Deadwood

by Pete Dexter

  Captain Jack pulled the branches off, and the more Charley could see, the worse it looked. "What do you think?" Jack said to Bill.

  Bill shrugged. "Why ask him?" Charley said. "He can swim."

  Captain Jack flicked at some insects that had burrowed into the wood, and then pushed his thumb through the hull.

  "Rotted," Charley said.

  Captain Jack shook his head. "Just one spot," he said. "It's up over the water line." The sun went behind the hills in back of them, and the place began to feel dark. Captain Jack said, "If we get to it, we can be across before nightfall."

  "We got to feed the horses and mules," Charley said. "We'll stay on this side tonight." The way he said that, it wasn't up for a vote. Bill got off his horse and pulled a bottle of gin and bitters from one of the saddlebags. Charley hoped he had something brown in there too, although he'd been meaning to cut back. Matilda disapproved and was still in the back of his thoughts. He had not given up on her. There was something about sitting in a bathhouse, for instance, and seeing a rail-thin morphine addict come in and take off her clothes that made him crave his wife's company.

  On the other hand, Mrs. Langrishe had replaced her in his regular, conscious longings.

  "Did you bring anything to imbibe that isn't colored pink?" he said.

  Bill shook his head. "You ought to give pink its chance," he said. "It's a different taste on your breath the next morning, and it doesn't leak out of your skin."

  Captain Jack took the saddle off his horse and began on Bill's. "You still got to put it in your mouth," Charley said.

  "It's a first time for everything," Bill said. The mare he'd been riding had a blind right eye, and was nervous to that side. Captain Jack never noticed until he'd walked behind her and she kicked him in the leg. It wasn't much of a kick—it glanced off the side of his thigh, where it could have just as easily broken his kneecap—but it dropped him to the ground. He lay where he fell, cussing. Charley was embarrassed for him, lying on the ground crying when he wasn't hurt. Bill pretended he hadn't seen it.

  Captain Jack got up slowly, flexing the leg at the knee. He walked around to the front of the animal, giving her plenty of room, and then jerked her reins twice. He said, "You ingrate whore," and then did something more ignorant than walking behind a one-eyed horse on her blind side. He hit her in the head. He made a fist with his right hand, still holding her reins with his left, and hit her square in the forehead. The poet-scout.

  This time Captain Jack didn't cuss. He just sat down and watched his hand swell. The worst of it was the knuckle of the little finger, which puffed three times normal size. Bill took a drink of the gin and bitters and offered the bottle to Charley.

  "All right," Charley said, and he took it. "I like a drink after a good fight."

  "I think she broke my hand," Captain Jack said.

  Charley said, "In any battle, there's winners and losers."

  Captain Jack's face got damp and moldy-looking. "I never broke anything before," he said.

  Bill took the bottle back and said, "Would you look at his hand for him, Charley?"

  Charley leaned over to get close to the hand. "You still haven't broke anything," he said. He put Jack's hand on top of his, gently, palm to palm. He pointed to the knuckle and then touched the finger connected to it.

  "See this here," he said, closing his hand around the finger, "when it makes a pop sound, that means it wasn't broke."

  Charley sat still a minute, until Captain Jack began to understand what he was going to do, and then he pulled the finger straight out. There was a popping noise as the bone slipped back into the joint, and then the color returned to Jack's cheeks. He looked at Charley with new respect.

  "That's sharp," he said, moving the finger.

  Bill said, "Charley's always been medicine sharp. He learned it from Calamity Jane."

  Charley took the pink from him and had another swallow. It did have a different weight in his stomach, it felt sillier than whiskey. "It isn't anything," Charley said. "Me and all my family have been nursing horse-fighters since time begun."

  Charley woke up stiff, it always took him a few days to get used to new sleeping arrangements. Bill was still asleep, wrapped around an empty bottle, drooling. Captain Jack was propped against a tree with his needle gun across his lap.

