E.L. Doctorow

by Welcome to Hard Times

  A few minutes later the Indian was standing in the dugout looking down at Jimmy. The boy stared back in fear, Bear wore his buffalo robe over his shirt and his black hair hung from under his hat down to his shoulders. They regarded each other and no word was spoken—and then the Indian bent down and tore the top blanket off Jimmy with such suddenness that he cried out and began to cough.

  Bear went into his doctoring with a speed that was like solace. He hung the blanket across the doorway leading to the cabin. He put a pot of water on the stove and poked up the fire. When the water was boiling he threw in some herbs he had and in a few minutes the air in the dugout was sweet and steamy. We all watched his moves transfixed: he drew a tin out of his pocket and poured a handful of seed in his palm. Then he kneeled down and looked around the dugout.

  “He wants a stone,” Molly said to me.

  I ran outside and found a flat piece of rock and brought it to him. He began to pound the seed into a powder, when it was well ground it made the sharp odor of mustard. He took some water from our pail and spilled it over the powder till he had a thick paste of earth and mustard. Then, cupping it in one hand he went over to Jimmy and went down on his knees, straddling the boy.

  Jimmy began to struggle then, kicking and throwing his arms up, but the Indian just drew back and looked at him until he quietened and turned his face away. Holding the mustard paste in one hand, Bear exposed the boy’s chest. Seeing that small white ribbed body made my heart hurt. Bear spread the medicine across from under one arm to the other, up to the throat, down as far as the stomach. Then he pulled down Jimmy’s shirt and bound the blanket tight around him.

  I will say this, whatever else was to happen John Bear was the best doctor I ever saw, white or red; he had a true talent for healing and it must be owned him.

  Before he left he stepped up to Molly and while she stood startled, unwound the thin chain from her throat and dropped the cross at Jimmy’s head. He was no Christian but a modest man; Molly had clutched the cross during her healing and he was no one to deny the power of a charm.

  Then came that long day and night with the wind whipping snow down from the rocks, and inside the dugout, droplets of water prickling the sod walls as the steam rose from the pot on the stove. I kept feeding the fire and filling the pot. Molly sat with the boy propped against her, he was coughing up matter and spitting it into a rag she held to his face. His eyes were smarting from the mustard, his chest ached with the coughing and burned from the poultice, he was in thorough misery. Whenever he made as if to tear the blanket away she held his hands and whispered: “Let it burn, let it burn deep!”

  Sometime during that siege Miss Adah came pounding on the door wanting to know how the boy was doing. She wouldn’t come in so I had to step outside and we shouted to each other a few moments before she scurried back to the saloon.

  Jimmy didn’t take anything for supper but during the night, after the snow let up, I thought he was breathing easier. Still he couldn’t close his eyes and Molly, laying his head against her breast, put her arms around him. It was an effort for her, she was blushing, she kept looking at me as if she expected me to laugh at her.

  There was a panic in her eyes for a moment, she wanted to talk to the boy, to soothe him, but she had trouble with the words. She had to go back a long way to find them:

  “I bet you never seen a big city. Molly used to live in New York, did you know that? Oh it’s a grand place with stone houses all in rows, and cobbled streets and lamps on each corner that the man comes to light each evening with a long taper. And the carriage buses you see, so shiny and clean, with horses pulling them that are braided in the mane, high stepping. Did you know that …?”

  I was sitting with my back to the wall and chewing on a prairie cake and as Molly went on talking I watched her close. The more she talked the easier the words came. The boy’s eyes were open and listening and he was breathing heavily, and Molly sat with her own eyes closed as she summoned up her pictures.

