Welcome to Hard Times

by E. L. Doctorow

  The axletree was split clean through, each half was poking into the ground. “You carrying another one?” I said.

  “No. No oder.”

  Off aways the woman kept shouting, it was the only sound in our ears and the man got embarrassed. “My vife,” he said tapping his forehead and he smiled ruefully.

  “You a nester?” Jenks said looking up at him.

  “Ya, I vas.”

  Jenks nodded: “Prairie’ll do hit—”

  “Ya.” We all looked at the axle. “She beg me for tree yar go wit oder Svedes. Cry each night … But I hope rain vill come. But no rain. Now I look for Svedes, maybe her mind comes back.”

  Swede’s voice was as deep as the lowing of a cow, but it was a gentle voice with no harshness to it. He didn’t cry about his misfortune but told it straight. I liked him right off. I told him there wasn’t much we could do about the axle but he could put up in the town awhile and maybe get hold of another by and by. He agreed to that so we started to unload his gear. We spent a good hour putting it on Zar’s wagon, these people were carting everything they’d ever owned. There was a frame bed, a bureau with four drawers, an oak table, a commode, bedding, chairs, stools, a churn, a kettle, a washtub, some iron pots, a plow with a steel share, a sack of corn—it was no wonder their old wagon gave out.

  The woman had come back to peek at us while we worked and it unsettled Jenks to catch her staring around the side of the wagon. It didn’t bother me none. She was a stocky woman, when her shawl slipped it showed her hair which was light-colored and sparse, her face was honest enough but there was nothing to hold on to in her eyes.

  I’d worked up a good thirst by the time we were through. There was about another hour of sun left in the sky. I said: “Your wagon should pull now with nothing on it. We’ll tote your things in, you follow us straight that way.”

  “Good. Helga!” he called to the woman. He went over to her and began to talk to her as to a child, pointing to Jenks and me. Without any warning she started screaming at him and then hitting him. She barely came high as his chest but she swung up and slapped his face again and again and beat at his arms. He made no move to stop her but just stood waiting for her to spend herself.

  “Godamighty,” Jenks said.

  “Let’s get up on the wagon,” I said. It put our backs to the sight, I didn’t like to see something like that.

  “Godamighty,” Jenks swore as we sat waiting, “a jahnt lahk thet a sufferin’ sich blows!”

  After a while we didn’t hear anything and as I turned the man was lifting his wife to the back of our wagon, sitting her on a chair so that she faced rearwards. She made no protest and he said: “You vill see me, Helga, ya?” We started off, the horses pulling hard, and I didn’t have to hold them, the weight did that. Behind us the man snapped his quirt over the oxen and they began to draw the covered wagon. It wobbled but it went, the axle scratching a furrow in the ground.

  When we were back at the town the man was still halfway across the flats. “Leave everything be until he gets here,” I told Jenks. He went into Zar’s place and in a moment Zar and his ladies came out to look, and Isaac Maple from his tent. Molly and Jimmy came over, everyone stared up at the woman on the wagon. The ladies went around to the side to look at all the furniture. Not one word was spoken and the woman sat still up on the chair keeping her gaze out to the flats where her husband was coming. I went to the well for a drink and when I looked back I saw the woman bend over with her hands on her knees, and she spat at Molly’s feet.

  Well in a moment Molly was by me at the well. I thought it was anger giving her tremors but she was grey with fear. “Now Molly,” I said, and she allowed me to hold her arm, “that’s nothing but a poor old nester’s wife.”

  And that was how Bergenstrohm came to settle. But we never called him anything but Swede.

  It was Isaac Maple who took the couple under care. Everyone else was put off by the woman’s madness but Isaac said: “My mother had spells from her change of life, my grandmother ’fore her, I seen it since I was a boy it don’t bother me.” He offered his tent for storing their furniture. He had Swede pull his wagon alongside of the tent and the two of them propped up the back with rocks. They put the bed and bureau back in the wagon and Isaac said, “Ye kin keep a nice house in there fer the time bein’.”

