E.L. Doctorow

by Welcome to Hard Times

  “Blue,” Angus Mcellhenny said softly, and he glanced a moment at me, “dinna spook me wi’ yer troubles. Goodbye to ye. I know yer feelings fer yer wee town but I canna bear to think on it.”

  Well that was the moment I asked myself what I was going to do. Everything was come to nothing. You try to dispose of your life to some purpose even though it appears to have none. My savings were gone; if I could get Molly and the boy on the buckboard how far could they go? Like Angus marching away out there among the others was the shambles of the town blowing off in every direction. All afternoon I watched to see who was leaving, feeling the pain of slow torture. But I have always been one for the protraction of misery and perhaps I counted each man who left as one less twist to the final pain. What I mean to say is I never made up my mind to leave, my will was exhausted. When the dusk came on there was a stillness over the town although the numbers were still thick. Men stood around, hardly anyone was moving. Anger, like heat, lay on the dust of the air. Jimmy came running by me, his eyes bulging, his mouth open as if he were about to scream. I looked where he’d come from, and I walked closer to see what I was seeing. From inside Zar’s saloon came the sound of one man’s haw haw laugh. Tied up at the railing was a bony used-up nag that I saw was once Hausenfield the German’s handsome bay.

  Looking over the doors I could see only his shoulders and his hat. But then he raised his head and there was his dark reflection in Zar’s fancy mirror behind the bar. Two Bad Men, the Man multiplied. I remember feeling: He never left the town, it was waiting only for the proper light to see him where he’s been all the time.

  “Hey, who’s the boss here,” he called out.

  Someone pointed to Zar who was standing at the end of the counter.

  “Say, friend, come have a drink, it’s good pizen ye made, I’ll swar—”

  Zar didn’t move, and in the silence of that packed saloon the man leaned down the bar and shoved a full glass along. It went the whole distance, people stepping back not to block the way; and at the end of the counter it tipped gently on its side, a-making a pool of whiskey that spread and began to drip to the floor.

  With a frown Zar lifted the bottom of his apron and began to dab at the liquid. The Man thought that was funny and laughed, and everyone looking on in that steaming glowing room began to laugh with him. Then Turner stood up to his full height so I could see now that blaze on the side of his face, the peculiar stare of his eye. He had caught sight of Mae and Mrs. Clement, standing shy behind the Russian.

  “Hey honey,” he said softly but there was no other sound now. “Hey honey,” he said crooking his finger. In that moment I could feel my heart tipping, spilling out its shame, its nausea. I had to run from the Trick, I couldn’t tolerate it, what other name is there for the mockery that puts us back in our own steps? Here the earth turns and we turn with it, around it spins and we go mad with it.

  Inside Jenks’s stable I found the mule and led him quickly to the cabin, but not by the street but behind the houses. I hitched him to the Major’s rig and then I went around to the front and stepped inside the door.

  There was no light and I couldn’t see. I heard a rustle from the dugout and when I lit the lamp and held it up I saw them both cowering back inside there. Molly had the boy in front of her, he was gripping the shotgun; and over his shoulder she was pointing that knife at me.

  “The mule’s hitched,” I said, “you want to quick take some things and ride out.”

  “I’ll kill you Mayor,” she whispered. She stared at me like I was some animal ready to spring, poised with her legs wide and her hand high holding that stiletto. She looked as if it was I who had summoned him up.

  “Don’t come any closer—”

  “Molly in the name of God listen to what I’m telling you!”

  In the shadows her eyes had the light of fire.

  “Don’t you care!” I shouted. “You want it to happen again? You think I can atone more? Take him away from here, you’re mother to him, a bobcat’ll curry its young, won’t you do that, won’t you take him the hell out of here!”

  The boy stood between us and now he raised the gun a little. “Look at this,” I said, “it should make you proud the way you’ve hexed this boy. Well I’m finished, I don’t want him, he’s nothing to me, go on the both of you, get out. The rig’s yours, the mule’s yours, everything—but quit my sight, you’ve been only misery to me. I rue the day I saw you Molly, I swear I curse the moment I laid eyes on you. Had I known what you was why I would have stood up to be shot, I would have held out my arms to the Bad Man. Shoot true, brother, or Molly Riordan is waiting who will do it much slower—”

  And all the while I raged I could see I had no name in her gaze, this was what she wanted, for the Bad Man to return! she’d been waiting for him, a proper faithful wife. Nothing mattered to her, not me, not Jimmy, just herself and her Man from Bodie. I was ready to kill her.

  And the boy standing there like he thought he was her son, it filled me with disgust. “What do you think you’re guarding there sonny, something worth the trouble? You think she cares a damn for you? Why she thinks no more of you than she does of me, right now she wouldn’t know if you put that muzzle in your eye and squeezed the trigger. Tell him Molly, he don’t believe me. Why you’re a simp to stand there, you ain’t got half the sense of your Daddy, you did and you’d be riding away right now!” I said, “Go on Jimmy, get out of here while you can, you don’t need her, you’re not the first she’s fooled, it’s no shame. Go on, boy. Go on—”

  But he only raised the barrel a little. Well I’m thankful for that, there was not a flicker of belief in his eyes. What he was to do was not my reckoning, it burst from him with the force of shot, he was a long time in the squeeze. How I failed is how Molly did not fail, and in the miserable waste of our three lives I want to declare only for my own guilt.

