Welcome to Hard Times

by E. L. Doctorow

“I don’t want filth in my house.”

  “You think everyone knocks is the Man from Bodie?”

  “Keep away from me!”

  “People come to me with business, you run in the dugout. Someone wipes his feet and takes his hat off and you curse him!”

  “Every manner of filth and dirt, every tramp, every stinking lowlife!”

  “You are getting a name in this town, Molly. I don’t like you acting this way!”

  “Get out then! They’re all like you. All the filth. They’re no worse than you are, damn you!” And she ran into the back room and slammed the door.

  That was the way she was acting. It was as if each person coming into town was taking away a little more of her air to breathe. What could I do? I see now what was going on but can I say I saw then?

  Jimmy accepted her disposition, it should have bothered him that she began to ignore him most of the time, but he saw her only a certain way and he was rewarded whenever she came back to him with a rush of feeling. He kept up his duties to her like a faith. For instance people knowing who he was would sometimes give him their dollars for the water. I was keeping no strict records on such payments, but I knew he turned over to Molly as much money as he ever gave into my hands. Where she hid it I didn’t know, or what she wanted to do with it. I knew she wasn’t making plans to leave, she was past making plans for her life, if I could have foreseen I would have put her on the stage myself, I would have bought her a catalogue dress and bonnet and packed her a satchel of greenbacks saying Go on Molly, you were right and I was wrong, the look of your cat’s green eyes will stay with me, go as far as this money takes you and leave Hard Times to the Mayor …

  But one night I found out where the money went.

  “Blue.” Her whisper coming across the room. “Blue, you sleeping?”

  “No.”

  “Why aren’t you sleeping? What’s on your mind, Blue, that you can’t sleep?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Tell me. Tell Molly your trouble.”

  “What?”

  “You want to come over here, you want to come to your Molly? Alright. Alright.” I heard her moving in her bed, making room for me.

  “I was just thinking of that letter come for Archie D. Brogan,” I said quickly. I didn’t know what had got into her.

  “He’s got a letter?”

  “A letter addressed with a typewriting machine. I wish I knew what it said, that’s all.”

  A giggle: “Well you fool, why don’t you open it?”

  “Go to sleep Molly.”

  “Come here Blue. Come give me a hug and forget that letter you say is worrying you out of your sleep. It’s not any letter is it? You know what it is, come on, come to your Molly.”

  I had not thought of her that way for how long? How long had it been since she turned, little by little, so compliant, that I felt I was some duplicate Bad Man taking his pleasure?

  “I want to whisper something. I really have to tell something in your ear—”

  I am a foolish man, I shall always have to go to Molly when she calls, knowing everything, expecting anything, I will still go. I put my feet over the side of the bunk and she cried, “JIMMY!” Loud enough to wake the town, “JIMMY!” she screamed.

  And there at the door, the dim light of the cabin behind him, he stood torn out of his sleep and a shotgun cradled in his arm, the boy.

  “You’ll keep away from me now Mayor? You’ll stay away? You try to touch me and you see what’ll happen to you? You see you lechering old bastard!” And that was her voice I recognized.

  With a groan I was at the boy, wresting the gun from him. He was half asleep, he stumbled over to her bed and fell into her arms, making sounds like he was shivering. “There, it’s alright Jim, Molly’s alright, don’t you fret—” I took his arm and I pulled him away. “Go on to your bed,” I swung him past me, “go on or I’ll whip you good!” I herded him all the way back to his cot, shoving him so that he fell down the step into the dugout. “Oh oww!” he cried, rubbing his toes, and I left him sitting there and crying.

  That new oily double-barrel glinting blue was in my hands and I swung it like a hammer against my desk but the stock didn’t break. Through the door there was Molly sitting up, holding the blanket up to her neck, her hair was down and she was giggling at her joke, the laughter came out of her closed mouth in fits. I threw the gun at her. It hit the wall and fell behind her. She stopped laughing, her mouth set in a prim smile, righteous and suffering, and that was the face I slammed the door on.

