Speak Now
A Short Story from "Romance and Other Crimes Vol. 3"
By Maryanne Peters

It was hard not to like L’Roy with his easy strength, his ready grin and his smooth butternut complexion. L’Roy Shipney and I were on the same road gang in New Mexico, working out of the county jail with sixteen other inmates repairing a culvert that had been damaged in a flash flood when the whole business began.

You had to be a model prisoner to qualify for road gang work. No disciplinary problems for six months and less than twenty months to serve on your original sentence. They transferred you to the county where you would work, and road gangers earned 25 cents a day to spend in the prison commissary van. More importantly, they earned forty days off their sentences for every thirty days of satisfactory work. Working Sunday through Sunday counted as an extra day. That’s why the Beatles song, “Eight Days a Week” was the unofficial anthem of the road gangs.

Not chain gangs. No one was chained together like road gangs in some of the Southern states. We even wore denim dungarees and blue workman shirts with our numbers stenciled on the back, not striped overalls like cons in comic strips. The guards wore guns on their hips and had rifles and shotguns in their vehicles. They kept their distance from us and didn’t make comments either after the Warden gave them hell for obscene and vulgar heckling. Welcome to the modern Corrections Department.

That last was part of what made L’Roy and I friends. My name is Richard Love. If you can imagine the obvious nickname the guards tagged me with you can go beyond that about ten times further to get an idea of what kind of abuse I had to put up with from other prisoners. The Warden eventually dealt with the guards but L’Roy had already taken care of my standing with the cons.

“Ricky is my buddy,” L’Roy said one day. “My friend because he always treats everyone good. You don’t treat him good; you are disrespecting me and your own self.” That ended because no one on the gang wanted L’Roy for an enemy. Especially not with a shovel in his hand.

We were working out of Truth or Consequences that week when L’Roy told me his plan. He and I were digging a hole where a concrete culvert would go under a new extension to County Road L4 when he said in a conversational tone. “I’m getting out of here, Ricky.”

I grunted. I’m small and skinny and L’Roy was doing twice as much work as I did for probably little more than half as much effort. I always had to work harder than anyone else to try to keep up my part. “You that short, L’Roy?” I asked. “Thought you had twelve more weeks to go, not like me with years still to run.”

As if I needed reminding. It had been on my mind of late. When L’Roy was gone there were cons who were going looking for Dick Love, the name and the deed. Time was running out for me. For both of us the days were running slow.

“Can’t do it.” He shook his head. “My gal is getting married on the 23rd and I got to be there to stop her.”

He was always talking about her, but I figured she was over him even before he was sentenced. Still, love has no sense to it, as we were all to discover.

“If you’re going, you take me with you,” I blurted. It was more an instruction than a plea. I do not like to ask him for anything, but this I needed.

“It’s not your fight, Ricky”, he said. “I will risk it because it is just what I got to do. You do your time. Besides, two men on the run will draw attention.”

“Have you looked at yourself lately, L’Roy. On your own you draw attention. Besides, I can help with IDs and stuff”. That was my skill. Master forger.

“I am worried about you,” he said. “Come with me then. We are here all alone. We can run down the creek.”

“After lunch,” I suggested. “It’s only a quarter hour off. If we go after lunch, we could have two hours before we are discovered missing”.

“That’s good thinking”, said L’Roy, clearly seeing that I could be more useful.

We went to lunch and told the guards that we would be done with the job in 3 hours if we were left to it. It was an attempt to get extra time without us being checked on, as was the case all morning. It may have worked.

Straight back from lunch we were gone, moving down the dry creek bed and then into the shallow water from recent rain when we hit it, to hide our trail from the dogs they would call out. We both ran false trails out of the creek once we hit the brush, but we kept on going following the water until we saw the bridge of the CanAm Highway ahead.

We took branches from overhanging brush to make ourselves “dust shoes” further downstream. Wedging our feet into these allows us to move without leaving boot prints, and to keep some distance between our scent and the ground. Maybe that worked too.

Up the hill from the bridge was a wide shoulder in the road and for our good fortune there was a large rig parked up there. We approached with care sticking to the sparse vegetation and then scampered over to take a spot behind the cab. There we had to wait, but with a second stroke of good luck it was not long before the engine roared into life and we were moving.

It seemed the driver had been taking a break before an all-night drive. We went north without stopping. The problem was that behind the cab unit we were visible, but on that stretch of highway there is nobody standing on the roadside and nobody looking while they are overtaking. Looking back, we took the back road 107 to State Highway 60 so it was desert all the way until it got dark. By then we were just outside Winslow Arizona.

Our water was done, and we were stiff from the more than 5 hours ride. But we managed to use the darkness to hide us while we made across the country on foot towards some suburban houses.

Everything seemed to be occupied. To confront anybody now would be to destroy our carefully masked long trail from New Mexico, so our first thought was to get clothes. In the darkness I pulled some things off a clothesline, and we hurried into the only building we could get into, a yard with a flimsy fence and a workshop building at the far end.

It had power, so we could reassess our position. It was a candle factory. It smelt of scented candles and hot wax. On the main table we put all that we had, including what I had just gathered.

