(1986) Deadwood

by Pete Dexter

  It was the kind of thought, once you thought it, you wondered why you never thought of it earlier.

  Solomon Star stood naked in his first-floor room at Mrs. Grace Tubb's rooming house, slicking his hair. He dropped his comb into a jar of axle grease and spread it evenly over his head, then he parted it down the middle, testing the straightness with his finger. He pulled the comb straight down from the part, first the right side, then the left, then the back. He touched the crown of his head, looking for misplaced hairs, and finding none, he picked his hat up off the bed and centered it over his ears.

  He put on his shirt next, a new shirt with the initials SS sewn into the pocket, and buttoned it from the collar down. When that was done, he lifted the collar and put on his tie. It was a bow tie, and he worked several minutes on the knot, checking with his fingers to make sure the ends were even. Then he reached into his top drawer for a tin of talcum—he knew without looking where it was—and dusted himself under the shirt. He pulled on his vest, then his underwear bottoms, and then his pants. He sat down to put on his socks, dark red with the initials SS sewn into the sides. People assumed Solomon Star was all business, they hadn't seen his socks.

  He buffed his shoes on the bedspread.

  Before he left the room, he picked up the wildflowers in a vase by the window. He had picked them north of town that afternoon. Seth Bullock was worried to death. "Picking flowers," he'd said. "You spent a whole day picking flowers?"

  Solomon had smiled at him and left the office early.

  He carried the flowers across the town now into Chinatown. He took the seat he always took at the theater, and smiled at the celestial. Solomon Star believed the celestial owned the business. He also believed the celestial was the father of Ci-an, the China Doll.

  He came over now, all smiles and bows, and asked if Solomon would have a drink. Solomon thanked him, returning the smiles, and waited while he spoke to one of the waiters.

  The celestial settled in next to him and said, "China Doll, she miss you."

  Solomon Star nodded and sipped the whiskey that the waiters brought. "I know," he said.

  "She think you special white man. She wants be only yours."

  Solomon nodded and sipped. "Her wish is my own," he said.

  "Good," the celestial said. "Very good." He looked around the room, uncomfortable, and Solomon took the envelope out of his pants pocket and put it between them on the table. In it were ten hundred-dollar bills.

  "For her dowry," he said.

  "Yes," the celestial said. "So she marry white man she wants." Solomon did not understand Chinese ways, but he knew they were interested in money, and that the girl did not have enough to marry.

  "Not yet," Solomon said. "White men have only one wife. I must unmarry first." The Chinese smiled, as if that were a small joke between them, and put the envelope in his blouse. "Soon," Solomon said.

  The celestial nodded. "Very soon," he said. "I get China Doll now, she sing for you and then you see her tonight, very soon."

  Solomon handed the Chinese the flowers. "Take these to her," he said, "from Bismarck." The Chinese took the flowers, smiling and bowing, and made his way up the stairs. The room was full now, more miners than Chinese, sitting at all the tables, standing at the bar and along the walls.

  Solomon knew they had come for Ci-an. The theater filled every night at the same time, and then emptied after she had finished. He looked at them now, unshaved faces, dirty and torn clothes, permanent squints. He wondered what methods the miners used, to ruin their eyes.

  He did not like them there, in dirty clothes, waiting for Ci-an. They belonged with upstairs girls, which were convenient all over the northern Hills. He looked around the theater, face after face, red-eyed and drunk, and found himself looking at them as Ci-an would. Their faces became one face, and it came up out of the smoke open-mouthed for her as she stood on the stage.

  He wiped his mouth with his hand and thought of taking her away that night, back to Mrs. Tubb's rooming house. In all, he had paid the celestial three thousand dollars. If he understood the Chinese, the money would be returned to him as her dowry.

  He thought he would have a house built on the west side of town, where the sun would touch it in the morning while the rest of town was still in the shadows of the mountains.

