In Calamity's Wake (17 page)

W
HAT ARE WE TO DO WITH THIS, MY SWEET
and wonderful girl? What should be written on the tombstones of legends? Wild Bill is buried on a hill beneath a bronze bust of himself looking young and formal. The epitaph, written by Charlie Utter, reads,
Pard, we will meet again in the Happy Hunting Ground. To part no more, goodbye
.

Buffalo Bill is buried at Lookout Mountain overlooking the Great Plains and the mountains, the Continental Divide, the ponderosa pines. His tombstone is fashioned out of blond rocks cemented together in the shape of a chimney. A plaque gives his name and the dates of his birth and his death and says that he was a
Noted Scout and Indian Fighter
.

Crowfoot is buried with his horse. He was dressed in a buckskin suit with a feather headpiece adorned with a stuffed crow and solemnly carried with his
saddle and rifle to a burial place on a rise overlooking Blackfoot Crossing, where Treaty 7 was signed. A bronze marker on the grave reads that he was
Father of His People
. In 1948 a stone cairn was also erected there in his honour.

Sitting Bull was buried in Post Cemetery, of Fort Yates, North Dakota. His gravestone is a tall marble pedestal supporting a three-ton granite bust of him on an elevated shrine with a flagpole that flies the American flag. His epitaph reads,
Chief of the Hunkpapa Sioux
.

Jesse James is buried by his wife and cousin Zerelda under a stone that stands for both of them and gives the dates of their beginnings and endings, commenting only that he was assassinated.

Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen, is buried on her ranch. Her stone bears a poem by her proud daughter Pearl:

Doubt hangs about the contents of some of these graves and that of Red Cloud, and Geronimo. But no
one imagines that Calamity Jane is not where she belongs. Dead on August 1st, 1903, buried on August 6th. Stories of who had stood by her deathbed—who had warned her of her death, who knew her, who had loved her, been loved by her—blossomed over her grand funeral.

She is buried in a modest grave in Mount Moriah Cemetery beside Bill Hickok and all the poor whose gravestones make up Potter's Field. Two-thirds of 3,600 graves in Mount Moriah are paupers' graves marked this way. Martha's grave shows that her alias was Calamity Jane and that she requested to be buried by Bill. There was some confusion when the headstone was carved and it reads that she died on August 2nd, the anniversary of Wild Bill's murder. This is an error no one bothers to correct, what with the value of stone. These are the stories of your ancestors. I give them to you because my grandmother and my mother loved me and I love you. One day I hope you will know how when you love a daughter it breaks the spine of history and folds time all around you. After horses there were carriages then cars then Bennett buggies and subways and then, who knows? There may be other cousins out there roaming about that you could meet someday, children of children of children had by Burke or by Steer's daughter, Jesse, or by her other husbands, little
lives that went unrecorded. If they exist I hope you find one another.

I love you and your brother so very, very much.

T
HIS NOVEL IS A WORK OF METAHISTORIO-
graphic fiction. Most of the facts about Calamity Jane, including who she was at birth, are difficult to prove. The woman named Martha Canary (sometimes Cannary or Burke), who became famous as Calamity Jane, claimed to have had a daughter by Wild Bill Hickok that she gave up for adoption, and it is out of this claim that the story of Miette was born. The novel and its arrangement are original, but almost every character—with the significant exceptions of the protagonist, her father, Zita and the Hag—is a real historical figure and wherever possible I use their words and their descriptions of the events that they were part of. In the sections where direct quoting at length occurs, the original, historical document has been altered to allow the novel to transition smoothly from scene to scene and to make these voices better
aid the overall project. However, it is worth noting the sources of sections where real voices and other texts appear. The list that follows does not include the apocryphal quotes (the quote by Lincoln upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, for example) or any other facts or stories drawn from secondary descriptions of conversations, or events drawn from nonfiction sources that are not first-person accounts.

J
UAN
R
ULFO'S
classic magic realist novel
Pedro Páramo
influenced the early chapters of the book. In fact, at one time I saw Miette's story as a contemporary revisiting of his novel, which is the story of a man sent on a journey by his dying sainted mother to find his infamous criminal father.

T
EXT FROM
Jules Verne's novel
Five Weeks in a Balloon
was adapted (where I preferred my own French) from a translation made available by Project Gutenberg. The text I adapted can be viewed here: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3526.

T
HE TEXT
of the pamphlet handed out by Maguire describing Calamity Jane is from James D. McLaird's critical biography,
Calamity Jane
.

T
HEOPHILUS LITTLE'S
account is drawn from a description of his life in Abilene written in a loose-leaf notebook. It is altered via editing and rewrites to highlight Wild Bill Hickok's story. It can be viewed here: www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~pasulliv/settlers/settlers25/WildBill.htm.

L
EW
S
PENCER'S
long speech is drawn in part from the memoir of another “Negro minstrel” named Ralph Keeler. That speech is rewritten and fictionalized to reflect the information I had about Lew, to better fit the novel and to conjure greater connection between Lew and Calamity Jane. The original (fascinating) Ralph Keeler story can be viewed here: www.circushistory.org/Cork/BurntCork5.htm#KEELER.

