(1986) Deadwood

by Pete Dexter

  She lay expressionless on the bed, and did not move to wipe the spit from her chest. He stood up and buttoned his pants. He wore the clothes of the white people, and spoke words of their language. He laughed too much when he was with them, like a child with older children, and drank all the concoctions that were in fashion. He played their games with cards.

  It was only among his own people that Tan You-chau was feared. She had seen Tan's two faces, and knew him to be empty inside. She did not need or want to kill him. His own life would be her brother's revenge.

  "Do you want me to dress?" she said. "Or may I wash first?"

  He said, "Have I made you dirty?"

  "Yes."

  He stood over her a long minute, until she thought he was going to abuse her again. "You are no use to me," he said finally. "Tonight, after you sing, I will sell you to the creek miners. You are no longer under my protection."

  "Then I should wash," she said. "I would not want your new friends to soil themselves, and think badly of your hospitality."

  She washed the spit off her breasts, and then cleaned herself inside. She chose a fresh robe from a trunk under her bed and dressed. She never looked in his direction, not once. "Perhaps you will be wearing the clothes of the white people too," he said.

  She offered no opinion. She tightened the combs in her hair and checked her face in the mirror. He had not disturbed her makeup, which was all she now saw in mirrors. She had lost the sense of her own beauty, and knew it would never return. That sense was a gift, like the beauty itself, and one without the other was useless.

  He waited until she had finished in the mirror, and then stood up. He opened the door, and the sounds from the theater were suddenly close, as if they had been waiting just outside her room. At the top of the stairs she could smell the white men, a smell that made her think of the dead animals they ate.

  But she was not afraid of lying with the cow-eaters. She had opened the door of the oven and found Song, and nothing in this life would sicken her again. That was gone too.

  She walked behind Tan down the stairs, her head bowed. She heard the noise change when they saw her. She was as beautiful to the white men as to the real people, but the white men did not know that silence was expression enough. They whistled and yelped like wild dogs, they fired shots into the floor.

  She did not raise her head.

  She followed Tan to the stage and waited while he introduced her to the audience. He did it twice, once in the language of the white men, who laughed at his clumsiness with their words. Tan laughed with them. He was of two faces, and empty inside.

  When he had finished, she stepped into the place he had stood and began to sing. The accompanist was Tan's uncle, who was blind. He had been captured when he first tried to leave Kwang-tung, and blinded with acid. Such were the risks of leaving China.

  The uncle played the white man's instrument, the piano, instead of his own. It was not an instrument designed to accompany singers. She looked out into the theater—half white, half real people— and sang her mother's song, of a young woman who had lost her betrothed in the war. It was a sentimental song—Tan had forbidden such tunes until late at night, after the white men had drunk many hours—but she ignored his stare and sang the words that came to her.

  "He is missing tonight.

  I am brave in the night,

  But I am afraid of the morning

  When I will see that be is gone."

  The blind man followed her on the piano, unsure of the notes. The real people bowed their heads, perhaps to memorize the moment, or perhaps trying to remember something from the time before they came to this place. There was nothing so beautiful that it was not more beautiful on reflection. It was the purpose of rice powder and rouge to suggest other times.

  Only the white men were unchanged by her singing. Some of them spoke as she performed, some called for drinks from the two bartenders, who were Tan's nephews. The nephews wore white men's clothing too, and sometimes sat in the white people's bars and watched which drinks were served and how they were made. She saw they were as greedy as Tan.

  Later, as she sang, one of the white men climbed onto the stage, bowed, and took her into his arms as if to dance. She was grateful for his stink of liquor, which hid the odor of dead animals. The white men in the theater howled, and when she looked down—the bar stood between the theater and the stage—she saw one of Tan's nephews howling too.

  The white man was clumsy and strong, and carried her off her feet. She had stopped singing, and now she closed her eyes and waited. She felt him put her down, his hands carefully avoiding her breasts, and then he bowed again, spoke a few words to her in his own language, and left the stage. The other white men applauded him, and he waved his hat in the air to return their courtesy.

