E.L. Doctorow (13 page)

It gladdened me to see him romp off that way. Pretty soon he came back in but it was just to pull Molly, protesting, up on the seat; and then there they were spinning away, she laughing and holding on tight and Jimmy shouting in a cracked voice, standing up and flipping those reins and getting more and more run out
of the mule. I went about my business and it seems now just a moment before I turned around and they were hardly in view. They had made circles further and further out but all I saw was a funnel of dust going down in a straight line. Where were they going? For a moment my breath stopped, I thought well goodbye to them, it serves me right, they’re gone and she’s still laughing.

But Jimmy had only seen something and gone to take a closer look. For a long time the rig was a black spot in my eye and finally it moved; and a while after they were back at the cabin.

“What’s out there Jimmy?” I said.

He looked at Molly. She got down and went inside and he followed her.

I went after. “I said what’s out there, boy, where’s your voice?”

“Wagon.” Another look at Molly. Her mouth was set tight.

“One wagon?”

“Yes.” And then with a rush: “It’s busted in the back and the man’s settin’ up there and she’s screamin’ at him.”

“Who is?”

“Why that woman, she’s—”

“Jimmy!” Molly said.

“Who are they?” I turned to her.

“How should I know who?”

“Well didn’t you speak to them?”

“Oh sure! I’ll go around greetin’ every lowlife on the prairie!”

I went out and found Zar and told him what they’d
seen. He was busy with his still but he said I could take his team and wagon. I hitched up four and Jenks reckoned he’d come along and we got up and started off. Why was I taking Zar’s wagon and not the mule and rig? I guess Molly understood better than I: We passed the cabin and she came out of the door, Jenks tipped his hat to her but she cried: “I know what you’re doing! Go get ’em Mayor, more fools for your town!”

We found it due south, sitting on the trail that edged the flats: it was just as Jimmy said, an old Murphy wagon stuffed to its cover, a man was sitting on the box and the back wheels of the wagon were splayed out like a new colt’s legs. The man was yellow-haired and beardless, his hands hung down between his knees and he watched us with eyes as baleful as his oxen’s. No woman was screaming at him, but further off walking away through the scrub with a shawl over her head she was raising her arms and shouting at the sky.

The man said: “Ay ben looking for Svedes.”

I said: “Well there’s none hereabouts so far as I know.”

He nodded as if he didn’t expect otherwise. Jenks and I climbed down to take a look at the axle, and when we did the man stepped off his box and he was the tallest fellow I ever saw, he must have been six and a half feet. He walked clumsy like a big man; he was fair-complected with strawberry skin, on the side of his neck there was a wen the size of a cannonball.

The axletree was split clean through, each half was poking into the ground. “You carrying another one?” I said.

“No. No oder.”

Off aways the woman kept shouting, it was the only sound in our ears and the man got embarrassed. “My vife,” he said tapping his forehead and he smiled ruefully.

“You a nester?” Jenks said looking up at him.

“Ya, I vas.”

Jenks nodded: “Prairie’ll do hit—”

“Ya.” We all looked at the axle. “She beg me for tree yar go wit oder Svedes. Cry each night … But I hope rain vill come. But no rain. Now I look for Svedes, maybe her mind comes back.”

Swede’s voice was as deep as the lowing of a cow, but it was a gentle voice with no harshness to it. He didn’t cry about his misfortune but told it straight. I liked him right off. I told him there wasn’t much we could do about the axle but he could put up in the town awhile and maybe get hold of another by and by. He agreed to that so we started to unload his gear. We spent a good hour putting it on Zar’s wagon, these people were carting everything they’d ever owned. There was a frame bed, a bureau with four drawers, an oak table, a commode, bedding, chairs, stools, a churn, a kettle, a washtub, some iron pots, a plow with a steel share, a sack of corn—it was no wonder their old wagon gave out.

The woman had come back to peek at us while we worked and it unsettled Jenks to catch her staring around the side of the wagon. It didn’t bother me none. She was a stocky woman, when her shawl slipped it showed her hair which was light-colored and sparse, her face was honest enough but there was nothing to hold on to in her eyes.

I’d worked up a good thirst by the time we were through. There was about another hour of sun left in the sky. I said: “Your wagon should pull now with nothing on it. We’ll tote your things in, you follow us straight that way.”

