E.L. Doctorow (11 page)

Jimmy was slow to get better, his cough lingered for weeks. Molly tended to him each minute of the time and didn’t ask any help from me. She cooked him soups, she kept him well wrapped; and on his walking day she held him under the elbows while he slowly stepped around the cabin. On occasion she went to consult with John Bear, bringing the Indian her portion of food. And if she returned with some more treatment Jimmy might have wanted to squawk but he submitted to it without a word. There was something about Molly that commanded him: she went about her ministering shortly, with never a smile, as if in one moment of a too tried patience she would just give him up and leave him to himself.

She had already left me to myself. Our bundling had warmed her only to the point where she hardly acknowledged that I was there in the cabin. She kept busy with the boy and with the steady cold now I was fairly locked in; so that there was not much I could do but take away
the slops, or worry would we have fire to last the winter. When Jimmy was on his feet I thought he might want to take up our reading lessons once more. But he didn’t seem keen on it, his eyes always wandered to the woman, and what use there was to the almanac; even that I had to myself.

I spent a lot of time studying the almanac. It kept me from brooding or wondering where the Bad Man might be enjoying his winter. It had census figures for the different states and their counties, and the dates they were brought into the Union. I have always been one for that kind of reading. Before I got the fever to go West I was bound out to a lawyer for some months, and it pleasured me to feel the legal cap or read the briefs all salted down with Latin. In all my traveling, whenever I came across a Warrant or a Notice of any kind I never failed to read it through. Some people have a weakness for cards, or whittling, my weakness has always been for documents and deeds and such like.

When I first came to Hard Times it was nothing posted that stopped me, I had a small stake in my money belt and I was riding up to the lodes to earn some more. But there was Fee putting the finishing boards on Avery’s two-story saloon, and the sight of him building this place right up off the flat ground struck me somehow. I could think of better places for a carpenter to make his living; not the poorest townsite I’d seen it still didn’t look worth his labor, yet Fee was working with an assurance that made me feel ashamed even to question him. In my forty-eighth year, tired out with looking, looking, moving always and wanting I don’t know what, I was ready to grant it wasn’t the site but the settling of it that mattered. I bought a room off the
porch from Hausenfield and I stayed. Later, without much thinking about it, I got a ledger from a traveling notions man; and after I acquired that lawyer’s desk and belongings who was going up to work in the lodes, I put the ledger on the desk and in my spare time I began to put down everyone’s name and the land they claimed and what properties they owned. I never enjoyed anything more. The town hadn’t a promoter, you see, and there were no records for anything. If it ever got big enough to be listed or if the Territory ever needed names for a statehood petition, why I had these documents. A few people like Avery laughed when it went about what I was doing; later, Avery was one of the first to call me Mayor—

But just thinking about it just made the days longer.

One cold afternoon there was a banging on our door and it was Isaac Maple. He came in begging our pardon, he said he’d tried to see Jenks and Zar both, but Jenks was asleep in the stable and Zar was in a mood and wouldn’t speak to him.

“See them about what, Isaac?” I said.

He took something from his pocket which I saw to be a small printed calendar. Standing there, with water hanging from his nose, he said: “I mark off the days with this, and s’far as I know it’s December the twenty-fifth, Christmas.”

Molly and I looked at him. He was waiting for something by way of reply, but all I could think to say was: “Well if that’s so Isaac take off your coat and drink some coffee with us.” At the same time Molly looked from him to me and walked away without a word.

It was clear in his eyes we were as bad as Jenks or the
Russian. His sad hound’s face fell: “Thank ye, no,” he said and turned and went out.

That put him in my mind for the rest of the day. Isaac Maple stayed alone in his tent most of the time, thinking I suppose of his brother Ezra. He was a shy man and he was new to the West and it must have been a powerful need for comfort which brought him to our door. I don’t often honor holidays but I wanted to understand Isaac’s feelings. In the evening I went over to Zar’s place and demanded a drink on the house.

Zar was leaning with his elbows on his sawhorse bar: “For what,” he scowled at me.

