Charlie Rose

First Chap

Charlie Rose drew up her bandanna, covering her face from both the sand that was flying through the air and the people she would soon come in contact with. Her horse slowed down its pace and the colored woman sitting behind her wrapped her arms even tighter around Charlie's waist.

"I don't know about this, Missy" The colored woman muttered under her breath. 

"Shut your mouth, Marsha" Charlie grunted and wanted to elbow the older woman. She thought against it, knowing that she was only saying this because she had been with Charlie for so long that the woman must have started to care for her. "If I wanted your opinion I would have asked for it before we crossed state-lines." The mahogany brown horse they were on trotted forward, towards a small town in the vast distance that appeared to be only a speckle of dirt. But, with every minute that passed, the town became bigger and wider.

"You shouldn't do this, Missy" Marsha murmured and shook her head. "You don't want to live with other people's blood on your hands. It haunts you for the rest of your life."

"It won't haunt me as much as that asshole does" Charlie told her and turned her head in her direction, although not turning around enough to see her face. "You don't know what it's like" She mumbled and looked back to the town they were slowly approaching. "You weren't there when he killed them." Her mind unwillingly led her back to the events that happened ten years ago. She had just left the dinner table to go play in the other room when a man at six-foot-two with a protruding stomach kicked the door down guns a blazing. Charlie had been so scared she ran into the other room and hid under a couch while the man killed her parents and brother, who had still been eating their dinner. At that time she hadn't taken up the name Charlie, then she was just Rose Differone.

She snapped out of her thoughts half a mile away from the town, just in time. She motioned for Marsha to hop off, because if they'd be seen riding on a horse together, Charlie would be considered a nigger-lover and they'd be chased out of town before even stepping off. Marsha didn't mind, she knew how this worked as she had been with Charlie for five years now. She had been beaten severely and left to die at some street-corner when the twelve-year old girl with a mule and a hat too big for her head walked past. Charlie had let her come with her to a room that she was renting, and with her help, Marsha had gotten her strength back and healed nicely aside from the small limp she still carried to this day, and has been in a debt with the girl ever since. If it weren't for Charlie's thirst for blood, Marsha would be out on the streets or, even worse, just another nigger buried in the mud.

They entered the town quietly. The people who were out on this sunny Sunday morning stared at them with wonder as they passed them and Charlie got apprehensive. She was afraid they would see past her disguise as a male and report her to the man, whom would drag her by her hair to the middle of town and shoot her in the head. That was, at least, how she always dreamed it would happen when she had nightmares about him. Despite of having only seen that man once, his face had bored into her mind's core and was engraved there probably for all eternity.

Charlie hadn't planned on getting out from under that couch ever, all those years ago, she had planned on just staying there until she would die from starvation. But, her plan had failed miserably when the family next door took her in. They were childless, and although struck by shock for their neighbors' death, they were happy to finally get to raise a child of their own. In those five years Charlie lived there, she only thought about running away and killing that man. Finally, one quiet night when she was twelve, she snuck out her window and hasn't been seen since in that city in West Virginia.

Again, Charlie was snapped out of her thoughts when Marsha made the horse stop. They had arrived to their destination; to the middle of the town. Charlie got off and walked to the nearby saloon while Marsha went to tie the horse up with all the other ones. The saloon was filled with drunken men, all laughing and singing songs she didn't know, and making passes at the waitresses who worked their asses off trying to please them. Charlie was glad she didn't have to work like those girls, she had seen to that when she ran away to take as much money as she could carry. That money had lasted her for so long, though, that was mostly because she almost never spent it. She saved up as much as she could making due with what she got from it; sleeping outside, drinking from rivers that were sometimes filthy, having to steal and scavenge for food. The first thing Charlie bought when she ran away was a mule after the horse she took suddenly dropped dead in the middle of the Nevada desert.