by Bill Albert
Newborn Buffalo Calf grows strong, Sunset Buffalo Dreamer signed with pride, squeezing the muscle in my arm.
Soon he will be a real tatanka, with big balls, Red Bear returned, cupping his hands to his crotch.
The others laughed, except for Bent Nose and, of course, Laughing Spear.
13
I had dreamed otherwise, but the reality of it was that my life at the Wild West was running on behind the scenes, unnoticed like most of the other lives—the advance agents, bill posters, bill inspectors, lithographers, board men, card men, banner men, ticket sellers, ushers, the razorbacks, canvas men, blacksmiths, carpenters, harness makers, buffalo keepers, horse wranglers, mule skinners, mechanics, train drivers, brakemen, signalmen, car porters, the polers, jack setters, stringer setters, toe-pin drivers, toe-pin levelers, watchmen, firemen, electricians, prop men, ammunition handlers, wardrobe men, feed men, laundrymen, cooks, waiters, dishwashers, and last of all, the coffee boys.
Up front was the Show.
After the Cowboy Band played the “Star Spangled Banner,” Buffalo Bill would ride out on his white horse and in a voice which easily reached the farthest top seat he announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen, permit me to introduce to you the Congress of the Rough Riders of the World!”
Whistles and shouts from the crowd and out they’d come, the whole confused bunch. Russian Cossacks and gauchos from the Argentine, French cuirassiers, German uhlans and English lancers, Mexicans, Arabs and Cubans, U.S. Cavalry, cowboys, and Indians. They about filled the arena, standing there in rows, horses pawing and snorting, crowd yelling, Buffalo Bill out in front of them smiling and sweeping his hat back and forth like he was holding it all up in the air by himself, which, leaving to one side all us invisibles and the others out there with him, might not have been too far from the truth.
Buffalo Bill was the King, but there was one other person the crowds loved almost as much as they did the Colonel himself. Judging by the yelling they set up when Annie Oakley came skipping and bouncing into the arena, waving and throwing kisses to the audience, she was the Queen of the Wild West. She was the only person who got top billing along with Buffalo Bill on the posters. The Peerless Lady Wing Shot they called her and after the Grand Review she was the first act out.
She was real tiny, five feet nothing, but all by herself she could hold the biggest crowd there was just standing there in the middle of a vast empty arena. With her pleated skirt and leather gaiters that came to her knees, a blouse covered in medals, and flat hat, she looked like a schoolgirl, which kinda made her sharpshooting all the more surprising, even though you knew it was coming.
Annie Oakley didn’t use buckshot. It would have been impossible anyway without killing her assistant. He held up glass balls for her to pot with a pistol and then a rifle. She did the same with coins, then shot a lit cigarette right out of his mouth. After that she went to work on small cardboard targets with her picture on one side and a target shaped like a heart on the other. Plugged right dead center every one and then tossed them up into the crowd. Her finale was to shoot clay pipes, small bottles and lit candles over her shoulder while looking through a hand mirror. The people yelled themselves hoarse.
I was impressed too, but not Benny. He had an underside for everyone.
“Penny-pinching damn Jew, is that one,” he commented sourly.
Annie Oakley? Even though they say her real name was Moses, you only had to look at her to know she wasn’t a Jewish person. Benny saw Jews everywhere, except where they were.
I pulled at Benny’s sleeve and gave the shaking five-finger sign for why. It was like walking uphill, but I was winning Benny over one sign at a time.
“Ya wanna run to take somethin for her or that Frank Butler, who she’s always calling Jimmy. And don’t be askin why she calls him Jimmy. Yeah, ya run to take somethin and ya’ll see what I’m sayin about that. One day she asks me to fetch her some liniment, which I does and brings it back damn quick too. Ya know what she give me? Five cents is what she gives me! Shit yes! Five rotten cents! Why even that damn stupid giant pays me ten cents. And if’n it was Cody, it’d be fifty cents. And those two havin their own special compartment on the train and gettin paid by the damn yard. She’s only workin twenty minutes a damn day. And another thing . . .”
