In Calamity's Wake (5 page)

S
HE CHANGED THINGS WHEN SHE ENTERED THE
room. She made the other patrons excited about the scene that might come, nervous about being the centre of a future joke, irritated by the interruption. She didn't do anything. She ordered drinks and she drank them and in doing so she became drunk. Every few times she got odd and said odd things. She was often too affectionate, greeting strangers, hello, dear, and, hello, darling, or too aggressive, accusing bystanders of staring at her or judging her. When the temperance ladies rallied outside the Gem singing, King Alcohol is very sly; a liar from the first. He'll make you drink until you're dry, then drink, because you thirst!, she roared back, The spinsters will be ministers when pigs begin to fly! Then she carried a tray of whiskies into the group and offered every lady a glass of spirits.

Still, she was neither as amorous nor as aggressive as Bill, who drank as much or more than her on many of the same nights.

B
ESIDES FORKS AND TINS AND JARS, HEXAGO
nal pencils riddled with bite marks, the odd piece of cotton, broken books all trampled into cart and horse tracks, I also passed the damaged coffins of three children beside the trail. The broken wood allowed a view of their dusty, wrapped bodies. One coffin, two feet long, was turned on its side and a coyote stood, pulling the cloth through the bottom. He looked up at me and then turned back to his task. My stomach twisted but I rode past. The little bones had no protection. Like the fossils of ancient civilizations the bodies of these children were too delicate, too fragile to leave a final imprint, too light even to stay in the ground.

At midday we stopped to rest. I sat cross-legged in the grass, shredding grass between my nails, making whistles of the wider blades and blowing them tunelessly. I read Jules Verne for a while, shading the pages
with my body by lying on my stomach propped up on my elbows. I fantasized that lying this way I was invisible to all but the birds. I loved the chapter summaries, the way they lined up my expectations.

When my stomach growled and my elbows and neck ached I sat up and chewed on some bread so stale it cut my tongue. Antelope grazed fearlessly around me. Wild lilac blued the edges of my vision. After some time staring at the sky I saw a cloud that looked like a roast chicken so I set up a fire.

W
E RODE
on the long next day. Herds of wild horses watched us pass. An immense murmuration of starlings spun across the horizon. The birds were a flowing black powder, thousands together in a wave taking on the shape of one much greater thing, a hand reaching down from the sky to conduct music.

A buggy carrying a high pile of boxes and pieces of
stovepipes and blankets passed us going the other way. The driver was an official-looking gentleman. His neat little body in its dark suit jolted and jostled with every bump in the road. He waved to me and I waved back.

At dusk the bats and nighthawks waltzed overhead while I unrolled my pack. I thought of doing some target practice with an empty can but did not want to waste bullets. I cooked myself some beans over the fire and enjoyed them with the corn that Mrs. Nixon had packed for me. I watched the stars light up through the woodsmoke.

I fell asleep wrapped in my blankets on the open hillside and I slept deeply until once again it rained, rained in this most arid place! I woke up being pecked by water and saw the lightning flash. I set up my tent and crawled into the darkness. In the thunder was my father's voice, but this time I knew it was only my ache to hear him.

I
T WAS 1862 AND THE CIVIL WAR WAS ON
. I
N
Washington, on September 20th, President Abraham Lincoln wept over the body of his eleven-year-old son, dead from drinking the polluted water that ran from the taps in the White House. In Virginia City, Martha and her sisters appeared for the first time in the newspapers as a band of vagrant children, a social concern, begging door to door. When not begging, Martha hid her sisters and brothers in bushes, under wagons, wherever she could, out of sight of troopers in homespun uniforms who would not hesitate to hang vagrants, even children, with their own belts. Evenings, Martha held her mother's hand while she lolled drunk upon the floor of the shanty. It was Martha who trod to the gambling hall to collect her father. It was Martha who slept on the floor to give an unwanted, armed guest her bed. Afternoons, she swept neighbours' houses to
earn money for food and cough medicine. Whenever she could she followed the cowboys and watched them practise throwing a rope, shooting at targets, jumping from the back of a horse onto the fleeing body of a calf. Once in a while they let her ride an old pony and help to drive the cattle home.

S
HE WENT
to the post office with her brother Elijah to mail a letter for their mother. They were excited for the treat of seeing bright stamps from around the world on display. The open books under glass were all from the postmaster's collection. They bumped into each other rushing through the door, and stopped.

There was a war ad in the post office that showed Winfield Scott, a Mexican war hero from Virginia, as the Hercules of the Union slaying the Great Dragon of Secession. Scott was in his uniform, which was like a short dress with a billowing skirt. His shoulders were adorned with epaulets. His hair was crimped and neat. He wore tall shiny black boots and a belt that bore a pattern of gold leaves against a black background. He brandished a club, holding it with two hands above one shoulder. The club was the length of his upper body and roughly hewn. It was labelled Liberty Union. Scott's expression was that of a man gravely assuming an unfortunate duty. He gazed impassively at the hydra,
whose fat tail wound between his legs. Each head was a finely drawn portrait of a Confederate leader, labelled on the collar for those who might presume an accidental likeness. Floyd was bent over backwards but the other heads stared at the club. Along each of the serpentine throats that joined the human faces to one monstrous body (labelled Secession) was written a Confederate crime. The first neck read Robbery; the second read Extortion. The third neck read Treason. The fourth read Perjury. Then came Piracy, Lying, Hatred and Blasphemy.