  He must have decided right off to give them credit. He paid me a dollar a day for their water although I told him there was no need. He thumbed through one of his catalogues and found a steel axle he could order that would fit the old Murphy wagon. He was taking care of the Swede like he was his own brother.

  “Wal,” Zar said to me one day, “is no meestery. The man has wagon.” That was true as far as it went, Isaac needed something to fetch lumber in if he wanted to build himself a proper store; until now Zar’s wagon was the only one he might have had, and he would sooner have given up his plans than ask for it. But I have a feeling Isaac would have welcomed these people had they only a handcart. I think it was enough that they had come to the town after him. Isaac was the kind of chary person who’s always looking for someone to trust. He couldn’t trust any of us who’d been there before him; but the Swede came off the flats as he himself had the autumn before, and that was as good as a ticket from Vermont.

  Whatever his feelings Isaac didn’t stand to lose much. You figure anyone who keeps a mad wife will pay his debts and do his share of work. Long before Alf delivered the axle it was clear that the man was worthy, gentle for all his size, he would ask no favors and do any asked of him. His woman seemed calmer with people around; and after one Saturday he didn’t again speak of looking for Swedes. What happened was one of the miners found Helga with her washtub and gave her fifty cents to wash his corduroys. The diggers were feeling the spring and they had a great wish to spiff up. It got to be a usual sight, a bunch of men standing around in back of Swede’s wagon in only their high lacers and union suits, smoking Isaac Maple’s imported Regalias or Cheroots and talking like members of a Society. Swede enjoyed their business and their talk. He would build a fire and hang a line of rope over it to dry the things his wife washed, and he’d stand trading words with the men, telling his story, nodding his big head as he listened to theirs …

  I can’t deny how I felt seeing this farmer settle in the town. Molly was right, I would welcome an outlaw if he rode in. I felt anyone new helped bury the past. Swede’s coming even put in my mind a thought I wouldn’t have tolerated before—to keep a record again, to write things down. Alf had left me three ledgers and a steel-point pen to keep the Express accounts. But there was enough paper in the ledgers to write the Bible. It was an idea that I had to put away, I looked toward Molly as if I expected her to read my thoughts, and I almost set myself against the words of scorn that would come.

  Actually, once Swede and his wife were here to stay Molly didn’t say a word against them. Something about Helga had scared her into gentleness, and it was like you find a drunkard who’s sworn off, having been cowed by the vision of Hell. Molly was never inclined to welcome a new face but for a long while she would not say so, her judgment was softened. When Bert Albany came down and I found out why, I told Molly and she even smiled.

  Bert came walking down the trail in the middle of one week, his shoulders were hunched and he sighed like he was carrying the world with him. He was the same pimply boy who always posted his letters with me. He stood in front of Zar’s place, smoothing the ground with his boot and finally he made up his mind to go in. “Don’t you know this is working day?” Zar said to him.

  The young fellow didn’t answer and he looked ashamed. He sat around in the saloon all day, sighing and nursing whiskeys, and he didn’t speak to anyone. Zar struggled to understand what the boy’s trouble was and he finally decided Bert had lost his job. “Poor boysik, he will not say bot I know he must have lost favor with the mine boss.”

  Now how was that so? Bert was not more than twenty. As well as I could remember he always got drunk w
hen he came to town—not because he seemed to enjoy it but because it put him in company with the rest of the diggers. That’s the way a young fellow does, doing twice as much of anything to make sure he keeps up with the rest. The mine boss wouldn’t let go someone like Bert. But Zar said, “Ah, I can afford him a few dollars, I will take him on as helper,” so I kept my views to myself.

  When the Russian offered him the job Bert’s mouth dropped open. Then his face lit up and he laughed. Course he’d take it! A couple of days after this I spoke to him: “Well,” I said, “now you don’t have to travel but a few steps to post your letters.”

  “Hell, Mr. Blue,” he said, “I given up writin’ letters. Never got no letters back.” He was cheerful saying this, he didn’t seem to mind. And each morning there was a new sound to hear, Bert whistling as he went about his chores.