  “… and each morning I would have a fresh black frock to put on and a white linen apron and a little starched cap to pin to my hair, as clean and starched as a nun I was. And that house! Well you’ve never seen the likes, a good fifteen rooms, each room fitted out with its own set of furniture and its polished floor of wood and its fancy rug. Why you could disappear into one of those big soft beds. And in the dining room, that was a room just used for eating, can you see that? the table would be covered with a fine cloth tasseled at the edges, and maybe ten settings of pure silver forks and knives and spoons, with three or four glasses at each place for the different waters or wines. And with the people all talking and laughing and the room lit up with candles, in we would come from the kitchen, three or four of us, carrying trays of hot vegetables and buns and a hen, maybe, and a roasted ham to serve to all the ladies and gentlemen. All the ladies and gentlemen …”

  I will never forget her words. Even after the boy’s eyes were closed she sat holding him around, whispering these remembrances. It was the most she ever said about herself, it was the most I ever learned about her. She was speaking the brogue. I had never heard her use it before, and I wouldn’t again.

  “All the lovely ladies, all the fine gentlemen …”

  Then her eyes opened and she saw me looking and “Turn away!” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “Don’t you dare look at me, turn away!” Even without her telling me I would have had to, such terrible pride was blinding.

  Later Molly slipped away from the boy and laid him down in his sleep which was so long in coming. And we each stretched out to get some sleep too. But all the blankets were on Jimmy and after the fire went down it was cold lying there, there was a chill in my bones that made them ache. I couldn’t sleep and neither could Molly. I heard her shivering. I moved near her and touched her shoulder and with a cry she rolled over and bundled up to me. “Damn you Mayor,” she whispered in my ear, “I swear I can’t bear the sight of you!” And I held her as tight as I could, feeling her breast on mine, feeling her breathing, and then the warmth came and I didn’t move until she was asleep. I think I had wanted to hold her ever since the fire. My hands were on her back and I could feel the scars under her dress. She was small, so much smaller than she looked. I held her around, pressing her to me and I thought well we’re both suffering our lives, only how we do it is different. If it replenishes her to hate me then let her hate me. At the worst her hate is something between herself and herself. And knowing it I was ashamed I had ever felt poorly of her.

  7

  Jimmy was slow to get better, his cough lingered for weeks. Molly tended to him each minute of the time and didn’t ask any help from me. She cooked him soups, she kept him well wrapped; and on his walking day she held him under the elbows while he slowly stepped around the cabin. On occasion she went to consult with John Bear, bringing the Indian her portion of food. And if she returned with some more treatment Jimmy might have wanted to squawk but he submitted to it without a word. There was something about Molly that commanded him: she went about her ministering shortly, with never a smile, as if in one moment of a too tried patience she would just give him up and leave him to himself.

  She had already left me to myself. Our bundling had warmed her only to the point where she hardly acknowledged that I was there in the cabin. She kept busy with the boy and with the steady cold now I was fairly locked in; so that there was not much I could do but take away the slops, or worry would we have fire to last the winter. When Jimmy was on his feet I thought he might want to take up our reading lessons once more. But he didn’t seem keen on it, his eyes always wandered to the woman, and what use there was to the almanac; even that I had to myself.

  I spent a lot of time studying the almanac. It kept me from brooding or wondering where the Bad Man might be enjoying his winter. It had census figures for the different states and their counties, and the dates they were brought into the Union. I have always been one for that kind of reading. Before I got the fever to
go West I was bound out to a lawyer for some months, and it pleasured me to feel the legal cap or read the briefs all salted down with Latin. In all my traveling, whenever I came across a Warrant or a Notice of any kind I never failed to read it through. Some people have a weakness for cards, or whittling, my weakness has always been for documents and deeds and such like.

  When I first came to Hard Times it was nothing posted that stopped me, I had a small stake in my money belt and I was riding up to the lodes to earn some more. But there was Fee putting the finishing boards on Avery’s two-story saloon, and the sight of him building this place right up off the flat ground struck me somehow. I could think of better places for a carpenter to make his living; not the poorest townsite I’d seen it still didn’t look worth his labor, yet Fee was working with an assurance that made me feel ashamed even to question him. In my forty-eighth year, tired out with looking, looking, moving always and wanting I don’t know what, I was ready to grant it wasn’t the site but the settling of it that mattered. I bought a room off the porch from Hausenfield and I stayed. Later, without much thinking about it, I got a ledger from a traveling notions man; and after I acquired that lawyer’s desk and belongings who was going up to work in the lodes, I put the ledger on the desk and in my spare time I began to put down everyone’s name and the land they claimed and what properties they owned. I never enjoyed anything more. The town hadn’t a promoter, you see, and there were no records for anything. If it ever got big enough to be listed or if the Territory ever needed names for a statehood petition, why I had these documents. A few people like Avery laughed when it went about what I was doing; later, Avery was one of the first to call me Mayor—

  But just thinking about it just made the days longer.