  He jumped when Charley sat up, the gun moving toward movement. "Easy," Charley said. "Let's see how bad I feel first, then you can go ahead and shoot." Gin was a different business, all right. It settled higher up in the head than whiskey, and Charley's mouth, instead of tasting bad, like it would have from whiskey, had turned combustible. Captain Jack began to smile.

  "You don't look too good yourself, horse-fighter," Charley said.

  "I been awake all night," he said, as if that were somehow better than hung over. "I tried to wake you and Bill for your watches, but it might as well of been an opium den . . ."

  "Opium?" Charley said. "You been visiting celestials?"

  "I have never been to an opium den in my life," he said. "All I know is what I heard." Charley shrugged and stood up. He was dizzy and weak and thirsty. He took off his shirt and pants and walked naked out into the water. Captain Jack looked the other way, embarrassed.

  "Kick that legend on the ground awake," Charley said. The water was making him feel better. "Tell him he missed his watch." Captain Jack looked at Bill, but he didn't move to kick him. Charley held his breath and dropped completely under the water. It pressed in on his ears, panicking him, reminding him of being buried. He stood up and walked back to the camp and kicked Bill himself.

  Bill spoke without opening his eyes. "I have been dreaming," he said, "that old women were profaning my legend."

  "It wasn't me, Bill," Captain Jack said. Charley got back into his pants slowly. The discouragement of leg trouble was that the first things you did in the morning—dress and stand up—reminded you of it. Bill sat up and checked the bottom of the bottle for gin.

  They loaded their rope and guns into the canoe. Bill sat in back because he liked to steer, and Captain Jack sat in front. Charley was in the middle, faced backwards toward Bill, holding on to both sides. When they were halfway across, he said, "You know, you do appear legendary in this light."

  Bill stopped paddling and got that look like they were going to have to rassle. He spit between his knees. He was sweating pure gin, Charley could smell it. Charley didn't want to rassle anybody in a boat. "Of course," he said, quoting from Harper's Weekly, "it could just be the sun playing in those steely blue eyes."

  The words touched Captain Jack, who quit paddling too and turned around to stare at them. Charley noticed the canoe starting to move sideways. "Pay attention to the damn boat," he said. In his experience, anything you rode, if it was going sideways you were in some kind of trouble.

  "That had a poetical quality, what you said," Captain Jack said. "I might use that sometime."

  Charley said, "If you get me to land, you can use every word I ever said. I give it all to you now, with Bill Hickok, a legend, as my witness."

  They pulled the canoe thirty feet up the bank of the island and left it under a pine tree. Charley got out, taking his time straightening up. It killed his legs one way to be cramped and another way to be straightened. "Are you hurt?" Captain Jack said.

  Charley shook his head. "Give me a minute to put my bones back together," he said.

  "If you want, you could wait here," Captain Jack said, talking to him now like Charley was somebody's wife that tagged along and couldn't keep up.

  "I said give me a minute," Charley said. "I don't want to miss your shoot-out with the moose." They climbed a hill and found rocks where something tall had molted. They sat down in some trees a few yards away and waited. Charley stretched his legs straight out in front of him, and that stopped the worst of the pain, the part that shot up into his hips. It was a relief, like bad news that proved untrue. That's how he thought of the onset of pain, like bad news. Once you weren't afraid of it,
it came to you like reported facts.

  The moose came from the low side of the gully, a bull and two cows. Captain Jack flattened out on the ground and sighted down the barrel of the needle gun. Charley could hear his breathing change.

  The bull lifted his head into the air and stopped. "He's caught our scent," Captain Jack said. The bull looked directly at them then and stood dead still. The cows waited behind him, swinging their heads. The bull blew air through his nose and moved a few steps closer.

  The cows stayed with him, nervous now. They'd caught the scent too. The bull kept coming, looking at the opening in the trees where they were. Captain Jack pulled the hammer back on the needle gun, his hand shaking like he'd been drinking all night.

  The bull was fifty feet away and heard the hammer cock. He stopped again, looking right at them, as if it was something there he couldn't quite figure out. The ball tore open his throat and he turned around, as if he could just walk away from it, and then dropped onto the rocks. The cows stayed where they were. One of them touched him with her nose.