  On a Thursday evening I stepped into Zar’s place for a drink. Jenks was there, sitting at a table with Mae and Jessie. I could hear where Zar was—his snores were coming out of the side room like running cattle. Miss Adah served me from behind the bar. “Where’s the new man?” I said to her.

  She looked over at the two girls and they looked back. Mae got up and went to the door to the side room and closed it carefully.

  “Now listen Blue, please,” Adah said to me in a low tone, “you got to promise to keep this under your hat.”

  Jessie and Mae came up on either side of me and I found myself hard put to raise the cup.

  “What’s going on ladies?”

  “That Bert is sparkin’ our little girl,” Adah said.

  “Whut’s thet?” Jenks had followed. “The Chink?”

  “Jenks I sweah,” Mae turned on him with a harsh whisper, “an you say one word I’ll have yo’ scalp!”

  “Gwan back to your stable, deadhead,” said Jessie, “this don’t concern you.”

  Jenks leaned back with his elbows on the bar and he grinned that sly grin of his: “Shit … Y’mean he’s cooin’ wif thet li’l yaller flopgal?”

  “Hush damn you,” Adah said. She looked at me: “It’s no joke, Zar finds out and he’ll kill him.”

  “He’s really stuck on her?” I said.

  “Lord!” said Jessie. “You’ve never seen the like. You’d think she was white. You’d think she had a papa owned a railroad!”

  “Saturday he didn’t give nobody else a chance to touch her,” Adah said. “Paid her the money and took her out by the well and held her hand.”

  “I saw it,” Mae said nodding.

  “Godamighty!” Jenks said.

  “Then after a while she figures it’s time to come back in, and so in he follows and gives her the money again and out they go again.”

  “Well what do you know!” I had to laugh. “Zar thought he was fired from his job.”

  “No sir, he just up an’ quit it! That boy’s crazy, he’s wild! There’s no tellin’ what he’ll do why I never saw a person afflicted so.”

  Jenks said: “Knew a feller oncet were bedded to a Piute. She sure did have a scent.”

  “It don’t seem right,” Mae said biting on her fingernail.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Now Blue,” said Adah, “that little thing is besides herself. She was so scairt Saturday she couldn’t keep from shakin’ all over.”

  “It scares her?”

  “Why she’s been cryin’ ever since. He has her out there somewhere right now moonin’ like a sick calf over her, poor thing she don’t know what to do.”

  “Well if he’s taken a fancy for her,” I said, “there are worse things.”

  “Blue,” said Adah, “there are fancies and fancies. She’s just a child, she don’t understand that kind of business, he got no sense treating her like that.”

  “When Zar finds out he’ll kill ’em both,” Mae said.

  “Well Zar don’t own the girl. Any of you could take a beau if you really wanted,” I said.

  “Maybe we could, maybe we couldn’t,” Jessie said. “But he bought her. Paid her Pa a hundred dollars.”

  “That Chink weren’t even her Pa,” Mae said to Jessie. “He said he was but he didn’t look as he could sire a flea.”

  “You won’t let on will you Blue?”

  “I’m dumb ladies.”

  “Poor child,” said Adah, “there’s no telling what’ll happen. What is it possesses that boy I don’t hope to guess.”

  I downed the drink and there were these three glum faces around me—weary Miss Adah with her fine mustache, long-jawed Jessie, plump Mae, her cheeks going to fat … What Zar would do worried them, but I think they were more frightened by Bert himself. They were uneasy at such a feeling in someone, it was beyond them. For me it was a revelation that such a thing was happening here. It was like someone had come along to put up a flag. I made up my mind if Zar raised a ruckus like the ladies feared I would do what I could for the boy. I wanted to nurture something like that, keep it going.

  The more I thought about Bert the better I liked him. You like to see desperation still in its pimples. I went to Isaac’s tent and the Swede was there, and I told them about Bert. They had a good laugh. When I went back to the cabin Molly was sitting outside. We’d been having some afternoons of sweet rain, some evenings of slow-dying skies, and she’d taken to sitting on a stool in front of the cabin door and she’d watch the night come on. I sat down near her and I could just feel the smile when I told her there was a true lover come to town.

