Calamity

by Libbie Hawker

  Suggs was my only choice, so to Suggs we went, with me singing to hide my worries and my arms wrapped tight around Jessie to keep the cold at bay.

  Suggs, Wyoming was one of those small, scrappy towns, half pale wood (new-cut) and half gray boards, old and weathered by sun and prairie wind. Suggs wasn’t much more than a few houses, all built after the same simple style, ringed around the usual saloons and cat-houses you could find in any village that grew up along the rails. The whole lot of Suggs was perched on a bank of the Powder River. The town boasted a new ferry, of which its citizens was inordinately proud, for they was all certain the stage line that ran between Buffalo and Sundance would make ample use of their crossing—and thereby turn the gray huddle of Suggs into a bustling metropolis, the likes of which the world hadn’t seen since New York City come along. I very soon learned not to cast aspersions on the ferry. There was no surer way to turn a citizen of Suggs against you than to make light of their big-city hopes.

  I very soon learned, as well, that there was little work to be had in town. I inquired after laundries, but it seemed a certain Miz Sugarmarsh had the laundry game in lock-up. No one worked for her unless they was born into her family; she didn’t even deem her daughters-in-law fit to bruise their knuckles on her washboards. There wasn’t a hotel in town, for Suggs hadn’t yet reached its lofty expansionary goals, and the few boarding houses was never full enough to warrant hiring help.

  I thought to inquire whether any of the local bawdy houses needed a madam. I reasoned Suggs might be the kind of town where my lack of experience on the madaming side of the business could be overlooked. But when it came to the bawdy life, the only claim I could make was as Calamity Jane. As for working on my back again—well, even if I’d been willing to expose my daughter to the ridicule, I was long past the point of trading on any meager looks I had once possessed, infamous identity or no. Nor could I hire on with the stage coaches, nor even whack bulls again without admitting my real identity. Suggs had me in a trap, all right. I didn’t know how I’d ever find my way out.

  I did still have a small reserve of money—not much, but enough to board for a week or two while I plotted my next move. I took Jessie down from the saddle and took my coins from the saddle bag and led her into a saloon. There I ordered up a whiskey for me and a sarsaparilla for her with a dash of real vanilla and a pickled cherry, and the bartender was so charmed by my darling sunshiney child that he put two extra cherries in the cup and winked at Jessie as he handed our drinks over. How vanilla ever found itself in Suggs, Wyoming is a mystery I cannot puzzle out, even to this day.

  I took Jessie outside, just in case a fight should erupt at the faro tables. We set down on the wooden boardwalk to savor our drinks in the brisk autumn chill. I liked to keep her out of saloons as much as I could, for well did I remember their wicked draw from my whoop-up days. No matter how predictably we fell on hard times, I didn’t mean for my daughter to ever whoop it up if whooping could be avoided. I was damn determined that Jessie would live up to the legend I had crafted for her: beloved daughter of an elegant, upstanding woman and a heroic man. I figured it’d be pretty justice if one of us, at least, managed to do our legend proud.

  I set and sipped my whiskey nice and slow, reasoning that if I paced myself, maybe I’d feel satisfied and wouldn’t go back for another. I had to measure out my money with care till I found a job to see us through the winter. Jessie was a regular catbird, gloating over every sip of her drink and giggling when the bubbles tickled her nose. I did my best to laugh along with her, but inside I was on the verge of crying. We could go back to Deadwood, I thought—we could just about make it to Deadwood before the snows got real bad. Then it would be all over, of course: the pretty canvasses I’d painted for Jessie would tear themselves asunder; the haggard portrait of Calamity Jane would be exposed underneath, there for my girl to see, undeniable as sin. But at least I might find some work in Deadwood. At least we wouldn’t starve.

  As we set on the boardwalk outside that saloon, a few folks did pass us by, progressing on foot or horseback to and from the ferry. I had to admit by then that Suggs’ ferry was doing a reasonable trade. I lamented my lack of ferrying skills, for with my big strong frame I might have convinced the owner to hire me on as a hauler. But without experience to bolster me, he would likely laugh a woman right out of town. Except to muse dismally on the ferry, I didn’t take any note of the passers-by who came up from the river—not till one of them stopped right in front of us.

