(1986) Deadwood

by Pete Dexter

  Bullock saw the problem was political. "It isn't a popular thing, to move a cemetery," he told the barber. "You move bodies, it stirs up memories of the dead."

  Doc Pierce was standing in Bullock's office. There was mud from the little girl's body still stuck to his hands. "I'll get blamed," he said. "Every time it happens, people's going to say it was because I buried them wrong. They don't care nothing about underground water, Sheriff. Things like this lead to violence."

  Bullock saw the undertaker was right. He saw that as sheriff, he might be held to account too. "Then we got to move it up the hill," he said.

  And the cemetery was renamed, and moved to the top of the hill, a coffin and a marker at a time. They called it Mount Moriah. The city hired miners and roughs to dig new graves for the dead who had no relatives. They had to pay more to get them to dig up the old.

  The move began in early July, as soon as a new road was cut, and all that month, day and night, the wagons moved up and down the hill, the sounds of wheels carrying over the miners and roughs, who had never worked around the dead before, and barely spoke. Sometimes there were small services over the deceased, more often there weren't. It was the first anyone had heard of moving a cemetery, and it was anybody's guess what was right to do.

  Charley put off moving Bill until he had time to think. He wrote Agnes in St. Louis, but there was no reply. Something had told him she wasn't there anymore. He put it off, though, waiting for her letter, until the city began to unearth the graves behind Bill's, and the footprints and wheel tracks from the day's work lay every evening all over Bill's bed.

  He saw that on a Saturday afternoon, and moved him the following morning. He took the Bottle Fiend with him, and two men to use the shovels. Their names were John McLintock and Lewis Schoenfield, and both of them stunk of alcohol. They came along free, for the honor of burying Wild Bill.

  Charley put them in back of the wagon and allowed the soft-brain to sit in front with him on the way up. The soft-brain did not believe Bill would be in his grave. "He ain't there," he said. "He's in heaven."

  Charley looked straight ahead and kept a tight rein. "Part of him's still here," he said. "The other part's in heaven."

  The Bottle Fiend did not believe it. "You don't go part by part," he said. "Angels carry you, all at once."

  They stopped under a tree and Charley sat with the Bottle Fiend and watched the two men dig. This part of the cemetery had been emptied now, except for Bill. There were piles of dirt every ten feet, and he could hear the men's breathing as they dug. The Bottle Fiend was wearing a clean shirt, and sat straight in the seat.

  Charley stared at the trees, he stared at the town. He watched a wagon leave the other side of the cemetery and begin the climb toward Mount Moriah. He looked everywhere but into the hole.

  The ground had been packed hard by the tourists, and the digging was slow. The men soaked through their shirts, but they never stopped. And even when John McLintock clipped Lewis Schoenfield over the eye with his shovel, there were no words. Charley saw the look on Lewis Schoenfield's face, though, and surmised they would discuss it later.

  The hole went deeper, the color of the earth changed. It was the blackest dirt Charley had seen in the Hills. The men were chest-deep into the hole when they hit the top of the box. Lewis Schoenfield touched it first; a little cry came out of him.

  Charley climbed out of the wagon, the Bottle Fiend stayed where he was. "He ain't here," he said. "He's in heaven."

  Charley was sorry he'd brought him; he hated to realign the soft-brain's thinking, it made him brood. People that thought a soft-brain only had one mood had never paid attention. The Bottle Fiend liked things the way he understood them, and felt tricked when they turned out different. That's because he knew he was soft-brained.

  Charley walked to the edge of the hole and looked down. The men scraped dirt off the lid of the box, it didn't seem nearly big enough for what it held. Behind him the Bottle Fiend said, "He's flew off with angels."

  Charley didn't answer. You couldn't protect anybody from the world. McLintock got two ropes out of the wagon and put one under each end of the box. "Angels got wings, they fly where they want," the Bottle Fiend said, and Charley suddenly thought of him, lying on the floor in Mrs. Langrishe's living room, trailing glass that looked like broken wings. He thought of the blood.

  "Come help with the ropes," he said.

