In Calamity's Wake (7 page)

T
HESE ARE THE KILLED (BY
B
ILL
): D
AVIS
T
UTT
, a good friend; Bill Mulvey, tried to sneak up on Bill; Samuel Strawhun, a foolish cowboy causing a disturbance in a saloon; John Lyle, a disorderly soldier of the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment; Phil Coe, a saloon owner with whom he had an ongoing dispute; Special Deputy Marshal Mike Williams, by mistake when the man rushed to Bill's aid. Also, Indians, a number debated depending on the politics of the day.

T
HESE ARE
the killed (by the international shooting sensation, Calamity Jane!): No one.

I
WOKE FACE DOWN WITH MY MOUTH FULL OF
dirt and blood. The pain in my ear was so great it was almost beyond feeling. I lifted my hand to touch my wound and I could not be sure if the raggedness dried into my hair was complete or if I had lost the ear. It was perfectly dark, perfectly silent. I dragged myself to a sitting position.

My horse, seeing me rise, walked over to me and touched my head with her muzzle. I rubbed her face and held her to help myself rise. I was weak and bleary-eyed.

Together we stumbled towards the fort thinking to sleep in shelter until sunrise. Near the entrance was a burnt-out firepit with wood piled beside it. I set a fire and peeled off my bloody clothes. I used water from my canteen to try and clean the wound but the pain was such sharpness I could not force my hand to finish. I
did not want to stand long, naked in the firelight, so I pulled the black dress from my pack and drew it on.

As I dressed I felt so bitter, I conjured and twisted that beloved voice.

Make her pay, daughter, for all of the years that she put you out of her mind.

Why don't you turn around? another voice said behind me.

I spun and saw the Hag standing there. Did you follow me? I asked.

She nodded. She was dressed in trousers and a man's shirt and a hat, all the fabric dusty and falling apart. The clothes must have belonged to another of her long-ago guests.

What do you want from me?

She smiled and stepped forward.

Go away, I said. You turn back and don't follow me. I don't care that you knew him.

I loved him, she said.

No. I loved him. I loved him so much and that's why I came here, because he asked me to go to her.

I know that, she said.

For a moment I thought I could see through her.

Go away, I said.

But a lot has happened. He didn't know what he was asking of you.

I shook my head and began to pull her dress off my body. It caught on my ear as I yanked it over my head and I screamed. I heard it rip. I threw it at her and she caught it. We stood looking at each other until I covered my eyes with my fists, leaning the heels of my hands on the cliffs of my eye sockets. After a few seconds of brilliant stars I lowered my hands and turned to my horse and swung my body up into the saddle and we rode away from her as fast as we could.

After twenty minutes, forty minutes, whenever it was that it started hurting to run, we stopped. I looked behind me to make sure she wasn't there. The crickets were silent. The dark was thinning and although the moon was low I could see through the trees of the forest. The trees lined up as if receding bands of soldiers stood at attention and between those slim lines I saw the body of a wolf stepping so smoothly it might have been bicycling. I stopped and stared. The black creature also stopped and held my gaze, thinking. My heart about to explode, I stirred my horse to trot away.

S
HE WAS BORN FOR THE FOURTH TIME IN
Montana at the confluence of three rivers. It was May 1859. Around the world, society was at its height. Gounod's
Faust
was being performed in Paris. Whistler was painting
At the Piano
. A French tightrope walker, Charles Blondin, was walking across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. Dickens and Darwin were writing their masterpieces. The Baseball Club in Washington was being organized and the steamroller had just been invented.

But her birth went uncelebrated.

Her mother's name was Mollie Bliss Connoray. There were complications and Mollie died in childbirth. Her father's name was John Connoray and he died in a thunderstorm riding for help for his struggling wife. So the baby came into the world and within the hour was completely alone. By the time someone found Mollie Bliss's body, the infant had been spirited
away. She was never found but all around the cabin were the broad footprints of wolves as well as pointed scat containing bone fragments and Mollie's hair. It was assumed the girl was eaten. No search was made. But in 1865 a boy living in the area claimed to have seen a naked girl with hair down to her knees fishing with her hands in the river. She was, he said, tanned and quick. She grabbed the fish and threw them behind her onto the dirt where they flapped together, sending teardrops of mud into the air. Later someone claimed to have seen a girl in the company of wolves attacking a herd of goats. For years similar stories accumulated, until footprints were found with pawprints and a hunt was organized.

