E.L. Doctorow Read online

The woman said: “Don’t mind Zar, he’s a Russky.”

  “I am,” the man agreed. He jumped down from the seat and I was surprised how short he was. “We make the night here, Adah, and tomorrow to the gold.”

  The woman disappeared in the wagon. The man said to me: “Now frand I have thirsty horses. Is that well yours?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I pay of course. You are a survivor, you will need provisions.”

  “Maybe.”

  He looked at me then as if he was hiding some joke.

  “You like beef? I carry beef.”

  As he spoke something fell off the back of the wagon and then someone jumped off and although my view was obstructed I thought it was a boy. I heard some high voices. At the same time the woman appeared at the front of the wagon and climbed down easily despite a mess of skirts.

  “Adah, horses to water,” the Russian said. “Others make tent in back of dugout. Like in homeland—two houses make willage.”

  Without unhitching the team, the woman Adah pulled them away to the water barrel. When the wagon moved off I saw three figures standing around a square bundle of canvas. This was dusk and it took me a moment to understand that they were all women. One, in pants, whom I had taken for a boy, I saw now to be a Chinese.

  “You see my prize herd, frand?” the Russky poked me in the ribs and chuckled. “Water for beef, is fair?”

  “Hey Zar,” one woman called, “can’t you wait till we’ve been in a place five minutes? I swear you’d trade with a cactus if you met up with one.”

  “Hey Zar,” another called, “that little old boy yonder looks more able than the feller you talkin’ to.”

  The Chinawoman giggled and Zar raised his fist and shouted: “Shod up!”

  But I almost laughed myself. Here I was with nothing between me and the Fates but the clothes on my back, I was hard put just to stay alive, and this fellow had come in off the flats to offer me luxuries. I shook my head. I told him I would rather take vittles and maybe some of his alcohol when his camp was made.

  “As you weesh,” he shrugged. He was disappointed, the ladies were his stock in trade. He walked over to them, did some shouting, cuffed the Chinese girl on the ear, and before long the women were putting up their tent nearby.

  Well I went about my business. Together with Jimmy I toted our property inside the dugout. I got one lamp going, I put up the stove and built a fire. We tamped the floor and spread the two blankets which belonged to the Major. All the while I was thinking of the provender to be had from this Russian. I hadn’t figured past the few peas and dried apples and tins of milk we’d salvaged; and I didn’t relish the idea of hunting prairie dogs. These traveling people—the more I thought about them the better I liked them.

  There was a commotion just as we had things about settled. Jimmy stuck his head out of the door: “It’s over by the Indian’s!” he called.

  I looked out. It was already dark. There were lights in front of Bear’s shack, and a lot of yelling. “Stay here Jimmy,” I said and I ran over. The Russian’s women were standing in the door waving their lamps and jabbering away. Inside, John Bear was lying face down on the ground. This Zar was trying to lift Molly under the arms and she was screaming and tearing at his face with her fingers.

  “Here, let her be, mister!” I said. I pulled my gun out and trained it on him. He put Molly down readily enough and turned to me, but he didn’t seem to notice I was covering him.

  “Ah frand,” he said, “you tell me what this is? My girls come to say hollo and what do they find but this savage?”

  “That’s right,” the woman Adah said. “Sittin’ on his haunches starin’ at her behind. I never seen the likes!”

  “Oh you sons of bitches,” Molly moaned.

  “That don’t go where I come from,” one of the women said. “No damn Indian—”

  “This lady is burned,” I said.

  “Well alright if that’s so, we can fix her up fine in the tent, we can take care of her.”

  “Don’t you touch me!” Molly screamed. “Whores! Keep away from me!”

  “Well I like that for being grateful,” Adah said.

  I said: “The Indian’s a good doctor.”

  The Russian raised his bushy eyebrows: “He doctors?”

  “He’s been taking care of Molly.”

  “Wal I have killed him with my fist. On his neck I hit him.”

  I kneeled down for a look at Bear. He wasn’t dead, he was stunned. I helped him sit up in a corner.

  Molly was saying, “Blue get these whores away from me, oh Christ get them away from me!”

  “Honey,” one of the women said to her, “look at you all covered with dirty redskin medicine, no wonder you’re complainin’. Now you come on with us and Adah’ll fix you up proper.”

  I thought Molly would have a fit. She was crying and beating her fists on the ground: “For Godsake I’ll die if they touch me, oh God, keep them away …” But what was worse, she suddenly left off and crawled around in the dirt until she found her little cross. She clutched it in her hands and began to mumble to herself, her lips moved fast and her eyes began to roll upwards.

  “Ay, poor woman,” Zar said fingering the scratches on his face, “she has sharp nails for a believer.”

  “It’s a cryin’ shame,” said Adah, “lyin’ in the mud that way.”

  I looked at John Bear, still sitting groggy in the corner. And I looked at these righteous people crowding the shack. “Molly you’ll come with me,” I said.

  Bending down, I lifted her arms and put her over my shoulder. I expected her to struggle but she made no move to stop me, she weighed like a baby. The air was chill so I told the Russian to put the buffalo robe over her. The minute the robe touched her, Molly gasped and dug her nails in my neck. I carried her out of the shack and toward the dugout, the ladies of the brush following me with their oil lamps throwing a jumpy glow on the ground.

