E.L. Doctorow (6 page)

“Wave, girls, wave!” Zar shouted.

And they did, jumping and waving their kerchiefs, calling “Hey! Hey!” until the miners began to ride down.

The sun was just setting. Zar snapped out orders to the girls and while they got busy preparing he took me over to his wagon and gave me a bag of flour, some strips of dried beef and a can of lard. He was smiling, I was his frand again.

But I wasted no time tucking that barter in the dugout.

A few hours later there were a good dozen mules and horses roped out by the tent. Singing was coming from inside and it was a strange sound in the night air. Those miners hadn’t taken but a few minutes to get over the wonder of the town ruins; one or two had put off their interest in the new whores for a few moments while they rode out to the graves to take off their hats.

But I talked with one man I knew, Angus Mcellhenny, a short old digger who kept a pipe in his teeth and had likely shot a hundred grubstakes before he gave in to work company lodes. Angus couldn’t believe what had happened.

“Just one of them Blue?” he kept saying.

“Just one Angus.”

“They roam in packs mostly, they like to put on fer each other.”

“Well he was alone.”

“My God. The doorty bastard. Say him once more.”

“Well he was a big man, a head taller than me, and
he had this blaze over one side of his face. But what you’d remember are his eyes. He had eyes like a spooked horse.”

“Sure. I know the mon. It would be Clay Turner.”

“He was headed your way.”

“My God, likely he rode right by the camp.”

“You know him?”

“I know of him. Why he should be dead, he went bad years ago.” Angus took his pipe out of his mouth and spit: “I wish him in Hell, he’s been ridin’ too long.”

There was a big laugh from the tent and the tall girl came out leading a man by his ear. He was guffawing, he was well along. Angus and I stepped out of the way as she led him around to the side of the tent and pushed him up in the covered wagon and climbed in after him.

“Blue,” said Angus, “come have one with me and we’ll drink to old Flo, God keep her.”

It was hot enough for midnight in that tent. Kerosene lanterns were hooked to the tentpoles and they threw a yellow cast over all the smiling faces. Over on one side the Russian had a bar set up, a plank laid across two sawhorses. His sleeves were rolled and a big apron was tied around his stomach and he was drawing whiskey from a cask to fill the orders of the girls. Zar was in a sweat, his face was red, his eyes bright. On the plank right by his hand was a shotgun. And on the ground by his feet was a sack into which he dropped the silver the girls brought him, or the pouches of dust.

“On house frand,” he shouted, and poured two drinks in tin cups. Angus Mcellhenny and I drank to the memory of redheaded Florence.

Some of the customers were sprawled on camp
meeting chairs, some on the ground; there were those who made a point of pinching the dumpity girl or the Chinese as they went by, there were a few gathered around Adah, who was leading the singing and playing on an old melodeon.

is what they sang but the song broke up when one man in back of Adah leaned over, put his hands in her dress and gave her a good shake. Adah shrieked, stood up and slapped him smart, and that made everyone laugh including her.

Adah called to the dumpity girl: “Do your dance Mae!”

And then all attention was fixed on Mae as she lifted her arms above her head and began turning around and around. The miners started to clap time and she spun faster and faster until her skirts rose and showed her legs above the shoes. At the height of the dance she stopped suddenly and yanked a man to his feet and led him right out of the tent while everyone laughed and yelled after him. The tall girl—Jessie, they greeted her—brushed back in a minute later and she went directly to sit on the lap of a glaze-eyed boy who still had his pimples. I saw the Chinagirl, dressed in a red satin shirt and bloomers with a yellow sash around her waist, she was on her knees offering a drink to one grey old fellow who stared at her while he pulled on his beard. He reached for her instead of the whiskey but she held up her hand and smiled, I suppose she had to wait her turn for the wagon.

These girls knew how to work, they didn’t pick but the drunkest of the lot, or the least able. It looked to me like Zar the Russian had an establishment that put old Avery’s to shame.

