E.L. Doctorow Read online

  “He’s a hungry one,” I said to Zar, “he’ll go for these horses if we let him.”

  “So, we won’t let him.” Still chewing a mouthful, Zar reached for his shotgun and slowly brought it around and shot off both barrels at the wolf. The animal was out of there fairly, along with his mate that we hadn’t seen, and the two of them bounded away along the arroyo.

  “Their courage’ll be back by and by,” I said, “let’s get to work.”

  We went for the corrals first, untying what rawhide lashes we could, cutting the rest, laying the poles down lengthwise on the wagon bed. Then we began collecting lumber from the frame houses and barns, staying away from places where the white ants were too thick, prying off boards, knocking away doors, pulling up porch planks, shakes, beams, shingles. There was so much rot in everything it was a wonder the buildings were upright at all. We worked all through the afternoon hardly stopping for a drink, coughing with the dust that rose, the sand blown by the wind. Our friends the wolves had cut down the mice and burrowing owls to be found but bugs and spiders scuttled away from our axe and pick. We worked till we judged the wagon could hold no more, the wood was stacked a tall man’s height above the driver’s box. Then we went around picking up every nail in sight. And we came on a set of bright white human bones sitting in the arroyo. We stood looking at that skeleton. It was clean. I had to think what an indecency it is that leaves only the bones to tell what a man has been.

  “Fountain Creek,” Zar said. He was mopping his neck with his handkerchief. “Frand, you see the peril. Always the ghost city is one with name full of promise. Is that not so? We must have care in our naming not to make this mistake …”

  It was dark when we were ready to leave. I took the reins and the Russian sat atop the lumber to weight it. The horses strained to get the wheels turning and we moved off at a walk. I’ll tell you I was weary on that trip: the night was black with stars and the wagon creaked and swayed and I slipped in and out of dreaming. I couldn’t believe the horses had a destination, I kept thinking I was traveling to no purpose. What good was this to that woman and that boy? What could I hope to do for them? Only a fool would call anywhere in this land a place and everywhere else a journey to it.

  I must have fallen asleep and the horses must have stopped—because I awoke to the boom of the Russian’s shotgun and the wagon lurched forward and the reins went taut in my hands. There was a light in the sky ahead of us.

  “Those damn wolves have been following,” Zar called down, “but they are running now!”

  Later we rode up to the town and Jimmy came running out to meet us. “A man’s here with that same wagon,” he said, “the one they put my Pa in—”

  He was about to cry. I got down, stiff, and took his hand: “Say what Jimmy? What, boy?”

  “Over there.” Standing by the well was Hausenfield’s hearse. I didn’t trust my eyes, I went over for a close look. There was the mule and the grey; the pick was still wedged across the black door. And a skinny, chinless fellow with a leather vest was leaning against a wheel, looking at me sly.

  “Howdo.”

  “Where did you find this wagon?” I said.

  “Hit waer jes setting out thaer. I tuk it up.”

  “And you’ve not looked in the door?”

  “Didn’t think to—”

  “Well that’s alright,” I said, “this is a burying wagon, you ever do any burying?”

  “Never have.”

  “Well you’ll find your first customer inside.”

  Then I turned and saw Molly holding herself up at the side of the dugout. She had on that white dress and she was smiling at me, a queer, bitter smile. I rubbed my hand across my eyes and I thought why I have a safe name for this town, we’ll call it Hard Times. Same as we always called it.

  5

  That was the way it ended and began again. From the day I returned Molly wore the wedding dress like she was born to it, she walked stiffly with her shoulders thrown back and her mouth grim against the pain. And when the pain was gone the set of it remained, the healed burns pulled her up tight, her chin was always in the air and the chain and cross was always plain to see around her neck. So that whenever I looked at her I was looking at rebuke.

  The day Zar and I started to put up our buildings Molly took John Bear’s buffalo robe out of the dugout and went to return it to the Indian. Over to his shack she marched, stirred him out of the dumps and gave him back the lice-ridden fur with what must have been proud apology. I could see by her manner when she came back, it was as if the Indian’s property had been stolen by some no-account thief and she had squared the scales by returning it.

