“How you figure?”
“She kept the name you gave her when she got married.”
“She didn’t take that feller’s name?”
“No, she did, but when she changed her last name she also added a middle one. Her name is Hour Glass Williams.”
“Hour Glass Williams, the horse doctor. As I live and breathe. You know, I thought about her so many times. Her and you. I always wondered . . .”
Jane’s face drifted off somewhere I couldn’t follow. It was somewhere inside that eighteen years where I never went, where I didn’t know her. The place was dark and forbidden for the likes of me and Hour. I frowned and looked down at my boots.
“We tried writin’, you know. We wrote Dora, but she wrote back sayin’ you left Deadwood. She promised to try to foreword on our letters, but your trail went cold fer a spell, and we stopped trying. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, Jane. Where did you go?”
“Oh, I went my way. Here and there. Was in Texas fer a spell. Got married and had me a daughter. A proper one this time.”
“What happened?”
“I did, kid. Bein’ a mom and a wife, it ain’t a life fer the likes of me. I love my girl. I loved her enough to give her to some fine folks who would be good to her. Ain’t fittin’ to have a mama drunk as a skunk all hours of the day. Still can’t sleep in a proper house with a roof. What sorta mama can’t sleep inside like a civilized person, I ask you?”
“You’re too hard on yerself, Jane.”
“Ah, I can stand the gaff. I know what I am. A wanderer, like you, Jimmy Glass.”
A gentle silence fell between the two of us like a newly laundered sheet in the wind. Nothing bad loomed inside it, but nothing good did either. It was a purgatory sheet of silence, but neither of us minded much. It wasn’t until the question came to me that I thought to end the quiet around us. Once the question was there, there wasn’t much I could do to not fixate on it. It was how my mind worked. A wanderer’s mind, as Jane might call it.
“Jane, I have a question fer you.”
“Shoot from the hip, kid. I ain’t holdin’ back nothin’.”
“Did you even really know Custer?”
The night air was broken by Jane’s sudden barking laughter. It came from her in a sudden burst and nearly knocked the wind out of me. Somewhere in the distance, a pack of coyotes howled, and the nearby horses stamped the earth, startled by the sudden outcry. It was an infectious thing, for soon, I was laughing along with her. We didn’t stop until the wind had left us and our eyes were blurred from tears. My sides ached from it.
“That was an unexpected goddamned question!”
“Ah, but did you?”
“It don’t matter a lick, kid. All them high n’ mighty officers were tha same as far as my story goes. Whether it were General George Armstrong Custer, General Crook, or General Terry, they was all a bunch of know-it-alls who didn’t listen a lick to their scouts’ advice. Just look at the famous fuckin’ demise of General Custer.”
“Why don’t you ever tell the true stories? Me and Hour, all those people you nursed in the pest tent, the stagecoach full of folks? You saved our lives. Why don’t you tell people those stories? You’re a real hero, Jane.”
“I don’t know nothin’ ’bout that kid, but if there’s one thing I have learned in this world of shows and legends, it’s that folks don’t want real stories. They wanna hear that I knew Custer, and they wanna hear I brought Jack McCall to justice. They wanna hear the stories they heard a thousand times before. The only thing that makes my story worth the dime they payin’ is the name attached to it. No, kid, if’n you wanna be a legend, best leave the truth outta it. No one wants to hear the truth, not from a dried up old bit o’ leather like me.”
“I would,” I said to the old bit of leather in front of me.
“Ha. Well, you never were very bright, I must say,” said Jane while laughing.
We both chuckled our part without knowing where to steer it. I had asked my questions, and she had learned her piece of the puzzle, but something seemed missing. I didn’t want to leave her here, but what else could I do? An offer to come with me to Kansas City came to mind, but she wouldn’t accept that. Not in three lifetimes. She had a wanderer’s heart, and there was no cure for that sort of thing.
“Farewell, Jane. You may not see it, but you saved us. To me, that’s better than any tall tale even you could invent.”
