hands, Eudora Ophelia greedily taking in the adventure, stopping from time to time to say how she would have this and that shot, how she liked when not with her husband to go out and practice her skills.
“I’m better than him now, I think,” said Eudora Ophelia. “I just need to go hunting to prove it.”
The church bell and town clock began to ring together.
“Oh, we’re late,” said Temperance. She and Eudora Ophelia began walking out of town, back down the dusty roads to their respective households. Temperance turned around and from about twenty feet away and shouted, “Do come over some time! I would love for my daughter to meet her other aunt.”

Eugene Fox, standing inside Clara Johnson’s store, chatting with Jack Hunter, spied a flash of red outside the window. Drawing close to the window he peered out. Then he ducked down underneath the crates next to the window.
“He alright?” asked Jack, who had been in the middle of telling a joke about a cow who got stuck on a bridge.
“Don’t know,” said Clara. “Go find out. I can’t have customers just squatting all day.”
“Yes ma’am,” said Jack.
“Stop calling me ma’am,” said Clara. “That’s only for the bedroom.”
“Yes ma–” Jack stopped. He shut his mouth and wheeled over to where Eugene squatted. He squatted down next to him, and then looked out the window. “Why it’s the Hands’ sisters, and someone else.”
“Yes, who is she?”
“Well I never seen her, but she looks an awful lot like the Blacksmith’s boy Cinder.”
“What do I need to know about some Blacksmith’s servant? What do I need to know about her?”
‘Well, why not just go an ask,” since you seem to be so set on finding out anyway. Jack reached over and ran his hand against Eugene’s cheeks.
“Hey, what did you do that for?”
“Just checking to see if that red flush was really on your face.”
“I’m not flushed red.”
“What if I told you that girl wanted to date you?” Eugene, already his face a deep red, turned crimson at the thought. He waved his hands in the air, and backed up from the window.
“He’s in love,” Jack called to Clara.
“That’s nice,” said Clara. “But I thought he was some kind of a rakehell?”
“Well?” said Jack, helping Eugene up. “My wife says you are a rake. Is that so?”
“Well….” Eugene looked down at the ground. “But this is different.”
“Why is this different?” asked Clara. “If you are, as you admit, a rake, then you have no problem taking a woman and making such advances as she would allow, proprietary be damned.”
“This one is different,’ Eugene paused, looked around the room. He opened his mouth and shut it again. Outside, the three women had finished their conversation. “This is different because she makes me blush.”
“Ah ha, he admits it!” said Jack. “Now go out there and talk to her. And take this.”
Jack shoved an object into Eugene’s hand and then showed him to the doorway. He pushed Eugene outside.
“What did you give him?” Clara asked, her hands on her hips as Jack rejoined her at the counter.
`Jack smiled, kissed Clara as she rolled her eyes, and said, “peppermint candy, the penny stock.”
“You’re paying me for that,” Clara said.
“Yes ma’am,” he said. “Put it on my tab.”
Clara looked around to see if anyone was watching. No customers in the store, no one peeking through the window. She swatted Jack on the behind.
Outside, through the window, they watched as Eugene Fox, rakehell of renown, chased after Ella. But Ella, twirling and spinning in her dance, seemed like a ballerina the way that she danced away from Eugene. It was as if she didn’t even see him as she made her way back home to the Blacksmith’s house.
The door slammed right in front of Eugene’s face, just as he was calling out “Miss, miss! I need to know… who you… who you are.”
Eugene sat down on the ground, he kicked at the dirt. He picked a clover and plucked its flowers. He stood up, balled his hand into a fist, and started towards Bart Hands’ door. He crossed the street, but right as he stood at the end of the laneway, he heard the shrill cry of a bird somewhere in the distance.
“Maybe later,” he said. “After all, I know she lives in town.”