T
HE DESCRIPTION
of Calamity Jane attributed to Charlie Utter is a highly contentious bit of text that may or may not have been invented by one biographer and then plagiarized by several others. It can be viewed here: www.deadwoodmagazine.com/archivedsite/Archives/Girls_Calamity.htm.

T
HE ARTICLE
by Lavinia Hart has been edited for length. The complete article can be read here: panam1901.org/documents/dochumannature.html.

C
ALAMITY
J
ANE'S
letter to Miette is based on Calamity Jane's autobiography, a pamphlet she sold on the street close to the end of her life to make a small amount of money. It has been greatly expanded in my version and recast as something not meant for public circulation. The original pamphlet can be viewed here: www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/biography/LifeAdventuresCalamityJane/Chap1.html.

B
LACKFOOT STORIES
and beliefs appear in parts of Zita's speeches. A great resource for Blackfoot culture is the beautiful and amazing Blackfoot Crossing Historical Centre in Alberta. I highly recommend a visit: www.blackfootcrossing.ca.

T
HE SONG
lyrics are from songs that were popular in America in the nineteenth century. They would have been in circulation throughout Calamity Jane's lifetime. They can be viewed here: pdmusic.org/1800s.html.

T
HIS BOOK HAD MANY TIRELESS CHAMPIONS
for whom I am utterly grateful. Thank you, Hilary McMahon, for finding us a wonderful home. Thank you to my passionate editors Jennifer Lambert and Jane Warren at HarperCollins Canada for pushing me forward with your uncompromising vision. Thank you to Patrick Crean for your support, advice and guidance through the first years of this project. Thank you, Susan Swan, for your constant support, your friendship and your mentoring.

Thank you to Tom Wayman and Suzette Mayr, whose talent and commitment made this book (and my PhD in general) possible. Thank you also to the members of my committee for your thoughtful interrogations, your keen insights and your experience:
Mary Polito, Rod McGillis, Elizabeth Jameson, Cecily Deveraux.

Thank you to the support staff in the University of Calgary Department of English, especially Barb Howe. Thank you to Russell Caple, Tasha Hubbard, Jonathan Ball, Nikki Sheppy, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Dennis Vanderspek, Michelle Berry, Angie Abdou and Suzanne Caple-Hicks for your feedback and advice as I worked on the novel and/or on the exegesis. Thank you, Colin Martin, for delivering my dissertation when I was far away.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, and I love you, to my husband and best friend Jeremy Leipert. Thank you to my adored family, especially my mother, Patricia Caple. I hope I make you proud. Thank you to my ideal in-laws. Thank you to my children, Cassius and Imogen Leipert, for keeping me from sliding off the world into the chaos of my imagination. Thank you (always) old friend, Nick Kazamia.

I am very grateful for the financial support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Department of English and the University of Calgary, a Ralph Steinhauer Award of Distinction, a Ruby University Anniversary Award, several Queen Elizabeth the Second awards and the A.T.J. Cairns Memorial Graduate Scholarship.

“Echoes of
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
by Michael Ondaatje and
Away
by Amy Bloom reverberate in Natalee Caple's brilliant poetic novel about the daughter of Calamity Jane seeking her mother. Her lyric gifts place Natalee Caple in the top tier of contemporary Canadian writers.”

—Susan Swan, author of
The Western Light

“Haunting and hallucinatory, Natalee Caple's
In Calamity's Wake
is a rich collage of sweeping myth and searing historical detail. Packed with the requisite big skies, barroom raconteurs and bullet wounds of an epic Western, the story of Miette and Calamity Jane is also personal and timeless, echoing our own futile attempts to know and understand even the people we love. This novel will have you asking ‘What is true? What is legend?' long after the fire is out and the embers have gone cold.”

—Miranda Hill, author of
Sleeping Funny

“Eloquent, earthy and evocative, this gorgeously written, dream-like novel is a delight. Caple's voice is enchanting and her perspective on the mythology of Calamity Jane enthralling.”

—Lauren B. Davis, Giller Prize—longlisted author of
Our Daily Bread

“Detail by detail, line by line, we are given Calamity Jane, the American Badlands, Deadwood, ghosts, thieves, a madwoman and a daughter on a visceral quest to find her mother. Mythic, real, compelling—this is a sumptuous feast of storytelling.”

—Richard Wagamese, author of
Indian Horse

“
In Calamity's Wake
does what the historical novel is meant to do. It creates a seamless meld of fact and invention. Just as Calamity created her own life, Caple recreates it—and with the same bravado and panache. An intriguing reversal of the damage of mythmaking, restoring the pilfered heart and soul of Calamity Jane to the flesh and blood woman.”

—Pauline Holdstock, Giller Prize—longlisted author of
Into the Heart of the Country

In Calamity's Wake
Copyright © 2013 by Natalee Caple.

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EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 978-1-443-40672-7

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