Deadwood

by Pete Dexter

  He got his toilet kit from the front of the wagon—soap and razor, bicarbonate of soda, and a mirror—and walked up the street to the bathhouse. The place was built of wood and leaned downhill, to the north, at a subtle angle that would make you look twice to see if the roof was tilted or you were. A man in rags and a black Eastern hat was sitting on a stool outside, beside a burlap bag he had gathered and tied at the top. There was something wrong with his neck, the way he held his head. "Clean water is fifteen cents," he said. "Hot water is another dime, but there ain't none today."

  Charley saw he was soft-brained right away. "It's a nice business you got here," Charley said, looking around.

  The man shrugged. "The man that built it is a doctor," he said. "Dr. O. E. Sick. He give it to me on the promise I'd quit my suicides."

  Charley nodded politely, as if that was the way they did business everywhere. "That was a smart thing, to take it," he said.

  The man shrugged. "Ain't nobody uses it but whores," he said.

  "Dr. Sick said he didn't have time to be overlooking the bathing habits of upstairs girls, he was too busy cleaning up their mischief. It didn't make him no money anyway. Did you say clean water?"

  The building was about twenty feet square, with a bathtub in each corner. There was a stove in the middle. Two of the tubs were half full. The water was dark, the surfaces speckled with insects. Some were swimmers and some were floaters. "Clean water," Charley said.

  "Hot's an extra dime," the man said, "but there ain't any." He took two buckets out the back door and filled them in the White-wood Creek, then emptied them into the tub nearest the front door. He repeated that until the water was a foot from the lip of the tub. Charley got out of his pants and slipped in. It took his breath. The man stood at the door, smiling. "Water this cold is supposed to be ice," Charley said.

  The man went out the door and came back in with his sack. He stayed in one spot and watched while Charley scrubbed himself with soap. The soap was hard and grainy; it felt like sand against his skin. Charley foresaw the invention of a more agreeable soap, and there wouldn't be room in the bathhouses for all the customers. "What you got in your sack?" he said.

  "My bottles," the man said. "I got more at home. Eleven hundred and sixteen, and eight today."

  "Well," Charley said, "you got a business and a hobby."

  "Doc Howe wouldn't work on no suicides," the soft-brain said. "He says ain't nobody going to make deliberate work for him, so Dr. Sick always had to come . . ."

  "I meant the bottles," Charley said. "Suicide's no hobby."

  The man gave him a soft-brained grin and shrugged. "Whenever I thought of it, I did it," he said. "I don't know how many times." Charley settled into the tub. He liked a man that knew he had 1116 bottles at home, but didn't know how many times he'd attempted suicide. "Sometimes I et poison eggs," the soft-brain said, "sometimes I put morphine in me, once I tried to hang myself." He pulled the collar of his shirt away to show Charley the disfigurement.

  "I already seen," he said. Charley did not like to look at scars or goiters or club feet. He thought of his wife's body then, white and slender, not a mark on it. She liked to touch the places on his legs where the bullets had gone in, he never understood that. His right leg, the wound was like half a star, the color of ketchup, about three inches below the hip. His brother Steve had shot him and took the ball out himself. He used Charley's hunting knife, and every time Charley had moved, Steve said he was sorry.

  The other leg, the ball had gone in from behind, farther down than Steve's. It was a Ute Indian who did that while they were climbing a tree outside a bear den. It went in the back and came out the top, which did not leave as clear a reminder as Steve's surgery. It was just two dents, one black and one the same red color as the half star. He didn't hold it against the Utes, or even that Ute, but he never went up a tree ahead of an Indian again.

  Matilda Nash was attracted to those spots from the time she was fourteen, when she first saw them. She would touch his scars, and his legs and his testicles, as if she knew what it felt like to be a man. At first when she touched him, it didn't seem possible that she was only fourteen years old.