  Then he thought of his own wife, in Bismarck. And Seth Bullock, and the business. Two twenty-thousand-dollar kilns were on the road somewhere between Deadwood and Sioux City. He didn't know why, but it did not seem possible to keep a Chinese woman in his house and a brickworks in town. It seemed like too much for one man. He decided to turn the operation of the kilns over to Bullock.

  He imagined what he might write in the letter to his wife. He did not consider telling her in person. He had changed, but he had not lost his senses. He would write that he had worked all his life, and missed things he could not get back, and it was time now to do the things that were left. And she could have half of the brick business.

  He did not know how to explain the Chinese woman. To his wife or to Seth Bullock, who depended on him as much. The difference being that Solomon was not afraid of Seth Bullock.

  The miners began to hoot now; the celestial was bringing Ci-an onto the stage. She walked with tiny steps, head bowed. He thought he could see something tremble inside her. He looked at her hands and saw the ring he had put on her thumb. Her fingers were like a child's.

  She went straight to the center of the stage and stood alone while the piano player began. The room went quiet, and she started to sing. The words were like baby talk, they had that sweetness to them. In her mouth, even the chopped sounds were soft.

  She sang for almost an hour, and at the end the miners hooted and shot off their guns. Some of them whistled through their fingers. They belonged with whores. She belonged someplace away from them.

  She waited on the stage until the celestial came to get her.

  Solomon had another drink, giving her time to prepare herself, and then walked upstairs. He knocked at Ci-an's door; she did not answer. He waited. He knocked again. An old Chinese woman came toward him in the hall, talking to herself in a bothered way. She was carrying towels, and when she was close to Solomon she said, "You shoo now," and walked around him and through Ci-an's door.

  He knocked again. He heard the old woman talking, then Ci-an. In a few minutes the old woman came back out, still carrying the towels, and spoke to him again. "You shoo now," she said. "China Doll sick."

  "Sick?" he said, and moved around her and into the room. Ci-an was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. She looked weak and pale, and he thought he saw her tremble. He was always seeing her tremble. "What is it?" he said. He stepped toward her, but Ci-an held up her hand to stop him. The old woman came in behind him and pulled at his arm.

  "You shoo," she said.

  Ci-an smiled at him and then closed her eyes for a moment, to show that she wanted to sleep. She put her finger over her lips, and he put his finger over his. Something in the movement touched him. The old woman was pushing him out. "You shoo," she said.

  He walked down the hallway, away from the stairs, and sat in the window at the end. He wanted to watch over her. From there he could see the hall without being noticed himself. Solomon did not show more of himself in Chinatown than he needed to. He had changed, but he had not lost his senses.

  A breeze came through the window and cooled his neck and head. He realized he was sweating. It was not uncomfortable, though, and for a long time he sat still, thinking of a morning he and Ci-an might have in the house that would catch the sun earlier than the gulch. It felt like he was protecting her now, and keeping her company. He wondered if she felt him there.

  The old woman left the room a few minutes after Solomon. She was speaking to Ci-an in a frightened way even as she closed the door between them. It sounded frightened to Solomon, anyway, but that was how the Chinese always sounded. He smiled and waited, and thought of the house. He was happy to be close to her.<
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  In ten minutes the old woman was back again, bringing a small man, who carried a bottle of J. Fred McCurnin swoop whiskey. Solomon saw that the man was drunk. He was freshly shaven and wore clean clothes, but he was drunk. The old woman looked up and down the hall, but did not notice him sitting in the window. The man did not look one way or another, and Solomon wondered if he had paid to lie with the old woman. Stranger things happened.

  No. The old woman opened Ci-an's door and pulled the man inside. Solomon thought the man must be a doctor. But then, a few minutes later, the old woman came out alone, and Solomon realized he hadn't been carrying a medicine bag.

  The breeze stopped, and in the stillness the sweat on his neck began to tickle.