That shrill cry was actually a teakettle that Bartholomew Hands had lately put on the stove. He had meant to turn it off, but he had been stoned as stationary as a victim of the Medusa when he saw Ella enter his house.
“Miss, why are you coming into my house” he asked.
“Bart,” Ella said, “can’t you see it’s me?”
“Cinder?” Bart asked.
The steaming kettle went off at that point, the water spitting out and burning up in the air around the stove.
“Not anymore,” said Ella. She spun around again. “This is me.”
“That uh, that was your mother’s dress,” said Bart. “The one she wore when I met her.”
“Now it’s mine!” said Ella. “I made a few alterations.”
“I… I don’t know what to say,” said Bart. “I should be angry, I think, but I’m not… just sad.”
“Sad?”
“I thought we had an understanding, an understanding that you would be my adopted son and take over the blacksmith business. You’re so good the way you can bend a nail or temper out some steel.”
“I, uh, I don’t want to do that,” said Ella. “I was never sure I could tell you.. But now, I feel like… like I have the power to be myself. I’m Ella!”
“Well,” said Bart. He looked around, and saw that the kettle was overflowing. He raced to salvage some of the water, which he poured into a cup of tea. It came up short, but Bart stood waiting in front of his mug, in silence.
“Well?” asked Ella.
“Well,” Bart drew in his breath. “I’m not your father, so I don’t really know you–”
“You’ve been my dad more than–”
“But I’m not, and so you have to leave this house.”
“What?”
“It’s no good for a father to be stuck alone in his house with his daughter,” said Bart. “People wonder about it, and people will wonder even more about you. They’ll say I made you this way.”
“I wasn’t made this way, I was just not yet myself.”
Bart sighed. “I know that. But if you are to live as you wish, you must leave here. You’ll need to find somewhere else to live. There’s no… no other way.”
Bart brought a hand up to his face and wiped away several tears. Ella was choking on her own tears, letting them drop down into her lap. She sobbed and hacked and coughed as she cried. Bart moved over to her.
“I,” he said, but could come up with nothing.
“Dad,” Ella said, looking up at him, “please?”
“It has to be this way… Ella… but you can stay here until you find a new place to stay. And of course you will be my daughter. You just can’t stay.”
“If you understand, then we can–”
“Your sister’s have gone and now it is your time,” said Bart.
“Can I… can I still work at the forge?”
“If that’s what you want,” said Bart. “But you must move out.”
Bart finished sipping his tea, left it on the table, and went to his room. Ella was left crying downstairs as the fire in the kitchen burned out, dwindling down into red and black ashes.

The next day, Ella sat staring at the ashes of last night's fire. She heard Bart rumbling around in his room. At 9:00, he appeared, fully dressed, and said, "Okay, I'm heading to work now, Ella."