  After that, there were other white men. Crawling up over the bar onto the stage, each one picking her up off her feet and moving a few steps with her in his arms, and then crawling back down, smiling, while the others cheered. One stepped on her feet, another dirtied her robe. The white men grew more elaborate in their bows, and one fell into the pit where Tan's nephews mixed drinks, and broke his arm. This was also cheered by the white men.

  After each interruption, she returned to her songs. She saw Tan at a table with one of the white men. This one had small hands and wore a tie and vest and a round hat. His nose was huge, even for a white man, and she knew from that he was wealthy.

  Tan sat with a solemn look on his face, nodding at every word from the white man's mouth. Then they looked at her together, and she knew he was selling her. She put it aside, it was no longer her body, no longer her pain. Her life had become a tool, nothing more, and she would wait to use it. Until the friend of Wild Bill came to her, and she had revenged Song for what they had done to his body.

  When she finished singing, she returned to her room and waited for the white man in the suit and vest. Tan brought him to the door, and bowed formally when she answered his knock. The white man bowed too. His nose recalled a tree root, part of something knotted and longer, exposed to view by accident.

  "Perhaps you will not belong to all white men if you please this one," Tan said. "He is very rich." The white man held his hat in both hands and smiled. She saw he was afraid to be with real people.

  "One is the same as a thousand," she said. She bowed to the man—who, of course, did not speak the language of real people— but did not return his smile.

  "It is up to you," Tan said. "You have brought all your troubles to yourself."

  "I have no troubles," she said. "Now leave us alone, and perhaps this rabbit will run away."

  "Perhaps this rabbit is a fornicator," Tan said.

  She shrugged. "One is like another," she said, looking into his eyes for a moment in an open and disrespectful way. "When you have laid with one, you have laid with a thousand."

  Tan left the room without another word. The white man stood near the door, holding his hat. She had never seen a white man undressed, but the old woman had told her their shafts grew in proportion to their noses. She sat on her bed and waited to see.

  The white man stayed where he was, awkward and afraid. She looked at him to ask what he wanted of her. "Shall I undress?" she said.

  The white man pointed to his ear to show that he did not understand. She untied the sash of her robe and let it fall open on top. "Shall I undress?" she said again.

  The white man nodded in an uncertain way, and put his hat on the chair near the window. Then he sat down and took off his shoes. He began to speak to her, words she didn't understand. She noticed that he had stopped undressing. He spoke in a soft voice, and asked with his eyes for her to understand him.

  Presently he looked down at his hands and played with the wedding band on his third finger. She understood he was speaking of his wife.

  She pointed to her ear, as he had done, to tell him she did not understand. That seemed to please the white man, and he straightened his back and pointed to his chest.
He spoke the word "Bismarck."

  She pointed to her own chest and said, "Ci-an." He smiled and began to speak again, less anxious now. She sat on her bed and waited for him to show her what he wanted. He stayed where he was, talking, until it came to her that the talk itself might be what this one wished.

  A moment after she.had thought that, though, the white man left the chair and came for her. She stood and removed the robe, and saw that he was struck by her beauty. There was a time when she had imagined all men struck in this way, but that was another time, and her dreams went a different way now. She lay on the bed, feeling the coolness of the quilt on her legs and back, and watched him remove his coat and unfasten the suspenders that held up his pants. When he saw that she was watching, he turned away.

  She closed her eyes, not to embarrass him. She heard his breathing, she heard him stumble getting out of his pants. The room was still a long time. She felt him watching her, and then she felt his hands, as soft as a woman's, touching her ankles, then the curves of her feet.

  When she opened her eyes, he was kneeling at the end of her bed, kissing her feet. She could not feel the kisses themselves, but the places where his lips had touched were wet, and she felt the coolness.

