Return of Little Big Man

by Thomas Berger

  Since I was standing and him sitting, I could see when the sombrero was off that his hair though long as ever was getting thin at the crown. I had lost only a little of my own, but at forty-seven I was acquiring some gray, and didn’t like it, so I admit I’d mix some coloring into the pomade and comb it into both my sideburns and the mustache. I was fond of thinking this plus my shortness of height made me look a lot younger than I was, not that I was all that much older than Amanda, putting the difference at about a dozen years, in a day when it might well be as much as thirty if the man had money and the girl hadn’t none, which of course wasn’t the case in the present instance.

  Speaking of money, by working another couple of weeks I would make enough to get by for a little while without immediately retrieving any of my nest egg from North Platte, and maybe I could find some outside work in addition to the unpaid job with the Friends of the Red Man, like tending bar in one of the plentiful saloons in Manhattan, but I still didn’t feel I could at this time afford to send Wild Bill Hickok’s widow the money I owed her to replace the roll I had lost, though I was sure going to do so soon as possible.

  Well, I don’t want to stretch out the telling of this episode, though when I was enduring it, them two weeks seemed to go on forever and not just be the “fortnight” they would of been called by the English. At my present age fourteen days pass in about an hour, but when your heart is still young enough to have some function beyond just beating, the clock is slower than you are. I just wish I hadn’t been so yellow about using the telephone, for I could of called up Amanda at her office not to bother her with a lot of palaver but just to remind her of what I had said I would do, if she was in any doubt. As to sending her a note, I tell you I was too worried about how ignorant I was in the use of words, when it came to putting them down in pen and ink.

  So I remained out of touch with Amanda throughout this time, and didn’t even have no intimates to talk to on the subject, by which I mean a woman pal like Allie Earp, for if you speak to another man about being stuck on a girl he would think you soft, the way Cody done.

  But the time eventually arrived, and having already said my goodbyes and collected my final wages the day before, I left the Wild West early one morning in late June and rode the ferry across towards my new life, wearing my city suit and hard-collared shirt, topped by a derby, and carrying a carpet bag containing what was left of my worldly possessions, having give what wouldn’t fit in to Two Eagles, White Bear Woman’s husband, including my wide-brimmed hat.

  The water was a bit choppy in the breeze you always get on a stretch of ocean water even when contained in a bay, which was welcome for on land the day was fixing to get hot, which in the beginning surprised us Westerners with our idea the East always had mild temperatures to match its tenderfoot ways, but we was wrong on both counts: it could get as hot on the sidewalks of New York as in the streets of Tombstone, and as cold in winter as Montana Territory, and the habits of the locals, especially the kind of Irish who owned and also patronized the saloons, was as rough as anywhere beyond the Mississippi. And added to all of this was way too many people everyplace you went. But that was where, on account of a woman, I was going to make my life, and I thought on passing the Statue of Liberty that for me it was a giant image of Amanda.

  I had my usual difficulty in finding the address, the streets being downtown in that part of the city that wasn’t laid out at right angles and being all named and not numbered, and the men I asked directions of either spoke with an accent I couldn’t understand or seemed to find my own speech hard to savvy, and I was afraid a stranger stopping a woman might be taken for a masher, so never done it.

  But finally, more or less by chance, I found myself on the right block and located the building, which lucky for me wasn’t tall as some, for another thing of which I was leery was an elevator. I never cared how safe Mr. Otis was supposed to of made them: I never could see any reason why one stayed up, so I always walked. Fortunately in this case that was only four or five stories. But first I should say that down on the sidewalk, at the entrance, I run into some old fellow just unlocking the front door, and he was in a disagreeable mood most everybody who didn’t know you was in in New York all the time, unless of course they wanted to sell you something, though even then they was barely civil. I guess they just had to deal with too many strangers in a crowded town like that.