  On the other hand, sometimes she would take his peeder in her small, white hands and talk to it, and Charley would promise himself to marry her because if he didn't, he was a child molester. She would encircle the head with one hand and squeeze, and then, with her finger, work the opening in it up and down like a little mouth. She called it "Baby Chipper," and invented it stories.

  She talked with Charley's peeder from the first time they undressed, through most of their wedding night, and all the nights after. Sometimes the stories were exciting to the imagination. She talked with his peeder right up until the time Bill came through Empire, a month late for the wedding, and walked into their bedroom drunk one night by accident.

  He'd never said a word about what he saw or heard, but she never talked to Charley's peeder again. Charley thought she might pick the stories back up again after Bill was gone, but it never happened.

  The world was not without make-believe long, however. A few months later, there was an eyewitness story in Harper's Weekly of how Bill had wiped out all ten of the M'Kandass Gang, and after that, everything he did got immortalized. If he ate pork, he shot the pig at high noon in the street. He had been famous before, but after Harpers Weekly the reporters came out from San Francisco and New York and Boston and Philadelphia. Bill saw where it was leading, and let it take him along.

  He adjusted to being famous. He encouraged the stories; he helped make some of them up. It led to more reporters, and women, and now and then a fight, which was no great inconvenience. There was something in him that turned cold in a fight, and he would kill what was in front of him without a thought, and walk away from it afterwards like it wasn't his business. It was a kind of purity.

  He was the best pistol shot Charley ever saw, and the only shootist there was who would fight with his hands. There was no question God had given him uncommon gifts, and he went where they took him.

  Charley's gift was harder to put your finger on. When they were alone, it didn't seem like a hair's difference between them, but somehow in public Bill's cork floated one way and Charley's floated another. People told things to Charley. He thought it might have been because he was short. A man who doesn't mind being short is everybody's friend.

  This soft-brain, for instance, standing in the door telling him about his suicides while Charley sat in ice water. "Poison eggs is tumble," he said. "It's better to hang than to eat poison eggs."

  Charley ducked his head under the water and came up with his hair pressed all around his face. He worked the soap into his head, feeling for ticks and anything else that might of crawled in there since he'd been in Deadwood.

  "How come a good man like yourself would want to cash in ahead of schedule?" Charley said.

  "When I thought of it, I never thought that far," he said. "Just to the doing part. A lot of others done it since I been here. A man hung himself and set a fire underneath, so there wouldn't be no remains for this world." The soft-brain looked at Charley. "I never did that," he said. "I wouldn't want to do nothing strange for people to talk about afterwards. I want them to talk about the Bottle Man right."

  Charley made a note to keep Malcolm away from the bathhouse. He ducked his head under the water again, to rinse the soap out of his hair, and climbed out of the tub. The soft-brain handed him his pants. "I stopped," he said. "Dr. Sick give me this business to make me promise. That's how I got into this career."

  Charley shaved in the tub water, brushed his hair, and scrubbed his teeth with bicarbonate of soda. He rubbed a little of that under his arms too, and then put on a clean shirt. He gave the soft-brain a dollar. "Hot water tomorrow," he said.

  The Bottle Man's head went even farther off center, to see if he was teasing. "You comin' back tomorrow?"

  "Every day," Charley said.

  The soft-brain said, "That's good, I
like you to come here." Which was the direction of Charley Utter's talent.

  When Charley got back to camp, Bill was sitting bare-chested on a tree stump, writing a letter. The Methodist was still at it in the street, saying the same things to a different flock. Bill had put his saddle on the ground in front of him, and was using that to hold his stationery. His nose was about an inch over the pencil. Charley marveled at the angles his body went. The boy was still asleep, and now that Charley was clean he could smell the liquor on both of them.

  Charley climbed into the wagon to straighten his bed, and when he came out Bill handed him the letter. Bill always liked to have Charley check his letters because he believed they would end up famous after he was dead. Bill never wanted to be embarrassed, especially after he was dead and couldn't right it. He had a beautiful penmanship, Charley thought, maybe what a doctor's hand would look like.