  I sat down and held my head in my hands. How could one man have been so blind stupid in his life! God help me for my sight, my heart went out to this child. Was everything, even her old sweetness to me, a design on him? She was training him for the Bad Man, she was breaking him into a proper mount for her own ride to Hell, and I hadn’t seen it till now, I hadn’t ever understood it was not me who suffered her, it was Jimmy.

  When it was decently day I went over to Zar’s place. “Pour you a breakfast Mayor?” Mae said quietly when I stepped through the doors. “You look as you could use it.”

  The place was mostly empty, a few people were sleeping at the tables. The night air was still in the room, it was cool but it smelled bad.

  “Bert not here yet?” I said.

  “Can’t expeck him to leave a cozy bed jes’ cause he has a job to do,” she said, pouring, “can’t expeck him to leave his Chink honey.”

  I took my drink.

  “’Smatter, Blue, that wife o’ yourn givin’ ye a time?”

  “What?”

  “Man looks like you do in the mornin’, either it’s his wife or his liver. Ain’t got no liver trouble so far as I know.”

  “You don’t look so good yourself,” I said. She had no color in her face, she was not so plump any more. “You not enjoying the prosperity, Mae?”

  “What do you want, Mayor, goddamnit.” She was rubbing her forehead. “Don’t know what it’s like to breathe any more. Used to be jes’ the week’s end, these days every night is Saturday.”

  Zar came clumping down the stairs. He dressed fancy now. “La la la,” he was singing, he came over and pinched Mae’s cheek. “Maechka,” he said, but she pushed his hand off and went to sit down with her glass.

  “Blue,” the Russian turned smiling to me, “you are the man I am meaning to see. I have important business to talk.”

  “Not now Zar.”

  “Of course now. You have just to listen.” He carefully took from his pocket a folded piece of newspaper. “At Silver City I see there is Company, for three hundred dollars they will go anywhere with steam drill and dig the water.”

  “So?”

  “So I tell you and you won’t be mad. I am thinking closely of sending for them. That way I have my own well.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “But not to sell water to others, I promise you that.”

  Mae laughed. He turned and glared at her.

  “Zar,” I said, “do what you want. But the minute you put up a well Isaac Maple will too. You know that don’t you?”

  He shrugged. “What do I care?”

  “Well then why should you think I care what you do? Do what you want and good luck to you.” A couple of men walked in the doors and then a few more after them. The day was beginning. I put money on the bar and I walked out.

  On the porch a man stepped in front of me: “Mornin’ Mayor,” he mumbled, “jest wonderin’ is there any news—”

  “You’ll know when I know,” I said shortly.

  “I know Mayor but I can’t—”

  “Come over to my place when I’m there,” I said. “I got other business just now.”

  Isaac was on his porch, putting out some wares, I went inside with him and spoke to him for a few minutes. When I was through I went down the street to the cabin. Molly was in the room behind the door and she was asleep, but the dugout was empty.

  It was toward the middle of the morning but hot and still
enough for afternoon. A few men were walking out of Swede’s tent and they were picking their teeth. I went up there and Swede was just coming out carrying a pair of kettles.

  “I’m looking for my boy,” I said.

  “Ya,” he smiled, “inside.”

  Jimmy was not at any of the long tables. A dozen heads glanced up as I looked around. I found him out in back, cross-legged on the ground, rolling pancakes and stuffing them in his mouth. He wouldn’t look at me. Swede’s wife was standing by him, her hands in her apron, smiling as she watched him eat.

  “Jimmy you’ll come with me,” I said.

  I dug in my pockets to pay for his breakfast but Helga shook her head and waved my hand down. When he was finished I walked away without looking back. I went down the street past Bear’s shack, getting on the trail and climbing up. I was feeling short of breath but I kept up my pace and turned off well along the trail, when I saw a flat rock. I picked my way to it and sat down and waited for him. And a minute later he came along and stood a few feet away looking at me.