“It’s Christmas, Zar,” I said. “Didn’t you know?”

“Wal wal, I tell you—only the spring shall I celebrate.”

But Miss Adah was properly moved. She ran to wake up the girls sleeping in the back rooms. I thought she had just the spirit Isaac wanted and when she came back I said, “Isaac Maple’s the one who told me.”

“I’ll go get him,” she said putting a shawl over her. “Poor man’s all alone.”

“Save yourself, Adah,” Zar said, but she was gone.

Zar had no use for the man and couldn’t see going to any trouble over him; when Adah returned, leading Isaac Maple, she had to set up the drinks herself—the Russian had sat down, grumbling, on one of his camp chairs.

Then Jenks wandered in, he was wearing a hat he’d made out of prairie dog fur, it came down to his eyes and went around his head to a point in back. You could just about make out his wolfy smile under that cap.

“The customer,” Zar said folding his arms.

Well I saw it was going to be a true enough gathering so I took myself back to the cabin to get Molly and the boy. Molly wanted no part of it. She said it wouldn’t do for Jimmy to go out at night with the wind so cold and snow blowing along the ground. I said we could wrap a blanket around him and I’d carry him over. That didn’t please either of them too much, but then we heard, coming across the wind, the sounds of Miss Adah’s voice singing a hymn with her melodeon, and I did as I wanted—wrapping the boy up—and we all went over.

When we came in Adah stopped her singing and got up to greet Molly. Everyone was very polite—Jenks pulled at his cap when he said hello and the ladies gave Jimmy a greeting although, since he stood by Molly’s side, they stayed their distance. There was only one lantern on the table and the room was in shadows, but Zar got up to light another and at Adah’s signal he started to pour out a drink for Molly. She held up her hand, very ladylike, and smiled and shook her head. She had drunk her share in the old days and it wouldn’t have hurt her now, but it gave her more pleasure to refuse, it set her apart from the ladies although she knew them better than they thought she did.

All at once, as we were standing around, nobody had anything to say, we were all embarrassed we’d made an occasion. I lifted my cup: “Well here’s to Christmas and better times for the world.”

“Amen,” said Miss Adah. Then she sat down at the melodeon and began her hymn again. Everyone was quiet and drinking listening to her sing it through. She had a deep voice but she meant what she sang. When she finished she started another and it was one Isaac
recognized, he stepped up in back of her and looking straight at the wall he joined right in, tenor.

Well the whiskey was warm going down and it spread over me like sun. There was this churchly music going; Molly, with Jimmy at her side, was sitting on a chair listening; Zar was stepping around offering the bottle; and I thought why this is what Isaac Maple had in mind, just to celebrate the fact that all of us are here. And I asked myself whether these weren’t already better times: here was some people and we had a root on the land where there was nothing but graves a few months before.

After a while the liquor began to have its effect on everyone. Jessie and Mae, who had been cowed by Molly’s presence, made a show of forgetting she was there and began to enjoy themselves. Jessie went over to Jenks, sitting in a chair, and stuck her thumb under his fur cap.

“Is that you under there, Dead-Eye?” she said.

Jenks slapped her hand away, stealing a glance at Molly at the same time: “Get on!”

“Why Jenksy!” said Mae plunking herself down on his lap. “Ah’ve never seen you so outdone. Didn’t you get yore sleep t’day?”

“If’n hew please, ladies,” Jenks said pushing Mae off. Holding his drink high he walked away to the bar. Jessie and Mae giggled. Jenks was being uncommon dignified but pieces of dry dung were stuck to the seat of his pants.

When the hymn was ended Adah turned in her seat and put her hand on Isaac’s arm: “You sing right nice, Mr. Maple,” she said.

“Thank ye, I like a good hymn,” said Isaac.

Zar was clapping his hands: “Holy, holy, holy! That’s vary good.”

“Ye have a true gift Miss Adah,” Isaac said.

“A gift?” said Zar. “Together you and she—two coyotes howling at moon.”