  "The others," Captain Jack said. Bill and Charley looked at each other, and then Charley broke cover. He picked up a rock and walked down the gully, keeping himself between Captain Jack and the cows, and when he was close enough he threw the rock and shouted. The cows turned and ran.

  The bull's head lay cockeyed on the ground; the smooth, heavy antlers wouldn't let it rest flat. His eyes were open and his heart was still beating, because the blood pumped out of the hole in his neck in spurts, but there wasn't much power driving it now. His nose was coated in dirt, but the dust in front of it didn't stir.

  "We could of took the other two," Captain Jack said. He and Bill were standing behind Charley now.

  "Some hunt," Charley said. He said it to Bill; there wasn't anything he wanted to say to Captain Jack. Bill stared at the animal and then closed his eyes, like he was praying. Captain Jack went back to the trees for the ropes. "Some hunt," Charley said again.

  "It's nothing but a sad-nosed horse," Bill said. "Not worth the case you're building. The circumstances don't matter, he ended up the same as a thousand others."

  "It doesn't matter to him," Charley said, "but if we left the etiquette of it up to the animals, they'd probably just as soon we did something else in the first place."

  Captain Jack tied a rope around the bull's neck, just behind the antlers, then climbed to the top of the gully, playing the rope out as he went. He walked behind a pine tree, making a pulley, and then came back down the gully to Bill and Charley.

  "Once we get him there," he said, pointing at the tree, "we can slide him down to the water easy." Captain Jack held on to the rope and waited to see if they were going to help. Bill took a deep breath and grabbed the rope at the very end, where he could steer. Captain Jack took the spot in front of him and Charley looked at them both for a minute, and then moved in front of Captain Jack. He couldn't see just leaving the bull out there for the flies.

  They pulled together, on the count of three. The moose moved half a foot. Bill counted to three again, and half a foot at a time they got him up the gully. It took all morning. Once, the place where the ball had gone into the bull's neck began to tear, and Captain Jack had to retie the rope. They dragged him up the rocks. They sweated and counted and breathed through their teeth. Without knowing how, Charley sensed Captain Jack wasn't pulling his share. The smell of gin coming out of Bill got stronger and more distinct. It struck Charley that the cows would come back after they were gone, and smell pink gin and think that was the scent of death.

  They got the moose up over the lip of the gully, and Bill walked, purposeful and erect, back into the trees, where he threw up. Charley was half-stomached too, and reflected, as he listened to Bill, that the only difference in the way they felt was the amount of pink gin they'd drunk the night before.

  Captain Jack had hardly broken a sweat. "There isn't a more peaceful feeling in the world than the aftermath of a hunt," he said.

  Like magic, Bill came back from the trees with a bottle of pink and sat down under the trees next to Charley. It was as if he'd been everywhere on God's earth before and left himself a bottle for later. He offered Charley a drink, which he refused. "I got to get some water in me first," he said.

  Captain Jack went down the hill toward the canoe and came back a few minutes later with a U.S. Army canteen. He sat down and took a long, noisy drink. Charley guessed he'd waited until he got back to prove he'd done his part in the pulling. When he'd finished, he offered the canteen to Charley, who ignored it.

  Captain Jack took no offense. He lifted the canteen toward Bill, who obliged him, and touched it with the side of the gin bottle. "To the hunt," Captain Jack said.

  They pulled the moose downhill to the water and Captain Jack tied the rope to the back end of the canoe. He left about six feet between the moose and the boat. "I don't like this," Charley said.

  Captain Jack smiled at him. "I've done it a hundred times," he said.

  Charley looked at the bull, twice as big as a horse, and then at the canoe, then at Bill.

  "It's just a sad-nosed horse," Bill said, and took another drink of the gin.

  "I know what you're contemplating," Captain Jack said to Charley, "that he's too heavy." Charley looked at him. Captain Jack shook his head. "Soon as it gets in the water, he's just like a cork," he said. "He'll float like another boat. . ."