I stood and collected my hat. There was more on my tongue, more than just a farewell, but I couldn’t form it. The measure of it was there, but the refined edges were not. A feeling lurked in my mind, an ugly one, that I would never have a chance to see this woman again. Surely, if that was so, something more should be said.
“Jimmy, tell Hour . . . Well, just tell her, won’t you?”
I tipped my hat and nodded to her. There was more, so much more to be said. All those prophets and poets they taught me about at St. Martin’s would have been able to find the words, the right ones. Alas, I was merely a mortal, and a small one at that. I turned on my heel and began my journey away from Calamity Jane, feeling every inch unworthy of my current place in the world.
It was then that the wind struck me, and with it, it carried her words. If I were a betting man, I would have placed a silver dollar on that wind coming from the direction of a little farm outside Kansas City. Maybe it came from an unknown place in Texas or a rowdy spot in Deadwood. Those words, the perfect words, were now mine to use.
“I love you, Jane.”
I said them to her without looking back, never seeing their impact.
The wind whipped up beneath them and echoed their song again and again and again. Two sentences that should have been one but for a poor girl’s handicap. The breeze picked them up and carried them off over the plains and across time. Words that swirled only moments around a cemetery where Wild Bill and Jane would rest in the future. Friends and neighbors and family added to them. All the people who were touched lent their voices. They rang like a bell in the air all around us now and back then and into the soon-to-be so Jane might never want for hearing them again in her lifetime.
I love you. Jane.
Legends may weep, and if they do, we mortals ought not to witness it, for who are we to judge their tears?
25
As soon as I saw the rider headed my way, the day turned itself a measure hotter than before. My wrists itched suddenly beneath the sleeves, and beads of sweat formed where the bandana touched my neck. I was on the road to Belle Fourche, and the only person in the world who knew that fact was Missy, yet something told me this fellow was here for me. A little notion somewhere in my mind said it. Even though it were nothing more than a whisper, I could still hear the damn thing. A good portion of dread rode along with me suddenly, and the weight of it was nearly too much for my horse to bear. The rider approached, and I could honestly say I never knew the man. That fact didn’t lift my burden though.
I slowed my horse’s pace to a stop and the fellow did the same. He looked barely older than a school boy. He was tense and itchy, an urgency haunted that gaze of his, and I aimed to know what it was. I nodded to him in greeting.
“What’s the hurry?”
“You wouldn’t happen to be a Jimmy Glass, would you?”
The sound of my name coming from the lips of a stranger was disconcerting at best. I tried my hardest to hide that fact. Nothing could be gained by showing your cards too early in any situation. However, it was my reckoning that only men with news of death or illness rode with the names of men they didn’t know, and my spine shivered with the possibilities.
“Yessir, that’s me.”
“Oh thank the good lord. That woman said she’d tan my hide if’n I took too long findin’ you. I reckoned she’d do it too. She scared me half to death.”
“What woman?”
“The
Madame woman. Diddlin’ Dora herself. She said to tell you to meet them at the Belle Fourche train station by evenin’. I reckon it’s important. She paid me a whole dollar just to tell you that.”
“Thank you,” I said, flipping a coin in the young man’s direction.
I trotted ahead as he fumbled off his saddle to retrieve his coin from the grass. No part of me wanted company on this trail, especially not from messengers who didn’t know me but knew my name. The fact of the matter was I had been headed to Belle Fourche, already pert near there at the outskirts of the town, to see Missy. I had written to her a month ago to plan the trip, and now the great Madame Dora DuFran was sending messengers to reroute me. Dora mainly stayed in Deadwood these days, and Missy ran her place in Belle Fourche. It weren’t odd that Dora would be paying a visit to Missy’s neck of the woods, but something about this smelled sour. My belly wouldn’t sit still as I wondered what had happened.