On the third day of the hunt the girl was cornered in a canyon. A grey wolf stood in front of her snarling and bristling until it was shot dead. The girl collapsed and cried over the body of the wolf, rocking and holding the head of the beast to her breast. When the hunters approached she growled and barked and as they grabbed her she bit and tore their flesh with her teeth. One hunter cracked her head with the butt of his gun and she fell down unconscious. They bound her and took her to a nearby ranch and locked her in a room. When she woke she howled and howled and howled until the men were on their knees with hands over their ears.

That evening a large number of wolves, apparently attracted by her incessant mournful howls, came to the ranch. The cows and horses and all the domestic beasts on the ranch panicked. The men shot into the dark, killing their own livestock as well as the wolves. In the battle she escaped.

Several years later a surveying team reported a teenaged girl playing with two wolf pups on a sandbar. After that she was never seen again as the wolf girl.

She emerged in Deadwood as Jane, who had learned hunting from the wolves and how to travel great distances between territories without supplies. She forgave the men who tried to rescue her but she longed for her wolf family, most of whom had been killed that terrible night. She drank until the human words left her mind and then she howled.

I
WOKE WITH MY EAR SCREAMING HOT AND IN
terrible pain. I was naked, asleep on the back of my horse, who stood drinking from a river. The Hag was gone. The awful woman who had shot me and who was not my mother was gone. My skin was stained from sweat and blood that had soaked the black dress; there were dark grey rings around my wrists like cuffs. I took my normal clothes from my pack and walked into the river with them, letting the water do what it could. I waded out into the chill, turning and rubbing until I was restored to my original colour. I wrung out my clothes and hung them over the branches of a nearby tree to dry. I fed my horse and held onto her for warmth, embracing her until the steam off her skin reminded me to take the deerskin from my pack, which I did and wrapped myself in. I fell on the ground and shook.

The sun rose and dried my clothes. I saw patches of the purest blue between the clouds. The wind made its shapes over me and a few hours later I got on my horse and began riding through a dictionary of pain.

A
IR IN
ear.

Air, bubble in left ear.

Air, coming out of ear, alternate currents of cold and warm.

Air, forced into ear on blowing nose.

Alive in ear, something is.

Animals burrowing in ear.

Animals, crying in ear.

Artery, large, throbbing behind ear.

Balls, circulating in ear.

Band, or cord, drawn tightly from ear to ear.

Battery of gunshots discharged in ear.

Beating, on an iron bar, tremulous tingling in ear.

Bells, ringing in the distance.

Bird wings fluttering momentarily in ear.

Biting of electric sparks on ear.

Blood bursting out of earlobes.

Blowing, into ear, someone was.

Boring of worms in canal of the ear.

Breath came from ears instead of lungs.

Cannonading.

Cat spitting in ear.

Coals glowing in small spots on ear.

Coldness in ear with numbness extending to cheeks and lips.

Crackling of straw on motion of jaws.

Crawling, out of ear.

Creaking like turning of wooden screw in ear.

Crying of animals in ear.

Detonating in ears.

Digging in ear with blunt piece of wood.

Echoes in ear.

Forcing, of brain through skull out of ear.

Heat, streaming out of ear.

Hissing, of boiling water.

Ice, thin crackling.

Insects.

Instruments.

Jumping of fleas off of ear.

Kettledrums.

Knife, dull, pressing.

Landslide.

Locomotive.

Murmuring.

Noise.

Opening and closing in right ear like a fluttering.

Opening, in right ear through which air could penetrate.

Parchment drawn over ear on which I was lying.

Rain in ear.

Rain, striking ground beside ears.

Reports, of distant guns in ears.

Roaring, in ears like draft through a stove.

Roaring, like a partridge drumming.

Roaring, of storm in a forest.

Roaring, of waterfall.

Rolled back and forth shaking head.