  The next time Bill offered him a drink, Charley took it. They pushed the moose and the boat into the water and, good to Captain Jack's word, it all floated. "See there?" Jack said when they were in the canoe. "What did I say? The secret's the gas, that's what keeps him up."

  They started back across the water. The gas made the bull float, but it didn't do anything to make him easier to drag through the water. Charley sat in the middle, watching Bill, and the bull behind him. The bull's tongue lay out one side of his mouth, purple-blue and a foot long, and one of his eyeballs had rolled up into his head, leaving the socket white, and he still looked better than Bill. "You want me to take a turn at that paddle?" Charley said.

  Bill didn't answer. He just stood up, bringing the bottle of gin, and let Charley crawl under his legs to the seat where he'd been. Captain Jack turned around to remark on the quiet satisfactions of hunting one's own food. "I love the city as much as anyone, pards," he said, meaning Deadwood, "but sometimes I think we're losing something in all this civilization."

  It sounded to Charley like another poem in the works.

  They were two thirds of the way across when the moose sank. One minute Charley was pulling his paddle against the water, and the next minute there was a sound that he recognized even though he'd never heard it before. They all recognized it, because there wasn't anything else it could have been. The moose passed air.

  It rolled out as sudden as bad weather, and lasted until the back end of the animal submerged, when it was replaced by the sound of bubbles. Captain Jack turned around, panicky.

  Charley turned around too, and watched the moose sink. He went straight down, butt first. Charley reached for his knife, but the moose was too fast for him. Before he could get to the rope, the front end of the canoe had started to come up in the air. That threw Charley off balance, and while he grabbed the side of the boat to steady himself, the front end went further up, and then Captain Jack—wild-eyed now, and shouting something Charley couldn't understand—fell into Bill, who was trying to get the cork in his gin bottle. Losing the forward weight, the canoe went straight up. Charley saw the Springfield fall into the water, and then the ropes, and then he was in the water too, fighting too many directions at once, losing ground with every move he made. He couldn't see where he was. Something was pulling at him in a way he couldn't pull back.

  He fought and lost, and then he calmed himself. The air went out of his chest and the water came in, almost by itself. He calmed himself and opened his eyes. He couldn't remember shutting them. Then he was forcing them open again—when did they shut?—and
he saw the light, a halo. Then, as he watched, a dark angel came

  through the light after him. The angel had the face of the Chinese in the kiln. He pushed out his hands to hold him off. They'd gotten heavy in the water, though, and were useless against an angel anyway.

  The angel brushed his arms aside, and took him by the head, and took him away. "I have loved you, Lord," he thought. He wanted to get it on the record. He was moving now, he couldn't tell where. He calmed again, too heavy to help himself, and waited. The light got brighter and bigger—he thought it would have taken longer to get where they were going—and then shattered, warm and clean over his face. And he knew his soul was saved.

  Bill grabbed him under the arms and dragged him out of the water. Charley began to cough. Bill left him flat on the ground, and then lay down next to him.

  "Charley?" he said. "You hear me?"

  A convulsion shook his body—it felt like a release in his peeder; was that possible?—and Charley felt water coming up out of his chest. Warm water. It happened again and again. In between, he could hear Bill's voice, asking if he could hear him.

  Even when Charley could answer, he didn't. He didn't have anything to say just then. The convulsions made him weaker, but after each one passed he gained more than he'd lost. It resembled healing. He opened his eyes and the sun was like spider legs through the needles of the pine tree Bill had pulled him under. He moved his hand to shade his eyes.

  "Charley?" Bill was still on the ground next to him, white-faced and wet and sickly. Charley sat up and vomited water.

  Captain Jack was sitting with his back up against another tree, maybe ten feet away. "You should of cut the rope," he said. "If you'd of cut the rope, we'd still have the boat and guns."

  Charley lay back and began to shake. His whole body felt ice cold and ashamed of being saved. "I never saw a moose sink like that before," Captain Jack said. "There must of been something wrong with him."