“Good. Helga!” he called to the woman. He went over to her and began to talk to her as to a child, pointing to Jenks and me. Without any warning she started screaming at him and then hitting him. She barely came high as his chest but she swung up and slapped his face again and again and beat at his arms. He made no move to stop her but just stood waiting for her to spend herself.

“Godamighty,” Jenks said.

“Let’s get up on the wagon,” I said. It put our backs to the sight, I didn’t like to see something like that.

“Godamighty,” Jenks swore as we sat waiting, “a jahnt lahk thet a sufferin’ sich blows!”

After a while we didn’t hear anything and as I turned the man was lifting his wife to the back of our wagon, sitting her on a chair so that she faced rearwards. She made no protest and he said: “You vill see me, Helga, ya?” We started off, the horses pulling hard, and I didn’t have to hold them, the weight did that. Behind us the man snapped his quirt over the oxen and they began to draw the covered wagon. It wobbled but it went, the axle scratching a furrow in the ground.

When we were back at the town the man was still halfway across the flats. “Leave everything be until he gets here,” I told Jenks. He went into Zar’s place and in a moment Zar and his ladies came out to look, and Isaac Maple from his tent. Molly and Jimmy came over,
everyone stared up at the woman on the wagon. The ladies went around to the side to look at all the furniture. Not one word was spoken and the woman sat still up on the chair keeping her gaze out to the flats where her husband was coming. I went to the well for a drink and when I looked back I saw the woman bend over with her hands on her knees, and she spat at Molly’s feet.

Well in a moment Molly was by me at the well. I thought it was anger giving her tremors but she was grey with fear. “Now Molly,” I said, and she allowed me to hold her arm, “that’s nothing but a poor old nester’s wife.”

And that was how Bergenstrohm came to settle. But we never called him anything but Swede.

It was Isaac Maple who took the couple under care. Everyone else was put off by the woman’s madness but Isaac said: “My mother had spells from her change of life, my grandmother ’fore her, I seen it since I was a boy it don’t bother me.” He offered his tent for storing their furniture. He had Swede pull his wagon alongside of the tent and the two of them propped up the back with rocks. They put the bed and bureau back in the wagon and Isaac said, “Ye kin keep a nice house in there fer the time bein’.”

He must have decided right off to give them credit. He paid me a dollar a day for their water although I told him there was no need. He thumbed through one of his catalogues and found a steel axle he could order that would fit the old Murphy wagon. He was taking care of the Swede like he was his own brother.

“Wal,” Zar said to me one day, “is no meestery. The man has wagon.” That was true as far as it went, Isaac needed something to fetch lumber in if he wanted to build himself a proper store; until now Zar’s wagon was the only one he might have had, and he would sooner have given up his plans than ask for it. But I have a feeling Isaac would have welcomed these people had they only a handcart. I think it was enough that they had come to the town after him. Isaac was the kind of chary person who’s always looking for someone to trust. He couldn’t trust any of us who’d been there before him; but the Swede came off the flats as he himself had the autumn before, and that was as good as a ticket from Vermont.

Whatever his feelings Isaac didn’t stand to lose much. You figure anyone who keeps a mad wife will pay his debts and do his share of work. Long before Alf delivered the axle it was clear that the man was worthy, gentle for all his size, he would ask no favors and do any asked of him. His woman seemed calmer with people around; and after one Saturday he didn’t again speak of looking for Swedes. What happened was one of the miners found Helga with her washtub and gave her fifty cents to wash his corduroys. The diggers were feeling the spring and they had a great wish to spiff up. It got to be a usual sight, a bunch of men standing around in back of Swede’s wagon in only their high lacers and union suits, smoking Isaac Maple’s imported Regalias or Cheroots and talking like members of a Society. Swede enjoyed their business and their talk. He would build a fire and hang a line of rope over it to dry the things his wife washed, and he’d stand trading words with the
men, telling his story, nodding his big head as he listened to theirs …

I can’t deny how I felt seeing this farmer settle in the town. Molly was right, I would welcome an outlaw if he rode in. I felt anyone new helped bury the past. Swede’s coming even put in my mind a thought I wouldn’t have tolerated before—to keep a record again, to write things down. Alf had left me three ledgers and a steel-point pen to keep the Express accounts. But there was enough paper in the ledgers to write the Bible. It was an idea that I had to put away, I looked toward Molly as if I expected her to read my thoughts, and I almost set myself against the words of scorn that would come.

