My Heart Laid Bare

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “And ‘Robert’ is so wonderfully trusting,” Liges thought. “The very best species of friend.”

  SO IT HAPPENED that Harmon Liges, ex-superintendent of the Camp Yankee Basin Mine, volunteered to show young Robert Smith the West, and to be his protector; for trusting young men traveling alone in those days, and giving signs of being well-to-do, did require protection from more experienced travelers. What plans they made together! What adventures lay in store for Mrs. Anna Emery’s sheltered child, whose imagination had been flamed, from early boyhood, by such popular tales of the West as Owen Wister’s The Virginian, Bret Harte’s “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” Mark Twain’s Roughing It and Teddy Roosevelt’s celebration of Anglo-Saxon masculinity in The Winning of the West and The Strenuous Life. Harmon Liges had never read these, nor would have wished to, but he took, it seemed, an almost brotherly delight in sharing with his charge plans of camping in the mountains; hunting, and fishing; visiting “a typical gold mine”; visiting “a typical ranch”; riding, by horseback, the treacherous canyon trails “as natives do.” In addition there were, here and there, such notorious establishments as the Trivoli Club in Denver, the Hotel de la Paix in Boulder, the Black Swan in Central City, and a few others to which, Liges said hesitantly, he’d bring Smith if Smith wished; though such places were likely to seem vulgar and lacking in dignity to a Philadelphian.

  “‘Vulgar’ and ‘lacking in dignity’? How so?” Robert Smith asked, blinking eagerly. “In what way, Harmon?”

  “In a way of presenting females—I mean, women.” Liges frowned and stared at his hands, as if overcome by embarrassment. “That’s to say—in the way such women present themselves. To men.”

  It turned out that Smith had never traveled farther west before this than Akron, Ohio, where he, and his mother, had visited Sewall relatives; this trip to Colorado was the great adventure of his life. In fact, he’d left home in defiance of his mother’s wishes . . . and he’d left home alone, which he had never done before. “So it may be that these are the very persons I ought to meet, if I’m to make a ‘man’ of myself once and for all,” he said, shifting almost uneasily in his seat. “That is, of course, Harmon—if you’ll be my guide.”

  Since the days of Teddy Roosevelt’s cattle ranching in Dakota, and his much-publicized hunting expeditions in the Rocky Mountains, Africa and elsewhere, it had become a tradition of sorts for men of good family to distinguish themselves in the wilderness (or, in most cases, as with Roosevelt himself, the quasi wilderness): that they might be declared fully and incontestably male, hundreds upon thousands of wild creatures must die. (In Africa alone, Roosevelt killed two hundred ninety-six lions, elephants, water buffaloes, and smaller creatures.) Though Harmon Liges had resided in the West less than five years, he had encountered a number of wealthy sportsmen during that time, bent on bagging as much “wild game” as possible, with the least amount of discomfort and danger; but never had he encountered anyone quite like Smith. It was usually the case, for instance, that such gentlemen traveled in small caravans, bringing cooks, valets, and even butlers with them up into the mountains, and camping in elegant walled tents, in the most idyllic of circumstances. (One of the most notorious of the luxury expeditions, hosted by Mr. Potter Palmer of the great Palmer Ranch in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1909, involved some fifteen covered wagons, approximately forty horses, and two servants for each of his twenty-five honored guests; the hunters bagged hundreds of wild animals and birds, but ate few of them, preferring the less “gamey” food they had brought with them in tins.) Yet here was the heir to the great Shrikesdale fortune, entirely alone in the West, unescorted, and unprotected—except for Harmon Liges.

  On the whole, Liges thought that admirable.

  On the whole, he rather liked Smith. Or would have liked him, had he been in the habit of “liking.” In any case it was difficult not to imagine himself, in his mind’s eye, as a dream-distortion of Smith—coarsely dark where Smith was coarsely pale, muscular where Smith was merely fleshy, given a rough sort of hauteur by his Vandyke beard, where Smith, clean-shaven as a baby, exuded frankness, innocence, and unfailing hope. (“He’s the man I might have been,” Harmon Liges thought one night, sleepless, a curious pang in his chest, “—if his father had been mine.”)

