In Calamity's Wake

by Natalee Caple

In the end, I think I understood Calamity Jane so well because we were like mirror images of each other, one dressed as a woman and the other as a man, one loving the stage and the other being trapped there. We were both wanderers with itchy feet and all manner of broken hearts and families behind us. We neither of us knew what regular life could offer. You might as well have put shackles on me as made me live in a house and you might as well have caged her as made her sleep away from the sky. At any rate, we wandered all over the Far West, travelling at all hours of night and day. The life was so exciting and I was so young; I was as happy as an itinerant mortal can be.

  I met Dirty Em in a small town near Topeka. She joined the troupe for a few nights and played the comic roles, the ones that only required the look of a woman and not my training. Em was loud and beautiful and she could beat any of us at cards. She drank and in order to get close to her I tried to drink too. She scraped me up and took me home and in the morning I asked her to marry me. Shortly thereafter we began to drink and fight like it was a professional act. Which is to say we lacked the natural limits such as real people put into effect to keep from killing each other. She called me names and threw things and I shook her like a damn doll. We didn’t even make love. We made hate. One day she threw a gun at me, screaming, why did I ruin her life? I came along and made a nothing out of her. Why did I destroy her dreams and humiliate her and why didn’t I just kill her? I admit I was completely drunk and it was only ten o’clock in the morning. She scratched my face and punched me in the groin and grabbed a knife and then somehow I shot her. I was a terrible shot and I only grazed her wrist with the first bullet, but with the second one I tore her cheek open. She stood there with her hand over the wound looking as if she held her face from sheer amazement.

  Please, I said, I’m sorry.

  I spent the next year in jail. She came to see me and we were calm with each other, survivors of something together. But when I finished my sentence I left without telling her, getting on the train as I had so many times and leaving.

  I felt bad about shooting my wife, but not as bad as I felt about hitting my friend back in Toledo. But then he was asleep and she was awake; he was innocent and she was at least partly to blame for giving me the gun. I did not know how to find my troupe or if they were still together. I went farther West than I ever had before, trying to find something different in myself that matched the landscape. I half thought I could finish school and get married again and maybe have a few kids. Once in a while I could picture that life clearly, like my death on the train; it was a memory from another life.

  I arrived in Deadwood still a young man. I walked down the streets and found the Bella Union. I walked in and got myself another job dancing and singing as a player in someone else’s show. I liked Deadwood. There was a church for every saloon. The gold-bugs and the preachers walked hand-in-hand down to the river for baptisms. Chinese lanterns hung in half the shop windows and the coloured folks lived right downtown.

  I made friends with your mother, who, for all her drinking, had the ability to see inside people and forgive them. And I made friends with Sam Fields, the Nigger General, and he told me about his service in the 114th Infantry Division, how he was a private with the attitude of a general when asked to stand up for his people. He told me about being a farm labourer after the war and making the decision to give it up and come to the Hills to pan for gold. Sam was intelligent and he knew his history (they also called him the Darkey Shakespeare) and he liked to orate on the great black men of America: Nat Love, known as Deadwood Dick, a famous cowboy; and Bill Pickett, the great bulldogger out of Texas. Years later Sam and I would celebrate Edward McCabe being elected state auditor in Texas and then again in Kansas where he established the all-black town of Langston. And we cheered because Langston was named by McCabe after John Mercer Langston, the first African-American Congressman elected from Virginia. The world was changing and we were there to see it together.

  Deadwood was an international oasis. Its Chinatown, in fact, was big and getting bigger. People said it was the biggest Chinatown beside San Francisco, and the whites could no longer pretend they were alone. Nights I was offstage I went with Calamity and Sam to eat some Chinese food and talk with the old fellow, who reminded me of my grandfather, that cheery man who pinched my grandmother’s behind until one day he got himself shot by one of those clumsy men who shoot other men by accident. Cause of death: mischief unknown. On the odd occasion, when we were very lucky, we’d see a lion-dance in the place, two people performing acrobatics under the giant gold head trailing red ribbons. Calamity cheered and howled; she was so happy when the cymbals crashed.