Actually, once Swede and his wife were here to stay Molly didn’t say a word against them. Something about Helga had scared her into gentleness, and it was like you find a drunkard who’s sworn off, having been cowed by the vision of Hell. Molly was never inclined to welcome a new face but for a long while she would not say so, her judgment was softened. When Bert Albany came down and I found out why, I told Molly and she even smiled.

Bert came walking down the trail in the middle of one week, his shoulders were hunched and he sighed like he was carrying the world with him. He was the same pimply boy who always posted his letters with me. He stood in front of Zar’s place, smoothing the ground with his boot and finally he made up his mind to go in. “Don’t you know this is working day?” Zar said to him.

The young fellow didn’t answer and he looked ashamed. He sat around in the saloon all day, sighing
and nursing whiskeys, and he didn’t speak to anyone. Zar struggled to understand what the boy’s trouble was and he finally decided Bert had lost his job. “Poor boysik, he will not say bot I know he must have lost favor with the mine boss.”

Now how was that so? Bert was not more than twenty. As well as I could remember he always got drunk when he came to town—not because he seemed to enjoy it but because it put him in company with the rest of the diggers. That’s the way a young fellow does, doing twice as much of anything to make sure he keeps up with the rest. The mine boss wouldn’t let go someone like Bert. But Zar said, “Ah, I can afford him a few dollars, I will take him on as helper,” so I kept my views to myself.

When the Russian offered him the job Bert’s mouth dropped open. Then his face lit up and he laughed. Course he’d take it! A couple of days after this I spoke to him: “Well,” I said, “now you don’t have to travel but a few steps to post your letters.”

“Hell, Mr. Blue,” he said, “I given up writin’ letters. Never got no letters back.” He was cheerful saying this, he didn’t seem to mind. And each morning there was a new sound to hear, Bert whistling as he went about his chores.

On a Thursday evening I stepped into Zar’s place for a drink. Jenks was there, sitting at a table with Mae and Jessie. I could hear where Zar was—his snores were coming out of the side room like running cattle. Miss Adah served me from behind the bar. “Where’s the new man?” I said to her.

She looked over at the two girls and they looked
back. Mae got up and went to the door to the side room and closed it carefully.

“Now listen Blue, please,” Adah said to me in a low tone, “you got to promise to keep this under your hat.”

Jessie and Mae came up on either side of me and I found myself hard put to raise the cup.

“What’s going on ladies?”

“That Bert is sparkin’ our little girl,” Adah said.

“Whut’s thet?” Jenks had followed. “The Chink?”

“Jenks I sweah,” Mae turned on him with a harsh whisper, “an you say one word I’ll have yo’ scalp!”

“Gwan back to your stable, deadhead,” said Jessie, “this don’t concern you.”

Jenks leaned back with his elbows on the bar and he grinned that sly grin of his: “Shit … Y’mean he’s cooin’ wif thet li’l yaller flopgal?”

“Hush damn you,” Adah said. She looked at me: “It’s no joke, Zar finds out and he’ll kill him.”

“He’s really stuck on her?” I said.

“Lord!” said Jessie. “You’ve never seen the like. You’d think she was white. You’d think she had a papa owned a railroad!”

“Saturday he didn’t give nobody else a chance to touch her,” Adah said. “Paid her the money and took her out by the well and held her hand.”

“I saw it,” Mae said nodding.

“Godamighty!” Jenks said.

“Then after a while she figures it’s time to come back in, and so in he follows and gives her the money again and out they go again.”

“Well what do you know!” I had to laugh. “Zar thought he was fired from his job.”

“No sir, he just up an’ quit it! That boy’s crazy, he’s wild! There’s no tellin’ what he’ll do why I never saw a person afflicted so.”

Jenks said: “Knew a feller oncet were bedded to a Piute. She sure did have a scent.”

“It don’t seem right,” Mae said biting on her fingernail.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Now Blue,” said Adah, “that little thing is besides herself. She was so scairt Saturday she couldn’t keep from shakin’ all over.”