(1986) Deadwood

by Pete Dexter

  Particularly Bill. He saw him then, incomplete. One half of a perfect man. He was brave, strong, loyal, handsome, and a swimmer.

  And inside he had as much feelings as a hawk.

  There was something between them that had never been there before, and Charley couldn't picture things ever being the same.

  Bill came out of the bushes, drooling blood. Charley saw clearly that the disease had taken his strength, and didn't have any left inside himself he could borrow against.

  Charley didn't think either one of them were worth much when they were weak.

  Boone heard about the Cat Man from Lurline Monti Verdi. she told the story to cheer him up, the little pilgrim that looked like a rat and called himself a natural cat man, and had dreams about cutting Phatty Thompson to pieces.

  She thought he would laugh, but he sat up in bed and began to put on his underwear. It was nine o'clock in the morning, too early for Boone to be on the streets. "Where are you going?" she said. The truth was, since Boone had got depressed over the two hundred dollars, it wasn't any fun to be with him. He'd quit scaring her, but he'd quit everything else too. Last night he just wanted to lay up close, talking about Frank Towles's head. She was hoping he'd be better in the morning.

  If Lurline needed to cradle something, she would of borrowed Pink Buford's bulldog.

  Boone hadn't taken Frank's head to Cheyenne. He regretted it, but the longer he went without doing it, the less possible it was to happen. To Boone the head was getting heavier, or the distance to Cheyenne was getting longer. She was tired of listening about it. How the sheriff was treating him unfair. That was why she'd told him about the cat man, to get his mind off Frank Towles's head.

  "What did you say his name was?" Boone said. He'd got his underwear on over his privates and stood up next to the bed to button it up the front. His head looked bigger than usual, and there was an ache in her shoulder where he had laid it to talk.

  "Jack McCall," she said. "But it ain't nothing to get out of bed for." He pulled his pants on, fastened them with his belt, and then tucked his shirt in a fistful at a time. She wondered what would make a man dress himself in that order.

  "Where would I find this cat man?" he said. He strapped his gun belt around his waist and put his hat on top of his head. There was room in that hat to grow strawberries. She let the sheets fall off her breasts, but he didn't notice. When Boone May wasn't suffocating her, he was hurting her feelings.

  "I don't know," she said. "What do you want with him, honey?" He didn't seem to hear. He just left her, naked, and disappeared. He didn't even close the door. She wondered sometimes why she liked him better than the others.

  He found Jack McCall asleep on the back step of the senate bar. He was curled to accommodate the shape of the step. Boone noticed his gun and his clothes and his shoes. Total, he wasn't worth five dollars. He put the toe of his boot in Jack McCall's stomach and rolled him off the step.

  The cat man looked up at him from the ground. He didn't try to get up, he just stared at Boone's face, like he was trying to place it. "Cat man?" Boone said.

  Jack McCall nodded. Boone sat down on the step. McCall backed away, reminding Boone of a crab.

  "I understand," Boone said, "that you been looking for employment amongst the upstairs girls at the Gem Theater."

  "I run errands," the cat man said, "just until I get back to Cheyenne. After that, I'm strictly cats."

  Boone nodded. "I heard you was good with them," he said.

  "That's true," Jack McCall said. "I was partners with Phatty Thompson, but he went back to Cheyenne . . ."

  Boone held up his hand and the cat man stopped. "I don't care about no Phatty Thompson," he said. The cat man waited. "What I care about," Boone said, "is your employment. What a white man's doin', running errands for whores."

  "It's only temporary," the cat man said. "When I get back to Cheyenne and find Phatty Thompson, I'm strictly cats. They come up to me, even in the wild, and let me put them in the cage."

  "I heard you wanted to cut Phatty Thompson's throat," Boone said. "Is that what you want him for?"

  Jack McCall shook his head. "Either that," he said, "or go back into partners with him."

  Boone said, "Maybe I got the wrong man."

  "What man are you looking for?" Jack McCall said.