  Solomon waited. Staring down the hallway until it seemed to weave, like the flats in the summer heat, and he began to hear voices in his head. Some of those voices were his and some of them weren't, and he could not tell one from the other.

  Ci-an had sensed the friend of Wild Bill was there before she saw him. At the head of the stairs, as she descended into the theater, she knew he had come to her.

  She found him quickly in the audience, and then averted her glance. She kept her eyes on the floor as she sang, and bowed her head between her songs, while Tan's uncle sat trying to remember the notes to the next. The uncle had difficulty remembering one song from another, a sign of his age.

  It did not matter. She sang her songs slowly, knowing their effect on the man, all men. He would believe he had been forgiven. She sang to him and held him with her songs, and drew him toward her. And she looked another time, as she finished, and again met his eyes. A small promise.

  When she had finished she returned to her room, sent Bismarck away, feigning illness, and sent the old woman for the friend of Wild Bill. "His hair is long and clean," she said, "you will see he is different from the rest."

  When the old woman had left, she moved from her bed to the closet, and searched the trunks of clothes until she found a small, black-handled knife. The knife was sharp on both sides and heavy at the top. A tiny piece had been broken from the tip, an accident in throwing.

  She put the knife on the table next to the bed, where the man would see it, and lay down. An unconcealed knife threatened no one. She looked at it from her pillow, fixing on it in such a way that the black of the handle became an opening, a door she would pass through leaving this place.

  But the friend of Wild Bill would pass through first. She did not move, but thought of the instrument's weight in her hand. She wondered if Song had felt the weight of the instrument of his own passing. She trembled, remembering the oven.

  The old woman came back with the white man. He was not as small in her room as he had seemed on the street. The friend of Wild Bill was holding a bottle, and she saw that he had drunk much of what was inside. She did not think that would slow his mind, or slow his hands.

  The death of his friend had hurt him, but there was no pleasure for her in his pain now. He smiled at her and stood at the spot where the old woman left him. She had thought he would come to her, that the momentum of this event had begun and would bring him to her bed.

  He spoke to her instead, softly, and she held out her hand. He crossed the distance between them and sat down on the bed. Ci-an moved and the sheet fell off her body. The man looked into her eyes. She held still, afraid that she would give herself away. Afraid that the man already knew.

  But he was not cunning. He was unpracticed in deception, and so did not easily see it in others. Song had been blind to pretense too. She unbuttoned his shirt, allowing her fingers to touch his chest. She felt the movement of his heart. He watched her face as she undressed him, as if he were searching for the meaning of it. There was a kindness in his eyes that she had not seen before, and it comforted her for what was ahead.

  When the shirt was unbuttoned, she sat up and pushed it back over his shoulders, and then his arms. She saw the place she would put the knife. He still looked into her eyes, and when the shirt was on the floor she took him in her arms and held him. Another comfort.

  His back was hard and she could feel each muscle and tendon and bone. She moved her hands, learning his back, and sensed that he had released himself to her. She began to love him.

  "I will take you away soon," she said.

  He pulled back, smiling now, and made a motion with his hands for her to speak. She said it again. "I will take you away soon."

  And he repeated the sounds back to her. In her lifetime, no white man had ever tried to speak Chinese to her before. The words came back to her, a prophecy.

  There was a narrow space between their bodies now, and she reached across it and unbuckled the belt to his pants.

  He sat very still, watching her, perhaps sensing that the things of this room did not harmonize. She went on with it, unbuttoning his pants. She was graceful in all things she did with her hands, and in a moment she held him in her fingers. His penis strained, like a blind old man.

  "Men are led by the blind man inside them," she said.

  He tried the sentence in Chinese, and she smiled at his pronunciation. He had dark eyes, the color of real people's, and patience. He tried again. She had meant to put the knife between his ribs at the first chance, but when the chance came, as he leaned over the side of the bed for the bottle, she could not bring herself to act.

  She felt there was something to be done first.