Ella said nothing. She waited until he left his house and closed the door. She peered out the window and watched as Bart went down the walkway, through the dusty road of town towards his blacksmith shop. She noticed that from time to time, he stopped and turned, looking at her through the window, through the fence and then the window, branches of a tree, the fence, and the willow. It was like one of those unending chain tales where each moment stopped and then each verse was added until the song built up and built up until it had to end with some kind of final rapid finale.
Ella thought of the song "I know an old lady who swallowed a fly; I don't know why she swallowed the fly - I think she'll die," all the way down to the final punchline of "I know an old lady who swallowed a horse - she's dead, of course."
The song played through her head as she sat down, pretending not to be watching Bart walking and turning, stopping, starting, and walking again. It reached its final crescendo and chorus when she could see him no longer.
Satisfied now that Bart had retreated into town, Ella sneaked up to the room she had been ordered to vacate and pulled out the chest of her mother's belongings. She began to dig through it, trying on absolutely everything.
"I feel strange," Ella said to herself as she stared in the mirror, wearing her mother's underwear. "I will have to get my own. But the vest does look just so and just right."
Twirling around, Ella let the fabric of her skirt swirl up like a flower floating down in a gentle spring breeze. Her wide and open grin would look maniacal if it were not pure joy with tears running down her face, just little drops like rain on a sunny day.
Outfit after outfit, she did the same thing, spinning around, making kissing faces to the mirror, holding her hands up in poses she'd seen in magazines the older boys sometimes traded. In her previous incorrect disguise, she looked just like a cigarette box girl. She did this, trying on outfit after outfit until she finally found a dress that she wanted to wear that day: a light pink chemise beneath a vest with a cherry petal pattern. The dress itself was of the spring, patterned with light lavender flowers, and if you squinted enough, little yellow dots which might be the sun or small birds. It looked like an army of small yellow chicks ready to wander around in the sunshine, the real spring sunshine that drenches the world in a salute of youthful gold.
“Myself,” she whispered.
Her outfit done, and an attempt at makeup more excited than skilled, she began. It ended up with an unintentional smoky eye on her outer. With her dress firmly chosen, modeled, and placed upon her body, and her face made up just like she wanted, Ella slipped into her mother's old trail boots.
Mother had worn them twice in all, only trying to ride a horse in them once, managing that just before she fell ill. Ella remembered her mother's face, now like Ella's face herself, wide open and happier than she had ever been seen, her hair flowing in the wind, her laugh permeating the entire trail, sounding more like a cackling bird than some mellifluous thrush enlightening the evening with song.
Ella looked into the mirror again. She smiled that wide and happy smile, wiped away some of the kohl, smudging it a little bit more than she meant so that her eyes were ringed in a happily applied darkness. Ella smiled even wider at the woman she now saw, and she placed the wig that Madame Abullo gave her on her head, her hair tucked underneath, and smiled again.
"Mom," she said to the mirror, "I'm Ella. I'm so glad and honored to be your daughter. I miss you."
With herself and her clothes all correctly presenting her to the world, she sat down and wrote a short letter to Bart. She thanked him for looking after her for so long. She apologized for not being the adopted boy he had hoped would succeed him in the world. She said that in this world she was happy to be a foundling daughter for him and she did think of him as her own dad. She added that she hoped that he would find her a daughter like his others, another of the Hands sisters. She sealed the envelope, laid it on the table, and headed for the door. She also indicated that when she found a new place she would send for her belongings.
She paused for a moment, standing in the threshold, looking back at the house in very much the same way Bart had stopped and looked through the window, the fence post, the wandering branches of the willow tree. After that moment, she went back inside, picked up the letter, sealed it with a kiss, and then she sighed deeply.
"I don't know where I should go," she said, finally walking out the door. "Well, how about with me, miss?" said Eugene Fox, his face flushed a deep crimson, his expression nervous, looking more like an Amanita muscaria mushroom than a human man.
Ella couldn't help herself; she managed just in time to bring her hand up to her mouth and stifle a giggle, a little bit of which escaped as a stray note in a guitar solo into the wind.
Looking at Eugene Fox, Ella bit her tongue. The sight of Eugene was not unpleasant to her, and he was not altogether resistant to work. Should he spend some time, a week or so, on a farm, or even working the forge bellows at Bart's blacksmith shop, he might soon develop real muscles, well-defined. He was cute, a little roguish in the face, his hair blowing this way and that in the wind so that it seemed to glimmer with the morning sun.
"I suppose," Ella said, her eyes betraying her thoughts, "you might accompany me where I am going." "Of course, dear miss," said Eugene, his teeth flashing a silver shine in the good day's sun. He reached out his hand. Ella ignored the hand and walked ahead of Eugene, kicking up her boots in a skip-walk, glancing back at him from time to time, her face almost as flushed as his.
Eugene tried to speak, but the syllables stuck in his throat, so that he did not pronounce the word so much as a sound. Ella's attention was called back, and she glanced at him, asking, "What?"
She bit her tongue as she asked, every moment or so they would do this stop-and-start-dance as they walked towards town.
He couldn't answer, breath gone, as they stopped in front of Madame Abullo's. The Madame was boarding up her wagon, readying it to go careening along across the plains. She stopped and turned to Ella and gave a wink.
"But I thought you would need my help," Ella said. "Wasn't that the deal?"
"Oh, my dear sterling girl, I did of course need the deal, but that time has passed. Tomorrow is the Promenade, is it not?"
"It is," said Eugene. He turned to Ella, out of breath still, panting, trying, and finally forcing out his question: "And I want to go with you, please let me take you to the Promenade, please, please," he said, the words tumbling out of his mouth, not so much like the Rosario the town believed him to be, but like a much younger boy in the throes of a first rushing affection for a woman.
Eugene blushed red again, so deep red that you could hear and see his heart beating, drum-battery-like, right through his chest, tapping out a tattoo like a mighty military parade of marines.
Ella looked around. A crowd had gathered to see what would happen at this ask-out. "But I guess it wouldn't hurt."
"Yes," said Eugene, he smiled a dopey smile like the wide-sewn-in lips on a child's Christmas doll.
Ella looked away. Madame Abullo came to her. "Is this what you want?" She asked. "I don't know, I don't... I don't," Ella stuttered, "but I think it is my duty to find out."
She shook the Madame's hand. As she did, the Madame passed a small folded piece of ledger paper into her hands. It read: "Leave at midnight and go with no one; on this your first of nights, go with no one but yourself, honest, true, and Ella."
Eugene continued escorting Ella, bringing her down the main street. Outside the Saucy Puss, he curtsied and thanked her for his duties in chaperoning her to her destination.
He managed to reach out and take her hand, twirling her around towards a kiss, but at the last moment, she ducked underneath his arm and retreated beyond the swinging wooden doors of the saloon.
Entering the tavern, Ella walked in and the madam smiled. "My dear," the older woman said, "I am excited you are here. We have been waiting for you." "But you wouldn't let me in," Ella stated.
"Who isn't themselves is allowed here," said the madam. As if to prove the point, she snapped her fingers, and two waiters approached a table of punchers who were beginning to get loud and rowdy, interrupting a showgirl giving a shrill rendition of an old song on the stage.
Ella watched, transfixed.
"Next, it's about a bath, after I've been escorted out," the singer had finished her solo, and a line of showgirls began a chorus line, kicking their legs up while a new set was rolled onto the stage.
Ella nodded. "I also need a place to stay," she said. "That, I have," The Madam laughed. "Girl, I have for you a room of your own, as I do for any girl that wants her own existence."
Outside, Eugene stared down at his hands. Somehow, this woman, who brought him, of all people, to blush like some hero in a romance novel, escaped his grasp twice.
"I, I, I... I don't know what's happening to me. Is it about her?" He wondered aloud.
The passing villagers could not answer, and so as they went about their business, he went about his, kicking stones and twigs as he walked, blinking, trying to find some pathway back to his former, proper, upright stature. His business now, it seemed, was buying roses for the next night and readying to call on Ella for the town's grand promenade.

