by Pete Dexter
One of the upstairs girls had tried to'fuck him once. Ten o'clock in the morning. He had run out of her room and never gone near her again.
He started his own drinking in the afternoon, and it changed him. It caused him to think about Phatty Thompson—who had gone back to Cheyenne without him in April—and it turned him ugly, to think he'd been left behind. He talked when he turned ugly to those that would talk to him, which was mostly tourists, and then, as he drank, it changed again, and he quit thinking about getting left behind, and began to think about the one that did the leaving.
He'd quit talking then, his head would start to sweat, and he would imagine himself cutting Phatty Thompson into pieces and feeding them to cats. And before long it wasn't only Phatty Thompson. The upstairs girls who paid him to run errands, the slant-eyes, the sheriff, all the tony bartenders that wouldn't advance him the price of a drink.
Jack McCall was a weak-looking man, but nobody teased him after his head begun to sweat. He was the kind that went soft-brained, and you either found them one morning sitting in the mud quacking, or they poured lamp oil all over the floor and set a hotel on fire.
Jack McCall would drink until his money was gone and then walk up the hill to his cabin and lie in his blanket on the floor, and after a while he could remember the night at Spring Creek when Phatty and the miners had told him they had never saw such a natural man with cats.
When he had got himself back to Spring Creek, he could let himself sleep. He did not believe in going under with the black thoughts still in charge. They grew in the night when he did.
Wednesday morning when Charley woke, Bill was sitting on his stump with Pink Buford's bulldog in his lap. The dog was torn on both legs and there was a piece of his nose that hung down from the rest, hinged there by a little bit of skin. "I don't know why Pink wants to fight this dog," Bill said.
Charley straightened his legs, which weren't too bad that day. "It's enough of that in this place without bringing old Apocalypse into it too," Bill said. "It isn't like there's nothing else to do . . ." The dog heard his name and began to wash Bill's throat with his tongue. Bill held still, looking serene.
"Maybe it's his nature to fight," Charley said. "Maybe he'd kill chickens if Pink didn't let him fight."
Bill pushed the dog back to look him in the face. "He might at that. He might have two natures that don't know each other is there." Bill shrugged. "At least that way, he doesn't need to go around all the time forgiving himself."
Charley went into the back of the wagon and got his razor and soap and towel. When he started up the street for the bathhouse, Bill came with him. "I could use a little soak," he said.
The soft-brain was sitting on a chair outside the bathhouse. Not whittling or whistling or watching the street, just sitting. He didn't look at Bill or Charley until they spoke. "Hot baths," Charley said.
The soft-brain said, "Hot's an extra dime." Charley expected he had forgot who he was. The soft-brain heated buckets of water, and in a little while Bill and Charley were both sitting in tubs. Somehow, Bill produced a bottle of pink gin. Charley found a copy of the Black Hills Pioneer on the floor next to him and noticed the motto written across the top. "Everything published on our own authority may be strictly relied on."
He looked through the pages. There was a story about a fish tournament in Philadelphia, one about foreign travel entitled "Inland Africa Is a Marvelous Land," and a discussion of the dangers and advantages of telephone poles. He read "Inland Africa" to Bill, but went through the rest without much interest until he got to a first-person account by Mr. A. P. Woodward, "How It Feels to Be Scalped."
Mr. Woodward, formerly of Boston, now of Custer, had accompanied Mr. Herman Ganzo of Milwaukee on a trip into the Valley of Hat Creek, seventy miles north of Fort Laramie, and there encountered Indians.
"I felt a sharp, stinging pain in my left shoulder and left leg," he wrote, "and I fell. One of them put a knee in my back while another hit me a clip with a club or a butt of a gun.
"My hair was held tight. I felt a hot, red hot, stinging sort of pain all around the top of my head, as though the hair were torn out.
"Thirteen men got up just in time to keep the red devils from finishing their work. But I came to again and my scalp was laid back again. It was only half torn off as you will see, and is growing again nicely."
