by Pete Dexter
Solomon Star kept his eyes on the ceiling. "Whatever you think, Mr. Bullock," he said.
"Tropical flowers," Bullock said. "We could plant orchids and sell them May Day . . . Solomon?"
"I've been thinking," he said. "I might like to read a novel."
Seth Bullock did not own a nervous-type stomach, but that declaration sent it right to the edge of the cliff. "You haven't been yourself," he said.
"That's what I've been thinking too," Solomon said. "Exactly."
Bullock stared at his partner, trying to see what it was. "Are you sick with something?" he said. He was hoping he was sick.
Solomon stood up and went to the front of the store. He looked out the window. Solomon hadn't spent five minutes in his life looking out windows. Bullock followed him over. "You know what, Mr. Bullock?" Solomon said after a while. "Those hills are pretty. It's like I never saw them before, like this is the first day."
"Is it bad news from home?" Bullock said. "Did the mail come today?"
Solomon shook his head, still looking out the window. He took a deep breath and stood taller than usual. "I wonder what the sights are like from that hill," he said, pointing at one that formed the southeast boundary of town.
"You've been on top of hills plenty of times."
Seth Bullock moved closer, wanting a better look at Solomon's eyes. "We got two kilns somewhere between here and Sioux City," he said. "Twenty thousand dollars each. Another one north of town, exposed to the elements. We got a drawer full of contracts for bricks everyplace in the Hills. We got orders and shipments coming in from anyplace that ships out. We got men to hire and goods to move. There isn't any turning back . . ."
Solomon smiled at him. He never smiled over business, not in his life. He looked back out the window. "I think I might climb that hill," he said. And that fast, he walked out of the office, crossed the street, and started toward the south end of town. He didn't even close the door.
Bullock sat down at Solomon's desk. He looked through the papers there, seeing they were in some kind of order he didn't understand. He didn't understand how Solomon worked, he didn't know what he did.
He did understand it was Solomon that made it work.
Seth Bullock had been a successful businessman nine years without knowing how to balance accounts or keep books. He had never written an order form or argued price.
He put Solomon's papers back where he had found them and moved over to his own desk, where things were familiar. There were letters there from politicians, marshals, and widows with hopeless cases. Presidents of mining companies in California and Colorado. There was a stack of wanted posters, upside down, which he consulted when there was highwayman activity in the immediate area. Seth Bullock had been sheriff a little over half a year in Dead wood, and a deputy marshal in Bismarck for three years before that, and, reputation to the contrary, he was not anxious to clean up the Dakota Territory, or anything else. He did know where to go to get it done, though, when he had to.
He sat at his desk most of the afternoon, thinking about Solomon Star. He thought of all the things that caused sudden changes in men, which came down to losing their children or falling on their heads.
Or women.
No. Solomon Star was married the way one-legged people were crippled. Forever. He thought of Solomon's wife—she had expressions like a sullen child, and a hard edge to everything she said. He decided to write her if Solomon didn't improve. She hadn't wanted Solomon coming to the Hills alone in the first place, and was anxious to join him. He knew that from her letters, which Solomon left unlocked in the top left drawer of his desk. To Bullock's memory, his partner had never brought her name into a conversation. He was afraid of her in a way that distance didn't change.
Thinking of that, Bullock hoped he did not have to write the letter. He did not like to do that to a partner.
After he had sold her to the white man, Tan You-chau had forbidden Ci-an to leave the house, even in the morning. "Whatever you desire, you will have it here," he said.
She did not know how much Tan had taken from the white man, but Tan himself had not come near her since the bargain had been struck. She thought Bismarck must be very wealthy. "What if 1 desire to walk outside?" she said.
Tan had smiled at her. "I will give you another servant," he said. "And she will walk for you, and then return to your room and tell you what she has seen."
Tan had not struck her since the white man had come to her room. He had given her new gowns and combs. The combs she had seen before, in the hair of his wife.
Her meals were brought to her room by the old woman, who went with her to Tan's own privy in back, where she was allowed to attend to her personal needs. There was another privy, larger and farther from the house, where the others stood in line after their meals; At appointed times, the servants used the same building, and at other appointed times, Tan's own wife and relations. The old woman questioned his orders—believing she had misunderstood—and he told her he did not want his China Doll so far from his house again.
The old woman told this to Ci-an. Ci-an said, "This Bismarck is perhaps the richest man in the world."
After her morning toilet, Ci-an shooed the old woman away and stayed alone in her room, arranging and then sketching her artificial flowers. And so she was alone on the morning when she finally saw Wild Bill's friend in the street. At first, because of his pain, she had not recognized him. His clothes were wrinkled and out of place, and he walked without attention to the mud, or other men. Pain was the surest disguise.
But she was not mistaken. He had picked up one side of the metal that held Song's body, Wild Bill had picked up the other, and together—equally to blame—they had put Song into the oven.
In the afternoon, she spoke to the old woman. "There is a man," she said.
"There are many men," the old woman said, "none of them any good."
"Hush yourself," she said. "There is a man I wish to see." The old woman shook her head.
"Tan has forbidden," she said.