Benny might have been right about Annie being close with her money, but just the same she was mighty popular with the Show people, especially the Indians.
“Yes,” said Charlie proudly. “Sitting Bull made her his daughter because of her great power with the rifle and her big heart.”
We had something in common then, Annie Oakley and I, if only she knew it.
I had seen her around the showgrounds and getting on and off the train but she never gave me a look. I made out as how she wasn’t high and mighty or anything like that, any more than Buffalo Bill was, it was just that there were so many kids underfoot all the time at the Wild West, so many people working, that one more face didn’t stand out terribly much from the crowd.
“It was because of her,” Charlie went on, “that Sitting Bull joined up with Pahaska when he did. Now, of course, he is dead and Pahaska again has his horse.”
He was off once more, repeating the story of Sitting Bull’s murder, which sparked the others and meant I had to sit through yet more tales about the Ghost Dance and the killings at Wounded Knee Creek.
“General Miles he called for Pahaska to come to Standing Rock to talk to Sitting Bull. He came, but was stopped by other soldiers and the agent. Then they rubbed out Sitting Bull and Pahaska went away back to the Wild West. Little Sure Shot wept when she heard that her father had been rubbed out.”
She may have cried, but a few days later I met Annie Oakley in person and one thing was certain, she still had all ten of her fingers.
It was after breakfast. A tall man with a black mustache and too-close-together blue eyes, who I recognized right away as Frank Butler, came up to me and asked if I’d mind taking a pot of coffee and some milk over to his and his wife’s tent. Pot in one hand, milk jug in the other, I followed him across the showground, my stomach turning over, exhilarated and dead keen to meet Annie Oakley. She and I were almost related, what with us both being adopted by the Sioux, even if I was a Oglala and she a Hunkpapa.
The tent was smaller, but like Buffalo Bill’s it had a carpet and proper furniture. Rifles were stacked to one side and a painting of Annie Oakley on a horse stood against the back. The lady herself was sitting just inside at a small wooden table sewing at something.
“Well, Little Girl,” Frank Butler said, “look what I got for us over at the mess tent.”
She smiled sweetly at me with the same smile she let loose on the arena crowd. Up close she looked older, thin nets of wrinkles around her eyes and line creases at her neck. Not so old as Buffalo Bill, but not like on her posters either.
“Thank you very much, Jimmy. You can put that down just here, boy. Jimmy, pass me the sewing box please.”
Here was my chance. I took a couple of steps towards her and made the three signs for good morning.
Sunrise, day, and good.
She put down her sewing and looked at me blankly.
“What’s the matter with this boy, Jimmy?” she asked with some alarm.
She didn’t sign, I could see that right away. I smiled, leaned toward her, pointed to my throat and shook my head.
“Jimmy!”
“Oh, sure,” he said, dug into his pocket and handed me a nickel.
14
I might have stayed safe behind those scenes at the Wild West and might still be there if not for Benny December and his blasted plans for his future. It all began with a bottle of gin.
“Listen, Mouse, there ain’t no trouble with this. I ain’t askin you to peddle it to yer damn Injuns, am I? Just take this here bottle over to Billy Baker like we done before. I promised it for near an ho
ur back and he ain’t real pleased to be kept waitin on it. Don’t you forget the money neither. Why? Because I got other business to be gettin on with right now is why. Don’t ya be givin me that cow-eyed look or wavin yer hands. Go on!”
It was gloomy dark on the showgrounds, only the watch lanterns lit. Spooky too, with soft voices, sometimes laughter, coming up as I passed each tent and then fading out again, like nimbly waves on the beach. I didn’t want to be sneaking around in the dark or going anywhere near Billy Baker, whose overripe-melon head and thick face even in the full daylight scared me white. I guess right then I must have been more scared of Benny.
