E.L. Doctorow

by Welcome to Hard Times

  Walking to the bay in front of Ezra’s store, the man was laughing to himself and smacking his hands together. Every few steps he would turn around to look at the wagon rumbling away south and each time he looked he laughed harder. He took the bay over to the Silver Sun and saddled it with the gear from his dead roan. Then he tied his new horse to the rail, mopped his forehead with a red handkerchief and stepped up to the saloon doors, which he found locked. He kicked them open and from where I was I heard Avery’s voice say heartily: “Come in, come in!”

  After the man had been a while in the Silver Sun, everyone began to come out of doors, standing in ones and twos on the porch or in the street, watching that wagon going away smaller and smaller ahead of its dust cone. Jack Millay saw me and limped over swinging his one arm: “Did you ever see such work, Blue?” Jack’s face was pinked with excitement, he took his joys how he could. In the alleys some of the people were bringing their buckboards to their side doors and at the rock end of the street John Bear had his travois lying in front of his shack.

  I watched the Indian now. When Hausenfield had taken his pot shots Bear had jumped for cover fast enough although his back was turned to the noise. If he was deaf he had another sense to make up for it, if he was dumb he wasn’t too dumb. He came out of his shack and lashed his things to the travois. Then he picked up the poles and pulled. When he reached his skillet lying in the middle of the street he walked right over it and he went right down the street and past the last house. Later I saw him standing half a mile in the flats. He laid his travois down and stood still facing the town.

  Behind him and east, tiny Jimmy Fee who had never come back in was sitting by his father’s grave. Clouds were over half the sky now, the sun was covered and a little breeze was blowing.

  I went to my office and found Molly Riordan looking in my desk.

  “Haven’t you any whiskey, Blue?”

  “Whiskey’s across the street,” I said and just then we heard Avery yelling with a laugh in his voice: “Molly! Molly-y!”

  Molly ducked behind the desk, and through a hole in my oilpaper window I saw Avery holding his swinging doors open, bellowing with good nature: “Molly where are you, gentleman here wants to see you!” Even across the street I could hear the bottle crashing somewhere behind him. He laughed as if he was enjoying it, called Molly again and went back in.

  “Christ!” said Molly. “Isn’t anybody going to do anything?”

  “Why don’t you go on over?”

  “What?” She stood up then, watching me fill the cylinders of my gun.

  I said: “That knife Avery gave you. Do as he said, hold it tight against your wrist and if your moment comes slip it out and use it. But I don’t think you’ll have to.”

  “Oh sure, sure! Christ that Bad Man’s the only man in town! I can’t believe it, you’re no better than that son of a bitch Avery, using a lady, for Godsake, marching brave behind a lady’s skirts. You’re some comfort Mayor, go to hell!”

  I tucked the gun in my belt and opened the door. People were waiting in the street.

  “Oh God,” Molly said, “so this is what it’s come to, how did I ever end up in this forsaken town, oh Christ this is the end. I’ll tell you something you didn’t know, Blue, I left New York ten years ago because I couldn’t bear bein’ a maid, I was too proud to say ‘Yes Mum.’ Doesn’t that tickle you?”

  “We do what we can, Molly.”

  Her face was twisted up and tears were streaming down her cheeks as she walked by me saying: “I hope he gets you Mayor, I swear I do, you and the rest of the crawling bastards in this miserable town.”

  I followed behind her as we walked across—everyone stepping out of our way—and went up on the steps to the Silver Sun. She turned to look at me once more.

  “You’re alright, Molly,” I said.

  But when she walked up to the doors the stiletto slipped out of her sleeve and clattered on the porch. I kicked it aside before the Bad Man might see it and I pushed Molly through the doors and stepped in behind. Then I saw what made her drop the knife, Florence bent over the upstairs railing, bare, with her arms dangling and her red hair falling down between them.

  Now Avery must have seen the woman dead that way when he came back to close his doors and pull his shades down. But he wasn’t too concerned when we came in, he greeted us laughing and jovial.