If the city was a ramshackle, wooden, run-of-the-mill town, propped up by its proximity to the train track – nothing more than just a stop in a dust bowl – then it was transformed into a wonderland alight in the gentle feeling of an early summer sunset. With stars and gas lamps twinkling together, pulsing in and out, they danced, tuning themselves into the rhythm of the universe the day of the promenade.
Ella spent the day getting ready for the promenade, dragging her trunk from her former lodgings at the Hands household. She was aided in this by Temperance, who marched right into the house that morning as Ella was knocking. Temperance spent a good 15 minutes berating her father about his mistreatment of their sister, grabbed the chest, tried hard not to throw it outside, failed at that attempt, and the two women chatted and gossiped as though they had spent all of the last few years chatting and gossiping about this and that, and how strange it was that Raymond Fox seemed to have a hand out with a silver shiny coin everywhere someone was now looking for work.
Installed in her new apartment above the Saucy Puss, Ella fidgeted with and made adjustments and alterations to the gown she sewed with Madame Abullo.
Seeing the dress in full for the first time as Ella modeled it, Temperance gasped and said, "You are a beauty for the ages, as if this were not the face that launched a thousand ships."
"Thanks, sis," said Ella, smiling and tearing up a little.
Temperance reached over, wiped away the tear, and told her, "Don't cry so much, you'll ruin your makeup, which, my dear, we must fix."
The rest of the day, before Eugene came calling, was spent in tutorials on how to put a glamor upon Ella's face. After various stops, starts, and new attempts, the rouge, the powder, and the kohl all came together to present a ball-fancy Ella, ready at last for the promenade.
As Ella descended the stairs into the Saucy Puss to meet Eugene, who was in the midst of drinking a shot, the whole of the tavern stood up. A chorus of men cast their eyes, splitting back and forth between Ella and their previous favorite of the showgirls, who also stopped, smiled, and applauded. The madam took the time to cross in front of the stage and announce that Ella would soon be dancing at the Saucy Puss, after going through the usual college of showmanship required of all the dancers.
"We only have the finest, as you gentlemen know," the Madam said. "Our own homegrown sweetheart, Ella, here will be the tip-top of the toppermost."

"Ella, you look absolutely astounding," said Eugene, when he recovered himself and walked over to her. He held out his hand up high, practiced in this dance. Ella shyly, furtively reached up and took his hand as well.
"I didn't know a town like this could be so pretty," said Eugene, "anywhere with you would be the prettiest of all sights because you, my dear girl, near the distance make the whole world as beautiful as you are."
"Didn't say that, yes I think I've heard that in Shakespeare. Are all your lines rehearsed, or do you know how to make up any of your own?" Ella teased.
Eugene paused, looked down at the street, and kicked a line back and forth in front of him. "They say that Farmer Donhalbaen has set up his barn for dancing. He's even got a couple of fiddle players out there to really set the mood," Eugene said. "How about we walk through this town hand in hand and then enjoy ourselves at the dance?"
At first, Ella said nothing, she simply inched a little closer to Eugene.
Then she wrapped her fingers around his fingers and let him lead her through the streets. Candles and jars hung from trees, and little reflective mirrors were placed around the town. At one point near the church, some of the mirrors had fallen to the ground, cracked, and someone had lost their own personal mirror, but the sparkling of the candlelight flickers in those floor-laden flashes seemed to Ella like dancing stars.
As they passed the church, Preacher called out, "Ella! I know this is your first day, so remember to save anything more than amity and friendship for after your marriage."
Ella nodded, and as she held Eugene's hand more tightly, they passed through the town along a flower-strewn pathway, banners waving every 20 feet in the breeze, towards Farmer Donhalbaen's barn.
“Wait,” Eugene said.
Eugene stopped and slipped something out of his pocket. Ella turned to see him fumbling to present her with an item. She blinked.
In the light and through the sparkling shine of the early evening, she saw a deep red rose, three distinct blooms. She gasped, put one foot behind her back, and leaned back just a little before murmuring out a "thank you" and blushing.