I was closing on Billy’s tent. I thought I could make out his enormous shadow flickering against the canvas. Sweat was dripping down my sides with the not wanting to be there. I was just drawing a deep breath when a hand dropped hard on my shoulder and spun me clean around. I closed my eyes. It had to be Billy Baker for sure, bigger than a mountain and twitching mad for his bottle.
“What the hell ya playin at!”
I opened my eyes. It was one of the watchmen. Relieved, I smiled, showed him the bottle and pointed to Billy’s tent.
“Speak up, lad! Come on . . .”
He shined his light into my face.
“Oh, it’s you, the Injun’s dumb coffee boy.”
I nodded and pointed to the tent with the bottle.
“Ya what? That for the big fella? Let me see that . . . Jesus and Mary! You tryin’ to murder him? Better if ya sell it to the Injuns.”
He snatched the bottle.
Hanging from my own ear, pinched tight in the watchman’s hand, my feet scrabbling for the ground, I was hauled across to a nearby tent.
“Mr. Barnum?” he called.
“What is it?” came the reply from inside.
“Got us a sneak-around nightflyer out here.”
“Come on then, bring it in.”
The watchman pulled back the flap and pushed me inside. My ear burned something awful.
There sat Henry Barnum, his sideburns puffed out fierce in the half-light thrown from the lantern. He was behind a card table with papers spread out in front of him, a half-empty whisky bottle and a full glass. He was tipped back in his chair, a thin cigar in one hand.
“OK, Marcus, what’s the . . . You!” he growled, letting his chair crash forward. “Suffering Judas! What’s he been doing?”
“Trying to sell gin to Bill Baker is all.”
“What? Bill Baker? You off your stupid head, boy? Are you? He ain’t supposed to drink liquor. Everybody knows that! Pure blue-murdering poison what with him with his goddamned crusty giant’s liver!”
He banged his hand on the table.
“God damn it to hell! One of the best draws we got too. Think it’s easy finding a giant like that? Do you? You got yourself in real big trouble now. That goddamned nail-eyed chief ain’t going to fix this one for you, nor Cody neither. No sir, they sure ain’t. This is Mr. Bailey’s part of the show, not Cody’s. We make the rules here and we enforce them too. Besides Cody might reckon as how if you’re selling gin to the giant it’s you been getting firewater to his damn precious Indians as well. And he sure as tomorrow don’t like that, does he, Marcus?”
“No sir, Mr. Bailey, he sure don’t like that.”
“You’re off the grounds, boy. Like you should have been before now. First thing in the morning. Marcus, you take him back to where he sleeps at and tell that idiot J. J. Ryan if he don’t do his job right and keep this boy where I can find him in the morning he’ll be joining him out on the goddamned road.”
I sobbed all the way back to the tipis. Five minutes and everything had been ruined. Just when I was beginning to figure things out and getting so that I felt steady.
“You’re gonna do for me, ain’t ya, boy?” complained J. J. Ryan. “Shit and garters, ya are. Buried eight foot down in the shit and me without no shovel!”
He called Charlie Pinto Face and told him what had happened.
“Sunset Buffalo Dreamer will be shamed,” is all Charlie said.
I wrote down that I hadn’t sold any drink to the Indians and that anyway Benny had made me take the gin to Billy Baker’s tent.
“A man must take the blame for what he does,” he said sternly.
I didn’t know it was bad, I signed.
Charlie wasn’t moved. Neither was Sunset Buffalo Dreamer.
“I make you my vision son,” he said. “You repay this by selling the demon firewater which destroys my people?”
I never sold firewater to the Indians, I signed.
Sunset Buffalo Dreamer wouldn’t look at me, only Charlie.
“I have not seen my vision clearly. Bent Nose was right. There must be another way to see my vision. This is not the newborn buffalo calf I saw. No, nothing but old man’s folly. Wanting it to be true. He is just a white boy. He must go back to his people.”
He turned his back on me and walked off like I had never happened. He even took away my name.
It wasn’t fair at all! I hadn’t done anything wrong. It was Benny. Why should I lose another father and another name? Why should I be banished from the Wild West for making one single, stupid mistake? I cried myself to sleep among the buffalo robes.