  “Here’s Molly, hello Blue! Come on, come in, drinks on the gentleman!”

  Behind the bar the Bad Man from Bodie was grinning and setting up two more glasses. Avery went to the doors and opened them, calling into the street: “Everybody! Drinks for the whole town on the gentleman here!” The Bad Man laughed but outside everyone began to run, I could see under the doors the feet running in the dirt. The only one Avery got was Jack Millay, who had followed us onto the porch and was peeking over the doors when Avery shouted out his invitation. Avery pulled Jack in and I know that in a few minutes the town was empty but for those of us in the saloon.

  It was a celebration. Avery, Jack Millay and I stood at the bar while the man poured for us. Molly sat at one of the tables staring up at Flo with her knuckles in her mouth. The man came around the bar and served her a drink from a tray, making a mock bow like a fancy Eastern waiter. She sat looking away from him and didn’t even stir when he took the bottom of her skirt between two fingers and threw it back over her knees. Avery laughed at that and Jack laughed too and the man backed away from Molly, looking at her and chuckling. He went behind the bar again and lifted his glass to her.

  The Bad Man drank Avery’s liquor like water and every time he poured for himself, he poured for us too. The other two kept up with him but I emptied my glass by throwing the stuff over my shoulder. The man finally saw me do that and then he broke the neck off a fresh bottle and filled my glass slowly and then raised his and looked me in the eyes. He was a younger man than I expected but his skin was shot red under the stubble, there was a blaze on one cheek and he had the eyes of a crazy horse. Right then my hand began to move and I meant for it to go for my gun. But it went instead for the glass on the bar; I felt at that moment that I wanted to please him, I was almost glad to drink.

  After that the man began to break open a bottle for each round. One time, as Avery had his drink up to his mouth, the man stuck his arm out and whacked Avery’s glass with the heel of his hand. Avery stumbled back, spitting out teeth and blood and trying to laugh at the same time. A bit later, the man fixed his attention on Jack Millay’s stump and with an eyewide amazement he swung at it with a full bottle of whiskey. Jack went grey and sunk to the floor right where he was standing.

  I suppose it would have been my turn next but that his eye caught Molly again, sitting just as he’d left her. He gave the rebel yell and jumped over the bar.

  “Blue!” Molly screamed. She was trying to put tables and chairs between them and the Bad Man was laughing and tossing the furniture aside; Jack Millay was out on the footrail and Avery was slumped at the bottom of the stairs, crying and wiping at the blood on his apron. I drew my gun at that moment but it was too late. The man caught Molly by the wrist and almost at the same time I sent my shot, wild, across the room, he was crouched in front of her and shooting back. Molly was struggling and pulling or I’m sure he would have killed me; as it was his shots drove me through the doors, I fell back onto the porch and rolled off into the dirt. I heard him coming to the doors, laughing, and I picked up my hat and began running, stumbling, down the street, staying close to the porch and keeping low. He was at the doors now, sending shots into the dirt at my heels, into the porch alongside me, and what I thought then was that I wanted those records in my desk, I wanted to go across to my room and get those ledgers to safekeeping. But it was almost as if he knew, his bullets tore up the ground on my right and kept me going straight, I was limping from the pain of my fall, tripping in the dirt, my heart like a hand clenching my insides, and I didn’t stop until I was out in the flats with everyone else.

  So we all st
ood scattered on the flats looking back at the town—the boy Jimmy Fee, John Bear, Ezra, and the rest—some with gear, some by a horse or a buckboard, some with bundles and some, like me, with nothing. Overhead the sky was heavy with clouds, a wind was blowing, and although it couldn’t have been much past noon, the day was black. We watched for a long time. Every once in a while we could hear a scream or something crashing, small sounds now in the flats. And then, after a long silence, flames began to lick out of the saloon. Hausenfield’s horse in front whinnied and pulled back on his ties and then the Bad Man came carrying a chair on fire. He whooped and threw the chair across and it landed on the porch in front of my office. Then he saw something and ran across the street. What he saw was Fee’s ladder still leaning where it was left against the stable. He picked up that ladder and went around poking out windows with it and when the wind had caught the flames and both sides of the street were framed in fire, he used the ladder to knock down the porch beams, jumping aside and hollering when the hot wood fell into the street.