  Anyway, this fellow, who as I say was old but maybe not more so than me at that time, it’s just he was so gray-faced and slow-moving, when he turns to shut the door and sees me behind him, he first flinches and then, seeing I ain’t there to rob him, says in a surly voice, “It’s too goddam early. There ain’t nobody here yet, for Jesus’ sake.”

  Since this was Amanda’s building I didn’t want to make no trouble, so I just says I’d wait outside the office of the party I was meeting, and he turned his back on me, so I went on in and found the room number for F.R.M. on the directory board in the entryway and undertook the climb, which was a lot more strenuous due to the regularity of the stairs than mounting a comparable height outdoors. That was undoubtedly why there was so many weary-looking city folk: life there was more exhausting for the human body than in the prairie, mountains, or even the desert. An Indian who could survive hunger, cold, and bloodshed on his own terrain wouldn’t of lasted long in the wear and tear of Manhattan or what had become of it since the white men bought it.

  So by the time I got to Amanda’s floor I was all tuckered out and panting like old Pard after he had a good run, and when following the numbers in the unlit hallway I come to her office, the letters painted on the frosted glass panel of the door, FRIENDS OF THE RED MAN, was big enough to see, but my vision was still too wobbly as yet to make out exactly, in the dim light, what was on the piece of paper stuck below, wrote in ink by hand.

  So I had to wait a while before understanding that the office was closed not just for today but all week, no reason given. Any packages was to be left with the janitor.

  Not only was I disappointed, but I was worried about Amanda. Maybe she was took sick suddenly. But if that happens, a person ain’t likely to specify a precise time when they’ll be back. I reckoned, or at least I hoped, it was more likely a vacation. If so, what would I do with myself for a whole week?

  I clumped down them many steps and found that janitor on the ground floor, where he was pushing a wet mop around.

  I was careful to stay on the part that was still dry, so as not to rile him before getting some information. I began, “Friends of the Red Man. I was wondering—”

  With the usual New York impatience, he says, head down, “Closed,” and continued to swab that dirty mop in big circles without rinsing it in the nearby bucket.

  “I know it,” I says. “But what I was wondering, due to sickness or vacation?”

  His mouth went down in a sneer though he still didn’t look at me. “It’s her wedding.”

  “She’s getting married?”

  “Shit,” says he, “if you’re going to walk across this clean floor, then go and goddam do it.”

  I had been brought too low by the news even to consider what I swore I’d do next time one of them city folk was nasty for no good reason: kick him in the arse. Fact is, at that point he could of kicked mine without fear of retaliation: I wouldn’t of felt it. I couldn’t even ask him any further questions, whether he would of answered or not, for I didn’t want to know any of the details. Now, these many years later, I can look back and see that Amanda hadn’t made no arrangement with me to do what I done. She hadn’t promised me a job or in fact even said she looked forward to seeing me again, professionally or socially. I myself had concocted that entire business out of thin air and overheated feelings. I had a tendency in that direction, but this was worse than with Miss Dora Hand, in that I had put more store in it, though of course not so bad insofar as Amanda was not shot to death, only married, but I was in the same fix, since I wouldn’t be seeing her again. I didn’t need another married woma
n friend like Annie.

  My reaction to this was not noble. I went to what I believe was a number of saloons but due to my state of drunkenness I couldn’t keep track, and it’s always possible I stayed in the same one, and what changed was only the other customers and also my state of consciousness. I do recall at around the point I was two and a half sheets to the wind, like the sailors say, I got real bitter about how nobody in New York City knowed I was the sole white survivor of the battle supposedly shown in that picture the Anheuser-Busch brewery hung in every saloon in the U.S.A., “Custer’s Last Fight,” and it was back of the bar in each of them I visited now, unless it was one and the same place, and I got real mad looking at Custer wearing long hair and wielding a saber, neither of which he had that day, and I begun to tell, probably at the top of my lungs—though at the worst of it I could hardly hear my own voice—what really happened at the Little Big Horn, eventually getting so worked up I throwed my glass at the picture, and I guess I really did go to more than one place, for next day I retained a memory of being bum-rushed into more than one street, and the last time it happened, probably while I was laying facedown in a gutter full of filth, my wallet was lifted, along with my pocket watch and chain, my new derby, my boots, and even my celluloid collar. Whether my carpet bag was took at the same time or I had lost it earlier, I never knowed.