Charley cringed reading that, more than if he'd run into A. P. Woodward and heard it firsthand. For Charley, reading put things into his own voice.
He looked at a story about a new gun they had out in California that spit seventy rounds in four seconds. They called it the "Peace Conservator." They were always doing some damn thing in California that nobody had thought out the consequences.
The Bottle Fiend took a bucket of water off the stove and poured half of it into the tub between Charley's knees. The other half went into Bill's tub. Bill was reclined and looking at the ceiling, and never as much as flinched. Charley wondered if his peeder was damaged enough by the blood disease, he didn't care what else happened to it. Charley had almost read him "How It Feels to Be Scalped," but Bill was too far away and serious.
Charley turned the page of the newspaper and there was a report on the suicide of Mons Jensen, a part-time farmer, part-time miner who lived with his wife and boy on twenty acres just east of town.
Mons Jensen had written his note early in the morning, while the boy and the woman were out doing chores. It said, "I wish what is left of me to be burned, and what will not burn I want buried right on the spot." He nailed that to the door of his cabin, and then went outside and built a pile of logs around one of the smaller trees in the yard.
Charley looked up then, and noticed the Bottle Fiend was watching him. "What's in them pages?" he said.
"News," Charley said. "What's happened lately."
"Does it tell what's next?"
Charley said, "Nobody knows what's next."
"Madame Moustache does," the Bottle Fiend said. Charley went back to his paper. The Bottle Fiend said, "Sometimes me, too." Charley looked up again, waiting, but that seemed to be all the soft-brain was going to say. A minute after he looked back at the paper, though, the soft-brain said, "Are you going to tell me what it says in there, or I got to read it myself?"
"There are some things that don't do you any service to hear them," Charley said. "It just gives you bad ideas . . ."
The Bottle Fiend nodded, as if he understood that, and sat down on the bench and watched Charley read. Mons Jensen had poured kerosene and gunpowder on the logs. Then he'd harnessed a span of horses so his boy could come to town, and he'd carried a crock of butter from the cellar for his wife to sell at Farnum's.
Then he'd gone back to the tree and chained himself there by his leg, and then he'd dropped his match. Charley went back and read the note again. "I wish what is left of me to be burned, and what will not burn I want buried right on the spot."
Charley read the words and heard them in his own voice. He pictured the events again, trying to keep the hand from dropping the match. He couldn't make it come out that way, even in his own head. Once Mons Jensen got the chain around his leg, there wasn't a thing that could stop the match from dropping. He imagined that was the way it had happened too, that there was a place the farmer couldn't turn back even if he wanted to. Charley put the paper down to get the scene out of his head. Reading Was personal to him; he always found himself in the words. Sometimes that was good, and sometimes it wasn't. Some of the letters Bill wrote, for instance, were killers.
He closed his eyes and after a while Bill began to talk. "I never been interested in things after I done them," he said. "The past is the past, but there is something now that I regret like I was about to do it."
Charley did not like the way that sounded. He opened his eyes and saw Bill was still staring at the ceiling. He always looked up when he talked about love.
"It's the matter of Agnes Lake," Bill said. "I remember the day I first put my eyes on her, walking
the high wire in Cheyenne, the look on her face while she was up there, feeling every little stir in the air. You have to be perfect for that, there can't be a bad thing inside you to get in the way ... I never saw such legs, more muscle than my own . . ."
Charley had seen Agnes's legs, and Bill was right. They were springy, too. She could jump from the floor to the back of a horse without warning. She could jump backwards, over herself, grabbing her knees, and land on the same spot she left. Charley had seen her do these things and thought of his own legs, and how useless they were by comparison.
"She was the most perfect sight I ever saw," Bill said. "That day on the high wire. I decided on the spot it was Agnes Lake and Wild Bill. I don't know if I mentioned it, but there was a while when I was damn near a perfect sight myself."
When Charley looked, Bill was smiling at him. Charley didn't want to comment on the perfection of Agnes Lake, who was five years older than Bill after the circus makeup came off. Charley liked his perfection younger and softer.