"I will see this man," she said. She reached out and took both of the old woman's hands in hers, an uncommon gesture toward a servant. "This man knows of my brother Song."
The old woman pulled her hands away and covered her ears. "There is no such person," she said. "He does not exist. You invite the same for us both. What would my children become if their mother had never existed?"
"Tan cannot decide who has existed," Ci-an said.
The old woman moved to leave the room. She was afraid and beginning to weep. Ci-an stopped her. "Please," the old woman said, "I am afraid."
"There is a man I wish to see," Ci-an said. The old woman was not listening now. Her eyes went from the window to the door to the ceiling, lighting like a bird, searching for a way out. She smiled and nodded, and could not stop her tears.
"Hush yourself now," Ci-an said kindly. "Soon I will ask you for something, and when you have done that thing, your obligations to me are over."
She watched the street all afternoon, but did not see Wild Bill's friend again. She closed her eyes and willed him to her room. She became his other person, and cried for him to find her, so they might be whole again. She did not know how long it would take, but this would happen.
She had senses that other women only pretended to possess.
In the evening Tan came to her room to take her downstairs. He knocked at her door before he entered. He did not insult her or try to touch her. He addressed her as Ci-an, not as China Doll, although that was still his name for her among his servants and family. The old woman had told her that.
"You are a very lucky girl," he said. She did not ask him why. "You have a benefactor of great wealth. You must continue to please him as you have . . ."
"I do not please him," she said. "He pleases himself." Tan winked at her, and watched while she perfumed the palms of her hands.
"There are some men who do not wish to be pleased by a woman," he said, as if this were the profound thought
of an intelligent man. "Some wish only to give a woman pleasure. I think your white man is like that."
"He is not my white man," she said.
"You should be kinder toward the whites," he said. "They have many kind inclinations. They are very generous."
She said, "Perhaps when you have enough money, you will become one yourself." She thought Tan would strike her, but he only smiled. "Perhaps they will give you their smell as well as their money."
And still he only smiled.
He accompanied her downstairs, smiling at the voices, nodding at things the white men said. She watched the stairs, and then the floor. She did not acknowledge the men who had come to see her. She kept herself apart.
She sang happier songs that night, although there was no happiness in her. When she had finished, the white men howled and shot their guns into the ceiling and floor. Some of the real people howled too—she could hear single voices in the shouting, and knew which were Chinese.
She was beginning to know all things now.
The white man came that night with a gift. A gold ring. She accepted it, trying it on one finger after another until it fit, finally, on the thumb of her left hand. It seemed to please him that it fit, and he sat on her bed and smiled. She took off her clothes and lay next to him.
He talked for a long time, showing the mountains with his hands. He had bathed that day, she could smell the soap. His voice was excited, and then it calmed, and when he stopped speaking there were tears in his eyes.
She did not know what had turned him sad. "Bismarck," he said, pointing to himself. Then, with another finger, he pointed at her and said, "Ci-an." And then he crossed the fingers.
She closed her eyes and thought of Wild Bill's friend. In this moment, she suddenly knew, he would begin to find her.
She heard the sounds of Bismarck's undressing, and opened her eyes long enough to see him standing on one foot, pulling his pants leg inside out. He was not as careful with his clothing now as he had been before. He.stumbled; she closed her eyes, and waited. His breathing grew louder as he fought with his pants, and then grew louder, a different way, as he came close.
He touched her hand first, the one she had put the ring on. He held it gently, cupping it as if it would spill, and then he spoke into the palm and kissed each of her fingers, beginning with the smallest and ending with the thumb, where he kissed the ring itself.
He spoke to her again, kissing her arm and then her shoulder. She smelled the beef he had eaten in his sweat. His voice became more melancholy as he spoke. She had no interest in what his words meant, but she thought that perhaps, like herself, he would be happier without his life. She thought that one day, if there was time, she would end his sadness.
Bismarck sat up suddenly, as if he had heard her thought, and walked across the room to the table where she kept the paper and charcoal she used to draw her flowers. He took a piece of the charcoal and several sheets of the paper and came back to the bed. He began to sketch. She watched his lines and saw white men had no talent for drawing.
He drew a picture first of a man. It was not an important man, for he placed him in the corner of the paper. The man had stick arms, a single line for a neck, and a mouth as narrow as a bird's. He drew hair and a tie and a hat. He drew shoes. Then he pointed to the man he had drawn and said, "Bismarck."
The next figure he drew was larger. He put it on the other side of the paper, in profile, so it watched the man. The second figure was sticks too, but on this one he drew fingers, and on one of those he put a ring.
He pointed at the second figure and said, "Wife." She did not know the word, but understood the meaning. Then he drew mountains between the figures, and stick deer, and water.
She looked at the drawing and said, "I will end your sadness, if there is time. But not now." He smiled at her, not understanding the words. He put the charcoal against the paper again and drew an X across the larger figure.
She thought Bismarck's wife was dead. She sat up against the bed board, keeping the sheet over her breasts, and took the charcoal from his hand. She drew a likeness of Song on a clean paper. It took only a few seconds—she had drawn his face many times, and knew the tricks that showed the intelligence in his eyes, and the gentleness of his expression. And when she had finished, she drew an X over him too, to show that he was also gone.