You could hear the whole atmosphere of the party in the town itself. Even the boisterous cowboys and old men of a certain age, confined by the Madam to the Saucy Puss because, as she put it, "This one is for the young folks. You have here every night, sit still and calm down, and let them dance their hearts away," could make out the riotous joys of songs as the fiddles sawed away and people sang and danced and danced and sang and snuck off into the descending darkness to explore a new connection. Many returned intimately acquainted with each other, lipstick smeared, and just as intimately acquainted with hay and grass inside and rolling over their fancy party clothes.
Night descended, and only the candles and the stars, still locked in their dance with each other, could be seen anymore.
Darkness had descended through the town, and yet the town was threaded through with so many of these lights. Flickering star lights. Flickering candle stars. Shouts and yells and laughter. The band tuning up and then–
You could catch snatches of the songs from here and there. Old farmers sat in their dark houses ashy hearths glowing down to coal. They sat staring at their wives, their wives staring back, both remembering their days at younger dances, in their own promenades or coming out parties or cotillions.
Even if the whole town was not present in the barn at the dance, at the presentation, everyone felt every moment, could hear snatches here and there blowing through the wind of old songs, sometimes hearing,
“Nearer my God to Thee
Through this land of liberty
I sang on every wreck and
Stood on every deck
When I was a Merchant Marine”

Or the band might also slip into an uptempo number:

"My old horse Bill,
he had his fill,
rode him up across the hill,
he bucked me off
and I fell down,
I nearly broke my jacket and crown,

Jacket and crown,
hat fell down,
Bill ran off then went to town."

Even every once in a while a slow waltz ballad, singing something like:

"On nights like this, between your kiss,
it's all supposed to be a rose, the flush,
the grin will soon begin,
to make a life as you suppose

Destined all be on the fall,
but falling can be fun,
I'm a sinner too, if me and you
can get on the run."

Into such strange yet cheerful songs as this, Eugene, hands locked with Ella, walked into the farmer’s repurposed barn. It was strewn throughout with more flowers both real and made of paper. American flags draped in the same creche and bunting patterns throughout. Small hay bales had been set up where the fiddle players, banjo players, and other accompaniment could sit and play.
From time to time, from behind those hay bales, two or three people emerged, usually quickly trying to remove newly formed wrinkles in their clothing.
Temperance and Eudora Ophelia stood at a small table, administering food and drinks to those in the barn. They waved to their sister and called out, making a small excuse to Eugene, and went over to see them.
"I didn't know you both were coming," Ella said.
"Of course we wouldn't miss our sister's Promenade for nothing in this world," said Eudora Ophelia.
"Especially since you seem to have landed the most eligible bachelor," said Temperance.
"Why, Temperance, you are absolutely incorrigible," said Eudora Ophelia. "She, you must know Ella, Hand sisters definitely like our men."
"I do like the way that looks," Ella said as she grabbed a cup and let her sisters fill it up. There was a pause as a fiddler snapped a string and let out a stream of curses, resulting in laughter among all the other dancers at the promenade.
He retreated from the stage, and Mary, the town's reporter and owner of the newspaper, took over, spending some time telling jokes she claimed her late husband dearly loved. Most of the jokes were of the order, "What does a cowboy wear to the promenade? His best vest!"
More groans than laughter filled the crowd, but the effect of the groans was to cause laughter at the audacity of such jokes to be so ineffectual.
"He is pretty, I will give him that," said Temperance.
Eudora Ophelia leaned in and said, "Ella, men like him are after a prize, and it is up to you whether you let him treat you that way. He is eligible to take you up and get you killed.”
“I think you mean liable, sister,” Temperance said.
“I’m older, I know what I meant,” said Eudora Ophelia.
"Why," said Ella, "he's been nothing but a gentleman to me," as she shifted back and forth on her feet.
“Yet, you sensed something in him that you're not sure you like," said Eudora Ophelia.
Ella said nothing.
"I know that mood," said Temperance. "I've had that mood myself many times. Why, I can't tell you how often when you were off in some reverie underneath your tree, father and I got into an argument. He said something I knew was correct, but I couldn't allow him to know that I understood his point."
"Why, it must be her first time feeling like this," Eudora Ophelia said.
The two other Hand sisters fell back into discussion among themselves, and with a grimace, Ella went off to find Eugene just as the band kicked back into action with a song whose lyrics seemed to be:

"That's what I like about the West,
grueling days without rest,
mined for a silver vein,
20 Mule Team and it's a pain,
but I am free and on the Range,
I'm not going back again,
no not to wander in the east,
where I count the very least,
so even when I find melancholiness,
'cause I often do, I must confess,
the open skies I love the best,
That's what I love about the West."