  But then the bay was going mad so he untied him and got on his back and held him to a walk toward the rocks. We couldn’t see the man for a long while after that, but finally Ezra Maple pointed to the hills: He was well up on the trail toward the lodes, lighted for a moment by the fire down below him, picking his way through the stone and not even looking back. He disappeared again and that was all we saw of the Bad Man from Bodie, though we waited to make sure. The rain finally began to come down hard and we stood watching it fall into the fire and watching the fire lick up at the rain.

  2

  The Silver Sun made the brightest flame and the cleanest smoke. Once or twice part of the roof blew into the air above the fire—and that would be Avery’s kegs of alcohol. By and by the rain began to let up. The wind came back and whiffs of the smoke blew out on the flats. Off to the left of me Major Munn, the veteran who liked to call Molly Riordan daughter, was standing up on his buckboard with his arm raised. He was a bent old man with long white mustaches, and he was yelling into the smoke and roar which came out to us on the wind: “If I’d had you before me at Richmond, I’d have put the ball in yer eye, God help you, I killed twenty like you when I was younger,” his voice piped over the flats. “Let the sun drop you in the badlands and let you not die before the shit of prairie dogs is in yer mouth and the buzzard’s claw is on yer belly. May yer pizzle fry in Hell and your eggs wither to peas, may the marrow boil in yer bones and yer eyes melt in their holes for what you done here, God damn you, God damn you …” He was shaking his fist toward the town but for a moment I had the feeling it was me he was cursing.

  Then the fire’s roar smothered his words, and a gust of smoke hid him from my sight. When it cleared again I saw that Major was not up behind his horse, but down on the ground under him. I ran over: he had toppled with a stroke, his fist was still rigid, there was froth on his lips and a rattle in his throat. I put my hand on him and his eyes opened and he stared at me and died.

  Someone leaning over my back said: “Well I have seen the elephant.” Others came to look at the Major and it was enough to break the spell of the fire. People began tying down their gear, pulling cinches tight. In a few minutes half the town was strung out across the flats, only the women in the wagons looking back.

  The rain didn’t hurt what fire there was but it cut the wind down and that saved two structures: in the back of what had been Hausenfield’s place the gawky windmill over his well was still standing; and at the far end of the town, near the rocks, the Indian’s shanty was untouched. By the time the sun came out again everything else was gone, only some quarter posts still stood, charred and half eaten, and also one or two half-burned house sides where Fee had used green lumber.

  When I walked back a few little fires were still working along the ground and smoke from the ruins was rising straight up into the sky. The street was covered with ashes and everywhere you looked there were mice running in circles, dozens of squeaking little miseries twisting around in the dirt, flopping from their bellies to their backs. A jackrabbit was jumping into the air, trying to get off a jumble of glowing timbers, but he couldn’t jump clear. I almost expected one-armed Jack to come tugging at my sleeve to tell me what a fine sight that was.

  Stepping high over the rubble I found my desk upended and smoking. The drawers were burnt out and I found just the covers left of my ledgers. My mattress was gone too, it was a corn-husk mattress, the best I ever slept on. The only other thing of mine I could identify was a patch of brown blanket. The desk and the blanket and the ledgers I had bought from a lawyer who had passed through a year before, dumping everything he owned so as to march on unencumbered up to the mining camp in the lodes.