Angus Mcellhenny still wanted to buy me a drink and I let him. But when he turned away and got caught up in the revelry I took the cup and left. The song began again and I could hear it as I walked through the cold air to the dugout:

In the dugout Molly and Jimmy were chewing on strips of the dried beef like a pair of dogs, lying there with only the light of the glowing stove, listening to the sound of the frolic outside. It was a mournful sight. I poked up the fire, and with our skillet and some lard I made up a batter of flour-and-water cakes. I gave two of the cakes to Jimmy and put two down in front of Molly. She turned her head away.

“Molly,” I said, “I have some liquor here and if you eat those cakes you can wash them down with the liquor.”

She said nothing. But at that moment I heard a woman’s voice just outside: “Not that way you old ass!” At the same time someone stumbled against the dugout and one of the roofboards fell inside, hitting Molly on the back. Molly set up a yell and I picked up the board and ran out. That dumpity girl, Mae, was pulling her customer back to the tent while he laughed and coughed and stumbled along.

Well I put the board back in place and I sat down
against the sod wall so I could watch and keep the drunks away. I sat there sipping the whiskey Molly didn’t want; it was good whiskey and it warmed my gullet, but the rest of me grew cold in that chilly air. The windmill creaked in the darkness and one of the horses would nicker now and then and I must have heard twenty verses of that song rising out of the tent. But what I listened to was the talk coming through the sod wall at my back.

“Go ahead,” it was Molly’s voice, “take a look. Go on now, is it bleeding back there?”

“No.”

“Alright, you’re a good boy … I knew your Pa.”

“Yes.”

“He liked Flo—”

“Yes.”

“He’s dead now, for all the good it did him.” There was no answer, but a burst of shouts and laughing came over from the tent. “Why d’you cry!”

“I—I ain’t.”

“So he’s dead. There’s worse than that, look at me. You don’t have to cry for Fee. How old are you?”

“He said twelve.”

“When?”

“I don’t—I don’t remember.”

“Twelve. Well you’re small for your age. Go on and eat up that prairie cake, you want to grow into a man don’t you? Oh God my back is on fire, oh Christ! … Go on and eat, little boy, I can tell you a man is hard enough to be even with proper eatin’!”

Later I fell asleep sitting there and through the night
I kept waking to the shrieks of the women or the roar of the men. The light streaming from the tent fixed in a yellow square on my mind and from time to time I saw figures buck through it and disappear like phantoms beyond its edge. Toward the dawn I was aware of some mules trotting off and when the night lifted and I woke, stiff in the grey light, I could see miners sleeping all around, like stones.

I got up and walked about and came on Angus Mcellhenny: he was slumped and snoring in Hausenfield’s old bathtub which sat out in back of the ruins like some stranded schooner. The sight of Angus that way did not cheer me up, I felt a great melancholy looking on him in the gloom of the grey morning. What good anyone could come to on this ashen townsite I could not see.

As the day came up I found enough to do: I mixed up more batter for our breakfast, I looked for a pot for Molly’s use, I knocked a frame together for the door of the dugout, I gathered chips for fire from under the feet of the animals still tethered near the tent, I took the Major’s pony out where there was some brush he could work on. As the sun got higher the miners began to stir, and one by one they got up cussing or groaning, and they left. I heard one man say to his mule: “Now Blossom you walk nice and easy so as old Jake’s head don’t topple.” And another, that pimply boy, who looked sick and miserable in the daylight, came over with a crumpled letter in his hand.

“I always post my letters with Mr. Maple,” he said to me.

“Well Ezra’s gone,” I said.

“Alright, you can hold my letter for the stage.” He brought two cartwheels out of his pocket and put them in my hand. “It’s two dollars the ounce and I never say more than an ounce’s worth.”