Instrumental dances followed, the second one a square dance. Lining up to dance, twirling around, exchanging partners, Ella was shocked to find that for this moment, for this dance at least, her partner Eugene had been replaced by Bartholomew Hands. He took the lead, spinning her around at the proper beat into a dip, and said, "Ella, I hope you are having fun tonight."
"Yes, but why are you here?" Ella asked.
"Your sisters would murder me," Bart said, "if I was not here to see my daughter's promenade. I already got an earful, as you know, from your sister this morning. I tried to explain to her the impropriety of it all. It's not that I wouldn't like you there, it's just that... Well, I could come up with any excuse, but people would not see it as right."
"What's done is done, Ella. But I wish you had let me make that decision for myself."
"I see that now, and not just because your sister almost disinvited me from Christmas dinner. That is why I'm here, to apologize and ensure you have an excellent night. I'm going to go and leave all you young people to this dancing, and as we used to say, romancing. But I want you to know that you are welcome in our family house at any time. I'm not..."
He choked up a little bit. Ella reached up to wipe a tear away from Bartholomew. He continued: "I'm not the best at this and I haven't been as attentive as I would have liked. I hope that in time we can make it right."
"Of course," said Ella, wrapping her arms around him, and kissed him on the cheek. “Of course… Dad.”
With that, the song ended, as if by miraculous cue. Ella watched as her adopted father snuck out of the barn into the night.
Ella looked at her two sisters, both of whom whistled and looked pointedly anywhere but at their sister.

In the meantime, Eugene was speaking with some of the local young men. One of them elbowed him in the ribs and said, "I didn't know you were like that." "Like what?" said Eugene.
"Well, you know, a woman that you are with," the boy said, a thin gaunt tall thing with skin as pale as any recently deceased soldier, "she used to be Cinder." He laughed and told the story, though some of them politely backed away out of the circle.
"So that's it then?" said Eugene.
"That's it," said the boy. "You're on a date with a boy."

A woman was complimenting Ella on her dress, asking if she could feel the fabric and asking if Ella would help her with her own sewing.
Eugene looked over at Ella then looked back to the boy and asked, "Are you lonely? Don’t be that lonely."
"What are you talking about?" the boy asked, "I'm just trying to make sure you don't make a mistake."
"The only mistake I've made," said Eugene, "is talking to you." He balled up his fists, "The promise here, the reason my father came out here, is that everyone is allowed to become who they are here. My dad might be trying to buy the town and become the new founder, but isn't that what we were told to go west as young men and remake the world as we want to, to become who we've always wanted to be?"
"Hey man," said the boy, "you're taking this way too seriously. I was just trying to warn you that if you continue on with dating that man, you're going to be a f---."

At that point, Eugene hit the boy in front of him, and others around in the circle had to pull Eugene off.
"She's not! She's not!" Eugene cried, and that is when Ella overheard.

It seemed that all of the party was talking about Ella and her former life as Cinder, all of them giving their opinions about what it would mean for Eugene and Ella to form some kind of union.
Tears, tears that had not flown down her face in years, tears not of the happiness to be fully herself dressed up as Ella Hands, pouring like the power of waterfalls in secret caverns deep within the woods in the Pacific Northwest, down the face of the best-dressed woman at the promenade.
The town clock and the church bell began to chime in their usual unison, signaling that it was midnight. Ella reached down and pulled out a scrap from her dress, rereading it, and bolted into the night.
"Sis!" cried Temperance.
But Eudora Ophelia held her back. "Wait," she mouthed the word, "why, and because this is her life, not ours. She will come to us when she needs support."
Temperance said, "I hate when you're right because I prefer to be the one that's right."
"Everyone in town knows that, sis," said Eudora Ophelia.

Meanwhile, Eugene, who had been held down by half of the men at the party, broke free and dashed out into the night, left and right, trying to find Ella.
With Eugene gone, the men returned to attend to the boy who had caused the commotion. His nose was bleeding, his face half caved in, self wheezing, and claiming, "It's all right, some people can't handle the truth."
The doctor was called, the incident was explained, and he said, "I don’t think I have anything for it today. I think you are going to have to wait until my stock comes in in the morning, and then I might have some salve to soothe the trouble you've caused for yourself."
It was a murmur among most of the townsfolk that Doc Sam was probably right: no one is harmed or hurt for a little romance, and that trying to stop such love from blossoming in their little town was a far greater crime than someone choosing to present themselves as their real and honest selves.
A vote was taken up by the women of the promenade, as was customary. Although Ella was not there in absentia, she gained a royal promenade title that night. From then on it was said that Ella went from sweeping ashes as an awkward little girl to being a most stunning queen of the promenade

Outside, beneath the old tree where Ella had played as a child, had spun around, had spent so many hours in symbiosis with the plant - that is where Eugene found her.
"So you know," said Ella. " Now… you know… I'm sure this changes things."
"What things does this change?" said Eugene. "I like you, and of all the people in the town, I find you not only the most astonishing but the most bra–."