  He offered her the bottle, which she refused. He drank a long time, as if it were difficult for him to swallow. He removed the bottle from his lips and began to speak, his own language. She took his penis in her hand again and listened. Presently, he touched her shoulders. His fingers were soft and clean, and she held still, afraid again that he would see her purpose.

  But he spoke quietly, without stopping, touching her shoulders. Then her sides, then her back. He moved behind her on the bed, and from there he touched her breasts. He held them carefully and then moved closer, until she could feel his mouth on her shoulder and neck and his penis pressing into her back. She stared at the knife on the table.

  The pull was gentle, like a current. He was speaking behind her ear, and it pulled her. She bent herself forward until her face rested on her pillows, and he bent with her. He pushed into her slowly, as slowly as she had bent to the current, and it filled her in that same insistent way. One of his hands covered her belly, and she wondered if he wished to feel himself inside her.

  She lifted herself and pushed back into him. She closed her eyes and then, in the contradictions of all the things he was to her, the penis was suddenly gone and the door to her room splintered and slammed against the wall. She heard the wood break.

  The penis was gone, and then the man was gone too, and she felt the absence in all the places he had pressed against her back. There was a shot, and the man shouted. Words, not a cry.

  An old chinese woman had come to Charley in the back of the theater and pulled on his sleeve. "You come," she said.

  And he went, because he had drunk most of the bottle, and because the old woman was afraid. He thought there might be a snake somewhere. But she led him up the stairs to a room and left him inside with the China Doll. He had seen glimpses of the woman on the wagon train from Fort Laramie, and watched her sing that very night on the stage of the theater, but neither of those looks prepared him.

  Her face had the Chinese quality, but none of the weaknesses. It didn't look anything like a squash. Her skin was soft, and whatever her troubles—and there was something—she seemed single-minded enough about what to do for them. And Charley liked her. Something was reserved, and did not ask too much.

  She was as pretty as Mrs. Langrishe, in her Chinese way, and Charley saw that she was normal and wasn't going to bite.

  And so he let himself be undressed and handled, and then he saw she was unhappy, and he'd spoken to her as he kissed her from behind. "Don't be unhappy," he said.

  Yes, Charles Utter could sweet-talk the ladies.

  H
e did not crave her the way he craved Mrs. Langrishe, but there was enough craving left over from sitting in the theater with that lady's hand in his lap—her touch there had curled his peeder like salt on a caterpillar—so that by the time things developed with the China Doll, it felt like what he needed.

  And then he slid himself inside her—it was soft and slow and normal, and it was a relief too, to find out he wasn't tangle-brained forever after all the nights with Lurline—and more than that, it felt good, the way it had a long time ago, before he knew what to expect. And he thanked her, not worrying himself over the phrasing because she didn't understand anyway. "You're real normal," he said.

  And she lifted herself up and pushed back into him, and at that moment Handsome Banjo Dick Brown kicked open the door, holding his Colt in his hand, following him with it as Charley disengaged himself from the China Doll and rolled off the bed. He noticed again that Handsome Dick held the gun higher in his hand than most. Charley remembered the shooting at the theater.

  Handsome Dick took his time—he was a calm one facing an unarmed man—and then fired a shot that broke a piece of the bed-board. "Son of a bitch," Charley said, "you do always get even."

  Charley landed on the floor and rolled, left and right. He could not remember where his own guns were, or where he had been when the China Doll took them off. So it was an act of providence, somewhere in his drunk rollings, that his feet touched them. Not only touched them, but delivered them. He did not know how, but his feet put the gun belt in his hands.

  He was still moving on the floor and had glimpses of Handsome Dick trying to draw a bead on his head. Vanity kept the singer from spraying bullets all over the floor. Handsome Dick was a shootist and hated to miss. Charley rolled under the bed and stopped. He took one of the guns out of its holster and cocked it. Above him, the mattress sagged, and he thought of the China Doll's bottom, almost as close to him now as before Handsome Dick came in the door.