  Our other friend was Aunt Sally Sarah Campbell, a coloured woman who came in as a cook for Custer and bought herself a mining claim. She was the first woman to do that and white men were proposing marriage to her when the gold came in. The journalists made up a new name for what Sally was; they called her an unbleached American. The four of us thought that was hilarious. Sally said it was like saying she was as good as a white. Calamity said it was like saying she was a man. I thought, how strange it was for white people to see their own skin as bathed in acid. Sally made us dinners sometimes and we talked business, asking her advice. She was a stone-solid woman with a confidence I envied. Later, in Galena, she cooked to feed the poor miners, always sharing her good luck. Calamity delivered the food because the men had seen so few black faces not made that way by coal that Sally feared they might not eat. She and Calamity were ever colluding in kindnesses.

  So many of my old associates in the cork opera had already passed away. To a quieter stage, I hoped, beyond the double-dealing of managers and fickle audiences. An old showman is, in truth, a being sui generis, something unlike any other. We were like the heroes of the Far West, a dead and dying breed able to make the most dramatic of forms out of the most minor of incidents. We were not naturally worse than the majority of men when it came to lying, liquor and love, but we experienced more temptation and so we fell more often and became known more for our weaknesses than our strengths.

  My second wife, Mollie, knew me to be a man of contradictions, and, as she was a kind and generous profiteer of human flesh, we understood each other and were most gentle with each other always.

  I performed on Mollie’s stage for three years. Towards the end of that time I was tired of the excesses of life. I began to doubt whether a great Negro minstrel was a more enviable man than a great senator or author. I wondered if I could be one of those things instead. Mollie loved me. She would have turned over every cent made by her girls upstairs to keep me dancing in the gaming hall. I had her purchase books for me and I began to study every day, devouring every work of poetry, biography, fiction and history I could lay hands on. I practised arithmetic and grammar in the day and I dressed up like a good Scotch girl at night.

  Week by week I became indifferent to the audience. Then I began to feel contempt fester until finally I felt a positive hatred of their vacant faces. They would feel the same, I thought, watching me dance, as they would staring at a puppet in a museum.

  The community made the decision for me. They finally found out I had been in prison for shooting my first wife and I was marched out of town and left by the railroad tracks. Mollie, Sam, Calamity and Sally tried to stop them. But I was happy to be released from the security of the Bella Union.

  My life, in the end, consisted of more treks and visions. A few times I went to school, a few times I held down jobs in stores or on ranches. But I always returned to show business. I travelled on steamboats, one that carried a museum with the Twelve Apostles, Jesus, Mary and Joseph all in wax and one that showcased a taxidermy zoo and was filled with stuffed birds, a giraffe and alligators. I performed beside the giraffe for a small wage. I belong on a stage no matter what size, and when you find a place where you feel you belong it is almost impossible to leave.

  Martha

  THE STAGE, THE FLOOR, THE WALLS, THE CHAIRS were all of the same newly he
wn fragrant pine. Heavy red velvet curtains parted and a woman stood in the light emanating from a semicircle of gold painted shells. She wore fringed buckskin trousers and a cream-coloured silk blouse. Her blond hair, waved and clipped, shone as if oiled. She licked bright lips and put the back of one hand to her cheek. She opened her arms as Calamity Jane and sang to the body of her lover, Wild Bill, where he lay, stage left, a neat form outlined by a white sheet. Her voice was a sweet emotional treble.

  I have lov’d thee dearly lov’d thee,

  Through an age of worldly woe,

  How ungrateful I have prov’d thee,

  Let my mournful exile show,

  Ten long years of anxious sorrow

  Hour by hour I counted o’er

  Looking forward till tomorrow.

  Ev’ry day I lov’d thee more.

  Ev’ry day I lov’d thee more.

  Pow’r nor splendor could not charm me.

  I no joy in wealth could see.