  At first, I didn’t see any part of that man but his boots: old, worn-out, scuffed things with tired, slouching leather tops. The kind of boots that had seen many a long day of good, honest work. I set with my eyes fixed to his worn-down boots while he said in a bright voice—to Jessie, of course— “My, honey, you sure are having a good time, ain’t you? And pretty as a picture, you little bee.”

  He sounded so sweet, so genuine and happy, I couldn’t help but look up at his face. He as a spot younger than me—that is to say, younger than my real age—with a soft, round face and a long mustache, which he waxed into two jaunty curls like a Back-East man. But his big black hat was all West, and his hair was yellow as straw, which only made him seem all the younger. He bent over at the waist to grin at Jessie, just as if he was her favorite uncle. I liked the kindness in his eyes and felt drawn to him most powerfully—for neither Jessie nor I had seen such pleasantry in another human spirit for an awful long time.

  I looked up at him, and that was it. My ruse was all over. He glanced at me once in polite acknowledgment, then turned back to coo at Jessie some more. But he stopped and looked at me again, sharper this time, and the smile slid from his face, replaced by the slow awe of recognition.

  He said, “Why you’re—”

  “Don’t, Mister. Don’t say it.” I gave a little jerk of my head, the smallest nod toward my daughter. “She don’t know nothing about it, and I aim to keep it that way.”

  He straightened with a thoughtful air. “Yes mam. Reckon I can see the sense in that.”

  I said, “I’m trying to leave that all behind—the way I was. For her sake, you see. But it’s harder than I thought it would be.”

  He gazed down at me, speculative, but not with the sharpness that means a man is fixing to do you wrong. He just stood and looked at me, as if he felt called to do something but couldn’t make up his mind what that something was.

  I said, “I only need work; that’s all I’m after here in Suggs. Good, honest work. Do you know where a lady might take a proper job to see her through the winter?”

  “No mam, I do not,” he said, and twisted the curl of his mustache around his finger for a minute—thinking, weighing the consequences. Then, when I was about to shout and throw what was left of my whiskey in abject despair, he said, “But you won’t be out for the winter. You’ll have a place to stay with me—you and the girl both.”

  That was how I came to take up with Clinton Burke, and by God, if I ever learn what good deed I did to deserve that kindness and mercy, then everything I have suffered in my shadowed life will be accounted fair. Clinton was the gentlest soul the Lord ever made. He didn’t have much, save for a two-room cabin on the bank of the Powder, with a potbelly stove and a fiddle hung up beside the door (and he played that fiddle every night.) But everything Clinton had, he shared with me. He didn’t do it because he expected a damn thing in return. It was in his nature to share, to offer kindness to every broken thing he found—to mend whatever could be mended.

  Clinton lived to make little Jessie smile, and oh the nights when we would sit around that stove, stoked up to a red-hot glow, choking down the inadequate soups I cooked from ham hocks or cow’s tail, while Clinton played the fiddle and Jessie danced, twirling in her red dress till she fell down breathless with laughter.

  That’s why I did what I did—because Clinton wanted nothing in return for such tender mercy. Never before had I felt myself so heavily indebted, and yet I knew Clinton never expected me to pay hi
m a cent for the Christian grace he offered. Because he was good-hearted enough to demand nothing, I gave that man everything I had.

  “Clinton,” I said one night when the snow was piled thick outside. We had just tucked Jessie into her little bed beside the stove; she was fast asleep already. “I have an idea, and I don’t know how good it is, but you’ll tell me if it’s even worth thinking.”

  “All right,” he said softly, so as not to wake the child. “Tell me, then.”

  “I gone to a lot of trouble to hide Calamity Jane from the world, ever since Jess was born. But what if we brought her back?”

  He didn’t know what to make of my nattering, so he hung up his fiddle on its peg beside the door and waited for me to clarify my thoughts.

  Cautious and trembling, I said, “I think there’s some money to be made in Calamity’s name. There must be—else, why would so many girls claim to be me? They must feel they can turn a profit if they can convince somebody—anybody—that they’re Calamity Jane. If there’s any money to be made from Calamity, I’ll let you in on it. I’ll give you half of whatever we earn, whatever my old notoriety will pay. If you’ll agree to just one condition.”