  LINGERING COMPANIONABLY OVER the remains of a venison dinner, as Smith sips coffee marbled with cream and sweetened with teaspoons of sugar, and Liges smokes a Mexican cigar, in the zestful, smoky atmosphere of the Trivoli Club, they speak of many things; or, rather, Smith speaks and Liges attentively listens. Smith, like most shy, self-conscious individuals, has discovered that it’s easy, wonderfully easy, to talk, if only someone will listen.

  Clever “Robert Smith”!—he doesn’t once blunder and mention the name Shrikesdale; or Castlewoood Hall—the family estate in Philadelphia; nor does he hint that his family, and he, are burdened with wealth. Yet it wouldn’t require an unnaturally sharp-witted observer (and Harmon Liges is sharp-witted, indeed) to gather by way of allusions and assumptions that Smith is surely not “Smith”; an anonymous American; but comes from a most unusual family. A Scottish nanny named Mary Maclean . . . an English governess named Miss Crofts . . . a Shetland pony named Blackburn . . . Grandfather’s house in Philadelphia . . . Grandfather’s private railway car . . . a “cottage” in Newport . . . a house in Manhattan (overlooking the Park) . . . a nursery farm on Long Island . . . a small horse ranch in Bucks County, Pennsylvania . . . Mother’s gardens, Mother’s art collection, Mother’s charities . . . the sporting activities (yachting, sailing, polo, tennis, skiing) in which the ill-coordinated youth could not participate, to his and his family’s chagrin . . . preparatory school at St. Jerome’s and college at Haverford and a year at Princeton Theological Seminary . . . .

  “I hope you won’t laugh at me,” Smith says earnestly, fixing his moist brown eyes on Liges’s face, “but it is experience, and experience alone, I crave. You cannot understand, perhaps, what it is like to be nearly thirty-three years old, yet never to have lived as a man; never to have gone anywhere without Mother—except to school, and there she visited me as often as possible. (Not of course that I minded at the time, because I was terribly lonely, and homesick, and miserable as a child, and dearly loved her: which was ever my predicament—!) When I should have begun a career of my own, perhaps a serious career in the ministry, I did not, because Mother prevailed upon me to accompany her to Newport, or to Paris, or to Trinidad; when I should have cultivated friends of my own, and become acquainted with young women, I did not, because Mother was taken ill; or I was taken ill myself. And so the years went by. And so I have so little to show for them, I am quite frightened . . . .This past winter, for instance, I suffered from a mysterious illness that settled in my chest, and drove my temperature up as high as one hundred and three degrees, and forced me to cancel all my plans for nearly two months . . . during which time I lay abed looking idly through books of photographs of the Rocky Mountains, and dreaming of this . . . this trip, this escape, to I know not what! . . . though part of the time poor Mother nursed me . . . insisted upon nursing me, despite her own ill health . . . for she had suffered a stroke of some kind a few years ago . . . though it was never called such . . . a ‘fainting spell,’ Dr. Thurman called it . . . a ‘spasm of the brain’ . . . from which she eventually recovered; or so it is believed. In any case I lay weak with fever for a very long time and during that period, I’m ashamed to say, I often exulted in my sickness . . . for I was free to dream of the mountains, and of the deserts, and of horses, and rivers, and hunting, and fishing, and such gentlemen as you . . . though, dear Harmon, I could never have imagined you! . . . never. But at the same time I could relax in Mother’s care, and take no thought for any of the family problems, and forbid her even to mention the contretemps between one or another of my cousins . . . for, you know, Bertram is always fighting with Lyle, and Lyle is always fighting with Willard, and Uncle Stafford spurs them on as if he
glories in such behavior . . . nor is Great-aunt Florence (my mother’s aunt) any better. Ah, they are such a family! And Mother and I are quite terrified of them! . . . ever since Father’s death, when everything began to go wrong. (For that was shortly after poor President McKinley died; and Roosevelt was sworn into office; and the trouble began with Mr. Morgan . . . and was it Mr. Hill? . . . and the Northern Pacific Railroad . . . and the stock market collapse, which I never understood; and think it all a disgusting business, in any case, profit making at the expense of others.) Despite my illness, however, I wasn’t truly unhappy for there was always Mother . . . there is always Mother. Are you close to your mother, Harmon?”