  "I'm looking for the one that wants to cut a man's throat." The cat man stared at him again, thinking, and then he nodded his head. Boone got off the porch and picked the cat man up by the back of his collar. He brushed mud and pine needles off the back of his shirt, and then took the gun out of the cat man's holster and looked to see if it would fire. There was dried mud in the barrel and rust in the mechanisms. "Can you shoot this?" Boone said.

  Jack McCall nodded. Boone pointed at some dead trees up the hill. "Go on up there and show me," he said. Jack McCall walked up the hill and stopped. He raised the gun over his head, closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger.

  He disappeared in a cloud of smoke. When it cleared, he hadn't moved a muscle. The gun was still pointed at the sky, his eyes were still shut. That's how he stayed.

  Boone went up the hill after him. "Can you do it without shutting your eyes?" he said. "You got to see what you're shooting to shoot."

  Jack McCall was looking at the gun. "It hurt my hand," he said. "Like 'lectricity."

  Boone put a finger in each ear and pretended to clean them out. "Who told you about 'lectricity?" he said.

  "They got it in Cheyenne," the cat man said. Boone smiled at that.

  "A gentleman like yourself must get invited to a lot of fancy places," he said.

  "It's a man in the street who has a machine," the cat man said. Boone looked at him to see if it was true. He couldn't tell. This was the kind that could lie as easy as tell the truth, sometimes they didn't know the difference. "He charges a nickel, and you put your fingers in the holes to see how much you could take." The cat man looked up at him. "I only done it twict," he said, "but some did it all the time."

  Boone said, "I heard it's like fire."

  The cat man thought it over. "No, it ain't hot," he said. "It's fast, and there's bumps run through your skin and bones. I only did it twict because I don't like things fast."

  "You ever shot a man?" Boone said, just like that. Jack McCall watched him but didn't answer. "I thought a man like yourself would of done that," Boone said. "It ain't nothing to it, you just point the front end and squeeze the back. Most men done that. . ."

  "I shot people before," McCall said.

  "I thought you had," Boone said. "A man like you don't want to be remembered for kitty cats." He smiled at the cat man, the cat man smiled back. "I got somebody for you to shoot, they'll remember you for it," Boone said.

  They came back into town single file friday afternoon, strung out over twenty yards. First Bill, then Captain Jack Crawford, then Charley. Charley led the pack mules, which were as empty as when they left. It was embarrassing.

  Bill was straight and tall and looked purposeful. Nobody but a student of his carriage would of known he was drunk. They had been wordless all day. Bill and Charley didn't have the least interest in conversation, and Captain Jack, who was always interested, didn't have anybody to conduct it with.

  Bill rode directly to the camp on the Whitewood and got off the horse. He handed the reins to Captain Jack without a word and opened a bottle of pink. Charley took the mules north of town and tied them with the others. Then he checked into the Grand Union Hotel. He felt like sleeping indoors.

  The room was on the ground floor and cost fifteen dollars a week. There was a hotel saloon, tended by the famous Alphonso the Polite, and a dining room offering the cooking of the also-famous Lucretia "Aunt Lou" Marchbanks. There was a lock on the door and a bath at each end of the hallway. Charley sat on the bed, feeling the new springs, and thought about Colorado. He saw it was a mistake, coming north again.

  There were springs on his bed at home.

  The way he thought of it then,
his wife had expected things of him, and he had expected things of himself. She wanted to be comfortable—how she lived, and in the way people thought of her. He saw that he must have wanted some of that too, he didn't marry her for nothing. He'd joined the Congregational Church and then the Temperance Union. There had to be some reason for things as unnatural as that.

  But there was something he wanted more. And his sense of that wasn't trading mine claims and real estate in Middle Park or Empire, Colorado, forty years after the ones who found it had moved someplace new. Bad legs and all, he needed to be there when things were fresh.

  And the Black Hills were as fresh as it got, and it was a mistake. He lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He tried to picture how he would like things to be, but nothing came to mind. He thought he might need a freshness of spirit, that he had been chasing new places too hard to find it.