"Don't you say it," said Ella. "I'm not brave. I hate brave. I am handling the life that I have been given. That's it.” She pounded her first into the tree.
“Taken from my early childhood home after the death of my father, forced to deal with the death of my beloved mother, raised by a stepfather who only is now beginning to understand me, and only because sisters who I once thought hated me turned out to be my very best of friends. I'm not brave; I am constantly at the point of breaking. And it is cruel of you to pretend to be interested in me when you are interested in the conquest."
"Well, maybe I am!" said Eugene. His hand reached out and grabbed hers before she could bloody her fist against the tree. "So what? Just because I am interested in the conquest, as if this chase between humans is a game, I'm not interested in players of this strange game? That’s your thought? You don’t know me either.”
Eugene sat down and stretched his legs out against the grass. He ran his hand through it, letting his skin collect the beginning of the next morning’s dew as it formed around him.
“So I have been with others. Been with someone, to feel their closeness. Even if it is not forever, that… that is what I want. To feel the way I feel when I see you here." Eugene paused. "I only felt that way once, with my old bunk mate Silver when my father forced me into a New England boarding school."
"You had a bunk mate named Silver?" asked Ella, looking up at Eugene through tears as the midnight chimes tolled.
"Well, his name was actually Sylvester," Eugene explained, "but we called him Silver. All of us had names back then. I was called Genius."
"Are you that smart?" asked Ella.
"No," said Eugene, "my name is Eugene. They took the 'gene' part and added 'ius'."
It was silent as they looked out at the town and up at the stars. Ella started to laugh.
Eugene reached out gently and gingerly, tapping his arm against Ella's right shoulder. She murmured "mmm," continuing exploring the muscles on her arm, well-defined from years of work in the blacksmith shop, until once again their fingers interlocked. Then he pulled her into a kiss. She leaned back, and he let his other hand caress the back of her head, those fingers weaving into and through her hair.
"It's like it is," Ella said as she pulled back away from the taste of his tongue.
But he pulled her back towards him, and there was one long, last kiss.

Eugene let Ella go and sat next to her. A shooting star streaked across the sky, then another, then another.
"I didn't know there would be such a shower tonight," said Ella.
There was another long silence, and then she got up, off into the dark.
Eugene sat there, then another shooting star, then another. Finally, he got up, pushing himself off of the grass, nearly falling back down as his leg had fallen asleep, and he barely regained his balance before walking back to the promenade.
The violin players had finished their playing and were passing around a bottle. The Hands sisters were gone, most of the people at the party were gone, and Ella was nowhere to be seen.
“Ella” he called. “Ella!”
One of the fiddle players grabbed his arm. He pulled Eugene over to him and thrust a bottle of Healer’s Legend into his hands.
“Drrink me, I mena, I mean drink for me too much I… too much tonight,” the player said.
“Okay,” said Eugene, taking a swig from the bottle.
“Finish-ya,” commanded another fiddle player, likewise flushed red with many trips that night to the taste of liquor.
“I must find Ella,” said Eugene, but the fiddle players produced another bottle.
“Tomorrah,” the said, and though Eugene kept eying the door to the barn, he kept taking swig after swig from the bottle. Finally, in an attempt to stand up and go seek out Ella, he fell on his face, scratching it as he slid down the side of a stack of hay bales. Eugene then fell into the dark abyss that is neither sleep or not sleep that catches up with drinkers at the end of such heavy nights.