  Then there was silence between us and I see no reason now not to put down what happened: I found myself aware of Molly in a way that was pleasure and pain at the same time. I felt her closeness. I kept thinking I was older than she was and you see it was a too familiar thought to have, I had no right to it. I was not Bert Albany, I wasn’t free to respect my feelings, and so nothing was said as the darkness came down. And when she went inside I sat still and waited until she would be asleep before I followed.

  But that following Saturday was the night it first appeared all our fortunes were changing. There was a big crowd of miners and they were feeling the season, their carryings-on was not just a bit of fun, it was liken to a shivaree. They brought mouth organs with them, one fellow came up with a banjo, there was a lot of dancing with the drinking and since the women were scarce among so many, the miners danced with each other, stomping out squares so as to make the ground shake. And insisting in all that noise was talk of a new stamping mill going up not far to the east. The Chinagirl had no worries about Zar that night. Bert kept her in sight of his bar all the time but the Russian wouldn’t have noticed if he had carried her around on his shoulders: Zar was blinded happy with the rumors, rushing around from one fellow to the next to hear every version. By midnight he’d decided the Company was going to lay a road down the trail from the mines so as to cart the ore to the new mill—

  I didn’t trust myself to believe him. But it is true that the town was to be blessed with luck; and some of it was even to rub off on me.

  9

  I thought if Zar’s mind was a pony it would win the race. I wanted nothing to do with his happy expectations. But every time something else came up to justify them he would laugh at me, saying: “Wal, frand, am I crazy?” Until I had to go with the signs and tell him one day: “No, by God, Zar, you’re saner than me.”

  Now you have to season the talk of a digger with a lot of salt. A digger’s a man who’ll look for pay dirt twenty years of days with just as much fervor and high hope the last day as the first. Why any time you’re near one you can hear his song: “I’m savin’ my money Jack, and as soon as I have me a grubstake, it’s goodbye to the Company. I’m off to Montany and find me that vugg of pure gold! I know where it is, I know the spot Jack, it’s jest a sittin’ and a waitin’ fer me …” And he buys Jack a drink on it; and they both believe it. I didn’t want to put stock in any rumor come down from the camp.

  But there was a stamping mill gone up, that was a fact. Alf told me it too: a town called Number Six and i
t was maybe fifteen miles dead east. Angus Mcellhenny told me something else: the Company shipped on the toll roads leading west from the camp, so it didn’t pay them to cart anything but high-grade ore. But if they cut a road down to us they could get to the new mill across the flats and pay no toll to anyone. And they could make their low grade pay off as well.

  The way Angus spoke the idea made sense. And then one morning, early, a man rode down from the lodes and he had a string of mules trailing him. I’d never seen him before but I knew who he was, I’d heard him cursed too many times not to know him, Archie D. Brogan, the mine boss. He had pale-blue eyes in a face of fat, he was much too beefy for the miner’s garb he wore. He sat around drinking and jittery until Alf Moffet drove in with the stage, and then we knew why Brogan had come: three men in black tailored suits and derby hats stepped out and he nearly fell all over himself giving them a proper welcome. They were small men and they stepped precisely in our dirt, but they were the directors from the East and their engineer; so we cheered as Brogan put them on the mules and took them, bouncing, up the trail to the lodes.

  “I shall build a hotel!” Zar cried after them and he even hugged Isaac Maple in his joy.

  A few days later the Company men came back down to meet a special coach. And while waiting they fanned themselves with their derbies. “I never seen men with such white hands,” Adah said in a whisper, “why it’s indecent!” They talked to nobody, only asking Zar, at one point, if he carried wine. Zar was anguished because he didn’t, and when they rode off he shook his fist after them: “I shall build a hotel!” It was a vow this time and somehow it made the prospect surer.

  Not long afterwards we had a visit from a man owned a public house along the toll road leading west from the camp, and he looked us over carefully and measured out a lot for himself next to Swede’s wagon; and without my saying a word he put a ten-dollar gold piece in my hand—to hold it—and rode away saying he’d be back.