  He thought the Bottle Fiend might balk—there was a streak of that in him—but he left the wagon seat backwards and took the rope Charley held, standing on the other side of the open hole. McLintock and Schoenfield took a similar pose at the foot end of the casket, and together they began to pull the box up.

  The Bottle Fiend was not as strong as the other men, and Charley could feel his strainings through the rope, he didn't know how. They were connected, but between them lay the weight of the dead. The box rose toward them, a few inches at a time, out of the blackest dirt Charley had ever seen in the Hills. The Bottle Fiend stumbled two steps toward the hole, but caught himself before he went in.

  "Hold on, Bottle Man," Charley said. The soft-brain liked being called "Bottle Man."

  The weight was unnatural, Charley expected the box was half full of water. The Bottle Fiend's face turned red and the veins showed in his neck. And the box came toward them out of the dark, a few inches at a time. The soft-brain stumbled again. Charley said, "Just hold on. Let me do the pulling."

  The Bottle Fiend didn't seem to hear. The box was halfway out, and Charley saw he was afraid of what was in it.

  The box seemed to get heavier as it came to the lip of the grave. "Hold on," Charley said. The Bottle Fiend's hands were bleeding, Charley couldn't protect him at all. There wasn't any such thing.

  Charley pulled, and the end of the box came out of the hole. And in that moment, McLintock or Schoenfield slipped, pulled each other off balance, and dropped the bottom end of the casket back into the grave. Schoenfield fell in with it.

  The casket landed on end and broke open.

  There was no water. The back end of the box had swung back into the hole, hitting about where the head had been. The end Charley and the Bottle Fiend held sprung forward and rested against the far wall of the grave. McLintock looked into the hole while Schoenfield climbed out.

  "What happened?" McLintock said.

  Schoenfield bit his lip and brushed fresh dirt off his pants and shirt.

  "One minute we had it out, the next minute you was in the hole with Bill," McLintock said.

  Schoenfield stared at him through a puffy eye in a way that made Charley glad they'd left their guns in the wagon to dig. "It's no consequence," Charley said, but murder was on Schoenfield's mind, anybody could see that.

  "The matter at hand is the box," Charley said, and Schoenfield unlocked his eyes from McLintock's throat and they all looked into the grave. McLintock said, "That one end's dug itself into the ground. I don't see how a rope could be got under it." He moved to the other side of the hole, shaking his head. "They ain't no way to get in there and set it back down flat to start over either."

  "Shut up," Schoenfield said, looking at Charley. "Let the man think."

  "I was only remarking on what I seen. They ain't no reason to tell me to shut up."

  Schoenfield fingered the swelling over his eye, but neither of them went further. Charley studied the box and scratched his head. "Another foot and we'd of had him," he said.

  McLintock looked at Schoenfield. "You think that's so smart? 'Another foot and we'd of had him'? I didn't even bother to say that."

  "Shut up," Schoenfield said. "He ain't thinking yet, he's getting ready to think."

  Charley squatted on his heels. One of his legs cracked going down, and he knew there was a moment coming, as he got back up, when it would feel like his leg might break. He looked into the grave from this angle, and saw the box had been split, bottom to top. Something inside was pushing out the crack.

  If they tried to lift the casket out face-
down, Bill would spill out into the hole.

  "Is he thinkin' yet?" McLintock said. Charley stared at them all, one at a time.

  It was the soft-brain who spoke. "Why not put a rope around the top?"

  For half a minute they all stood still, looking at it. "Shit," McLintock said, "the soft-brain's got better sense than either one of you."

  "I didn't see you coming up with no ideas," Schoenfield said.

  "You told me to shut up."

  "I'm telling you again."

  Charley tied the rope around the top of the box, about a foot from the end, and laid the rest in a straight line leading away from the other graves, trying to prevent a fall and a broken leg. The day had that accidental feel.

  He stood at the end of the rope, separated Schoenfield and McLintock with the Bottle Fiend, and they all pulled together, on Charley's count. The box came out, but too easy. Bill stayed inside. Only the Bottle Fiend looked into the hole.

  "The wood must of rotted," Schoenfield said.