  Nor could threats or fears alarm me,

  Save the fear of losing thee:

  When the storms of fortune press’d thee

  I have wept to see thee weep,

  When relentless cares distress thee,

  I have lull’d those cares to sleep.

  I have lull’d those cares to sleep.

  I have lov’d thee dearly lov’d thee

  Miette

  LEW RODE ME TO BILLINGS AND DELIVERED ME to a hotel. He walked me inside, holding my arm, smiling back at hostile and astonished stares. He rang the bell for the porter even though the man stood in front of us.

  Dear sir, said Lew, could you call on my wife, Mollie Johnson? Tell her I am here with our child.

  The porter sneezed loudly and blew his nose, hiding behind the handkerchief for as long as possible.

  You make a fool of me, sir, he said at last.

  A loud voice coming from the direction of the restaurant said, I liked whoring; I won’t deny it. I met the best women in the world in the business!

  That’s Mollie now! Lew said, grabbing my arm and leaving the porter sneezing behind us and customers lining up to chorus, Well, I never!

  Mollie! Lew called from the entrance to the restaurant.

  A fat woman with blond hair piled over her crown and around her ears and loading her shoulders looked up at us and her expression turned from dull confusion to joy.

  Lew! Lew, come in! Don’t mind the riff-raff. Come right in.

  After whispers and embraces Lew left me with Mollie, who took me to her rooms. Alone, she was quiet and polite. I’m sorry for what you heard, she said. Once in a while the hypocrisy of life makes me break out of this disguise. She gestured to the room and to her furniture and to herself. The room was clean and well decorated; a four-poster bed made up neatly with quilts stood at one end. The walls were papered in soft patterns. Pink velvet sitting chairs under an open window framed a little table that bore a silver tea set. A neat wooden bureau lined with framed pictures, brushes and combs, and a set of lace doilies stood against the far wall.

  I live here now, Mollie said.

  In the daylight that fell through her windows I saw that her face was old and it seemed the more so for the youthful style of her powdered makeup.

  Do you like my dress? she asked, and I realized I had been staring.

  Yes.

  Yes? It was imported from Rome. This is real silk.

  She stepped forward and took my hand and laid it on the voluminous skirt. The fabric was indeed soft as a chick’s feathers and the violet colour had a curious, shifting depth.

  So, you don’t know what to say to me now?

  I don’t. Except, I—I am looking for Calamity—

  Jane, she said. Well, she is most likely in the Black Hills. She always returns there. She was always lovesick, stupid as a poet over the Badlands and Black Hills. Not me! I tell you the first time I got out of the coach with my mother I looked at the mountains and they reminded me of great crested waves. The Plains seemed endless like the ocean and I got seasick!

  Mollie motioned for me to sit down and so I settled in a chair and watched her prepare tea. I felt numb; I don’t know why. She poured for me and for herself and she settled in the opposite chair, took off her hair and the heavy beaded jewellery around her neck and ears, and sighed, looking out the window.

  So, you are the girl, she said. Amazing. And she is your mother. You know, I came here, to the West, with my mother. We came all the way from Europe. My mother was as opposite yours as diamonds are opposite to coal. No offence, darlin.’ I loved Jane. But my mother had such class ambitions! It was our intention to open a dress shop in America to serve all the suddenly wealthy with extravagances. We, like everyone, had heard that gold dust was common as dust motes. My mother got very sick on the journey from Germany to New York to Harrisburg to Lincoln to Deadwood. When she stepped down from the coach and said, Mollie, look we’re here, I looked at her sunken eyes and I knew she would be dead in a day.

  Dead from what? I asked.

  Cholera. It was cholera. On the ship it had been so bad people liquefied before my eyes. In the morning I saw a woman delicately hold a handkerchief over her nose and that afternoon the same woman was tossed overboard by her husband. I don’t understand why I could wade through that mealy rice-water diarrhea and not get sick but a doctor told me once it was something to do with my blood type. I have tough blood.