It was just before sundown when I arrived at the train station in Belle Fourche. I thanked the heavens above to see my Missy, just as lovely as I had left her, standing among a pile of luggage on the platform. Reds and purples from the yawning sun lit her from the west. Fading rays sent her shadows streaking across the wooden platform. A gentle breeze moved her hair away from her eyes like a lady in a picture. Angels didn’t look that good.
My initial thinking had been along the lines of something sinister happening to Missy, and to see her face smile when I approached relaxed an intensely chewed up part inside my chest. She wore blue and black from heel to head—a vision if I ever saw one. I lifted her in my arms and swung her round. She kissed me as I took in her scent.
“I have missed you,” I whispered beneath her hat.
She played at batting me away, smiling all the while.
“You ain’t gonna start that marriage talk again, are you? I don’t think I have it in me to turn you down a third time. Not with this new scruff.”
Missy ran her fingers through my newly trimmed beard. It was short to be sure, but with age, the patchy sparse bits had blossomed into a far more manly spread across my chin. Once, in an intimate morning moment, Missy had told me of her fondness for beards, so I took it in my head to grow one for her.
“I have many things to ask you in private, but for now, I want to know why I got grabbed by a messenger on the trail here? What’s goin’ on? Where’s Dora?”
Missy’s face fell, and the enchantment we had been weaving together unraveled around us. As if called from the ether, Madame Dora DuFran, in all her finery, made her presence known with a loud stomp of a boot on the floorboards next to us. Joseph stood next to her, a bit pudgier than I remembered, but smiling widely at me. Dora, for her part, stood with her hands on her hips, a sideways smirk on her face as she appraised me.
“Mr. Jimmy Glass,” she said with her grandiose voice.
I was a child again, a silly twelve-year-old boy, and despite myself, I lept into the grand woman’s arms. Without abandon, without shame, and without any thought to others around me, I held that woman. God bless her, she hugged me back. I was still her man, just like I had been all those years ago. A tender part of me would always be that man for her.
When we released, she slapped my arm and dabbed at the spots underneath her eyes. I had made her tear a little, and it was apt to ruin her makeup. Joseph leaned over and shook my hand while she fixed herself. I marveled at the fact that I was taller than he was now.
“What’s happenin’, Dora? A messenger found me and said to come here. We coulda met at the saloon. I was headed there to see Missy.”
“We weren’t gonna be there, kid. It’s Jane. She came up this way a piece ago lookin’ real bad. I came up here and gave her a job at the Belle Fourche place cleaning and the like. But the drinkin’, it’s the same. Her body can’t take it anymore. She started slowin’ down something fierce.”
“I told her she could stay as long as she wanted,” interrupted Missy. “I said she didn’t hafta clean and the like if she needed to rest. Dora told her the same.”
“You can imagine how well that went over,” added Joseph with a sad laugh.
“This mornin’ we found a note by her bed saying farewells and the like. Well, it was as close as Jane gets to sayin’ the farewells. But it said she was going to Deadwood to be with Bill.”
“To be with Bill? That means . . .”
“That means she’s aimin’ to go and die. The damn fool she is. She wants to run away and die in a ditch like a dog or somethin’. Well, we ain’t gonna let her. That woman ain’t passing this life without a friend next to her. I won’t have it.”
Dora looked likely to start crying again. Joseph placed a tender hand on her shoulder, and she straightened up.
“The train folks said she boarded the train to Deadwood last night, but the conductor had to stop in Terry just outside Deadwood proper because Jane was drinkin’ and vomitin’ everywhere. Terry ain’t nothin’ but a mining camp, but they procured her a room at the Calloway Inn. She’s there and she’s alone. Not for long though.”
“I’m comin’ too.”
“Damn right you are, Jimmy Glass. Joseph already purchased your ticket.”
The train ride was one of magic. Nothing spectacular inhabited the train so to speak, and the conductor did his duty with no more vigor than any other, but being among these people sparked a homesickness in me I hadn’t known lived. My ever-present wanderlust took a back seat in the train, letting me have a little bit of home.