Martha and Elijah were nine and seven, looking up at the poster, the letters they had been sent to post forgotten in their hands.

They think we're monsters. They want to kill us, Elijah said.

F
ATHER
, I
HAVE SINNED
.

I hovered behind the screen of the back door as my father took confession from Zita's youngest, her smallest daughter, in the main room. She wore a dark blouse and leggings under a white ruffled apron dress so I knew she had come directly from the mission. She knelt on the rough wood floor behind the folding screen. A yellow medallion on a chain shone at the base of her throat. My father sat in his chair with his back to her and his arms folded across his chest, nodding.

Father, this man, she whispered. He breaks horses. He sticks to their backs like he is covered in burrs. I watched him and I had bad thoughts. Like the thoughts my sister talks about with the older girls. My brother told me to stay away from him. My brother said that this man could pull up dreams out of your stomach and make you do things. My mother does not know, Father.

I will not share your confession.

I believed him when he said he was a tamer, Father, a kind of doctor for women's wildness. I saw him put his hand on my sister's stomach and how still she stood. And he did that to me too; he put his hand on my stomach. But I didn't feel still, I felt like wiggling. He rubbed my stomach and then he moved his hands away and when I thought I would cry he took my hands and stroked my fingers. He rubbed my wrists and my forearms and he started telling me my fortune. He said that I would have many lovers and I would break all their hearts. He said I would die from consumption before I was twenty. He said that only my first lover would ever reach the deepest parts of me. And somehow he ended up stark naked.

Child, Mary, you can't be more than ten years old. You can't even have begun to bleed?

Yes, Father, I began this summer. My brother said later that this is what the man did with every girl and he did it so often that sometimes it worked. I knew that it was dangerous to lie with him because the moon was wrong. But, Father, I had so much bad courage in the dark.

My father rubbed the heels of his hands hard on his knees as he breathed out ragged and loud. He gave her the requisite instructions for penance but when
she finished he went to his bookshelf and drew off a book I had never seen before and he took money from the centre of that book and folded it into her palm.

Tell your mother I owe her this and more, he said, for helping with Martha.

The next day I listened to him argue with a man who was helping a neighbour. I listened to an argument that never betrayed its point and so was pointless. When the man walked away my father held onto the knot in his cincture looking like he could hurt someone. But he couldn't.

I
HAD
meant to ride until the dark stopped me but a storm, and with it sudden night, forced me to set up camp while my horse pawed the ground and thrashed her head about. Snorts and the clattering of her teeth were interrupted by low, disturbed whinnies. She backed up against her reins and tried to pull free from the little tree where she was tied. When sheet lightning rendered the scene I could see that her eyes were wild, the whites bright in her face. I left my tent and stood in the cracking darkness wiping waves of water from her neck, holding her head still, blocking her when she wanted to plunge, rubbing her face and pulling her ears so she would listen to me. Long rolls of sound vibrated the earth underfoot. The shadowy tree branches waved
overhead. My fingers grew stiff until I couldn't unbend them. I slept leaning into her, starting each time she shook or swayed.

A stiff bark woke me. I shook rain from my face and looked around, straining at the darkness. My hands were numb and blue, hooked into the reins, and my arms, neck and back were full of stinging nettles. In flashes, near the sodden handkerchief of my tent, I saw a long body. I felt sick and my vision failed for a second. The curvature and the length of the figure suggested the body of a large woman. But the neck was too thick, too long. I pulled my hands free. They were useless. I crept forward and saw the graceful head, the eyes open and frozen, and the great dark gash across the cheek. My boot touched the fresh blood of a killed deer.

I shook my arms and bit my hands until they were mine again. I looped a noose around the deer's neck and threw the other end of the rope over a high thick branch and with the leverage of another tree I hung the deer until I heard a crack and saw her overhead. I tied her off, and moved our camp as far as I dared in the dark. In spite of gratitude and hunger, I did not want to be beside a dead deer when whatever barked in the night returned for its dinner.

A few hours later, in the morning, I stepped out and saw ravens squalling in the sky. I left my horse and
walked with the saddlebag that contained my knife and hatchet and some rope back to the deer. She was young and healthy-looking. I searched for a rock about the size of a finch's body. I looked the deer over carefully and then I cut the skin around her neck and pulled it down until I could put the rock under the skin and tie it off tightly, making a kind of a hitch. Then I cut off her lower legs, holding them against the tree and using the hatchet. I sliced the skin up her legs to her underside and made sure she was cut all the way to the neck. Then I tied more rope around the hitch I had made in her skin and I went back to get my horse. It took a long bloody time to pull her skin off, but once the skin started it came off clean with a loud rip and lay like a discarded garment beneath her. I butchered the meat into small pieces and filled two bags with it. I draped the skin over my saddle.