  One cold afternoon there was a banging on our door and it was Isaac Maple. He came in begging our pardon, he said he’d tried to see Jenks and Zar both, but Jenks was asleep in the stable and Zar was in a mood and wouldn’t speak to him.

  “See them about what, Isaac?” I said.

  He took something from his pocket which I saw to be a small printed calendar. Standing there, with water hanging from his nose, he said: “I mark off the days with this, and s’far as I know it’s December the twenty-fifth, Christmas.”

  Molly and I looked at him. He was waiting for something by way of reply, but all I could think to say was: “Well if that’s so Isaac take off your coat and drink some coffee with us.” At the same time Molly looked from him to me and walked away without a word.

  It was clear in his eyes we were as bad as Jenks or the Russian. His sad hound’s face fell: “Thank ye, no,” he said and turned and went out.

  That put him in my mind for the rest of the day. Isaac Maple stayed alone in his tent most of the time, thinking I suppose of his brother Ezra. He was a shy man and he was new to the West and it must have been a powerful need for comfort which brought him to our door. I don’t often honor holidays but I wanted to understand Isaac’s feelings. In the evening I went over to Zar’s place and demanded a drink on the house.

  Zar was leaning with his elbows on his sawhorse bar: “For what,” he scowled at me.

  “It’s Christmas, Zar,” I said. “Didn’t you know?”

  “Wal wal, I tell you—only the spring shall I celebrate.”

  But Miss Adah was properly moved. She ran to wake up the girls sleeping in the back rooms. I thought she had just the spirit Isaac wanted and when she came back I said, “Isaac Maple’s the one who told me.”

  “I’ll go get him,” she said putting a shawl over her. “Poor man’s all alone.”

  “Save yourself, Adah,” Zar said, but she was gone.

  Zar had no use for the man and couldn’t see going to any trouble over him; when Adah returned, leading Isaac Maple, she had to set up the drinks herself—the Russian had sat down, grumbling, on one of his camp chairs.

  Then Jenks wandered in, he was wearing a hat he’d made out of prairie dog fur, it came down to his eyes and went around his head to a point in back. You could just about make out his wolfy smile under that cap.

  “The customer,” Zar said folding his arms.

  Well I saw it was going to be a true enough gathering so I took myself back to the cabin to get Molly and the boy. Molly wanted no part of it. She said it wouldn’t do for Jimmy to go out at night with the wind so cold and snow blowing along the ground. I said we could wrap a blanket around him and I’d carry him over. That didn’t please either of them too much, but then we heard, coming across the wind, the sounds of Miss Adah’s voice singing a hymn with her melodeon, and I did as I wanted—wrapping the boy up—and we all went over.

  When we came in Adah stopped her singing and got up to greet Molly. Everyone was very polite—Jenks pulled at his cap when he said hello and the ladies gave Jimmy a greeting although, since he stood by Molly’s side, they stayed their distance. There was only one lantern on the table and the room was in shadows, but Zar got up to light another and at Adah’s signal he started to pour out a drink for Molly. She held up her hand, very ladylike, and smiled and shook her head. She had drunk her share in the old days and it wouldn’t have hurt her now, but it gave her more pleasure to refuse, it set her apart from the ladies although she knew them better than they thought she did.

  All at once, as we were standing around, nobody had anything to say, we were all embarrassed we’d made an occasion. I lifted my cup: “Well here’s to Christmas and better times for the world.”