  Still Clinton waited, patient as ever.

  I swallowed down my fear. “Tell everyone you’re Jessie’s father.” The words came out in a rush, for the dam of shame that had held them in for so long finally burst. My grief and hope and love couldn’t be stopped; they scoured me, and fair swept Clinton away on the current. “Let’s you and me pretend we was always married, and that Jess is your girl, and nothing was ever bad or sour. I don’t ask it for my sake, for I know I’m not the kind of woman any man would be eager to take up with. But Jessie… she deserves better than I can give her on my own.”

  Clinton smiled then, warm and serene. He crossed the tiny room and bent over my chair, and kissed me on the cheek—a brotherly kiss that made me feel as if I had always been his, as if I’d never been in any danger, and all the world was warm as springtime.

  “Why, Miss Jane,” he said then, using the forbidden name for the first time since our acquaintance, “I think it’s the very worthiest thought you ever had.”

  When the thaw came, and the Powder River swelled to the edge of its banks, we picked up and moved to Billings, Montana—the town I had once known as Coulson—right in the heart of the fabled fields of gold. We found no golden fields, of course (my pa would have been sore disappointed) but we found plenty of prospectors eager to scratch out a fortune.

  Clinton opened up a modest hotel on Billings’ main street. He had a big sign painted in fanciful, scrolling words outlined in golden leaf. He hung that sign above the hotel’s front steps:

  HOME OF THE ONE TRUE,

  THE LEGENDARY

  CALAMITY JANE

  From the very day Clinton opened his doors, business was cracking and brisk. I didn’t even have to play the role of maid; so many people came to Billings in search of their fortunes that we hired proper workers right from the get-go, including a damn fine cook who about made Clinton and me fat as swine. My only duty was a light one: to dress in buckskin and a big black sombrero, just like the one I’d worn as a much younger girl, and make our visitors say Ooh and Aah with my feats of riding and shooting.

  Clinton cleared a broad yard out back of the hotel, ringed by a pretty birch forest, and there I impressed a nightly audience with a half hour of shooting and trick riding. My audiences paid a quarter a head to see the One True Calamity Jane—and just as I galloped the final circuit, pinging the last cans from their posts with my two dazzling pistols, Clinton’s cook would throw open the kitchen doors, so the smell of roasting chickens or apple pies wafted out into the yard. My audience about went mad with hunger. A quarter a head to watch me shoot, and a dollar for the finest supper in Billings. Clinton and me, we prospered more than we’d ever imagined possible.

  We passed two beautiful years that way, living in ease and happiness, content with one another’s company. Clinton was good as his word: he proudly claimed he was Jessie’s father, and Jessie herself came to think of him that way—though I’m certain she still retained, in some sweet corner of her precious thoughts, the tales I had long-ago spun about Wild Bill. Jessie loved Clinton as much as he loved her. She thrived upon his knee. And every day, I over-brimmed with gratitude that my darling child should grow up safe and happy.

  Clinton bore a great affection for me, too, which I returned in kind. He was the best-tempered man I ever did know, patient and fair, so sensible he could have been a doctor or a preacher. Not a day passed but I thanked God for this welcome turn—the crossing of Clinton’s path and mine. Attached to such a quality man, no one dared question my morals, even if I was the True and Legendary Calamity Jane.

  Would that we could have gone on that way forever, living in simple harmony, happy with plain companionship. But that state of affairs wasn’t destined to last over-long. For two years, Clinton seemed glad to exist in an amiable partnership. But around the time Jessie turned four, I caught Clinton making calf eyes at me now and then, when he thought I wasn’t looking. I would tuck Jessie into bed—she had her own room now, in the pretty little suite the three of us shared at the back of the hotel—and I would straighten up to find Clinton leaning against the door frame, watching the whole proceeding with a misty fondness. He would catch my eye and smile, but his smile would linger just a moment too long. Or at the supper table, he would pause with his fork halfway to his mouth and stare at me, wide-eyed as if something had struck him an unexpected blow—as if some fearful realization had come upon him all at once, and startled the very breath from his body.