  “Sit down here,” I said, “I’ve got something to say to you.” He didn’t move. “I won’t hurt you, come on.”

  We sat side by side watching the town below us, a street of houses at the foot of that vast flatland, a small stir of life in all that stillness. A cool breeze blew on the face but down there it wasn’t enough to turn the windmill. Horses and mules were tied up along the railings, people were walking this way and that, every now and then a fragment of someone’s voice would rise up to our ears, or something would catch the sun and flash in our eyes.

  “I brought you up here because I wanted to be sure no one would bother us,” I said. “What I have to say is private between you and me. You understand that?”

  “Sure.”

  “How old do you reckon you are? Fourteen? Fifteen years?”

  “I don’ know.”

  “You’re a sight bigger than the day I carried you down from these rocks. You remember that? You took my gun, you were going after that Bad Man killed your Daddy.”

  My gaze went out beyond the town to the graves in the flats, and I suppose he looked there too. I didn’t dare look at him, I didn’t trust myself to say just what I wanted to say.

  “You remember that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think I could carry you now. I don’t suppose if you didn’t want it I could make you do anything. But I’ll tell you: when I got you down to the Indian’s shack I put you down too fast. I let you go too quick. I should have made plans for you then and there. But I never had practice being a father before and I didn’t know any better.”

  I felt him looking at me but I kept my own eyes on the town. “Now look at down there. It’s not as neat as the town Fee put up, it don’t show one man’s mark. Just a patch job, spit and old lumber, but if he could see it he’d like it. He’d say it was alright.”

  “How do you know what my Pa would say!”

  “I used to talk to him. I know what he valued. He died two years short, it would have pleasured him to see this.”

  He picked up a stone and tossed it away, watching it bounce down among the rocks.

  “Now when he died I said to myself, ‘Well he has left a son and I’m going to look after his son and pass on the lesson I learned from Fee.’ It’s not something a person could learn in one day or one week. It’s something you have to learn into, like carpentry. You understand?”

  He said nothing.

  “And I knew that, so I never said a word to you. I figured if I did as your father did why that would be the way; if I did everything as Fee would have done it, well you’d learn alright. And you mightn’t suffer the loss so bad.”

  Down below a woman was filling her buckets at the water tank. A man, it looked like Jenks, was walking into Zar’s Palace.

  “Course I was wrong, I should have taken you in hand right away and talked to you as I am now. Molly has got to you, it’s natural I suppose, but if you grow to the life the way she has, I’m saying it clear as I can Jimmy, you won’t have the idea, you won’t be Fee’s son any more.”

  “What do you know—”

  “You’ve got to allow for Molly. She can’t give up her suffering.”

  “My Pa had sand. He weren’t no coward.”

  “Does she call me that? Well now I’ve got to tell you”—looking at him, feeling the desperation of what I was doing—“probably your Pa did only one shameful thing in his life and that was to rush in after Turner.”

  “What?”

  “That was the one time he was no example to you. He went in there to get himself killed.”

  “What?”

  “It’s what you do when a Bad Man comes, Jimmy. I tried to do it too but I am a bumbler by nature.”

  “You better not talk that way about my Pa—” Lord, it made me faint-hearted, it was Fee’s face with no lines, a young hairless face with a frown of anger and no understanding at all. “You better not talk that way,” it said pursing its lips, “you better not!”

  And what did I expect, you can’t tell something like that, who will know it? “Jim you can squeeze the trigger and knock down a Bad Man and as sure as you’ve been shootin’, another will come up in his place. They take to this land, they don’t need much to grow, just a few folks together will breed ’em, a little noise and they’ll spring up out of the empty shells. Jimmy!”

  He had jumped up. Molly was stepping out of the cabin, a small figure in the street below.

  “I have spoken to Isaac Maple,” I said trying to control my voice. “Isaac will need someone to help him out before long. The Chinagirl is getting too heavy to move around, her time is coming. What do you say to working in Isaac’s store? It will be good for you. You’re going to work regular hours. You’re going to learn reading and writing. You’re going to grow up proper with this town and the day will come—”

  “She’s calling me! Here!” He waved his arms. “I’m here!”