  Molly was plentiful in her moods, unspeaking for days at a time, smiling with plans maybe or weeping for no clear reason but her memories. But when she had a mind to she could make anything in the world seem a taint on me. One morning Jimmy was helping me mix up some sod for chinking. Mae, the dumpity girl, came by with nothing much on her mind and started to talk to the boy and tease him a bit. Jimmy always watched Zar’s women with great attention and that gave them pleasure.

  “Y’all sweet on me, li’l ol’ Jimmy?” the girl asked.

  He blushed.

  “Y’all take a fancy to Mae, don’t yuh?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “Here put yo’ hand here, now ain’t that soft as soft?”

  She was holding Jimmy’s hand on her bosom and that’s when Molly showed up to give her a cuff on the ear. Mae was so shocked she had no anger but just bit her lip and ran off; Jimmy was suddenly back to the sod; and Molly stood regarding me as she would a lizard.

  It was no pain I felt but a steady ache, like some hand was gently squeezing my heart. It never left me. I would look out to the graves in the flats or look up to the rocks or over at the scar of the old street and always I saw the face of the Man from Bodie. That was the trouble, I know now, that was my failing, that I couldn’t see past my own feelings, I had no thoughts beyond myself. The day came when I had a sturdy clapboard cabin affixed to the dugout so that altogether we had two rooms to live in. I knocked together a table using pieces of the balustrade from the old Silver Sun, and some boards, and Jimmy and I fell into the habit of saving whatever food we had for that table each evening. Molly would serve it up and then take her portion and step down into the dugout to eat alone, leaving the boy and me to taste what sweetness we could while not looking into each other’s eyes.

  There was the business with Jenks. It was Jenks who brought Hausenfield’s wagon in off the plains, so pleased with his booty that he hadn’t smelled Hausenfield inside. His head was not much thicker than a broom handle and he had no chin to speak of; the way his sly yellowed eyes looked at you made you think of a wolf’s cunning, but really he was a stupid man. Before he managed to bury the German I had to show him where to do it and to point out how he could turn up the ground with the pickaxe lying across the door, and I had to tell him how deep he’d best dig and finally I ended up doing as much as he did. Then, with Hausenfield laid away this Jenks didn’t do another thing for a week but just sat around in the shade of his new wagon, eyeing the ladies or oiling his gun and his gunbelt.

  Well he looked so deliberate toying with those arms day after day it took me some time to understand he was trying all the while to make up his mind for staying or moving on. He was just a poky, traveling where the trail took him, he had himself a black coach and he didn’t know how best to gain from it. Zar was angry because I let the fellow draw free water for the mule and grey and for his own horse, a patch-bald sorrel, while he did nothing in exchange. And I began to be tried too. We neither of us figured there was much good in Leo Jenks.

  But one morning Molly approached him and with a loud, throaty voice, said to him: “Mr. Jenks, you find any use for that gun except in oiling it?”

  He was sitting with his back to a wheel and he sprang up fast when she spoke and took his hat off.

  “Well yes’m, ah kin shoot whur yew kin see.”


  “Is that right?”

  “It is, yes’m.”

  “Well I see a windmill over there, and on top of that windmill is eight stubby blades and I’m looking at the one wavin’ straight up at heaven.”

  Jenks put on his hat and cocked his pistol, aimed, and sent off a shot which splintered the topmost blade. The horses shied. Over by his shack John Bear stopped hoeing his rows and stood up to watch.

  “I see the neck of a bottle,” cried Molly, “sticking up out of that rubble there.”

  Jenks turned, took aim where she pointed, and the piece of glass sprayed into the air. Three more times Molly fixed her eye on things—a stone, a hump of dirt, a stick of wood—and each time this Jenks placed his round where she called it. The shots echoed off the rock hills and came back to us. Everyone was watching now, the women over by their tent, Zar from a corner of his new corral, and Jimmy squatting on the back of the Major’s buckboard. I was close enough to Jenks to see that when he took his aim those shifty wolf eyes of his squinted with some true knowledge.