“Not much use – those are women’s clothes”, said L’Roy, an ironic smile on his face. “It might fit you, Ricky, but not me”.

“Nothing will fit you except what you are wearing”, I said. But then I looked at the dress I was holding up and I had an idea.

“Find me scissors, a needle and thread or some glue and I will stitch this on over your numbers”, I said. He found everything, and I went to work. And we found water too and set about stripping off and washing away 500 miles of dust and quenching a thirst to match.

“Put on the dress”, said L’Roy. “Maybe that is not such a stupid idea. A man and a woman travelling together don’t draw no attention”. He was holding it up. It was a floral print. Pretty … on a girl.

“I am no woman”, I said. “I will look like a drag queen, or worse a convict in drag”.

“We need to use that long hair of yours”, said L’Roy. He pulled off the rubber band and arranged it across my shoulders. It was greasy, sweaty, and caked in dust.

“We can use wax to get the other hair off your body”, he said.

“You’re crazy. Now, this glue with keep this cloth panel in place. Leave me to my sewing”, I said. I was intent on getting his clothing sorted.

“Yes Ma’am”, he grinned. “If you don’t have a better idea, it looks like you are going to be Mrs. Shipney for a few days”.

“Which reminds me, we need to find IDs for me to modify if we want to travel in any kind of comfort”, I told him. But already the sense in his idea was beginning to become obvious. There was a dress. I could make sandals from the insoles of my boots and material in this workshop, and a shoulder bag with my denim shirt. If we were going to walk out of this workshop in disguise, we had to use what we had, and that was not much.

There were basins and hot water and there was soap, and L’Roy was having fun using the perfume for making scented candles into a feminine shampoo. He was also able to find some food which we ate ravenously.

“I have made you warm wax, so you had better strip and prepared to be stripped again”, he sniggered.

“This is not the stuff they use”, I protested, but it was going to be the stuff that we would use. He seemed to take a perverse pleasure in pulling it off, in particular from my face.

“I have put some up here too”, he said. He simultaneously seemed to yank away my eyebrows, but in fact he had followed a shape in a woman’s magazine he found to give a very professional looking arch. Professional or not, my skin was inflamed all over and felt like it was on fire. He found fragrant oil to soothe my skin.

After the sewing I set about preparing to modify outdated IDs found in a drawer to serve us should we be asked.

L’Roy washed and then after I had done the same, he washed my hair in his special potion and then tied it in rags as he had seen his mother do for his sister. I had no idea what was going on, but by this point I was too tired to care. We fell asleep on some packaging.

In the morning, we were ready to go with what we had, and few extra things piled into my bag. In his shirt with the eagle panel on the back L’Roy looked like a tourist, and in my dress sandals and curly hair I looked as feminine as a guy can look without makeup. I let the curls hang in my face just in case.

We needed money, but it would have to be lifted quietly. We did not want to draw attention to ourselves. L’Roy was the more recognizable so at the service station I caused the distraction with the till drawer open, and L’Roy lifted just the big banknotes underneath so we could get away. We managed to lift some sunglasses and a bit of food too.

My call for help from the guy on the counter gave me my first chance to try a feminine voice and to show off my smooth leg. It worked so well that I surprised myself.

We had enough money to catch the next bus on to Las Vegas – a journey of 320 miles that would take us 6 hours.

Our ID worked to buy the fare, although the driver did remark on our lack of luggage. Still, I figured that once we got to Vegas we could easily get lost in that busy city. But that was not what L’Roy was thinking. We were still a few days shy of the 23rd and L’Roy had to stop his gal from getting hitched. That would mean checking the many “chapels” to find out where the wedding was to take place.

“Promise me you will help me find her, Ricky”’ he said. “Ah will go in alone to stop her, and I will get arrested and sent back to jail, but looking as you do you can just walk away. You don’t look anything like Ricky Love”.

I promised him that I would help. We were in this together. We had a strong bond before the escape, but now it seemed that there were just the two of us, against the whole world. That brings two fellows closer together.

We sat together. We were dead beat after spending the whole night working on looking nothing like the escaped convicts we were. The bus felt secure, and we fell asleep.

When I woke, I found myself lying across L’Roy, with his arm gently cradling, a hand in my curls. I was startled and started to pull away, but he held me where I was.

“You hush now and stay still”, he whispered. “We look like a couple you and I, so keep it that way”.

As if to draw a line under that statement another passenger walked past our seats and seeing me, a girl in the arms of her strong man, she smiled, and I smiled back. I looked up at L’Roy and I had the strangest feeling. Once again, this man was my protector.

“Ricky is my buddy. You be disrespectin’ him then you be disrespectin’ me”. That is what he would say. Now our friendship seemed even closer as I lay in his arms. I closed my eyes. I sensed that he was bending forward and smelling my perfumed hair.

We got off at the bus station in downtown Las Vegas, and I went to the information counter to get details on wedding venues. I was shocked to find that there were 118 venues in the city, and even at least 80 if you exclude ones a distance from downtown and the strip. It seemed that we would need all the time that we had to find what we were looking for.