  Harmon Liges, staring raptly at his friend’s face, seems not to hear the query at first. Then he frowns, and replies succinctly—“My mother died at my birth. And my father, too. I mean—not long afterward. End of story.”

  “Really? You were an orphan?”

  Liges shrugs indifferently.

  “But what does it feel like, to be an orphan?”

  Again, Liges shrugs indifferently.

  “I suppose, to an orphan, his condition seems . . . a natural one. As mine, so very different, seems natural to me,” Smith says slowly. He rubs his eyes as if overcome with emotion; perhaps it’s pity for his friend, or a sudden pang of nostalgia for Mother. He says, after a moment, smiling, “But how comforting it was, when Mother stayed at my bedside, reading to me for hours as she had when I was a small child! Mother’s favorite book of the Bible is Proverbs, which is surely a beautiful book though difficult to grasp. Mother reads so well, one almost doesn’t mind that the verse is rather like a riddle sometimes—

  ‘Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep; so shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.’

  All very poetical; but what d’you think it means?”

  Seeing that the plump young Smith takes his own question so seriously, and that his eyes fairly shine with ardor, Liges checks the impulse to shrug again; saying, instead, in as thoughtful a manner as he can summon forth, “The ways of God are inscrutable, it’s said. His riddles are not for us to decipher.”

  4.

  How the world is honeycombed with riddles, in fact.

  With products of the poetic imagination, fantastical notions and man-made fancies that, to the masses of mankind, yet seem wholly real.

  If mankind will agree, to collectively believe.

  The value of gold, for instance.

  Gold, silver, diamonds—“precious stones.”

  All mere fancy, if you think of it. Worthless minerals in themselves, yet, as commodities, forms of complicity; delusions worth untold millions of dollars . . . if men will but consent to believe.

  And here in the vast West, mankind’s very imagination seems limitless. Where in the overly settled, mapped and calibrated East, too many people, among them overseers of the commonweal, make it their business to pry into a man’s private affairs.

  In New York State, for instance, even in the middle of Muirkirk—there he was fated to be “Harwood Licht.” So long as his tyrant of a father guided his life, he was fated to be “Harwood Licht.” And, in a deep spiritual sense, he acknowledges that he is, and will always be “Harwood Licht”—for there’s no gainsaying the fact of blood inheritance, the potent Licht blood that courses through his veins. Out of Muirkirk mud, a lineage to conquer Heaven. So, the temporary impersonation of, say, Elias Harden, Jeb Jones, Harmon Liges or their predecessors Hurricane Brown and Harry Washburn, count for little: hardly more than masks, to be worn and removed at will. Or whim. Or necessity.

  This, Harwood’s father would understand well. Every action of which Harwood is capable, his father would understand well; and, surely, since the old man’s blood courses through the younger’s veins, approve.

  “One day, I’ll make myself known to him,” Harwood vows. “I’ll make him proud of me, one day. And Thurston utterly gone.”

  (For Harwood had the vague notion that Thurston had in fact been hanged, and was of no more consequence to anyone. End of story.)

  Surprisingly, these past several years, Harwood has become a thoughtful man, at least when idle and not absorbed in the energies of The Game. Like Abraham Licht he sees little profit in brooding on the past unless such mental exertion yields future rewards; but of course there are interludes in a man’s life (hiding in the desolate hills above Ouray, for example, or for six days and nights ensconsed in the filthy Larimer County jail near-devoured alive by lice) when one has little choice but to brood.

  And to plot.

  Perfect strategies of revenge.

  For all the world is the Enemy, as Father taught.

  “And I’ll certainly never make Thurston’s mistake,” Harwood thinks, jeering. “To kill a bitch of a woman, a screamer, as he did; and to fail to escape.” He laughs, thinking of Thurston swinging on the gallows. His tall Viking-fair elder brother whom women made cow-eyes at in the street, while taking not the slightest notice of him, so much more the virile and stronger of the two. “That’s the one unforgivable sin—to fail to escape.”

  Like Abraham Licht, Harwood is an angry man.

  It matters not why, or at what—his feeling consumes itself, and justifies itself.