  I knew what that change in Clinton signified, though I couldn’t quite believe it was true. He was falling in love. It seemed damn impossible—too ridiculous. No man had ever fallen for me; not even when I was young enough that my youth held some small measure of desirability, if not my specific features. I couldn’t claim a shred of youth now. Yet Clinton Burke had found something in me—something worthy of his love. I didn’t understand; the situation tangled me up inside, and made me tense and short-tempered in his presence.

  My life would have been a damn sight easier if I could have loved Clinton back. God knows, he deserved all the love any woman ever heaped upon a man. But the more I noticed his yearning stares—the longer his glances lingered on my unremarkable face—the more I fretted and ached. I would have gladly given my heart to Clinton, but it wasn’t mine to give. My heart had been buried in Deadwood. It lay beneath the cracked, dry earth and a handful of faded blue flowers, in eternal darkness, among Bill Hickock’s bones.

  Lighting a cigar at full motion

  Clinton knew, of course, that I didn’t return his affections. How could he help but know? We never spoke of it—the unfinished task that hung between us, that hopeless longing he bore for me. I was so astonished by the fact of his love that I couldn’t puzzle out the right way to raise the subject. Nor did any time seem right to turn our frank attention to the business of our hearts. I believe Clinton would have breached the subject himself, sooner or later—some evening when Jessie was dreaming in her fine, soft bed, when Clinton sat pensively chewing the stem of his pipe and I worked my way (word by faltering word) through yet another novel about Calamity Jane. He would have raised the issue if I gave him half a chance. Many a time I felt Clinton go tense and quiet beside me, burdened by his need to speak. But I already knew what he wanted to say, and I think Clinton knew what my answer would be. I don’t love you and I can’t, Clinton Burke, because I have always loved another. He couldn’t bear to hear those words any more than I could bear to say them, so silence remained in its place, a wall between us, a palisade defending the comfortable routines of our shared life.

  When summer came on, Clinton had grown so restless under that burden that he couldn’t stomach the idea of staying put. The hotel was well established, he said—its care and operations now resided in the capable hands of our hired staff, who after all showed more prof
iciency than Clinton ever had in the duties and specifics of hotelling. Clinton took the owner’s cut, but little work remained to keep him occupied. The only thing that kept him tethered him to Billings was me.

  That’s why it came as no surprise when Clinton announced his intention to pass the summer out at Ekalaka, a settlement of cattle ranchers and sheep herders scarce bigger than a postage stamp. Clinton had been a cattle driver in his younger years. He missed the life, he said, and wanted a taste again. He meant to revel in the freedom of wide-open places while he was still young enough for revelry. Seeing as how I was intimately acquainted with wide-open places, I could find no cause to criticize his plan, even though I suspected his sudden yen for the range had more to do with the fact that I wouldn’t be there. I didn’t like to embarrass him by pointing out that fact, so I only said it was a bully idea, and wished him a glorious summer.

  You know, I believe that summer would have been a glory for me, too—for my life had elevated itself to a pinnacle I never dreamed possible. That’s not to say I was rich, by any stretch of human imagining. But I was comfortable and secure, and after a lifetime of hardship, what small comfort and security I now possessed seemed better than mountains of gold.

  Bitterly do I wish that state of affairs would have carried on indefinitely. But the unrest that fell over the West after Custer’s demise had never entirely abated. Indian raids wasn’t near as frequent as they once had been, yet the papers still clamored with grim news of attacks, with graphic descriptions of entire families cut down somewheres out on the prairie, or tales of white children abducted by Indians, never seen by their weeping mothers again. Such wild rumors kept white men scared enough that they was always quick to violence, and getting quicker by the day. Resentment of the Buffalo Soldiers down in Wyoming was spreading, too, like a summer fever—so was mistrust of the Chinese who worked along the rails. Fear and hate seemed to rise up on all sides, growing thick as the prairie grass. I suppose it was inevitable, that the twin demons of fear and hate would soon find their way to Billings. After all, gold was supposed to be hiding somewheres in the vicinity, and gold is the one force on God’s green Earth that can motivate a man stronger than fear or hate.