  “Amen,” said Miss Adah. Then she sat down at the melodeon and began her hymn again. Everyone was quiet and drinking listening to her sing it through. She had a deep voice but she meant what she sang. When she finished she started another and it was one Isaac recognized, he stepped up in back of her and looking straight at the wall he joined right in, tenor.

  Well the whiskey was warm going down and it spread over me like sun. There was this churchly music going; Molly, with Jimmy at her side, was sitting on a chair listening; Zar was stepping around offering the bottle; and I thought why this is what Isaac Maple had in mind, just to celebrate the fact that all of us are here. And I asked myself whether these weren’t already better times: here was some people and we had a root on the land where there was nothing but graves a few months before.

  After a while the liquor began to have its effect on everyone. Jessie and Mae, who had been cowed by Molly’s presence, made a show of forgetting she was there and began to enjoy themselves. Jessie went over to Jenks, sitting in a chair, and stuck her thumb under his fur cap.

  “Is that you under there, Dead-Eye?” she said.

  Jenks slapped her hand away, stealing a glance at Molly at the same time: “Get on!”

  “Why Jenksy!” said Mae plunking herself down on his lap. “Ah’ve never seen you so outdone. Didn’t you get yore sleep t’day?”

  “If’n hew please, ladies,” Jenks said pushing Mae off. Holding his drink high he walked away to the bar. Jessie and Mae giggled. Jenks was being uncommon dignified but pieces of dry dung were stuck to the seat of his pants.

  When the hymn was ended Adah turned in her seat and put her hand on Isaac’s arm: “You sing right nice, Mr. Maple,” she said.

  “Thank ye, I like a good hymn,” said Isaac.

  Zar was clapping his hands: “Holy, holy, holy! That’s vary good.”

  “Ye have a true gift Miss Adah,” Isaac said.

  “A gift?” said Zar. “Together you and she—two coyotes howling at moon.”

  Isaac turned to him: “Say what?”

  “Sure!” Zar began to laugh. “Such music I have heard on the steppe at night. Just the same as that: Howly, howly howly!” He doubled up with his own joke. “Jassie, Mae, you hear?” And he repeated what he’d said.

  But the girls were busy working on Jenks, they had followed him to the bar.

  “What’s botherin’ your friend tonight, Mae,” said Jessie.

  “He’s jes shy,” Mae said digging Jenks in the ribs.

  “I smelled o’
horseshit I’d be shy too,” Jessie said.

  “I’ll tell you frand,” Zar walked up to Isaac. “Not only your singing is not human, but your way of doing business. A man would trade for my liquor. A man would have need for my girls.”

  “Ain’t nobody can tell me how to run my business,” Isaac said turning red in the face.

  “Cash cash!” Zar threw his head back: “Caaash!”

  “Nobody forcing ye to buy!” Isaac shouted over the Russian’s roar.

  Adah thought things were getting out of hand, she glanced once at Molly and turned around to play another hymn. But it only added to the noise. Zar walked away from Isaac with a gesture of disgust and poured himself another drink from the bottle on the table. The storekeep was following him, well aroused.

  “Did I not pay ye cash for the use of yer tent? I deal fair and square, always have, always will. All’s I look fer is an honest profit and that’s more’n some can say!”

  “Who needs you,” said Zar.

  “God knows I didn’t ask to stay here, I was asked!” By this time the smiles were gone from Mae’s and Jessie’s faces.

  “I b’lieve Mr. Jenks here has gone fancy on us Mae.”

  “Listen you no-chinned, gun-polishing deadhead,” said Mae, “the next time you come along with yo’ tongue hangin’ out don’t look for us. Jes keep agoin’ down to her place and see what she’ll give you.”

  “You bucktooth son of a bitch,” said Jessie pushing her face up to Jenks. For a second I thought Molly had heard, but the melodeon was blowing loud and Isaac Maple was shouting over it.

  “I was horse-traded! Yessir,” he looked right at me, “I’ll say it. Horse-traded! Paid out good money to settle in this Hell. ’Tweren’t fit country fer Ezra and ’tain’t fit fer me!”