Running, from ears, ice-cold water.

Running, out of right ear, hot water.

Rushing in ear of a stream of blood.

Rushing, through small hole in ear.

Rushing, of escaping steam.

Seashell in left ear.

Snapping.

Sound, a strange voice.

Sound, of bats.

Sound, of bells.

Sound, of clock striking.

Sound, my voice, like someone else's voice speaking.

Sound, walking at night, I hear someone.

Straighten out lobe of ear.

Teakettle beginning to boil.

Teakettle, singing.

Thread drawn through ear.

Thunder rumbling.

Twittering, of young mice.

Wax flowing from ear.

Windstorm.

Wood, stacking it for fire.

Worms, crawling under ears.

You singing.

Zither of nerve endings played by a demon.

I
N
C
AIRO SHE SAW THE GREAT
M
ISSISSIPPI LIT
up by the fires of an execution. She sat on her horse on the bank watching as a Negro woman, the owner of a gambling saloon on an old wharf-boat moored to the levee of the town, was threatened from the bank by a group of twenty figures bearing torches. Torchlight falling on the faces of the vigilantes drew long shadows from their eyes to their jaws, making them look ghoulish.

Calamity called to a boy in raggy trousers running towards the crowd: Boy, what happened? What's happening?

The boy turned, jogging backwards, to answer her. They're goin' to lynch her, he said. She bin winnin' all their money.

Calamity rode her horse around to get a better look at the scene. The crowd grew as more and more
people ran to the wharf with sticks and torches and rifles. Soon it was a hundred strong and fire heated the air. On the wharf-boat the thin Negro woman in a grey dress stood, yelling back at her would-be killers, Get away from here. You too stupid to keep your money! Get away from here! The Lord won't forgive you people if you shed my blood! You all going to Hell like demons! You gonna burn! You gonna burn, not me. Get away from here!

The vigilantes began to move into small boats and they rowed over. Soon the black lines of rifle stocks were like spokes surrounding the woman on the wharf-boat. Someone gave a signal, though Calamity didn't see or hear it, and the boat was set afire and cut adrift. As it floated out into the current, the woman on the bow fell to her knees screaming and crying and covering her eyes with her hands. After a minute she got to her feet and went into the cabin. The vigilantes were calling to each other, We got her now! We got her! Where is she? Can you see her?

When the wharf-boat was well into the stream the woman appeared standing at the freight opening. Her hair was wild, released from its severe bun, her eyes were wide and her whole body tensed. She rolled a large keg of powder into the middle of the open space. She stood in the light of her burning craft, with a cocked
musket in her arms, the muzzle plunged into the keg of powder.

I dare you, she screamed, I dare you to come on and take me! You demons from the underworld, you white Satans, you whoremongers, you come and get me!

The night was soaked in silence. The small boats kept at a proper distance now, their occupants floating, stunned. The flames licked up the sides of the wharf-boat, growing thicker and brighter until enormous sheets of flame cradled the boat. The woman stood, floating down into the darkness that swallowed the river, with her cocked musket still in the keg of powder. She cursed and defied her executioners. Calamity rode to the water, swung off her horse and waded in. She swam, limbs thrashing in the water, towards the woman.

Jump, she yelled. I won't let them lynch you. Jump and swim away from the boat. She screamed at the vigilantes, Put your guns down. Put your guns down. She's a woman. Are you going to burn her alive? Are you gonna hang a woman? Put your guns down. Goddammit, put your guns down!

Calamity heard an explosion. It was a boom that struck her in the gut; she felt it move through her. She saw the wharf-boat sink. Sparks showered the water, fell on her wet hair.

Damn you! she screamed. Damn you! Damn you! Damn you! She smacked and punched and kicked the water as she waded back to shore.

There was a long silence from the people in the boats. Their arms were at their sides, weapons on the ground. Their expressions were astonished. A number finally spoke out in sincere voices as if to a jury:

She didn't have to do that.

I didn't have the heart to lynch a woman nigger.

We would have taken her in for cheatin', that's all. We were only trying to frighten her.

Nigger woman was crazy.

She had a death wish.

Don't they all.