  When I got to the dugout I stepped past Jimmy and laid Molly down on a blanket. Then I hung up the other blanket for the door and poked my head out and said to these still-chattering women: “Alright, I’ll take care of her, she’ll be alright.”

  But when I turned back inside, Molly was looking at her palm—she couldn’t find her cross. “They took it from me, they stole it!” she cried out. And then she began to wail again and to curse. She cursed her father and her mother, she cursed the day she was born, she cursed herself for coming West, she cursed me. And while she ranted and carried on, Jimmy slipped out and found the cross lying on the ground halfway to the Indian’s shack where she had dropped it. He came back in and went to his knees by her side and held it out with that solemn Fee look on his face.

  Molly, all streaked with tears and dirt, looked up at Jimmy as if seeing him for the first time.

  I was wishing she could look at me that way. I said:

  “Molly, you remember Fee’s boy …”

  A few minutes later they were both sleeping sound. It was warm in the dugout, we were like three creatures in a hole, and I sat down to rest a bit before I followed the Russian and his ladies to their tent. I stretched my legs and closed my eyes and I fell asleep. Now I’m trying to write what happened and I wonder, does a dream come under that? I dreamed the Man from Bodie was driving a herd across some badland; and riding each head was a wolf or some buzzard with its claws planted. I was in the middle, running with the rest, and I couldn’t shake free of those claws. They drove me to my knees and I tumbled and was stomped into the earth by those behind me, dirt was filling my mouth. It was the taste of dirt woke me. Pieces of dried-out sod were falling from the wall, on my face. I got a shock because through the edge of the blanket hanging for a door I saw it was broad daylight outside. I had slept right through. Molly and Jimmy were still asleep as I crawled out and stood up stiffly, blinking in the sun.

  It was well along in the afternoon and I was sure those traveling people were gone. But I turned and ten yards in back of the dugout
there they were striking their tent. It was a big army tent and they were having trouble, they were too busy to do the striking—they were arguing. When one made to pull up a stake another shouted something, and then they all had to shout something. In the light I could see the women better than I had the night before: the one called Adah seemed to be older than the rest, the Chinese and the other two—one tall, one kind of dumpity—were not much more than girls.

  I was happy to see them.

  But this Zar caught sight of me in the middle of a long harangue and he tacked me on to the end of it: “And you, frand, are no frand of mine!” he shouted.

  I didn’t know what to say to that, I walked over to the well to wash off. He came up to me, talking every step of the way: “So what shall I do now? All morning I search for trail to mining camp! You did not tell me there was none, you said nothing. And now I have women who should be on their backs and they are on my neck. Four days have I lost!”

  My head was still filled with sleep. “Trail up through those rocks plain as day,” I said.

  “You call that trail? It is for ants. How can I get my wagon on that trail?”

  He was right there, I hadn’t understood he wanted to wagon straight up to the lodes—I should have, there was nothing else he would want to do.

  “Well mister, that’s just a back trail. The town you wanted is on the trade roads another two days travel from here. I guess you followed the wrong light after all.”

  He was mad. The veins in his neck stood out. He let go in Russian and in English and the words flew. When I bent down to pour some water over my neck he bent down too, and when I threw my head back to drink he addressed my Adam’s apple. When he ran out of names to call me, he pointed to the scratches on his face and went on to Molly—a “cat woman” he called her—and when he finished with that subject he turned and stalked back to his girls.

  Well I thought for sure I had lost the trade on the well water. This Russian wouldn’t hand me a bean now. And if he had ridden up two days before he did or two days after, that would have been the end of it.

  But my head cleared and I remembered something.

  I ran after him: “Look here,” I said, “if you can’t get to the gold maybe the gold will come to you.”

  “What’s this?”

  “Come on Zar,” the dumpity girl said, “we’re wastin’ time, this place gives me the chills.”

  “What gold?” he said, ignoring her.

  I talked for all I was worth. I told him—exaggerating a little—what a thriving town this had been until two days ago. I told him how the miners came every Saturday night, a regular crowd of them, to spend money and blow off steam. I told him there was no reason they wouldn’t show up just like they always did—for as I’d remembered, this was Saturday.

  For a few seconds I had him. He pulled on his mustache and frowned and worried the idea some. But then he made up his mind: “No. We go.” What saved me was that he and the ladies weren’t in agreement which way to go. He was for striking west to the big roads, they wanted to turn back. The bunch of them bickered and sulked, shouted and threatened each other while I kept glancing up to the rocks and hoping the time would be with me. Whenever it seemed as if an accord was about to be made, I put in a word that would start the arguing up all over again. Only the Chinagirl had nothing to say, she stared from one to the other, wondering how things would turn out. She was the one who first spotted the three figures on muleback looking on from high in the rocks.

  “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.

  4

  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.

  All I need in this lifetime

  Pretty girl and a silver mine …

  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:

  All I want before I’m old

  Big fat woman and a mountain of gold …

  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!”