  I had my mother’s sewing machine, which she had held onto on the rocking boat through storms and plagues and undersea monster attacks. And I had a little room in the south end where I sat and worked most days and night. I made beautiful shirts and pants that could make a woman fall in love with the man that wore them. But I made dresses very poorly and everything else worse. I made a wedding dress once that killed the bride. She tripped on the hem coming down the stairs to go to the church and would probably have broken her neck falling except the veil wrapped round her throat and caught on a nail and hung her. So, business was up and down.

  And then, one day, Calamity Jane came in and asked me to make a pair of trousers so fine they could bring a sheriff to leave his actress wife. I knew she meant to give them to Wild Bill. The pants I made were dark brown wool with a V-back waist and three bone buttons on the fly. I sewed one of Jane’s own eyelashes into the crotch seam. I should have known then that she would be destroyed by the man in those beautiful pants. Anyway, I am at base a kind person and so I turned to whoring. I thought to save some lives that way. She laughed at her own joke and stood and smoothed her dress.

  It is easy, she said in sudden seriousness, to judge a woman for half of what she’s done without weighing it against the other half. Your mother begged money for drinks. She would borrow five dollars, buy a few drinks and then one for the house. She would go out on the street and borrow some more. She would order the house to buy and the house bought. This was tolerated, encouraged. It was considered neither begging nor borrowing. Calamity was Calamity; she was dear for being true; there was not an iota of herself that she kept hidden. I admire her for that. It was part of the expenses of the night to keep her glass filled and I must say that I was paid well for my pretty kindnesses and she was paid poorly for all the lives she saved, for all the good she gave, willingly to anyone. If you but whispered of a sick friend she would sober up and devote herself to their care. She risked her own health doing so. So, fine, she drank her weight the rest of the time. If Wild Bill Hickok was a hero then Calamity Jane was a hero and heroes were part of the overhead. I’ll send a telegram to Dora DuFran, she said. Dora will know where to find your mother.

  Dora DuFran

  CHARLIE UTTER HAD THE MAD LOVE FOR DORA DuFran even though she was married and it made his friends, especially Martha, laugh to see him so besotted. Charlie, Martha always said, was the most noble of creatures in all forms of love including friendship, and little interested in public opinion. The only person who may have loved Wild Bill more than Martha Canary was Charlie Utter. He followed and pro
tected Wild Bill as the tiger follows and protects a spoiled cub. Once Bill was gone the only person who could make him laugh was Dora.

  Charlie was no joke of a lover. He cut a notable figure. He stood only five and a half feet tall but he was unusually meticulous in his person. He had long flowing gold hair and a trimmed moustache. He wore hand-tailored fringed buckskins, fine linen shirts, beaded moccasins and a large silver belt buckle, elaborated with designs of roses and thorns, and he carried a pair of gold, silver and pearl ornamented pistols. He slept under the highest quality blankets, imported from California, and he carried with him everywhere mirrors, combs, razors and whisk-brooms. He was well known for his bizarre habit of bathing daily and the whiff of lotions that followed him.

  So, when Dora gathered Martha to a room and told her friend (all flapping and flushed) that Charlie had asked her to marry him and that she had declined on the basis of her matrimonial state, Martha thought it natural to advise him to treat Dora’s every request from then on as a heroic task set by a goddess to win her immortal favour. Charlie, understanding how little he understood, agreed to such a long-term courtship that it might never be clear what was won by whom or how or when.

  It was fall in 1878 when Dora thought of the cat solution. Martha, she said, I have it! My girls are the sweetest, the prettiest and the cleanest in Deadwood. But because they are, they are also the loneliest, so much more discontented than the girls who work for Madam Mustachio, who are always gay with drink, or even the girls who work for Mollie Johnson, who are so prone to jealous fistfights. I know now they need a cure for their loneliness as much as or more than they need other cures.

  Dora sent her pianist and lawyer, Franca, to ask at the Black Hills Pioneer office where they could get some pets for the girls. Franca was followed down the street by a band of suffragists beseeching Franca to abandon Dora’s whores and the men who drank liquor beside them.