  Always he feels he’s being cheated. This is the American credo—I’m being cheated! Somebody else, anybody else, is doing better than I am; deserving no more, but reaping far more than I am; life cheats me, or other men cheat me, or women; I have yet to receive my due, and never will. If liked, I’m not sufficiently liked. If loved, not sufficiently loved. If admired, not sufficiently admired. If feared, not sufficiently feared. Harwood’s numerous identities have yielded numerous rewards, it’s true, and there have been times when his pockets have bulged with thousands of dollars; but never so much as he expected or deserved. Never so much as another man might have reaped in his place.

  I could murder you all he thinks pleasantly, strolling along the bustling Denver streets.

  If only you had a single neck, I could murder you all with my hands. The memory of that woman’s neck (the woman’s name now forgotten, for Harwood is careless about details) twitching in his fingers.

  He’s twenty-eight years old with the look of a man who’s never been a boy. The hooded eyes, sullen mouth, hair like limp chicken feathers, unkempt whiskers and sideburns, musclebound shoulders, the fighter’s rolling gait . . . In the casual observer, even another male, Harwood arouses the apprehension one might feel for an aggrieved bison or a coiled rattlesnake. Poor Harwood: even when he smiles, his teeth proclaim his anger; when his linen is fresh it isn’t, somehow, fresh; on him, aftershave cologne smells like bacon grease; a purloined gold signet ring edged in diamonds, shoved onto his smallest finger, looks like trash. Yet he has his dignity. He has his pride. He has his plans.

  “One day, everyone in the United States will take notice of me,” he thinks, “—whatever my God-damned name.”

  And Roland Shrikesdale III, also known as Robert Smith, will figure prominently in these plans.

  For there is such a thing as luck, Harwood thinks, though Father taught them to scorn such a belief as the reasoning of weak, puerile men. Luck exists, no doubt of it, and Harwood’s luck has simply been bad.

  If he wins at gambling (poker, dice are his specialties) he loses within a few days, more than he’s won. When he was a salesman for Doctor Merton’s All-Purpose Medical Elixir, though he sold a fair number of bottles of the stuff to sickly women, he was betrayed by his supplier in Kansas City, who’d neglected to tell him of the medical complications, including even death in some instances, following in the wake of such sales.

  There was his experience at Camp Yankee Basin.

  Harmon Liges hadn’t been, strictly speaking, superintendent at the camp. In fact, he’d had little to do with the mining operations at all; his position was that of foreman’s assistant at the mill; not a very well-paying job but less demeaning at le
ast than millworker. (Though he lacks the air and training of a gentleman, Liges, the blood-son of Abraham Licht, retains the prejudices of a gentleman for whom manual labor is an insult.) Shortly after he arrived at Yankee Basin in the Medicine Bow Mountains, Liges realized that it was in refining mills, and not mines, that opportunities for theft are greatest: the detritus that sifts through the cracks of the machines and collects on their undersides is rich with gold dust, if one has but the patience to collect it and the sagacity not to be caught. So, as foreman’s assistant, Liges recruited a team of assistants to help him after hours in packing tubs of sediment taken from beneath the ball mill, and scraping off the thin coating of amalgam on the copper plates, and stripping the copper plates themselves—the most painstaking and rewarding of all such tasks. To the untrained eye such matter may appear worthless: muck, dirt, fine black sand. Indeed, who but a man of imagination might guess that invisible treasure might be salvaged from it, that thousands of dollars might sift by magic into a man’s pockets by way of such grubbing? Of course the enterprise was dangerous, for one could be caught; involved in clandestine activities, one could be punished. Yet wasn’t the risk worth it? “The revolt of slaves against masters, and a God-damned good thing,” Liges thought. Since his arrival in the West he’d heard wonderful tales of miners who’d made themselves rich by smuggling, day after day, small chunks of “picture rock” out of the veins they worked, and selling it to fences; “picture rock” being a rare ore encrusted and glinting with solid gold, too precious to be delivered meekly over to the mine owners. But his own enterprise came to an abrupt and humiliating end only a month after it began when his most trusted assistant ran off with most of what had been salvaged and another, having breathed in toxic vaporizing mercury while trying to condense some amalgam at Liges’s instruction, went berserk believing that God was punishing him and confessed all to the mill foreman. So Liges was forced to flee Yankee Basin on a sway-backed horse with nothing to show for his ingenuity except a leaking sack of black sand which, when refined in Manassa, yielded only $97 in gold, which he lost at poker that night.