When I was done there was still plenty left for Mr. Bear and Missus Wolf and all their coyote, fox and raven neighbours. I packed the bundles on the back of my horse with my other gear and we went looking for a smokehouse.

A
S
I
RODE
into Lethbridge all the clean rich ladies riding shotgun in their husbands' Packards and Oldsmobiles down the wide roads stared at me as
though I were a Hallowe'en apparition. They were like owls their heads rotated so. The sound of those cars. It felt so strange to look down on them. Blood seeping through the bags had stained my horse's sides and I had had no chance to wash after the butchering. I was covered in shades of blood. It amused me to take out my rifle and ride with it held across my saddle as if I were a gunfighter entering a frontier town.

I found the trading post in the centre of town; it was a little wooden house with a tall brick false front in that top-hat style that suggests a second floor. I left my horse staring after me. The high sound of a little bell tripping gave away my entry. A woman was sorting accounts behind the counter. Around her were piss-pots and fry pans and top hats and saddles and canteens and jars of buttons and piles of socks and spools of belts, spotting scopes and stuffed parrots and bicycle parts and every sort of thing. A thick stack of dollar bills lay in a drawer before her that she shut quickly. She frowned at my appearance and I held up the deerskin.

If you are a bandit woman you have come to the wrong place. If you want to sell me that skin it has to be tanned. And if those are bags of meat and you are here to sell them then they have to be cured, dried or smoked. Which, by your meagre look, I am guessing
they are not. You can't just kill a beast and sling it around my place!

I meant no offence. Can you lend me the wood and screens to build a smokehouse and I'll smoke some meat for you? Or just tell me where to find one and I'll give you the skin for free, I offered.

She shook her head and turned her back on me. Her backside was half as broad as the counter. The walls were hidden behind racks of coats. An open armoire revealed a selection of wedding dresses and mourning suits. She pretended to be counting blankets, waiting for me to leave. The stack of blankets was neatly folded but she stroked and patted them as if soothing wrinkles from fine linen.

I can make do with a crate and a hammer and some old screen, I said. I'll give you half the meat.

She squared her shoulders, put her hands on her hips and turned back to me. She clucked her tongue and reached over her head to finger a vast swath of beaded necklaces, red, turquoise, white, yellow and pearl, hanging from a hook in a low beam She assessed me and sighed.

Maybe I could help you if you were to buy something. I have some fresh imported Hutterite chicken. You look like you could use some meat.

What makes it Hutterite chicken? I asked.

She shrugged. Conversion, I suppose, and then betrayal. Have you got any salt? she asked.

I don't.

She pursed her lips and squinted at the weak sunlight. I'll give you a bag of salt if you'll help me do inventory. I don't want that skin, the cutting is ragged, it's not fleshed and it doesn't have a head.

I can go back and get the head.

I don't want the head. I want someone to inventory boots; the last time I did it there was a foot in one. Make yourself some brine and soak the meat and if it looks good I'll get you a smokehouse and if it tastes good I'll take half. But I need three days of work from you and I need your boots.

Where will I stay? I asked, feeling like I had wandered into a trap.

You have a horse?

Yes.

I suppose you need feed for your horse?

Yes.

Then I need four days of work and you can both sleep in my stable. I suppose you need food too, and a bath.

Five days work? I asked, and she nodded.

And your saddle. You'll need to buy back your boots and a saddle, I suppose?

Images of skeletons stacked in the hay of the stable floated in my mind. I need to think about it, I said, and I backed up all the way out the door. As I turned to leave I saw a pile of folded Confederate and Union uniforms topped by a tray of wedding bands beside a collection of Bibles.

Where you goin'? she called sharply.

Thank you. I won't bother you. I'm going to South Dakota.

That's a long lonely ride. Are you for mining?

No.

Are you gambling?

No.

You don't look like a whore, at least not a good one.

I'm looking for Calamity Jane. I have a message for her.

Ha! You're goin' the wrong way. Better go to Virginia City. Last time I read her name she was there.

I watched her hunt through papers but she did not find the proof of her direction. Exasperated she said, better yet, go anywhere you please. Here, I know what you'll want.

She turned to sift through another stack of papers.

Here it is. Here's a history of the woman. She's not even real. She's just the made-up fantasy of that little man.

She dropped a pamphlet before me. It was an illustrated biography of Ned Wheeler.

Twenty cents, she said, and that's to save you the cost of hunting phantoms.

I
BOUGHT
the book, bags of salt, dried herbs, a couple of screens and wood, and a tin bath from her. A man and wife offered me a room at the hotel in exchange for smoking some rabbits for them. The man giggled inconsolably at my appearance until the woman put him to bed with a bottle. I built a little smokehouse in the back and while I smoked the deer meat and the rabbits I read the brief story of a boy who dreamed of women. The story was written very plainly and the two illustrations were of Ned Wheeler himself and his first famous creation, the magical personage of Wild Edna.