"Of course," Bill was saying, "there's no such thing as perfect. And even if there was, it doesn't mean that one perfect thing ought to have another one . . ."
While they let that settle, the Bottle Fiend brought Charley a new newspaper. "Her thoughts about me weren't necessarily true," Bill said. "She believed I was as good as she was because I was as famous. She still doesn't know me through and through."
"Maybe you don't know her through and through either," Charley said.
Bill sat up in his tub. "Like what?" he said.
"I don't know," Charley said. "But there's a lot goes into getting this old that doesn't necessarily show." He felt himself getting somewhere he didn't belong, but didn't know how to get out. Bill was still looking at him. Charley said, "I meant she's been as many places as you or me, she can't of missed the whole world."
Bill took another drink from the bottle and looked back at the ceiling. "She never saw things the way other people did," he said. "There's something innocent in her, she doesn't see anybody's motives."
"What motives were yours?" Charley said.
"None," he said. He looked back at the ceiling. "All I ever wanted from her, from the day I saw her walking across the wire in Cheyenne, was to be included, and be in the back of her mind when she went up on the wire."
"Well," Charley said, "that's what you got."
Bill shook his head. "I did something to her," he said. "That was the perfectest sight I ever saw, and I took it, and now I changed it."
"How do you know?" Charley said. "She's in St. Louis."
It was quiet in the room for a little while. "I know it," Bill said, "because I did the same thing to myself."
Charley said, "There's a sawbones named Wedelstaedt I heard of, a specialist in diseases of passion."
"That's all he does?" Bill said.
"That and care for the Chinese," Charley said. "He's the only one that will set foot in Chinatown." Bill thought about it, and changed moods.
"I never saw how Chinese were worse than anybody else," Bill said. "Maybe a little jumpier."
Charley was grateful to be off the subject of Agnes Lake. "They got a peculiar language," he said. "I listened to it on the trip out here, and couldn't pick up as much as 'fornicate' and 'eat.'"
"I heard they can't file claims, that the sheriff has said they can't."
"A fact," Charley said. "Sheriff Seth Bullock, the miner's friend."
Bill took another drink of the gin. "Do you believe one sawbones is different from another?"
"It has to be," Charley said.
In a while Bill said, "What does a blood disease do? To a woman, I mean."
"I heard they don't notice," Charley said.
Bill fitted his head back into the wall of the tub and looked at the ceiling. Charley looked through the paper the Bottle Fiend had brought him, and saw that Mrs. Langrishe had announced monthly meetings of the Deadwood Social Club, in which members could partake of the waltz, polka, schottische, or quadrille.
Charley had been a long time without a female, and the image of the sparks falling into Mrs. Langrishe's blouse jumped on him like something out of a tree. It hung all over him, right through an editorial that said, "The hostile Sioux should be exterminated, and the white men engaged in trading ammunition to them should be hung wherever found." And another one concerning the spreading of stories about murderous encounters with the Indians. "We wish to say that a man cannot be guilty of anything more craven and contemptible than to willfully and deliberately put out stories of Indian massacres among the friends of the reported victims, and we would advise that fellow 'Just came in from the scene of the massacre' to keep himself shady."
Charley was in agreement with that, but he was more in agreement with Mrs. Langrishe's chest. Then he turned the page and saw an article entitled "The Cremation of Baron Van Palm." When he saw what it was, he read it out loud. Disposal of the deceased was one of Bill's constant interests. It wasn't morbidity. Bill believed he was different and wanted to be treated that way, in life and beyond.
"'The Cremation of Baron Van Palm"' Charley said. "Listen to this."
"Who?"
"Baron Van Palm."
"Who is that?"
Charley skimmed the article and shook his head. "It doesn't matter. It starts at eight-twenty-seven, when they inserted his body into the oven." Bill put the bottle against his lips again, but slower.
"Eight-forty-five" Charley read, "vapor cleared and body was seen plainly against the red background of the retort. Flue mouth white hot and there seemed to be a radiant crown floating over the old man's bead."