  My own darling Wife Agnes

  I have but a few moments left before this letter Starts

  I never was as well in my life but you would laugh to see me now

  Just got in from Prospecting will go a way again to morrow will

  write In the morning but good newse

  My friend will take this to Cheyenne if he lives I don't expect to

  hear from you but it is all the same

  I no my Agnes and only live to love bur never mind Pet we will

  have a home yet then we will be so happy

  I am all most shure I will do well hear

  The man is buring me Good by Dear Wife love to Emma.

  J.B.Hickok

  "Wild Bill"

  Bill watched Charley while he read it. "How does it sound?" he said.

  "Prospecting?" Charley said.

  Bill shrugged. "You got to put down something, that's what a letter is. I mean the tone. Is the tone true?"

  Charley gave it back to him. "You know Agnes's dispositions," he said. "How do you talk to her?"

  "What's that matter?"

  "The way to write letters to somebody," Charley said, "is the way you talk."

  Bill was embarrassed. "What kind of sweethearts do you send Matilda?" he said. "I'd like to see one of those letters."

  "I don't put down anything personal," he said. "I write business letters. Everything I ever said to Matilda she took three different ways, and wondered what did I mean by each of them. I don't say anything I don't have to, and I sure as Jesus don't put it down on paper. There is such a thing as looking for trouble."

  Bill looked at the paper in his hand. Charley said, "Of course, I've been married a long time."

  Bill said, "Me and Agnes never started out from the same place. That makes it harder. I can't live like a paper-collar in St. Louis the rest of my life, and I can't bring her here. She isn't used to a place like this."

  In the street, the Methodist was asking God for protection. Bill and Charley listened to him a few minutes. The letter to Agnes was still in Bill's hand, between them. "Did you know that preacher left his wife behind too?" Bill said. "Jack Crawford told me that. He came out here to find gold and left his wife and four babies back in the States. Sends them every cent he earns at the sawmill, and lives off what he makes standing on that packing crate."

  "A minister that works?" Charley said. He looked at the Methodist closer and noticed he was preaching with his eyes shut now. And Charley loved God for many things, among them not calling him to the ministry.

  Boone May slapped himself awake, he could have slept all morning, even with the snoring, but Jane Cannary had rolled in her sleep and come to rest with her mouth next to his ear. As she snored, she blew, and the breath in his ear felt like insects to Boone, who reached out in his sleep and slapped himself across the side of the head. The hand was cupped and caught his ear, and there was an empty, numb feeling inside there, along with a sort of ricochet noise that he associated with the sound of going deaf.

  He opened his eyes and saw calico-pattern walls. Half the tents in town had the same walls, it was the only material you could get at Farnum's until there was a new shipment. The tent was open, and he looked out to the street, thinking of how easy he could of got robbed in the night.

  He sat up at the thought, and began looking for Frank Towles's head. His guns and pants were beside him on the ground, but the bag was gone. He got his underwear on and crawled out from under his blanket. He picked up Jane's pants and then her shirt and then her boots, throwing everything out the front of the tent. Nothing.

  He didn't want to, but he pulled the cover off Jane and looked underneath that too. Her skin was pale and bruised and old. She was a big-boned girl, but fat. Spindly legs, soft-looking arms, no chest to her at all. He had never seen a woman black and blue so many different places. It looked like they'd dragged her all the way from Chicago. And she was as ripe as a live body gets.

  "Whatever you got on your mind," she said without opening her eyes, "furget it."

  He looked at her face then, a man's face. Not a man you'd want to know. Flat eyes, no lips to speak of, she had a nose similar to the outlaw Big Nose George. Boone stuck his head out of the tent and took a few breaths of fresh air.

  "It wouldn't hurt nothing," he said when he came back in, "you was to visit the bathhouse once."

  "I give it a bath once," she said, pulling the blanket back over her body, "and a Cheyenne peeder come floating out." Boone felt himself getting sick.

  "Where is Frank Towles's head?" he said. "You're the only one could of took it."

