Empty Kisses

It was the hottest day in 1865. Mr. George First walked down the street with his back to the sun. In his hands he held a rifle; in his mind he held a grudge.

Sixteen years before, George was a young man. He was sitting at a bar in Charleston. He called the bartender and ordered a tall glass of ale. While the bartender poured the glass out of a very large wooden barrel, George spotted a woman walking in.
She was the classic southern belle. Prim and proper, she was, with the softest powder skin on earth. Her lips were strikingly red and her blue eyes were deep as the sea. She wore a seductive, scarlet dress that bled the hearts of men. The bartender slid the glass to George.
“Who’s that there lady, Jim?” George asked the bartender.
“I believes me that there lady’s name’s Abigail,” the bartender answered while wiping a glass clean with a washcloth. “S’ppose I could be wrong, though. Her name really doesn’t matter to me, anyways. As long as she stays purdy and in my bar, I don’t give a damn what her name is.”
George left his ale at the counter and walked over to Abigail. She smiled at him.
George smiled back, “What’s a lady like yourself doing in a dirty bar like this?”
“That depends,” she said.
“On what?”
She cocked an eyebrow, “Are you Mr. George First?”
“Yes ma’am, I am. May I ask your name?” George cooed.
She gave a little courtesy, “Abigail Nightingale.”

George continued his determined trek to his destiny. His tattered boots left footprints in the dusty street. A record of his steps. One could see where he had been by looking at his footprints. He pulled out a scrap of paper from his pocket. On it was an address, scribbled in black ink.

Twelve years before, George was a plantation owner. His father had been lost at sea on business and he inherited the property. In his tuxedo pocket was a small, black box filled with dreams. The cold carriage ride to the ball was made all the warmer with Abigail sitting next to him. She wore a luxurious mink coat that he bought her for Christmas the week before.
He held her hand all the way there, and, when they arrived, he held her hand all the way up the twenty steps to the front door of the ballroom. He only let go to hold the door open for her and then seized her hand once again as soon as she was inside. He took her coat to the check and then returned to walk her to their table.
It was a magnificent ball. The whole room was filled with music and all the richest people within a hundred miles were there. It was certainly the grandest affair they had ever attended.
A man walked around with a tray of champagne and George took two glasses. He sat down and handed one to Abigail.
“Thank you, sir,” she smiled playfully.
“You’re very welcome, miss,” George grinned. He held his glass up, “To our love!”
“To our love!” she clinked her glass against his and they drank.
She suddenly felt a pang of apprehension, “This is a mighty grand affair, you know. What did it take for you to get in here?”
“Nothing too much for you, my dear Abigail,” George swooned.
Abigail simply smiled and sipped at her champagne.
The rest of the night went by without incidence, and the ball was about to end when George got out of his seat.
This surprised Abigail enough for her to say, “What are you doing, George?”
He lowered to the floor and rested on his left knee.
“Oh, George!” Abigail fanned her face, trying not to cry.
George said lovingly, “Abigail, I love you more than anything else. I love you even more than I love myself. Diamonds, fur coats, fancy balls? They’re not important at all to you, I know. I buy them only because I love you and I only want you to have everything. From the first time I saw you in that grimy bar I knew that you were the one for me. I never doubted for a second that I would have married you then and there if I had the means, and, you know, I didn’t. I haven’t had the means for a long time. But now I have my father’s plantation and everything’s different. I can support you now, and that’s all I have been waiting for. So, Abigail, will you take my hand in wedded matrimony?”
George pulled out the small, black box of dreams from his back pocket and opened it.
Abigail was crying now, and everyone surrounding the table was looking on, waiting for her answer. Through sobs and tears she said very softly, “Yes.”

As he walked down that street, George saw a slave girl leaning on a door on the sidewalk. She was the daughter of his cook. He did not smile at her when she smiled at him. He had not smiled all day.