  It was a situation that somehow obligated an explanation. Charley stood with the rope limp in his hand, staring at the box. Nobody moved.

  It was the soft-brain who spoke. "It's a statue," he said. "The angels took Bill to heaven and left us a statue for a souvenir."

  "It isn't a statue," Charley said. "It's earthly remains. The other part's in heaven."

  "It's a statue," the soft-brain said. "Look for yourself." Charley dropped the rope and walked to the edge. He put a hand on the Bottle Fiend's shoulder to pull him away; he was sorry he'd brought him along. The soft-brain wouldn't move, though. He had a streak of that in him.

  Charley looked then and Bill was almost vertical in the corner, leaning against the wall of dirt. His clothes were decomposed, scarcely clothes at all. His color was bad, and the cross in his cheek where Jack McCall's ball exited had opened and the skin had rolled back on itself.

  Even so, Charley had seen him looking worse. He lowered himself into the hole to carry Bill out. When he tried to lift him, though, the body had an unnatural weight. The legs were as hard as wood.

  "Give a hand," he said, and a moment later the Bottle Fiend's head showed at the lip of the grave. "Get the rope."

  He tied the rope under Bill's arms, and guided the body while the other three hauled him up. He heard McLintock complain it felt like three hundred pounds. Charley kept the body face-up as they pulled it out; he held Bill's shoulders, then his waist. The legs passed through his hands, and finally the feet. He recognized the shape of Bill's legs from their rassling. Nothing had changed, and he wondered at the secrets that lay underground.

  When he climbed out of the hole, McLintock and Schoenfield were standing over the body. The Bottle Fiend was back by the wagon, afraid. Bill was face-up, still full in the chest and shoulders, straight and dignified. Charley thought of Agnes, and the day he had held her in her room at the Grand Union Hotel. He felt her in his heart now, her spirit was as familiar in him as Bill's.

  McLintock found a stick and poked, gently, into Bill's arm. Charley did not move to stop him. Then he poked the shoulder, his legs, his stomach. He looked up, half afraid. "He's pertrified," he said. "He's pertrified hard as a rock."

  Schoenfield took the stick—McLintock was not reluctant to give it up—and he poked the body too. Harder, until the stick bent and then broke. Charley and the soft-brain watched from the wagon, thinking their own thoughts.

  "Touch it," Schoenfield said.

  "I ain't touching nothin'," McLintock said.

  "It's a statue," the soft-brain said, to Charley.

  Charley thought of Agnes.

  McLintock leaned close to the body and sniffed. "Ain't no smell at all," he said.

  The soft-brain looked at Charley. "I told you," he said.

  Charley didn't answer. He felt the pull of Agnes on him, and was somehow not surprised to unearth the cause of it, perfect and hard, hidden like a diamond three years in the dark.

  "It ain't Bill," the soft-brain whispered, and it sounded like the voice inside Charley's own head. "It's a souvenir the angels left behind."

  Solomon Star shot Tan You-chau for the second time at the corner of Main and Wall streets, across from the newly built Bullock Hotel. It was September 24, 1879.

  Seth Bullock was sitting in the dining room of his hotel at the time, and when he heard the shots he lifted a copy of the Cheyenne Leader over his face, not to be recognized. Although he'd given up official duties to John Manning, he had yet to wean the town of the notion he was the law. There was no emergency of any consequence, from mud fever among the mules to the miners refusing to work, that he was not called to relieve.

  Once found, Seth Bullock never refused. His thoughts now were political. He was a famous man west of the river, and would not jeopardize it, refusing to help. He hoped not to jeopardize it getting shot.

  And so, hearing the gun in the street, he lowered himself in his chair and covered his face with a newspaper. He had just finished a story about the telephone system that would be installed in Dead-wood in November, the only one between Chicago and San Francisco.

  It was the cook who found him. He'd hired Lucretia Marchbanks away from the Grand Union, and took all his meals at the hotel since. She walked into the dining room, heavy-footed and slow, and went directly to his table. She always knew where he was. "You best come look in the street," she said. "Mr. Star shot that Chinese again."