  There was a circle at the top of the white man's head, barren of hair, and she saw that he had not removed his shirt or his tie. He pushed his face deeper into her feet, making eating noises, and she picked her head up off the pillow a few inches to watch more closely. The old woman had told her white people did not understand the beauty of bound feet.

  He stayed at the foot of her bed with his face buried in her feet a long time, and when he emerged she saw that he was erect. The old woman was wrong about that too.

  The white people's shafts were not in proportion to the size of their noses, they were the size of their noses.

  The white man climbed onto the bed, as tentative as a pet who knows he does not belong there. He crawled, hands and knees, until he was over her face. His own face was pink and damp. She closed her eyes and waited. The white man lowered himself gently, again speaking words she did not understand, until his soft body was draped over hers like the final disease. He kissed her eyes and cheeks; she did not move. She felt the shaking in his arms and chest, and heard it in his voice. She thought she felt his tears on her cheeks, but the white man was naturally wet, and it was difficult to know.

  He entered her more rudely than he had approached. There was a sudden jab, and then she could feel his small shaft working in and out, as if at the finish of the race. Which it was. The white man spent himself in the time it took to swallow a piece of beef. She wondered at the connection.

  He left her body the way he had come to it, lifting himself slowly off until she felt the singing of her skin. She opened her eyes as he backed off the bed, and when she could, she swung her legs over the side, stood up, and wrapped herself in her robe.

  The white man had turned away to dress, and stood on one foot as he put the other into his trousers. She went to her window and looked out, willing the friend of Wild Bill to come to her room soon. In this way she ignored the white man's shame, and her own. lb acknowledge it was to feed it.

  She waited for him to leave the room, but he stayed. When she brought her eyes back inside, he was standing against the door, wearing his coat and vest and trousers and shoes again, holding his hat in his hands. It was as if he had just come in.

  He began to speak to her again, a rush of quick words that stopped as suddenly as they had started. The white men fornicated and spoke in the same manner. They had only one speed. She listened to the words with her eyes properly lowered. She had no desire to insult the pitiful or the lame.

  When he had stopped speaking he came to her again. He knelt where she stood and kissed her hands, and then he stood up—his eyes had tears now, she was sure—bowed, and left her room.

  A moment later, she saw him appear on the street, moving faster, hiding his face in the collar of his coat. She watched him walk a block west, and then turn left, to the south, in the direction of the cemetery. The white man's posture changed as he left Chinatown, his gait slowed, and as she watched him, she saw that he would return.

  Charley Utter got back to Deadwood on Friday afternoon, a day ahead of the Clippinger man. He rode through town holding the pouch with fifty copies of the Cheyenne Leader over his head and delivered them to A. W. Merrick at the offices of the Black Hills Pioneer, and was told there of Bill's death.

  His distinct feeling, from the moment he heard the words, was that one half of himself was gone.

  "A common drunk?" he said. He remembered lying under the

  pine tree after he had nearly drowned, realizing Bill was incomplete. Now, in Bill's absence, he saw the other side. It was a balance between them.

  A. W. Merrick nodded, pleased to have a chance to tell it again. "Bill was holding aces and eights," he said, "and the coward Jack McCall came up from behind, pistol drawn, and fired once into the back of his head."

  The newspaperman watched to see how Charley took it. "Doc Pierce said he'd never seen a prettier corpse, that Bill's fingers were just like marble." He paused again to see how that set before he went on. "The ball tore a perfect cross, coming out his cheek."

  Charley stood dead still, feeling the newspaperman's eyes on him, feeling the words he'd said working on all the years of his life, pressing into them, changing them. Changing him. Not only what he was, but what he had been. The newspaperman had taken a pencil off the desk and prepared to record Charley's words.

  Charley held on. "What are your feelings?" the newspaperman said.

  Charley shook his head. "I don't have a thing to say in the newspaper," he said.

  "This is for Bill," the newspaperman said. "He oughtn't to pass from this world to the next unmourned."