Isaac turned to him: “Say what?”

“Sure!” Zar began to laugh. “Such music I have heard on the steppe at night. Just the same as that: Howly, howly howly!” He doubled up with his own joke. “Jassie, Mae, you hear?” And he repeated what he’d said.

But the girls were busy working on Jenks, they had followed him to the bar.

“What’s botherin’ your friend tonight, Mae,” said Jessie.

“He’s jes shy,” Mae said digging Jenks in the ribs.

“I smelled o’ horseshit I’d be shy too,” Jessie said.

“I’ll tell you frand,” Zar walked up to Isaac. “Not only your singing is not human, but your way of doing business. A man would trade for my liquor. A man would have need for my girls.”

“Ain’t nobody can tell me how to run my business,” Isaac said turning red in the face.

“Cash cash!” Zar threw his head back: “Caaash!”

“Nobody forcing ye to buy!” Isaac shouted over the Russian’s roar.

Adah thought things were getting out of hand, she glanced once at Molly and turned around to play another hymn. But it only added to the noise. Zar walked away from Isaac with a gesture of disgust and poured himself another drink from the bottle on the
table. The storekeep was following him, well aroused.

“Did I not pay ye cash for the use of yer tent? I deal fair and square, always have, always will. All’s I look fer is an honest profit and that’s more’n some can say!”

“Who needs you,” said Zar.

“God knows I didn’t ask to stay here, I was asked!” By this time the smiles were gone from Mae’s and Jessie’s faces.

“I b’lieve Mr. Jenks here has gone fancy on us Mae.”

“Listen you no-chinned, gun-polishing deadhead,” said Mae, “the next time you come along with yo’ tongue hangin’ out don’t look for us. Jes keep agoin’ down to
her
place and see what
she’ll
give you.”

“You bucktooth son of a bitch,” said Jessie pushing her face up to Jenks. For a second I thought Molly had heard, but the melodeon was blowing loud and Isaac Maple was shouting over it.

“I was horse-traded! Yessir,” he looked right at me, “I’ll say it. Horse-traded! Paid out good money to settle in this Hell. ’Tweren’t fit country fer Ezra and ’tain’t fit fer me!”

“Didn’t it never snow in Vermont, Isaac?”

“It did, yes it did. But you could reckon it, you didn’t spend yer days and nights beatin’ the sag out of a tent to keep from bein’ buried!”

“Why this is a gentle winter, Isaac,” I said.

“That may be but it’s m’ first and last in this hole, I’ll tell ye.”

“Than go and farewell,” Zar screamed.

“I’ll go, I will, don’t ye fret. When that stage comes I’ll be on it when it goes—”

At that moment Miss Adah stopped her song. And in the sudden silence Isaac looked around and cried: “But
that stage’ll never come. We’ll all be dead before that stage comes again!”

Those were the lonesomest words I nearly ever heard. Not a night had passed lately when I hadn’t thought the same thing; but I’d never said it out loud and neither had anyone else. Isaac took the fear in all our minds and put it in the air. A chill ran through the room and in the quiet we heard the wind outside blowing desolate across the earth. I saw a wilderness of snow-crusted flats between us and the rest of the world, and not a track on it.

A moment later Isaac left. Then Molly got up and went off quickly. Mae leaned against the bar and fingering her hair said: “See you next Christmas, honey,” softly, as to herself. Zar slumped down at a table and put his head on his hand. Our gathering didn’t make any more sense, each of us was alone as himself, I wrapped up the boy and we left too.

The forlorn feeling of that Christmas night grew as time went on. There were days of such pure cold that it was like swallowing frost to take a breath out of doors. The weather had us holed up good, almost in spite it seemed like, and if I thought about the spring it was as a lost possibility. How could you remember the warmth of the sun when through one bleak day after another the winter danced around you with every fancy step it knew? We huddled in that cabin, bent grey sticks with eyes in them, I couldn’t even worry that one day we might not have what to eat or make a fire with: it was a worse dread to feel so lost on the earth, a live creature in a lifeless land.