  Bullock put the paper on the table in front of him and looked at her to make sure he understood. He always had trouble understanding Negroes. He treated them polite, though. "Pardon me?" he said.

  "Mr. Star done shot the same Chinaman again," she said. "He don't have but two shots in that bitty gun or he'd shot him more."

  Bullock found Solomon standing in the street, holding an empty derringer. There was blood on the porch of Ayers & Wardman's Hardware, but the celestial was gone. Solomon stared north, in the direction of Chinatown. A woman was screaming inside the store, "Murder! Murder!" over and over.

  Bullock took the gun out of Solomon's hand. "Where's the victim?" he said.

  The cook had followed Bullock out of the hotel. "He run that way," she said, pointing north. "Talkin' that Chinese talk as fast as he can." Bullock took Solomon by the arm and led him the other direction, toward jail. Solomon could have been in Boston for all the attention he was paying.

  Mrs. Ellsner came out of her bakery, a dozen ladies behind her. Bullock wondered, in the back of his head, what they did inside. There were always a dozen ladies in Mrs. Ellsner's bakery. One of them called to him.

  "Is it safe, Sheriff? We heard the shots, but we thought it was only afternoon mischief in the badlands."

  "It was an accident," Bullock said. "A Chinese gentleman was shot in the street."

  She stood with her hands on her hips, the wife of one of the town's lawyers. He couldn't remember which one, there were half a hundred now, drawn by the legal disputes over ownership of claims. "Mr. Star's luck with the Chinese is very bad," she said.

  Seth Bullock touched the brim of his hat. He walked Solomon into the new jail, a frame building next to the flouring mill, and shut the door. There were two chairs and a table inside. He sat Solomon down in one and took the other for himself. He stared across the table at his business partner for the better part of a minute.

  Solomon was someplace else.

  "You shot the same Chinese twice now," he said, sounding reasonable. Bullock always took a reasonable tone with those he arrested. Solomon nodded and looked at the ceiling. "I may not be able to call it an accident this time."

  Solomon brought himself back to the here and now. "It wasn't an accident ever."

  "This Chinese—"

  "Tan You-chau," Solomon said.

  Bullock was surprised that he knew the name. The names white men knew for the Chinese were the names they'd given them. Like Ding Dong and Hop Lee and Heap Wash. "One's like another," he said.

  Solomon looked at the ceiling.

  "I
got to put you in jail," Bullock said. "The whole town's watching this now." Solomon was someplace else. Bullock made a fist and brought it down on the table.

  Solomon never looked. "We trusted each other a long time," Bullock said, reasonable again. "If you told me what this grudge was, I could fix it. Did this Chinese put a curse on you?"

  Solomon never looked.

  Bullock took the keys out of the drawer in the table and stood up. "I got to put you in jail," he said again. "You see where this has led?" When Solomon didn't answer, Bullock unlocked the door and held it open.

  "I'll locate the Chinese and see how bad he's hurt," he said. Solomon walked into the cell and sat on the cot against the wall. There was a faded yellow chamber pot in the cell, a dirt floor, iron grating across the window. Bullock shut the door and locked it. He looked at Solomon and thought of the business. "I should of done this the first time," he said. "For your own good, I should of locked you up."

  Solomon never looked.

  Bullock went back to his hotel. He found Lucretia in the kitchen and told her to make sure Solomon was fed. "Anything he wants," he said.

  Bullock went into Chinatown, looking for the injured Chinese. The place stunk a hundred ways the rest of the town didn't. It was mostly the small animals strung from the windows, he thought, because the Chinese themselves, except for the whores, only smelled dusty.

  He pounded on the door of Tan's theater, but there was no answer. He heard movements inside and went to the back. There were three girls there, lined up to use the bathroom. They opened their eyes wide when he asked for Tan, they shook their heads. He imitated a man being shot, they moved farther away. When he turned his back, he heard them giggle.

  He crossed the street to the death house, but the old man there was blind, and stood in the doorway, looking over his head, saying, "No, no, no." Bullock imagined how big the old man thought white men were.

  He noticed blood in the doorway.

  He went back into town hopeful. If the Chinese refused to make a complaint or die, there was no case against Solomon.