  I kicked around in the debris and finally saw something else: it was my habit to keep my fortune of two pouches of gold dust under the floor of my office, but the pouches were gone and my dust stood in two solid cakes. Those nuggets sat there like somebody’s eggs. There were other people poking around in the rubble up and down the street and I wondered what any of them would say if they found a pair of balls lying independent like that. I tried to pick up the gold but it crumbled and spilled and I only got a few pinches into my pockets. I didn’t try to reclaim the rest, after just a few minutes in this smoke and heat my face was grimy, my eyes were watering and my clothes were about dry although the rain had left me drenched. There was a terrible stench over everything that made me remember the people lying under the Silver Sun.

  All that was left of the saloon were the three steps leading up to the porch, and there was a small fire under them. Just beyond, up where his store had been, Ezra Maple was taking inventory, pushing boards aside, kicking his ruined goods. He was the one who saw Molly lying on the ground in back of the saloon rubble.

  “Blue! Look here!”

  She was lying face down, the whole back of her dress was burned away. I kneeled down by her side and after looking hard I was sure she was breathing.

  “She’s alive,” I said to Ezra.

  “Well what do you mean to do?”

  “We can’t leave her here this way.”

  I straightened up and saw John Bear pulling his travois back down the street toward his shack. I yelled at him but he didn’t turn around so I had to run and get him. The three of us picked Molly up by the hands and feet and carried her over to the Indian’s hut. The front of her dress hung down like a flag.

  “Wait a minute,” Ezra said, wanting to stop, “it’s not decent.”

  “You can’t cover her up,” I said, “her whole back is burned.” From her shoulder blades to her ankles, Molly was covered with blisters. We laid her down on the hard earth inside Bear’s place and then the Indian went out and drew some water from Hausenfield’s tank. When he came back he scraped a pile of earth from his floor and poured the water on it till it was a mush; then he took a tin from his pack and sprinkled whatever was in that tin—saleratus maybe—on the mud; then he spread the mixture along Molly’s back and haunches and legs and covered it up with some kind of flat weed he had. John Bear was a true doctor, there was no hesitation in his moves. By the time he was finished Molly was moaning, a good sound although I didn’t like to hear it. I stepped outside and a shadow passed over my eyes.

  I don’t know where the buzzards come from but they’re never late. Three or four were making slow circles above the town, another few over the flats. I had left the Major’s body out there, lodged against a back wheel so his pony couldn’t run. But one of the carrion birds glided down, spread his big wings and perched on the buckboard and I saw the pony shy. A second later I heard his whinny and then he was rearing; the wheel rolled over the Major, and the pony was trotting free toward the town, pulling the rig with him, leaving the old man’s body exposed to the birds.

  A few hundred yards to the east the little boy, Jimmy Fee, was running around his father’s grave, waving his arms as if the shadows of the buzzards were cobwebs in his hair.

  I ran to the end of the str
eet and caught the horse, turned him around and rode him back out. The birds on Major Munn spraddled their wings and flapped into the air. They had already blooded his neck. I lifted the old man on the buckboard, sitting him down among his possessions. There was a blanket and I threw it over him. Then I rode the wagon to Jimmy Fee. A few more buzzards had come up over the flats and now they circled Fee’s grave in a procession. Hausenfield had not dug very deep. The boy was huddled on top of the mound with his hands over his head, he was crying and screaming although he had hardly whimpered when Fee died.

  “Come on up here, boy,” I said still holding the reins. “Come on up beside me.” But he only cried the more. I had to step down and carry him in my arms and hold him in my lap all the way back to town. He kept crying: “They’re gonna get my Pa, the birds are gonna get my Pa …” And I knew that before anything else we had better hurry up and bury the dead. Someone in the street was shooting and cursing and a coyote was running fast back to the rocks.

  Ezra found one shovel from his store that was only charred along the haft, and I found a rusty pick that was lying at the foot of Hausenfield’s windmill. To give Jimmy Fee something to do I sent him looking for his own digging tool and he came on the skillet lying in the dirt where the Bad Man had flung it. Even if we had ten new shovels it would have done no good, only two of the men besides Ezra and me were willing to help dig. The rest of those who had come back to the town were packing their saddles or loading their rigs with what was left to them and riding out in ones and twos.