  There were five bullet holes in the ceiling, and the hotel was only two months old.

  He thought about the boy then, lying in his wagon. And the Chinese in the kiln, and Bill shooting glasses off the head of Pink Buford's bulldog for the tourists, and drooling in his sleep from the poison in the mercury. Charley had seen the mercury cure before; the next step, Bill's teeth would loosen. He began to think about the hunt, but he stopped himself before he got to the part where the moose took his revenge. There was a moment in the water he was still afraid of, when the angel came through the light for him.

  His legs began to ache.

  He sat up and went to a desk in the corner of the room. There was writing paper and a pen and ink in the top drawer. He wondered about the letters that had been written from this room, if the writers told things the way they were, or if they tried to make it sound the way they wanted it to be. He guessed that the kind that would shoot holes in the ceiling wouldn't be the writers, but if they were, they'd tell it the way it happened. The hearts and flowers would of been written by the paper-collars and salesmen.

  He took paper out of the drawer and composed a public challenge to the Clippinger Pony Express Company. It took his mind off Deadwood. "As owner of a newly established pony express," he wrote, "I now propose a race, from Cheyenne to Deadwood, Dakota Territory, to be initiated on the second day of August, 1876, between the Clippinger Pony Express and the Pony Express of Charley Utter, previously of Middle Park and Empire, Colorado, who has successfully dealt in the transportation of goods all his life. The purpose of the race is to decide, once and for all, who is best able to deliver the mail to the miners and the pilgrims of the Black Hills, who deserve a damn sight better than they've got."

  He signed the letter and made a copy. He left one at the Clippinger office, next door to the Big Horn Grocery, and gave the other to A. W. Merrick, editor and publisher of the Black Hills Pioneer.

  A. W. Merrick was soft-faced, gray-haired, and he had a twitch. He was twenty-nine years old. He had come to Dead wood from Custer, and before that from Omaha. There was a story that he'd made camp in the southern Hills one night and woke up in the morning with his head propped against a gravestone, and his hair had gone gray. Charley didn't know if that was true, but he knew a man that shouldn't of left Omaha when he saw one.

  The newspaperman put on a pair of spectacles and read the challenge. He said, "You write with style, Mr. Utter."

  "Thank you," Charley said.

  He read it again. "Quite exciting," he said. "Did you ever consider working for a newspaper?"

  "I was thinking of running a pony express line," Charley said.

  A. W. Merrick shook his head. "It's a pity to waste talent," he said. "A paper like the Pioneer offers grand opportunities."

  Charley said, "I think I'll save it to fall back on." The newspaperman took the pencil from behind his ear and made marks on the paper that Charley couldn't read.

  "I'll have to remove the word damn," he said. "Our readers bring the Pioneer into their homes, where there's women and children."

  "All right," Charley said, "damn goes."

  A. W. Merrick studied him across the desk. "An editor has to make decisions like this all the time; nobody else can do it."

  There was a trapper Charley knew back in Colorado who ran lines deep into the mountains and sometimes didn't see a human face, white or redskin, for six months at a time. He wasn't a hermit by choice, it was business. And that trapper let go of a conversation easier than A. W. Merrick. All the newspapermen Charley ever met were the same way, it was like something depended on you knowing what they did.

  Charley had been interviewed a dozen times, had his picture taken twice. They asked you questions, and then wrote answers in the paper that you didn't say. The lies were worse about Bill, who, of course, participated in them, saying any damn thing that came into his head to a reporter, figuring his imagination was as good as theirs.

  A. W. Merrick discussed the thankless nature of an editors job, the price of newsprint, when you could get it, and humorous headlines he had seen in newspapers all over the country. He had begun a description of a printing press he had seen in Boston when Charley stopped him. "Mr. Merrick," he said, "if you would excuse me, I've got to prepare myself for the race against Clippinger."

  The newspaperman looked like Charley had slapped him in the face. "I didn't realize preparation was needed," he said. "What do you need besides a horse?"