He was off before I could say yes or no, and I think it was this as much as anything which caused things to go as they did. Zar the Russian was climbing down from his wagon with a whistle on his lips when he saw the boy give me the letter and ride off. He buttoned his shirt and called to me. Together we built up a fire and he brewed some real coffee and gave me a mug. Then, sitting on the ground, he asked me to tell him what, truly, had happened to the town. I told him.

“So,” he said, “was a sudden man.”

“That’s right.”

He pointed to the boy’s letter which I had put in my shirt pocket: “And town is gone but use for town may not be gone. Am I right?”

“You’re right.”

“And will stage come again?”

“I reckon. If it pays.”

“Will come stage again. Will come miners again!” He couldn’t contain himself at the idea, he jumped up and began pacing and pulling his beard, a round barrel of a man muttering to himself in Russian. I drank the hot coffee and watched him. He stopped to look around: he looked at the windmill, he looked at the rock hills, he turned a full circle, looking east over the rubble of the burnt-out street and looking south over the flats to the horizon. The sun was at noon and it bleached the flats almost white with shimmers of yellow
or pale green where the ground dipped or lay in the shadow of a cloud.

“Frand,” he said taking a deep breath, “what do you smell?” He looked at me: “You smell the coffee? You smell the horse? You smell the burn in the air?”

I nodded. “Ah, you have not the merchant’s nose. You know what I smell? The money!” He looked at me and that gold tooth showed out through his beard and he was laughing hard, holding his hands on his sides and shaking fit to bust. He laughed so loud that Jimmy came out of the dugout to see.

“You unnerstand what I’m telling you, frand,” Zar said. “We shall be neighbors here!” He leaned over and slapped me on the shoulder. Still laughing he walked quickly over to the tent and went inside.

Well his coffeepot was still on the fire so I filled my cup again and motioned for Jimmy to come over.

“Drink this up Jimmy,” I said. He took the coffee without a word. I noticed he looked better with a good night’s sleep in back of him, those Fee eyes were not so deep in his head.

“Is Molly still asleep?”

“No. She’s saying words.”

“What?”

“She’s saying words to herself. With that cross.”

“Is she praying?”

“Yes, she’s praying.”

When he finished I filled the cup again. “Take this to her,” I said, “she’ll take it from you. Maybe a cup of coffee is what she’s praying for.”

Walking carefully Jimmy went toward the dugout. But then some loud protest caterwauled from the tent
and he stopped for a moment and looked back at me.

“Go ahead,” I called, “that’s just those people.”

I put more water in the Russian’s coffeepot and set it back on the fire. Then I stood listening to the awful sounds from the tent. The ladies were sleeping in there and Zar had gone in to tell them they were going to be founders of a new town. It was a furious racket. I could hear him shout and I could hear them shout back. I figured the only one not putting up a squawk was the Chinese, and I was right. In a few minutes she pushed the flap aside and came out, limping a little, to stare at the rocks and the flats and the ruins.

I had an idea at that moment. I went over to the bathtub and rolled Angus out on the ground. He didn’t even miss a snore. I dragged the tub back to the well, washed it out as best I could, and filled it with pails of water. I could see the sun shaking in that water and it showed back the blue sky. Given time to warm in the day’s heat it would be an inviting thing; I have my share of cunning.

As I waited the argument inside the tent fell off until I could hear only one of the women standing up to Zar’s tirades. She appeared outside and it was the plump one, Mae. Mae stalked over to the wagon and climbed in and started to throw things over the side. A pot, a blanket, a carpetbag. “I ain’t goin’ to, no sir,” she was yelling, “y’all can fry here in this hole for all I care!”

Zar had followed her and he was standing by waving his fist: “You think you are too good for this place! You think you know better than Zar what to do! I will kill you with my hands, Maechka!”

For answer she threw out an oval looking glass and it caught him square on the side of the head. I could have laughed but the Russian roared with rage. Jumping up on the wagon he stuck his arm inside and pulled the woman out and threw her to the ground.