Jane was dying somewhere, yet it didn’t seem possible. Calamity Jane was a hero, and heroes, they didn’t die. Did they? Was it possible? For me, she was invincible. Jane was a marvel, but she was dying somewhere alone. A piece of me refused to believe it.
Here I found myself, arm in arm with the most beautiful woman I had ever known and speaking to two people to whom I owed my life. We laughed and talked of times far gone. Dora and Joseph told story after story of the great calamity that was Jane. I relived my first encounter with her, and my embarrassment at thinking she was a man.
It was impossible, wasn’t it? Amidst all that cheer and love, surely it couldn’t be that somewhere a woman as powerful a force as Jane was withering away. Even now, she was a specter haunting our section of the train, letting us not forget the parts we might have missed in her story. She seemed to float near Dora especially, trying to make her refrain from leaving out the fights where she had bested the great Madam. I just couldn’t reconcile it all. Legends don’t die.
“What about her daughter?” I asked when the conversation had lulled. “Back in Abilene, Jane said she’d had a daughter. Shouldn’t we write her or somethin’?”
Everyone looked to Dora for answers. After all, she would be the person to know such things. She sighed and stared at nothing in particular with the vacant look of regret.
“Maude, yes. Jane gave her to a woman named Sadie Beck ta raise. Sadie was a sister-in-law or somethin’ of the sorts I think. The story was never the same when I asked. As I recall, Jane tried to visit Maude a few times when she got older, but she was . . . well . . . drunk. We all know how she gets. After a spell of visits, Maude told her to leave and not come back.”
We all nodded silently, and I tried not to judge a girl I didn’t know. A mother who gave you up is hard enough, but a drunk mother who gave you up would be a might bit harder to take for long. Jane was a mighty potent force. And that could wear down even the most patient person over time.
“I still have her address, but I didn’t think she’d want to be here. Jane didn’t say much about it, but her face was a shade different when I saw her after their last fight.”
Uncertainty didn’t sit right on Dora’s face. It screwed the edges of her mouth downward in an uncomfortable fashion. Missy reached across the void to take Dora’s hand. They shared a brief look of feminine sympathy, a kindness Joseph and I could only guess at.
“Perhaps she’ll change her mind. Best to write her when we get to Terry. Don’t you reckon? I can help you find the words,” said Missy, squeezing her hand.
“Thank you.”
When we reached Terry, the moon was high and the town quiet. In Deadwood or Belle Fourche, this hour would have witnessed plenty of raucous talk and drinking, but here it seemed that the world was already in mourning. Briefly, I wondered if we were too late.
The conductor pointed across a small thoroughfare to an even smaller hotel before tipping his hat to us and bidding us good night. We crossed the silent road and entered the hotel where a tall man greeted us from behind a counter.
“We are lookin’ for a woman,” said Dora. “She came in last night, sick. The conductor helped her get a room here. Goes by the name Jane.”
“Yeah, I know the one. I hope you folks have some money to pay her way. Sent a doctor up to her an’ everythin’. Said she weren’t long fer this world with the state of her innards.”
Dora leveled a glare at the man, and he softened under the pressure of it.
“I mean, of course we gave her every consideration.”
“You better had,” I chimed in. “That’s Calamity Jane you have up in yer room. The Calamity Jane. You best thank yer lucky stars you have the good fortune to house her. This’ll put yer little hotel on the map.”
His face fell and the man started wringing his hands. A cold sweat draped itself over his face like a veil of water beads.
“Oh my. That’s who she is? Well, obviously then, the . . . uh . . . the room is free of charge. And the doc. I wouldn’t dream of . . .”
“We will also require two rooms,” said Missy, her nose sufficiently in the air. “One for my husband and I, and one for our friends.”
“Yes, yes of course. Friends of Calamity Jane stay free of charge as well.”
He fumbled with room keys and told us where Jane was staying.
“There’s a grand restaurant just right . . .”
Hour Glass Page 21