  That's how newspapermen were. When Charley walked back outside, it was dusk. His feelings on Bill had changed, and it made him sad and tired. He started back to the Grand Union, thinking he would try the famous Alphonso the Polite for company, but at the door he thought of the boy in the wagon, and went back to his camp instead. Jane was sitting on Bill's stump, drinking coffee and whiskey, half and half.

  Bill was gone to his appointments in the badlands. He was weak and sick, but not weak and sick enough to stay there in the moonlight with Jane Cannary. She stared at Charley without seeming to recognize him.

  "How's the boy?" he said.

  "Asleep," she said. "He's a good boy, he don't say a word." Charley leaned against one of the wheels of the wagon and looked in. Malcolm was right where he'd left him. "I took care of him while you were gone," Jane said. "Don't worry about that."

  "Thank you," Charley said.

  "Shit," she said. Jane was never much at accepting appreciations.

  "Did he eat?" Charley said. The boy looked thin to him, and pale, but it was hard to say in that light.

  "Milk," she said. "Corn soup."

  Charley sat down on the ground with his back against the wheel. Dark came fast in the Hills, and he was having trouble seeing Jane's face. "Bill come back," she said. Charley didn't answer. "I was in the wagon with the boy. When I come out, he was rubbing hisself with silver."

  "Mercury," Charley said. "The doctor prescribed him that for his treatment."

  "I wisht he'd of come to me," she said. "Doctors don't know nothin' about illness." She drew in the dirt with a pointed stick while she talked. "I been nursing the ill all my life, never asked a thing in return."

  "You did good by the boy," he said.

  "Shit."

  "He's lookin' better," Charley said.

  "His tongue got unswole," she said. "Anybody looks better, they can get their tongue back inside their mouth. He ain't spoke a word yet." She finished what was in her cup, and then filled it again. Coffee and whiskey, half and half. She stirred it with her finger. "Bill don't like me," she said.

  "He's consternated," Charley said. "Things are changing too fast for him, and he's trying to stay the same." Saying that, he saw that it was probably true for them both. "It doesn't have a thing to do with anybody, except maybe his wife."

  "Shit," she said. "Wild Bill Hickok ain't got himself married."

  "I was there," Charley said. "The woman is Agnes Lake, the famous trapeze artist and equestrian."

  "I don't believe it," she said. "What does Wild Bill need with a circus lady? That ain't his kind of people, tricksters and illusionists. Elephants . . ."

  "He d
idn't join the circus," Charley said. "He just married a trapeze artist."

  "Shit," she said. "It probably ain't legal. They was probably playing the larks with you . . ." Charley saw that she loved Bill. It was some strange ripples they got when God dropped Bill Hickok into the pond. It was darker now, and he could see her better. Dirt poor and homely, she sat on a stump poking at the ground with a stick, crying for the most famous and handsome man in the West. The moon picked up the streaks on her face. Charley didn't blame Bill—he'd never done a thing to Jane but run away—but it seemed like he ought to of known about this before Charley did. "Elephants," she said, shaking her head.

  "He took her back to St. Louis," Charley said. "So maybe they aren't married in the common way." Jane finished the coffee and sighed. A long, hoarse sigh, and then she stood up and threw the stick.

  "Shit," she said. Her movements were mannish and heavy. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hands and sighed again. Charley sat still, giving her time to compose. "Well," she said after a while, "I still got the boy to take care of."

  "You did good by him," he said again. "Here's something for you." He reached into his shirt pocket and found twenty dollars.

  She took a few steps toward him and saw what it was. "I don't take pay for nursin' the sick," she said, and he thought she was about to cry again. "It's my duty. I'll take pay for driving a bull train or scouting or accommodating a gentleman—everything I do, I'm the best—but not for nursing the sick."

  Charley studied the woman, and could not imagine it. Not on the drunkest night of his life, not with somebody else's peeder. "It's for the food," he said. "Somebody's got to pay for milk and corn." Jane took the money and the bottle sitting on the ground next to the stump.