Though he often drank from his father's supply and from time to time would join the old salt miners and cowboys, newly off their latest ride, for some light libations, drinking with the fiddle players knocked Eugene out for two days.
The second day, he managed to return home, where he stood for hour after hour, hearing no end of screams from his father who said, "Clearly, it is clear that you are not ready for this land. You need more structure. It is only my great relief to know that you will shortly, very shortly, be back East at Harvard, where you will finally learn some manners and the real breeding as befits a family like ours."
Whether Eugene grumbled or said something back has not been reported. Three days later, he rode back into town. First, to Bartholomew Hands' shop, but Ella was not there. Then he tried each of the Hands sisters' houses, but at each place, he was met with a sister who said, "If Ella wanted to find you, she would find you."
Temperance, adding loud enough that Eugene could hear as he rode away, "I told her that you were the worst of news. Rakes like you, I hope, are returned their own actions tenfold."
He tried calling at the Saucy Puss, but the Madam said that it was up to the Showgirls whether they would accept any man or woman and that if he wanted to interact with her, he would have to come back when she was fully trained as one of the dancers.
"That is not now at all," the Madam said. "She has been training quite hard the last couple of days, and I have given her the day off."
It was only by chance, when Eugene, dejectedly leaving town, mumbling, "If I don't find her in the next day or so, I'll never be able to hash out the whole thing with her before I go to college," that he saw her sitting on the riverbank, letting her feet dangle, watching as golden minnows swam discreetly by.
"Hey," he said.
"It's for horses," Ella said.
"I mean, hello," said Eugene.
"I know what you mean," said Ella. She sat silently.
"I thought we had a good time," Eugene said.
"We did," said Ella. "I had a fantastic time, but my clock ran out."
"Your clock?"
"Yes, after all, I have never had the chance to be this, to be me, to be Ella in full."
"But you've always been," Eugene said.
Ella started to tell Eugene about her life before, but Eugene stopped her.
"I know all that," he said. "What I need to know is why you ran away."
"I'm not ready for this," Ella said. "I've just lately found myself. I want the chance to explore, to really live now, here, happy the way that I feel dressed, the way that I feel dancing through town the way I did as a kid, the way I felt when the stars and the candles danced and flickered together in unison."
"And that's not with me?"
"I don't know if it's with you," said Ella. "I cannot commit right now. There is so much to do and so much to learn and so much for me out there. And I imagine you have much to do as well. I hear you're going to college!"
"Same as my father before! I'm actually..." Eugene paused, and he drew his breath, trailing his fingers as if he was passing an imaginary coin from knuckle to knuckle. "Actually, rather frightened. I don't know what I'll find back there. The fact that I have been a rake before... I never felt the way that I feel looking at, talking with, dancing with, and kissing you."
"Well, maybe it's not the last," said Ella. "I'm glad that I'm the first girl you fell in love with. But we're from different places; this is where we intersected."
"For what it's worth," said Eugene, "I would throw it all away and ride with you anywhere in the West. If you said you wanted to be like Red and live a life as an outlaw, I would follow you."
"But that's not what we're meant to do," said Ella. "And that is why I had our moment, and that is why I had to leave, because such moments, to be meaningful, must fade away like a candle burns out, gone."
"I suppose," said Eugene, "that I can understand that. I will always," here he patted his heart and then held out his palm as if bringing his heart from his chest out in an open ritual offering to, "remember this love I had for you. As such a rake, allow me one last kiss?"
Ella thought for a moment, stretching her toes in the waters of Reedy Creek. Then she nodded and pulled Eugene into a kiss.
As they kissed, his hand crept lower and lower, reaching under her dress. "Yes, that touch… Gene…. yes…," said Ella, "yes, I want this." "Ella," said Eugene, his hand slowly trailing up the woman’s thighs, "I want this too."

Three days later, Ella waited as the train came into town to spirit Eugene away back to the East. Reynard Fox stood on one side of his son, and Ella stood on the other. She leaned forward and kissed Eugene. "Cute," she whispered, blushing, biting her lip, for the last few days.
"You are a lovely woman," Eugene replied. "I lo- I love the time we spent."
Reynard Fox snapped his fingers impatiently, and his sort of beat and the snapping became the rhythm of the oncoming train. The train stopped, it whistled, a scant few people poured out, and the older man shook hands with his son. Eugene disappeared onto the Iron Horse and was never seen in Ruddy Creek again.
Watching a long time as the train disappeared into the horizon, Ella turned back towards town. She went to the Saucy Puss, where the Madam handed her a shot of whiskey.
"Courage, my dear," said the Madam. "It's time."
Ella drank the shot quickly, coughing inwardly at some of the harshness of the alcohol, a bit too much bite, not quite enough flavor.
"Yeah," the Madam said, "it's no Healer’s Legend, but it'll do to get you started."
Ella smiled and thanked the Madam, then retired into the changing room behind the stage where the other girls helped her into her leathers. The piano player started up a tune.
And when it came time for her moment, Ella stepped into the spotlight and said, "Hello, my name is Ella Hands. I am brand new, so everybody, treat me nice, okay!"
The men and some women gathered around to watch this debut began to clap and cheer. In the back, the boy who had lately jeered at Ella groaned that he would have his revenge and disappeared likewise from Ruddy Creek.
As for Ella and the show that she put on with all of the other girls, the local paper had only this to say:

"Though there are some moral improprieties in the way the Saucy Puss runs its show, and it is certainly not family fare, we may still admire the talents of a young woman. There can be no debate in town that Promenade Queen and local fixture, the most beautiful of us, Ella Hands, is triumphant in the show. If only the Puss put up more acts like this, we might finally have a Vaudeville rather than a brothel."

The Madam cut out the clipping and pasted it up in her back office, in the middle of many other write-ups. She showed Ella one day, and said “they say we’re evil but they can’t get enough of us. Yours is the best though. Stay on as long as you like dear girl.”
Ella did stay on, until Ruddy Creek itself died– though that is another story.
But this story ends with Ella sitting in that same back office, in casual conversation with the Madam, as they both worked to mend the showgirls’ leggings and other clothes.
“How do you feel?” asked the Madam.
“Like the luckiest woman in Ruddy Creek,” Ella said.
As she sewed her next stitch, she pricked her finger and a little blood dripped to the floor.
“That’ll happen,” said the Madam.
“Mmm,” said Ella.
“Are you helping your father any time this week?”
“Yes,” said Ella. “There’s a pick a miner wants Dad just can’t get right. His hands are getting worse.”
“Indeed,” said the Madam. And the women continued sewing.