  He finally holstered his pistol and took his hat off again.

  “I thank you, Mr. Jenks,” Molly said looking my way, “it’s good to find a man in these parts. I wish the Lord my husband knew the gun the way you do!”

  After that Jenks had no trouble deciding what was his aim in life. He rode the wagon off east one dawn and at night came back with a half a dozen prairie dogs slung from the box. You have to be quick to hit a prairie dog while he’s diving for his hole—I learned later Jenks parked the stage in the middle of a dog town and lay atop of it for hours till the animals forgot he was there and came up out of their burrows.

  Jenks turned out to be a good hunter and he bartered his kills for my water or for Zar’s liquor or for one of the girls. Fresh meat is a luxury and there is nothing will go down easier than a well-roasted haunch of dog or a good rabbit stew. But when Molly cooked up some of Jenks’s meat she always spiced it with her scorn, which made it hard to swallow.

  By the time the stage came we were seeing the last of summer. The sun was getting white and it was setting earlier. The winds were lasting and they put out more of a bite. Each day they blew off more of the old town dust and ate away the char of the old street. Zar had his place built, a long low public house of clapboard and sod, it stood where his tent had stood—on the north side of the windmill—and its door, like the door of my new shack, faced to the southeast. When the stage drove in it was in front of Zar’s that the driver reined his horses.

  We were all there to meet it, even John Bear. The stage was run by the Territory Express Company and the name was painted in red letters along the side. The letters were well covered with dust and grime, the tails of the horses were caked with mudballs. Our town was a good trip from the last stop.

  The driver was Alf Moffet; I knew him. He sat up on his box leaning forward with his arms on his knees and the reins loose in his hand. He was looking for a face he knew and the first one he saw was Molly.

  “Why Miss Molly,” he said, “I heard you and Flo was dead.”

  Molly frowned but she said nothing. The Russian and his ladies were right there and I feared Alf would say too much. I had not had trouble with any of the miners that way. Molly was hid the first few Saturdays they came and after that they did not think to question her. But I knew Alf for a fun-loving man, he had a voice full of gravel and he liked to talk.

  “Well Alf,” I said stepping up and clearing my throat, “we had a fire here as you can see but we’re not all dead. These here are some of our new citizens”—I pointed to Mae and Jessie and Adah—“and if you’ll step down and come into the new saloon I’ll buy you a drink and maybe introduce you to them.”

  “I can’t be stopping long, Blue,” Alf said, but he allowed me to take his arm while he jumped down. He grabbed his mail pouch and told the other man on the box, an old man I did not know, to unload. There were two barrels lashed to the back of the stage and a pile of boxes on the roof as well as what was inside. The Express took on freight if there was any room left after passengers. We always got supplies in plenty when it came and I had been counting on that since the day of the fire.

  Inside Zar’s place there were lamps burning. It was afternoon but the Russian had not built any windows. I sat Alf down on a camp chair at a wooden table and after our eyes were accustomed to the shadow I motioned to Zar and he smilingly brought over a full bottle of whiskey and two glasses—just the way I had told him to do it. The glassware was Avery’s old stock Jimmy and I had recovered the day after the fire. I wanted to be careful with Alf.

  He was a big square-faced man, grey underneath his hat. He tossed off three drinks neat and when the dust was washed from his throat we began talking.

  “We got some orders to put in with you Alf,” I said.

  “Well Blue I don’t know. Company wants me to tell ’em when I get back if’n Hard Times is worth the trip any more.”

  “Miners are showing up more than ever, Alf. The Russian here is doing a good trade. People comin’ every day. This Mr. Jenks—I don’t know whether you saw him put there—he’s all the way from Kentucky.”

  Alf tilted his head to one side and smiled at me.

  “That was just a little accident, that fire,” I said. “The town will be up like a weed before you know it, Alf.”

  “Well now Blue I always liked you, yessir. If you was hanging by your fingers from a cliff you’d call it climbin’ a mountain.”