  "The buck was about twenty-two years old," she said, "handsome for that breed. He was desirious to make a papoose with Calamity Jane, and it wasn't till the last minute I changed my mind. But shit, a lady's got a right to change her mind." The Indian story was something Jane said in the morning to the ugliest ones and the youngest ones, to keep them from falling in love.

  Boone went back outside and lost what was in his stomach. It was mostly pink, from the gin and bitters. "So whatever you got in mind this morning," she said from inside the tent, "think of that redskin. It's Sunday morning and I save that for the Lord."

  When he felt better, Boone looked again, this time without moving anything. Sometimes things was easier to see if you wasn't looking as hard. And there it was. Jane sat up and spit, and the bag was where her head had been. She'd been using Frank for a pillow. He picked it up before she could lie back down. "You got no respect for personal property, Jane," he said.

  She laughed at him, and said, "Gee," and "Haw," which was the words she'd used when it was still Saturday night, to tell him which way she wanted him to move.

  Jane had arrived in Deadwood that same day from Fort Laramie, where she'd been hired to replace a bullwhacker that had come down with torpid fever on the way out from Cheyenne. He was yellow-skinned and depressed by the time Jane saw him, and she doubted if they'd got him to town in time to save him. .The cure for torpid fever was Tutt's Pills and Phosphoric Air. You took the pills in the morning and took Phosphoric Air at night, and the pain in your head went away if it was in time, and you went soft-brained if it wasn't.

  Jane was a natural nurse. The sight of a sick man brought something out in her. She knew cures for all the diseases that had cures, which worked for what, and she took the sick bullwhacker's job with a sorry heart over the circumstances.

  The man who owned the bull train had a sorry heart too. Jane had done some bullwhacking for him before. She could swear with the best, but where a man would use a whip to influence the oxen left or right, Jane would get drunk and abuse their hides. It wasn't intentional, but whenever Jane ran a wagon, the cattle came in scarred. Open scars were collecting spots for grubs, and grubs would cripple the oxen until they were only good for slaughter and hides. Not that scarred hides were worth much.

  But Jane was the only unemployed bullwhacker in Fort Laramie at the time the train came through, and the man who owned it offered her thirty dollars to take the sick driver's team the rest of the way into Deadwood. She wanted to go back to the Hills, and swo
re to stay sober.

  She had been there before with Lieutenant Colonel Richard T. Dodge's expedition in 1875, when all the boys got the summer complaint drinking bad water from Beaver Creek. Jane dressed like a soldier and rode like a soldier and panned the creeks like a soldier, until she was finally discovered by California Joe Milner, who had guided the expedition into the Hills, getting lost sometimes for two and three days at a stretch. He'd caught her doing business. She was charging the Army boys a dollar a turn, half the regular rate. Jane was never one to exploit the U.S. Army, which, to her thinking, was a damn sight more than you could say for California Joe.

  He came into her tent—there was two or three boys waiting outside—and caught her with a corporal. Recognizing her, he called Jane a notorious harlot. The corporal was trying to put all his clothes on at the same time. She lay back, her Army uniform open here and there, and congratulated California Joe for finally finding something he knew what it was.

  Lieutenant Colonel Dodge decided against sending her back because of the Indians, but they watched her every minute after that, and it was never in Jane's plans to be watched except at her invitation.

  They were five weeks in the Hills and she was glad to leave, but later she pined to return. It wasn't that the Hills had looked that good the first time—Jane never cared much for scenery—but the stories made it sound brand new.

  And it was someplace to go. She had about wore out Fort Laramie.

  There was another reason, too. She'd heard Bill was headed there. That he'd come through Fort Laramie with a wagon train not four days before the bull train. Jane had told more lies about Bill Hickok than Harper's Weekly. She had said they were pards, she had said they fought Indians together, she had said they were married. Calamity Jane Cannary felt like there was a link between them, and that when they finally met, Bill would see that they was two of a kind. She never saw herself embraced with him, she had visions of saving his life.