Joshua and Rosa: A Love Story (Part 2)

Joshua had come west looking for a fortune. His father had given him nothing but the bitter prediction that failure would follow Joshua and bring him back home with his tail tucked securely between his legs. Joshua knew that his mother, had she lived, would have been more supporting but a lifetime of enduring her husband’s casual brutality had left her old and broken before her time and she had passed on while Joshua was just moving into puberty.

Having not found a fortune Joshua decided to try his hand at farming. But having neither the skill nor the fertile land needed to be a good farmer, he found his true calling as a smith. More than a smith actually, Joshua had an intuitive way around machines and tools…he could fix a plow or correct a wobbly wagon better and faster than any man that anyone in those parts had ever seen. Joshua’s shop, which was once a cavernous stable in the heart of town, was financed by monies saved from a small bequest from his mother and from odd jobs taken during his years traveling and searching. It eventually became one of the most prosperous businesses for miles around. Word of mouth spread among the ranchers and farmers and working men of the area and people came from far a-field to buy his well-crafted tools and have him work on their precious equipment.

Rosa had gone north looking for…for something more than Mexico was willing to offer a woman. With five younger brothers and three younger sisters, Rosa imagined that she was little missed in the ramshackle house that mother worked day and night trying to keep together. Rosa had drifted into America with no specific expectations and America had not offered her much beside the chance to wash other people’s clothes or to serve drinks in a bar where the men had no compunction against touching her rudely and often. Disillusioned Rosa eventually decided to return home…to heed her father’s wishes and settle down as the dutiful wife of whatever man would have her…and live out her life in the quiet desperation that she had seen overwhelm and nearly kill her mother. But having made that decision, bitter fate intervened to change her plans.

Fate that took the form of a man whose wife Rosa worked for. He was a foul-smelling, often drunk man who would not take “no” for an answered when he demanded sexual favors from her. He raped her in the room where Rosa tended to the chores the man’s wife assigned her and then laughed when she threatened to report him to the authorities. The local authorities laughed too and sent her on her way. Stripped of her virtue, the one thing her father had specifically commanded her to guard zealously, Rosa knew that returning home was no longer an option.

Joshua had found his calling in the small town…and built a reputation that spread far and wide…but he was still unfulfilled because he had no one share his relatively prosperous life with. Joshua worked hard from sunup to sunset most days coming “home” to an empty room in a quiet boarding house. Joshua occasionally entertained the ill-disguised intentions of marriage-minded single and widowed women in town but none of them sparked with him in a way that made him want to stand in front of Preacher Brown’s altar. Folks wondered what Joshua was looking for but in truth he couldn’t say himself.

On occasional nights, Joshua indulged himself to the point of buying the intimate company of one of the girls working in the saloon but that usually left him feeling ashamed and more alone than ever.

Rosa had resigned herself to a fate that she could have scarcely imagined when she came to America. Having taken on the mien and mantle of a fallen woman, she moved from one nondescript town to another equally nondescript town until she found work as waitress in a sleepy saloon in a dusty, sleepy town. Despite her shame at having had her virginity taken from her, Rosa resisted an offer to make better money as a “working girl” and settled into the drudgery of waiting tables.

Joshua would always remember the night he wandered into the saloon after closing up his shop. His first impulse had been to just go to his room and sleep but he was strangely restless and something compelled him to stop in for a beer. Joshua had just taken a table in the back of the saloon when he saw the Mexican girl who was the new waitress sigh heavily and cross the floor towards him. And there it was…out of the blue…that spark he’d been looking for.

Rosa rarely made eye contact when she was taking drink orders. Thanks to having been introduced to the ungainly language by a nun who taught school in her hometown, Rosa’s English was good enough but far too often her thick accent became the brunt of crude jokes so she usually said as little as possible. But on that night something drew Rosa’s eyes up and when her eyes met Joshua’s piercing eyes she felt a light in her heart that she hadn’t felt in so many months that it disoriented her. Rosa took his order…smiling inside when he seemed as tongue-tied and thunderstruck as she did…and went to the bar with a lighter step.

Joshua drank his beer self-consciously, feeling as though his heart was going to burst from his chest, and left quickly. He dreamed about the girl that night and then daydreamed about her all the next day. Joshua went back to the saloon that night and was happy to see that she seemed to be pleased to see him. Joshua was halfway through his second beer when he finally found courage to ask her out. The girl seemed reluctant at first but, shyly, she agreed.