We were posing as a couple “friends of the bride, but out to surprise her, and (wouldn’t you believe it) we have lost details of the wedding venue”!

We looked at a few downtown, and then we decided that we needed to find a cheap motel to stay the night. I left that to L’Roy while I continued to check another two chapels for weddings scheduled for the 23rd.

I was to meet L’Roy in the lobby of the Golden Nugget Hotel at 6:00 pm, but when he was late I started to get worried. We had come all this way, and a policeman had seen the APD with his details and he had been arrested on the spot. I was just starting to think what to do, He would never give our meeting place away, so why was I feeling so frantic? I guess I realized that I really wanted him beside me, and without him there was a rising panic.

So, when he appeared I rushed over to him. I felt foolish as I got near and stopped short.

“It’s OK. You’re my girlfriend, remember? You can give me a hug”. So, I did. I hugged him hard.

“And you’re going to want to kiss me when I show you what is in my pocket”, he said. “I think having Ricky Love as my girlfriend must be lucky, because two bets in a row paid off, and look at how much we have won”.

To this day I cannot quite work out how he made all that money. We only had maybe a hundred dollars left, and you put that on the roulette table maximum odds I suppose it is possible. Or maybe he shook somebody down for the cash or was recouping an old debt. He has always said that it is just luck.

“I am going to take you to dinner”, he said. “But first we gotta get you dressed up like a proper lady”!

I am not sure whether it was luck that took us into that boutique either, but the lady quickly saw that I was not one of her regular female customers.

“Don’t worry sweetheart”, she said. “I serve plenty of girls like you here. The chorus lines of Vegas have plenty just like you, but not nearly as pretty. I will get you the underwear that you need, and we can put those curls of your up in a suitable hairdo and give you a proper makeup job and a manicure. And it seems that this great big man of yours has the money and wants to spend it all on you.”

They say that Las Vegas makes people a little crazy. People do things in that town that they would never dream of doing at home. I guess that is what makes it the place it is.

I stepped out with L’Roy Shipney that night and I felt as if I was a woman. Not only that, but I also felt like the most beautiful woman in the world and like his woman.

They also say that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, so I guess that means that the two nights that we stayed at that hotel on the Strip and the day in between should stay there and not be put here. Suffice it to say that I was not me – I was somebody else.

Still, I had the concierge ring around to find the wedding we were there to stop, which is just the kind of thing that concierges in Las Vegas can do that mere mortals cannot.

He found the place, and the time, and so on the 23rd we were obliged to turn up, standing in the shadows at the back of the tiny chapel with just the bride and groom, the marriage celebrant and two hired witnesses standing at the front.

I looked up at L’Roy and it seemed for a minute that he was not going to do anything. The celebrant opened and he did not shout out. I found myself hoping that he would not. Given the surroundings it may have been more prayer than just hope. If he spoke it might ruin everything.

He was waiting for that thing, which is not required, but it is traditional. I know now that it comes from the marriage liturgy section of the “Book of Common Prayer” first published in 1543. You know the words – we all do. The celebrant called them out …

“Should anyone present know of any reason that this couple should not be joined in holy matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace”. I closed my eyes and willed him to say nothing, but he had come all this way …

“My name is L’Roy Shipney, and the bride knows me very well. And I know her, better than the man standing beside her. So, I am guessing that she has not bothered telling him that she has not always been XXX. When we first got together, she called herself by that name. but she was in fact YYY. But that was before she had her cock and balls cut off! I just thought that her groom might like to know that”!

I looked up. All three standing at the altar (if you can call it that) had their mouths open. The groom was the first to speak, but only to utter one word.

“Fuck”!

“It should not matter to you”! the bride protested. “If you love me then the past is irrelevant”. But maybe she could see the look on his face – a rising disgust – she changed tack. “Don’t listen to him. He is an ex-boyfriend, jealous of what we have”.

“Fuck”! It seemed it was the only word the groom had. But he needed no other word, he just turned away.

“You bastard, L’Roy”! she shouted. “If you think that I will ever get back with you, you can forget it. I want a man who loves real women. Women like I am now”!

She ran after the groom, but I don’t think any of us believed that she would bring him back. That included the celebrant who picked up the posy that the bride had dropped and looked down the chapel directly at us.

“Very unfortunate, but I think we can rule them out”, he said. “And the whole thing has been bought and paid for”.

“Is same sex marriage legal in this state”? I turned to L’Roy. He had just called out those words.

“Yes, in the state of Nevada you can marry who you like. Does that mean …? Well, there is no problem here. Come forward you two”.

“Just one minute there”, L’Roy called back. Then he turned to me, with eyes that asked the question even before he opened his mouth. “Ricki, would you agree to be my wife”?

It was like a dream come true. I mean we say things like that, and the truth is that I did not even realize that is was my dream until just that moment – the moment it came true.

“Yes”, I said as we walked down towards the celebrant.

He threw me the posy, and I caught it.

The End
 
(c) Maryanne Peters 2024

Author's Note:
If you liked this story then please check out my latest book on Amazon - "Romance and Other Crimes Vol. 3"