The drawing pleased Bismarck, and he took the paper and charcoal from her hands and dropped them on the floor. His eyes teared again and he buried his face in her neck. The smell of the cows was stronger now, and she closed her eyes and held herself motionless.
It was a long time before he moved between her legs. She felt him tremble, and before he entered her, he had spilled himself on her legs. Like a boy. He stayed on top of her, with his head pushed deep into the curve of her jaw, until the trembling stopped and his breathing evened.
Later, after he had dressed, he returned to her on the bed and knelt on the floor. He was not sad now. He spoke into her hand again, and then kissed the thumb and the ring he had fit over it.
He left her a few minutes later, closing her door quietly behind him. She lay in her bed, and from there she saw the drawing of Song on the floor, and the drawing of Bismarck and his wife beside it.
Dead faces in her room.
She looked at the ring on her thumb and wondered what kind of ceremony that had been.
Charley did not set out to become drinking partners with a soft-brain, but those things happened when you were kind to the underprivileged. Every morning he sat in his tub with the weight in his head and a weakness in his legs and arms. He sat there until it was time to begin drinking, when he would give the Bottle Fiend five dollars and send him for J. Fred McCurnin swoop whiskey. Charley couldn't do chores for himself until he had thinned out his blood.
The Bottle Fiend would return with the bottle and sit in his chair, remarking on Charley's new bites and bruises, until, a few swallows into the morning, it would suddenly seem cruel to Charley that anybody ought to have to go through life soft-brained and sober, and he'd pass the bottle back and forth with him half the morning.
And sometimes, after he'd dressed, he took the Bottle Fiend with him to the badlands and bought him drinks at Nuttall and Mann's. The Bottle Fiend didn't talk much when he drank. When he'd drunk enough, in fact, he didn't talk at all. It came to Charley one afternoon in the bar that Bill had never talked much either, and that from a conversational point of view, there wasn't much to choose one over the other.
He was not surprised. Drinking depended more on understanding than talk anyway.
Charley liked the Bottle Fiend for being straightforward, but had no idea what went on inside his head. And without that, there wasn't any understanding. It was more like drinking alone. But that had been done before too, somewhere in the history of the West.
And that is how it happened that the morning Charley finally ran into Mrs. Langrishe again, he was in the company of the soft-brain, both of them freshly bathed and drunk. Mrs. Langrishe was coming out of Farnum's carrying packages that pushed against her chest and distorted it in an agreeable way.
Charley took off his hat and nodded. He was holding an open bottle of J. Fred in his other hand. "Good morning," he said. She stopped, and took a moment to remember who it was.
"Mr. Utter," she said. "I thought you had disappeared."
"I've been laying low," he said. She looked into his face, and then into the Bottle Fiend's face. "This is my friend, the Bottle Man," he said. She smiled at the soft-brain, and he looked at his feet. Charley was not embarrassed.
"He is shy with strangers," Charley said. Then he turned to the Bottle Fiend and said, "Mrs. Langrishe runs the theater."
The soft-brain looked up from his feet at Charley, but would not acknowledge her. "Is she the one that bites you?" he said.
Charley smiled at Mrs. Langrishe, a horrible smile, and said, "Sometimes he gets things confused."
She smiled back at him, and the heat came into his skin. H
e had been with Lurline again the night before, at it one way or another all night long, but the heat was in him again. "I missed you at Bill's funeral," she said. "I never had the opportunity to tell you how sorry I felt." She was still holding the package. "He seemed like such a gentle man," she said.
Charley said, "He had a lot of sides." Then he handed the Bottle Fiend the whiskey and replaced his hat. He reached for her packages.
"I'll tote these for you," he said. She gave up the packages and— a peculiar gesture—she ran her fingers along the hollow of his cheek.
"I know how you feel," she said. And he wondered if that was true, and if it was, how far it went. He smelled the perfume on her hand—it was different from Lurline's—and every bit of blood in his body was congregated in his head or his peeder, pounding the tom-toms. He adjusted the packages and began to walk Mrs. Lang-rishe home. The Bottle Fiend followed them, a yard or two behind. Every now and then he would stop to splash a little whiskey into his mouth. The Bottle Fiend could not drink and walk at the same time.
Charley was not embarrassed. He refused to be embarrassed of his friends.
Mrs. Langrishe studied Charley as they walked. It was something about actresses that nothing they did ever seemed out of place. "I heard you had begun a pony express," she said. They had come to Shine Street, and turned west, uphill. The trouble with living in a gulch, besides floods and fires, was that every time you made a turn, it was uphill.
Charley shook his head. "We held a race for the business," he said. "Myself against Clippinger. We won by half a day, but Clip-pinger never quit his line, and my brother Steve got put in jail for thirty days for shooting somebody's pig back in Fort Laramie during the celebration." The news that Steve had been put in jail for shooting pigs had come in a letter, delivered by Clippinger Pony Express.
She smiled at him. "How ever did he come to shoot a pig?"
Charley looked behind him and saw the Bottle Fiend had just turned the corner. He stopped, waiting for him to catch up. "Excuse me," he said, "he gets confused."