  When I come to next morning I didn’t recognize the neighborhood at all. It wasn’t where I had started out, but seemed to be all slum, with dirty little kids running around and big dark buildings in solid walls from one end of the street to the other, and so crowded and noisy with people and pushcarts, with now and again a skinny overworked old horse pulling a battered wagon while its driver cursed it and everybody in the road, that I thought I was in a drunken dream of Hell or maybe had died and gone there. Anyway, there was enough commotion so that nobody paid any attention to me.

  I was such a mess I would of stood out anywhere else, but here I was amongst the better dressed and groomed, and when I asked one of them little kids with holes in his pants and dried snot on his face if there was a public bath in the vicinity, he never had no idea of what I meant, though he could speak English, for he asked me to give him a penny, and when I searched my pockets and found I had lost every cent, he called me the dirtiest name I ever heard.

  I walked till I wore through the soles of my shoeless socks, and finally I come to a commercial area with a lot of businessmen on the sidewalk, and picking the friendlier faces, though frankly you didn’t see many of such, I would say, “Excuse me, sir, I’m a respectable person irregardless of my present appearance, which is due to an unfortunate accident. I was wondering if you might extend me a loan often cents, along with your address, so I might return it promptly.”

  I repeated this to several people but nobody listened to it much past the “Excuse me, sir,” most of them not looking in my direction, but one big fellow with a red nose says he would get a policeman to run me in, and another, the nicest, told me to go to such-and-such mission and get a free pair of shoes.

  There’s nothing like physical privation to call your attention away from distress of the feelings. When you get uncomfortable enough, you can’t remember your other troubles. The summertime pavement of New York ain’t the place to walk barefoot. My feet got fried, and when I reached one of the rivers that flow around the island and found a dock low enough to sit on and dunk my hoofs, I hadn’t been there long before a big-bellied cop come along with his helmet and truncheon and says, “Be on yer way, or yuh’ll rigrit it.”

  Finally I did end up at a mission on the Bowery, where they give me a used pair of shoes which was too big and with worn-through soles but served the purpose, and all I had to do for them was sing some hymns with the others, to the accompaniment of a piano played by a lady with a sorrowful expression who later said a word to each of us, taking me for just another tramp, and I never let on because at that moment, feeling lower than a snake’s belly, I figured I didn’t deserve better, at my age to make a fool of myself over a young woman; furthermore, a woman who was herself blameless. I mean, she wouldn’t even know of my feeling for her.... On the other hand, if she didn’t know, then I was not humiliated before her.

  I have found throughout my long life that the older I got, the easier it was to deal with matters of pride, at least if they was not bad enough to shoot yourself over right away. I couldn’t blame my current predicament on any of the saloons I got thrown out of, but still the experience soured me on any idea I might of had to return to my barkeep career, at least when it come to New York, and I had demonstrated no talent whatever at panhandling, so unless I wanted to hang permanently around a mission, singing for suppers of thin soup and stale bread, I never had no sensible choice but to get back to the Wild West if Cody would let me.

  So I found my way by foot to the Staten Island ferry landing and just lingered there till some of the cowboys showed up, returning from an overnight spree in the city, and they staked me to the fare when I told them I had gotten beat up and robbed in an outnumbered fight when I stood up for Texas amidst a crowd of Irish micks, squarehead Germans, and Eyetalian greaseballs, on account of they was always getting into such commotions or anyway claimed to.

  I used the same story to explain to Buffalo Bill, only omitting the fight, for he was not himself a pugnacious drinker. I just had one, I says, and then another and so on, until I was blind drunk and busted, a state of affairs which he regarded as normal enough though I never did see him in it. In fact, I never seen him actually drunk, I expect because by time he was under the influence, everybody around him was so much drunker he seemed sober.