Five years before, George was a father. Abigail had born unto him nine beautiful children. Gray hairs were beginning to form on his temples. Crow’s feet had landed on his eyes. He was getting older and the country was on the brink of civil war.
Abigail had been very worried for the past few days and George was inclined to ask her what was wrong. He called her into his study on their plantation.
“Yes, dear?” she asked. She was in her nightgown and wore no makeup, but George still saw her as the most beautiful creature the good Lord had ever created.
George stood up, “What’s wrong with you, my dear? You have not been yourself these days.”
“Oh, well… I’ve just been concerned lately,” she sighed.
George frowned, “Concerned? About what, in particular?”
She looked down and shuffled her feet for a time before answering, “It’s the country. The north doesn’t like the south, and the south doesn’t like the north. You studied history in the schoolhouse, didn’t you? When entire areas don’t like each other, they go to war. It’s just what they do.”
“So what have you been worrying about, my dear?” George asked.
She was frustrated, “We’re going to go to war, I just know it! I don’t want to put our children in danger. We have to go.”
“Where to you want to go?” George was concerned. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

George turned a corner on the street he was walking down. He cocked the rifle and prepared for a conflict. He was headed toward the tenth house on the left. If the scrap of paper in his pocket was correct, inside was betrayal. He broke a light sweat. Could it have been nerves or heat?

Four years before, George was a newcomer to the island. Abigail had decided to flee to a sugar island in the Caribbean Sea to escape the war that followed not six months after she had told George her fears about it. George managed to find nothing for sale in the whole sea but a tiny sugar farm on Grand Cayman Island. Being forced to sell his South Carolinian plantation, he was left with nearly no money very soon after he arrived on the island.
One day, Abigail came into the living room, sat down next to George on the couch, and kissed him.
“What was that for?” George laughed.
Abigail merely looked at him and said, “For being so good to me. I love you.”
After she left the room, George sat there and thought. Her kiss was empty. It was devoid of any emotion, let alone love. It was filled with nothing but arid obligation. Certainly, George loved his wife, but now he wondered whether she loved him back. Since they had become poor, all of her kisses were nothing more than obligatory mechanisms.
Her love seemed distant to George. He could detect that, deep down, there were embers left of the flame she once had for him, but how long would these embers continue to keep her heart warm for him?

George got to the tenth house on the left. Although there was nothing physically different about it that would distinguish it from any other house on the island, it felt different. It was painful to look at; disgusting, even. He felt like vomiting, he even gagged once or twice. George could bear no more of it. He banged the end of his rifle on the door.

Yesterday, George was alive… alive inside, at least. He had been suspecting more and more that his wife did not love him anymore, and, to his own horror, he had also been suspecting that she was having an affair. Naturally, he denied it to himself, despite the compelling evidence against her. She would spend days on long walks on the beach, but there were often times where George would never see her on the beach at all. The beach.
It could not have been more than a week before that he had followed her to this very house, and watched her leave four hours later. He knew that she was coming to the man and desecrating their marriage. He tore a small scrap of a flyer posted on a wall and jotted down the man’s address.
He went to the island’s only gunsmith. Emptying his small bank account, he purchased a Sharps 1862 Confederate Carbine Standard rifle for fifty dollars. He knew that he would not need the money after he did what he needed to.
It was a standard military rifle with a cherry wood stock and a steel barrel held onto the stock by three brass rings. The design on the trigger and firing mechanism was not especially intricate, but, honestly, that really didn’t matter to George. All the rifle needed to be able to do was shoot.

Bang! Bang! Bang! George hit the door with the end of his rifle until the door was opened. He pointed the rifle into the face of the man who opened the door.
The man was older than George—maybe sixty-five or so—but he was in no way a frail man.
“Are you the man sleeping with Abigail First?” George asked impatiently.
The man looked confused, “You mean Abigail Nightingale?”
“She lied about her name to you?” George was increasingly impatient.
“Excuse me, but do I know you?” the man acted like he didn’t even notice the rifle pressed up against his nose.
George yelled, “That’s my wife you’ve been sleeping with!”
“No… It couldn’t be…”
“Damn well it could!”
“Where have you been?” the man moved towards George.
George poked his rifle in the man’s face, “You stay back, you filthy monster!”
“Monster?! I didn’t know she was your wife, George!”
“George?” George stared at the man, taken aback at hearing his name from this stranger.
Mr. George First lowered his rifle and looked, for the first time in ages, into the eyes of his father.