"Well, he was old," Bill said. "That's good."
Charley continued reading. "A sheet enfolds the corpse, the alum experiment being a perfect success in preserving elements of decency."
Bill stopped him again. "What's that? An alum experiment?"
"It's a sheet for preserving the elements of decency," Charley said, and picked it back up at "elements of decency."
"Nine-fifteen; sheet charred at the bead, and stood up black and ragged. The body's left hand raises and points upward, as if the dead were ascending from the remains. At this point, the eye-bole was opened to test for oxygen."
"At nine-twenty-five, the band fell again. Dr. Otterson, in charge of the experiment, notes a glorious rose-colored light about the remains, and there is a faint mint odor through the eye-bole."
"Mint?"
"Mint," Charley said. "It's a damn sight better-sounding than worm food, isn't it?"
"It sounds better than life," Bill said.
"Ten-twenty-five," Charley read. "Feet incandescent and semitranspar-ent. Body surrounded by gold mist. . ."
"Then what?" Bill said.
"That's the end of it," Charley said. He turned the page to make sure. "Right after that it says, "reported by Colonel Olcott.'"
Bill said, "Did you notice that everybody we met in this place is a colonel or a major or a professor?"
"Or a captain," Charley said, meaning Jack Crawford.
The Bottle Fiend pulled another bucket of water off the stove and divided it between Bill and Charley. "I never tried to burn myself," he said. "I just et poison eggs and shot myself in the head. And I tried to hang."
"It isn't dignified to burn yourself," Charley said. "People talk bad about you afterwards. This story in the paper, the deceased was already dead, and it was the family and friends that did it." Charley had a vision of the soft-brain chaining himself to a tree and dropping a match in a pile of wood, like Mons Jensen.
Bill had closed his eyes to concentrate on the heat in the water. The Bottle Fiend was nodding, as if he was thinking over what Charley said on burning, but when he spoke again, it was as if they were still talking about newspapers.
"I know something's going to happen next," he said. "The newspaper don't know it, but I do."
Charley said, "Nobody can predict the future."
"I know something's going to happen," the soft-brain said. C
harley waited and finally the soft-brain told him. "It's somebody wants to shoot Bill."
Charley was looking at Bill, and he never opened his eyes. He did smile. "Who told you?" Charley said.
"A man with little bottles," the soft-brain said. "He give me the little bottles and then took them away when I cut myself. He give me a gun too, and said to shoot Wild Bill when he was sitting in the bath. A little-bitty gun, little-bitty bottles. I know who he meant."
Bill had stopped smiling and opened his eyes. He was drunk and tired, but he could always put it off to do what needed to be done. "What was this man's name?" Bill said.
The Bottle Fiend shrugged. "I don't know names," he said.
"Where was he?"
The Bottle Fiend looked at the ceiling. "In a room," he said after a while. "There was little bottles, and he had a knife. He give me the bottles, fair and square, and then took them back when I got cut."
"Where?" Bill said.
"My finger," he said, and held it up. It was wrapped in a piece of dirty cotton.
Bill said, "Will you do something for me, sir?" The soft-brain nodded. "When you see the man again, you tell him Wild Bill said there's about to be a cheap funeral in Dead wood."
The Bottle Fiend looked at the ceiling again, maybe picturing it.
Bill settled back against the tub and closed his eyes. That fast, he was drunk again.
"You know," Bill said after a while, "we got to study cremation. That sounds like the ticket." He took another drink of the gin, and the Bottle Fiend sat quietly and watched them.
Once, maybe twenty minutes later, he said, "I don't remember what you said, about the man with little bottles."
"Don't concern yourself," Bill said. "I'll get you some bottles. It's no consequence at all."
The old man's hands hurt him at night and kept him from sleeping much, but even so, the first thing he heard every morning was the boy, banging around his camp in the dawn light, making breakfast. He wondered how a person made that much clatter lighting a fire.