  Anyway, he says sure my job was still there, and then he adds something I probably should of been offended by had I not been so shaken by the matter of Amanda. “The Wild West is home to you. Jack.” I knowed he meant it in a friendly way and probably would of applied it to himself as well, for he seldom stayed with his blood-family in Nebraska, but I didn’t have no alternative.

  I drew an advance on my wages and bought new boots and replacements for the other clothes I had lost, except for the derby, which would only of been an unhappy reminder of the new life I wasn’t going to have, so I would of had to get me a hat had I not run into Two Eagles before doing so.

  He was wearing the sombrero I had give him on leaving. Now he would never ask me why I was back, as he hadn’t inquired as to why I had been going away. But he did look at my bare head now, which was an unusual sight outdoors in them days with white men.

  “Do you want your hat back?”

  “I gave it to you,” I says.

  “Yes,” says he, “but I think you need it.” And he takes it off and hands it to me.

  I mention this because it’s a twist on what white people call Indian giving, and maybe demonstrates the redskin angle on the subject of personal possessions.

  Well, so much for my imaginary love affair. I can shrug it off here, though it took me a while to get over it at that time.

  That winter in North Platte the separate house Cody had built on his property and named Scout’s Rest was all finished and ready to move into, with fifteen rooms and big porches ten foot wide, and he had a special room upstairs fitted out for drinking, with a sideboard full of bottles and glassware arranged like in a bar, and a big bed for the use of any guest who was so drunk he passed out. His wife Lulu continued to live in the old Welcome Wigwam house, and as usual I never saw her all winter long.

  I was back at my vacation job of personal bartender to Buffalo Bill and the many visitors he invited and also the passing cowboys, drummers, drifters, and all who dropped in without being asked but was whiskeyed and fed just like they was, some of them staying around for weeks, on account of Cody was always in the market for company and missed the show crowds. I myself for once welcomed having a lot of people around, for it was cheerier than if I had only the company of my disappointments. Also I missed old Pard real bad and often would go out to where he was buried and say hi t
o his bones, which I was relieved to see had not been dug up by any animal, for the grave could not be distinguished by now from the surrounding ground and the grass had grown evenly across all.

  There was less money than I believed there’d be in the savings I kept at the local bank, not that they stole any, but I guess I hadn’t sent back as much as I thought and also not a lot of interest was earned on an account like that.

  Cody seemed to have the golden touch, with his successful show, and I ought to say his ranch was a real one and profitable as run by his brother-in-law Al Goodman and several dozen working cowboys, and I decided if I was going to be lonely at least it wouldn’t be so bad if I was prosperous as well, so I asked Buffalo Bill to do me a favor and let me invest the modest amount at my disposal in the next project he come up with.

  When he acted none too keen about that proposal, I got sore and, with some whiskey under my belt, accused him of being selfish. If I had been working for any other employer, my arse would have been kicked out the door at that point, but if there was anything Bill Cody was not, it was selfish or stingy or intolerant of the ranting of a drunk, so he says all right, but what I should know about the business ideas of Doc Powell was that they didn’t always make as much money as it seemed they might at the outset.

  He was referring to an old pal of his who lived now in Wisconsin but showed up from time to time over the course of many years, in fact since Bill had met him when Powell worked for the Army as a physician at Fort McPherson long before. Unlikely as it seemed, Frank Powell was a genuine doctor and sometimes practiced as such, but he was also a character after Cody’s heart, a heavy drinker and a big talker, a sharpshooter who sometimes did an Annie Oakley act, an honorary Indian with the name of White Beaver, and a specialist in schemes designed to enrich himself and his fellow investors, among them the merchandising of such patent medicines as White Beaver’s Cough Cream, the Great Lung Healer, which was guaranteed to cure any complaint of the chest, from the congestion of a cold up to and including consumption.