15
“You’ve let me down bad. You’ve let Sunset Buffalo Dreamer down even worse. I guess you know that, doncha?”
It was morning and I was on trial. Buffalo Bill sat behind his desk wearing his dark city-banker clothes. His right hand was bandaged and he kept rubbing at his eyes with his left. He looked worn down. Barnum stood next to me. Nate Salsbury and Major Burke were there too, sitting as far apart as they could. Mike Furlong had been called in as well. He was hovering nervously by the entrance to the tent, winding and unwinding his long legs.
“I’d like to throw you out myself,” Barnum had told me. “But I reckon as how it was Colonel Cody that took you on, it better be him that throws you out, or at least sees that you get put somewheres they’ll be able to take care of you proper like. Bunch a damn Indians and a white boy!”
Sunset Buffalo Dreamer had refused to say anything that morning when I left with Barnum. His face was stone, eyes like dull black beads. Charlie was not so unbending.
“He is very sad,” he explained, when we stood outside, “but he will not show his sadness.”
He had patted me on the shoulder and smiled.
“You are a white boy. You are better with your own people. An old man like Sunset Buffalo Dreamer, well . . .”
He shrugged.
None of the other Indians were there to say goodbye. Maybe they didn’t want to add to Sunset Buffalo Dreamer’s shame.
Walk with the Great Mystery, Charlie Pinto Face signed.
I walked with Henry Barnum.
“Mr. Barnum here says you been selling liquor over at his sideshow tents. Is that right?”
I nodded.
“I see. Right. Where’d you get it at? Write it down, boy, on this paper. Go on, don’t be afraid.”
He pushed a piece of paper across the desk, handed me a pencil.
In the town, I wrote.
“Arrange this all by yourself?” asked Salsbury, stepping up close to look over Buffalo Bill’s shoulder. “Ain’t no one helping you?”
No, I wrote.
I didn’t see much point in giving them Benny’s name. When I’d tried that with Charlie I just got myself in deeper. Besides Benny would have murdered me if I got him in trouble with the Colonel.
“All by yourself?” asked Salsbury. “That don’t figure, Will. Kid young as him gotta be a runner for someone.”
“Well, I don’t know, Nate. I was making my own way younger than him. Doing a man’s work then, I was. I remember once when . . .”
“Not the same at all,” Salsbury replied, cutting him off.
&n
bsp; “No, I guess you’re right,” said the Colonel slow and deliberate, his eyes focused somewheres else.
“It were that Devil Boy, Colonel Cody!” Mike shouted suddenly, like the real Devil was coming up right behind him with his red-hot pitchfork. “That there Devil Boy put him up to it! I know it like I know the Lord. It were him!”
“What?” said the Colonel, looking up in alarm.
“The Devil!” repeated Mike, stumbling sideways and catching himself by grabbing a tent pole.
Mike swung there for a moment, the canvas shaking and flapping.
“Who the hell is that?” asked the Colonel.
“Mike Furlong, sir,” Mike said. “Waiter at Table Number Seven.”
“The Devil? What the hell does that . . . ?”
“I was just tryin to explain, how that . . .”
“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Nate Salsbury, throwing up his hands. “Will, please! And you,” he said turning to Mike, “just shutup with that damned nonsense!”
“You gotta put him off the grounds, Colonel,” insisted Barnum. “Why, he coulda killed my giant selling him that rotgut.”
“Your giant?”
“Please, Colonel Cody,” Mike implored. “If you would just . . .”
“Shutup!” yelled Nate Salsbury, his face going red.
Barnum raised his voice.
“Billy Baker, the Boy Giant. You know, Colonel. I told you.”
Mike fell silent and began corkscrewing his legs again.
“Sure, sure,” said Cody wearily, “Billy Baker the Boy Giant. Course.”
I didn’t know, I wrote on the paper.
Salsbury bent to read.
“Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” he snapped at me. “Like I said before Will, the Show’s no place for a kid like this.”