  Charley looked across the counter. "Has anybody written his wife?" he said.

  The newspaperman wrote that down, and then answered without, looking at him. "There has been some conjecture that there was none," he said. "Can you verify a legal marriage?" Charley reached over the desk and took the pencil out of A. W. Merrick's hand. The newspaperman yelped.

  "A common drunk?" Charley said again. A moment had passed.

  "It happened in a split second," the newspaperman said. He cradled his wrist where Charley had touched him. "Before anyone could sense trouble. It was like lightning, or a flood. An act of God."

  "It's no act of God to shoot a man in the back of the head," Charley said. "That's man-made."

  Merrick shrugged and took a step away. "I think you fractured my wrist," he said, Charley having refused to notice he was carrying it.

  "What happened to the assassin?" Charley said.

  "Tried by a miner's court at the Gem Theater, and released,"

  Merrick said. "His claim was upheld that Bill shot his brother in Abilene, and had vowed to murder the whole family on sight."

  Charley remembered Abilene and swooned at the years that had passed, the things that were gone. "Where is this avenging angel?" he said.

  The newspaperman held on to his wrist, insisting on his injury. "He took a horse and headed out alone in the direction of Fort Laramie," he said. "Jack McCall is his name, but he is known by his association with cats."

  Charley turned and started out the door. His legs hurt, and he was tired and dirty. "Are you after him?" the newspaperman said.

  Charley stopped. He breathed deeply before he answered, and waited until he was sure he could talk. "There is no hurry for circumstances to catch up with Mr. McCall," he said.

  As Charley left, the newspaperman had overcome his injuries and was writing down his words.

  Charley took the gelding to the livery stable and told the boy there to feed him and brush him down. The horse was good to Brick Pomeroy's word, and would run as long as you asked him. Charley thought he would keep the gelding, even though he now had no interest in the pony express. He thought he might give the business to his brother Steve. He gave t
he livery boy five dollars and walked back to his camp on the Whitewood. Malcolm was gone from the wagon, leaving only sour sheets and the smell of urine and aired whiskey.

  He stood in front of the wagon, thinking of how things changed. The boy passed through his thoughts like a piece of A. W. Merrick's newspaper blown across the street. The killer Jack McCall appeared and disappeared too, weightless.

  He held on.

  He took the mattress out of the wagon and stripped the sheets. He filled a pail with water from the creek and scrubbed down the floor of the wagon. He took the sheets and his dirty shirts into Chinatown and left them at a laundry. He picked up fresh clothes. He was nauseated at the smell of Chinese food, and the sight of rows of dead ducks hung on lines outside the windows. He walked back to the wagon to collect his toilet, and then to the bathhouse. The Bottle Fiend was at his station next to the door, holding on to a sack of bottles.

  "Hot water," Charley said, and handed him a dollar.

  The Bottle Fiend did not seem to recognize him, and Charley wondered if he had truer instincts than people with unmolested brains. If he saw inside Charley, and didn't recognize him.

  Charley sat in the tub while the soft-brain heated water. After a while the Bottle Fiend spoke, and Charley saw he had been silent out of respect. "I don't believe nothin' I heard about Wild Bill," he said. "That he shot that man's family connections back in Kansas."

  Charley said, "Bill shot six men in Kansas, including Phil Coe and the M'Kandass cousins. Nobody named McCall, in Kansas or anywhere else."

  The Bottle Fiend said, "I don't believe nothin' I heard. I listen to my heart." Charley wondered again if the Bottle Fiend remembered him. He sat quietly as the tub filled, a bucket at a time.

  "There is things in the future the newspaper can't tell," the Bottle Fiend said a few minutes later. "I told Bill right on this spot, and he said, 'If you see this man with the little-bitty gun, tell him there's about to be a cheap funeral in town.'" The Bottle Fiend shook his head. "I ain't seen him yet to tell him. It wouldn't make no difference if I did. Who listens to a soft-brain?"