  I pulled him down. I took hold of his shoulders and held him down on the rocks. “What kind of a mama’s boy are you! How far do I have to take you to get you out of that woman’s spell! Listen to me I said the day is coming when no Man from Bodie will ride in but he’ll wither and dry up to dust. You hear me? I’m going to see you grow up with your own mind, I’m going to see you settled just like this town, you’re going to be a proper man and not some saddle fool wandering around with his grudge. Jimmy listen to me—”

  He was struggling under me, a strong boy, not hearing, his face screwed up in hate. And I felt his breath clean as grass on my face and I talked on and on as if words could do something. “Listen listen,” I kept saying but the strength was draining out of me, like hope, and my mind was doing another talking: It’s too late, and I’ve done it wrong, I am too late.

  He pushed me over and jumped up and delivered a kick in my side and ran off down the trail. It was a powerful kick and well aimed, I feel it now on a deep breath. Below in the town there was no sign of Molly. But as I sat up and looked I could hear a clatter somewhere and a moment later out of the tent two skirted figures stumbled into the sun, locked together. Someone shouted and people were running from all directions, pouring out of the saloon, the store, to make up a circle around those two. Another moment and I saw Jimmy arrive, ducking into the crowd.

  It was Molly rolling around in the dirt with Swede’s wife Helga. Molly had made up her mind to take affront because the woman had been feeding up her boy. As I ran down I could hear people yelling encouragement. But by the time I made my way through the circle Jenks and Swede had pulled the two women apart. They stood glaring, wild-haired and gasping, scratched and mussed so you could hardly tell one from the other. Molly’s dress was torn in front. “Lookit thet tit,” a man said.

  Later I stood in the cabin holding a hand to my side, watching the boy bathe her scalp where Helga had pulled out the hair. Molly was moaning on her bed. There was a knock at the door and it was Swede, wringing his hands. Behind
him, down the street, was the sound of his ranting wife.

  “Blue, dis is a bad tang, my vault, forgive my Helga, my vault—”

  “You big dumb stupid Swede!” I shouted. I could feel the water come to my eyes. How was it his fault? What in Hell made him think he must take the blame?

  11

  I say that was the true end of me no matter what happened after. Sharp as the boy’s kick in my side, clear as the pain, was the sudden breathless vision I had of my unending futility. Who as well as I and what I am could have ensured the one’s madness and the other’s corruption? But we won’t think about it: I tried to keep my heart by taking it out of doors. And how long was I able to do that? One week? One hour?

  Some of these spring-comers paid for lodging and moved into one of Isaac Maple’s cribs. And there was cabin space for those willing to share beds. But the town wasn’t big enough to take on everyone and nobody was doing any more building. Those who had the money to build were making it too easily in other ways. “Who cares where they stay,” Zar said to me, “they are drinking my whiskey, they are bouncing in my beds!” So after a while there were squatters staked out in back of the buildings, living out of their wagons, lying down for the night under lean-tos. And it began to make trouble.

  I mean people would throw their slops into the alleys. Some didn’t care where they did their business and it got so you were hard put to walk in the street without putting your boot down in a mess. One morning Molly found a drunken man peeing against the door, and it drove her to distraction, she cried the whole day. I tried to call a meeting at the well of all the people who owned streetfront, some of them had privies in back, but not all; but only Jenks and Isaac and Swede came. Jenks said: “Jes watch yer step in all yer do. Hit’s good fer the land. How do the Indian get his greens up if not by shittin’ on ’em all winter?” Isaac was righteous: “Nobody cares a damn,” he said, “but if they all come up with dysentery ’tain’t themselves they’ll blame but each other.” Isaac had the right sentiment but he was a busy man. It was Swede and I who ended up digging and fencing sumps behind each side of the street. That Swede would do anything you asked of him, he would tilt his head away from his wen and close his eyes and nod yes—no matter what it was.