  Now in all this and what followed only once did it strike me to overcome both of them, hustle them on the wagon and take them away myself. It was at this moment, with no thought as how it could be done. I lunged at Molly over the boy’s outstretched arms almost at the same instant she heard the coach coming down the street. She crouched and came up past me, swiping at my ribs with the stiletto, putting a rent in my side—and she was out of there while I was stumbling over the boy.

  That was as close as I came. Afterwards I hadn’t the time.

  “Jenks,” screamed Jessie, “in a second I’m driving this thing myself, Jenks—”

  “Now,” Molly was cooing, “here you tell me Mr. Jenks will run and just one man he has to take care of?” Her voice was as soft and natural as a sane woman’s. “Why Sheriff, I know you can shoot the balls off a man quick as a blink. You’re not runnin’ Sheriff, no sir, it makes no sense. Look here, even this shit yellow spine of a Mayor ain’t running.”

  “That’s his business, please ma’am, the way I see hit I can’t shoot all those people down in much health.”

  “Just him,” Molly gripped his shirt again, “just him, just that Bad Man from Bodie, you know what he did to me, you have any idea?”

  “Well—”

  “Jenks I promise good things, I swear, I can do more than those two on the box put together. Do you believe that?”

  That brought Miss Adah out of her daze. Everything Molly had been saying suddenly made her stand up and point her finger: “Why I always knew,” she said with a voice of surprise, “yes I did, even when I passed on my wedding dress to you, that you was no lady.”

  Down the street someone near the door of Zar’s Palace turned and saw the woman’s figure atop the coach. He said something and then a few men had separated from the crowd and were running toward us, shouting. The Bad Man was putting a match to everyone.

  “Oh Lord, Jenks—” Jessie screamed, and she took up the reins. The Sheriff started to climb to the box but Molly grabbed his arm. At the same time I found myself slapping the horses’ rumps just as Jimmy did, although I think we had different reasons. And o
ff lurched the coach, Miss Adah falling back on the roof.

  The wheels spun up a cloud of blue dust under the moon. A minute after they were gone, three or four men hooted by on their horses, giving the chase, choking us standing there, flattening us against the cabin wall. I never saw either of those women again and I don’t know what happened to them.

  “Oh lookit thet!” said Jenks. “Godamighty,” his voice broke, “lookit what hew done to me!”

  Molly giggled: “Sheriff honey, you’ll listen to me now, won’t you?”

  I’m trying to put down what happened but the closer I’ve come in time the less clear I am in my mind. I’m losing my blood to this rag, but more, I have the cold feeling everything I’ve written doesn’t tell how it was, no matter how careful I’ve been to get it all down it still escapes me: like what happened is far below my understanding beyond my sight. In my limits, taking a day for a day, a night for a night, have I showed the sand shifting under our feet, the terrible arrangement of our lives?

  I can’t remember her foul words, poor Molly, what she said to Jenks, but only that it kept Jimmy rooted where he stood; and that by and by Jenks was spinning his Colt and checking each chamber, his simpleton pride rising like manhood to her promises. Or did he really believe he could stop the riot by killing Turner? At the far end of the street a bunch of men were running out of sight toward John Bear’s cabin. Next to the saloon Isaac’s store was locked and dark, but already someone was banging on the door.

  In those moments I was unable to act. The way I am, I will do as well as anyone until a showdown. But also I was raging that Jenks could believe this woman cared for anything but herself and the Bad Man. The wolfy fool licked the syrup of her words and was marching up the street almost before I could run back inside and get my gun from the drawer. Molly ran in the dugout, already praying with that cross of hers. Jimmy, holding the shotgun slack in one hand, was in a stupor. “Get back inside!” I said to him.

  I ran to catch up with Jenks: “You know what you’re doing?”

  He was trotting like a hero: “Reckon,” he allowed himself to say. I wasn’t worth too much of his attention now Molly’s declarations were in his ears.

  “Well I hope you find it worth it, Mr. Sheriff,” I said. “But you better have a plan!”

  “Stay back—”

  “You’re a damn fool. He won’t give you the time to sight. This ain’t a target to shoot, this is a Man from Bodie!”

  “I kin get ’m awraht.”

  I wanted to believe him. On the left side of the street one side of Swede’s tent was buckling and there was the clatter of pots and kettles. I could see now to the end of the street and in the bright blue shadow they were knocking John Bear’s shack to pieces. I thought Yes, can one shot do it? It will scatter the flames and the fire will go out.