  Alf had heard about the fire from one of the people from the town—he didn’t say who. I couldn’t tell him any lies. “Same thing happened just a few years back to the town of Kingsville. Kingsville, Kansas. Did you know it?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  Alf poured another drink: “Well sir it was a good town, a railroad head. They had two, three livery stables, couple of stores, lots of nice frame houses, a jail made of brick, some dandy saloons and a two-story hotel. Bunch of these Bad Men come along one spring, stayed three days. Killed twenty people. Broke up the hotel, wrecked the stores. Bricked up the doors and windows of the jailhouse, made of it an oven and roasted the Sheriff alive. Town never came back.”

  “What about the railroad?”

  “Catcher come along the following summer and they laid track right on through for another thirty miles. Pass by today you can wave at the prairie grass.”

  “Them Bad Men are sure a plague, Alf. It’s no use denying. Let’s have another drink.”

  When his head went back to receive the liquor I motioned to Zar who had been standing by the door. A moment later Mae and Jessie came in and sat down at the table. After I made the introduction I went out into the light.

  Bear was helping the old man unload the back of the wagon. Jimmy was on top of the stage untying the lashings. Jenks was fingering the rifle sticking out of the boot by the driver’s seat. But what made me really stand up was the sight of Ezra Maple. I hadn’t stopped to look for passengers, I couldn’t believe my eyes. He was standing there in an Eastern suit, a carpetbag was on the ground beside him. Lord if it wasn’t him!

  “Ezra!” I called.

  But Molly was talking to him and as I walked up she said: “Mister I told you he ain’t here, he couldn’t take the climate. Blue,” Molly said to me, “this is Ezra Maple’s brother Isaac. He’s a doubtin’ man, he’s looking all around for the General Store.”

  Of course, looking closer I saw it couldn’t have been Ezra: this fellow wasn’t as tall, nor did he have as much of a stoop in his shoulders. He was younger, fairer-skinned. But he had that same sad-eyed long beagle’s face. “Well you sure fooled me,” I said. Molly went off with a short laugh and I took the man for a walk over to the spot where Ezra’s store had been. I told him what had happened.

  He shook his head and looked at the ground: “He shouldn’t a run off knowin’ I was comin’—it ain’t like Ezra. Wrote a letter to him six months ago. Wrote it down plain as day!”

  “Well now, Mr. Maple once a
letter is west of the States it might light down anywhere. I never saw Ezra get a letter, likely it never even reached him.”

  He took a big curved pipe from his pocket, filled it and lighted it with a box match. He puffed and frowned and stared at the dusty rubble and shook his head: “It don’t seem right at all.”

  I could understand his feelings. A man doesn’t go West for nothing. He’d been traveling four or five weeks, by train, by steamer, by stage, thinking all the while to find his brother when he got here. And probably to make a life.

  “‘Come along when ye can.’ Those were his words to me when he left.”

  “That so?”

  “‘Come along when ye can, there’s room out there fer two.’”

  “That’s true enough.”

  “I wrote out a letter when Ma died sayin’ I had only to sell the store and then I’d come. Jes the pair of us, seemed like we ought to try our fortune together. And now here I be”—he took a good look around—“and Ezra ain’t, and it’s a bad bargain I made.”

  “Well now, Mr. Maple I don’t know. The water don’t flow from the rocks and the game don’t nibble at your back door. But the place has what they call possibilities.”

  He gave me a sharp, trader’s look. “Well I haven’t seen a tree in seven days.”

  “That’s what they mean: look at all the possible trees could grow if they’d a mind to.”

  He didn’t laugh but I had his attention away from Ezra for the moment. I walked him back to the well.

  “I’d like you to taste this water,” I said. “It’s as good as any and better than most. Dip into that pail and refresh yourself. Help you to think clear on what to do.”

  At that moment I had no plan in my mind. But when I walked over to the stage and looked at the freight standing on the ground I had some forward-thinking thoughts. These were the store supplies Ezra Maple had ordered. There was a barrel of flour, a barrel of beef in brine, sacks of coffee, cartons of tinned sardines, crackers—a whole lot of stuff.