  13

  That was the idea I held on to like my life, it moved me to action, it was a clear simple thought and I took it over from Jenks, becoming the fool he’d been, lifting the fool’s hat from his dead body to fit on myself, becoming Molly’s final fool, as I am now. But who could not in the face of such ruin, with the race burning crazy in that moon’s light? It was justice to kill him, the single face, the one man; I had to do something and what was most futile made the most sense. It was a giving in to them all, every one of those accursed people rolling over each other in the still warm dust of the street, scampering this way and that to find what to destroy.

  But I wasn’t going after it the way Jenks did. He marched up the steps holding his polished pistol and he pulled one of the saloon doors back. “Hey!” he cried, raising the gun to sight, but the flood of light from inside made him blink, and what easy game he was bathed and blinking against the dark. After a great second’s silence there was a rush for the door, men stumbling outside, their shadows looming long on the lighted porch, down the steps, shadows turning into men in the street. Jenks was knocked off his balance, he tried to right himself, his gun hand was swinging wildly.

  I heard Zar’s voice, “No, no!” and maybe the Russian was going toward the door thinking in a panic of the mirror in back of his bar, or the lamps hanging so grandly above the sawdust. I think it was Jenks’s wild shot which caught Zar in the stomach. From inside the Bad Man’s gun sounded twice, but Jenks was hit twice, the first shot took him in the chest and spinned him around, the second surely broke his neck. Jenks did a clown’s tumble down the steps and there he was twisted double, his face in open-mouthed surprise looking up at me from under his arm.

  He’s still there, they’re all as they are. I can write with one hand but I can’t dig. Horses shied away from his fall, a man was running toward me, I thought What is he going to tell me? but he had a barrel stave in his hand. I held up my gun and he veered off like a dog on a richer scent.

  Across the street Swede’s restaurant was a pile of canvas, humping and shifting, a living thing. He was pulling his wife out from under and I ran over and helped him. We put her on her feet and she grabbed Swede and held on to him, sobbing and hugging him. He was crying too, holding an iron skillet in his hand, his anger making him cry, and when it got the best of him he broke out of her grasp, cursing, and started to beat at the movement under the canvas, swinging that skillet with all his strength.

  Helga pulled at him, trying to get him away. People were running every which way, meeting and grappling in the street. It was a lunatic town.

  “Swede,” I cried, “get her out of here!”

  He came to his senses, I have a glimpse now of his face suddenly calm under its shock of hair, white in the moon’s color. He picked up his wife and walked away quickly, straight out past the sump, going toward the shadow of the rocks.

  From Zar’s Palace issued a woman’s rising voice of moans stopping short in one deathly scream.

  I had remembered a bale of barbed wire standing behind Isaac’s store, a big spool of it, maybe Isaac from Vermont had been expecting the herds to come to Hard Times. I made for it, proud of my cunning; and I was in such a fever with my idea, the tear in my side didn’t hurt, nor the thought of Molly and the boy awaiting what might be, nor the moment’s glimpse I had, going down the alley of the looters beating down Isaac’s door. Through the walls of the saloon I could hear Turner begin to sing drunkenly, throw the furniture around—and it was thrilling to concentrate my hate.

  Now from that spot there was a clear view to the rock hills lying under the moon as far east as the eye could see. I have the image in my mind of John Bear looking on from a ledge up there, although I’m not sure now this was the moment I spotted him. What can I say, he had no hat or shirt as he waited there on one knee while the mob wrecked his shack, by then he had no reason to wear white men’s clothes. I can’t understand how my eye found him, he was so still. But the moon picked him out for me, it was a lye moon etching him on my brain. There was motion in his stillness, something already done in his pose, and although I was not to see him again there is no break in the picture I have between then and this morning when I found the Russian on the floor by his bar.

  Plotting for the Bad Man I couldn’t have understood John Bear last night, if I’d known what he was contemplating it would have made no sense to me. I was dragging that heavy spool up the alley in sweat and in pain and in righteousness. I saw Swede return, striding heavily toward Isaac’s store, and I called him and made him help me with the burden. “Ezra!” came Isaac Maple’s cry from within his store, “Ezraa-a-a!” out of the cracks and crashes from within and the agonized Swede wanted to go help him, but I kept him with me, infecting him with my madness, and like penitents hurrying before God’s wrath we made a bed of barbs on the porch, a trip wire from one post to the other, unwinding the roll, pushing it back and forth, back and forth, as Turner sang.

  Swede had a length of planking and with it he climbed atop the overhang and lay flat, waiting; while I stepped back into the street feeling the moon’s light like a desert sun on my back. Behind the man’s horse I crouched, Hausen
field’s bay—a friend, like me, spurred to its bones—and “Turner!” I cried out. “Do you dare come out, Turner!” screaming his name again and again, the voice in my throat someone else’s, some stranger’s voice doing my work while I watched quietly as one by one the gas lights inside tinkled out and the saloon became dark. Then I shut up. My fingers squeezed out the slack in the trigger, my arm rested across the man’s own saddle, with my other hand I held the bay’s ear twisted tightly in my fist. In the great silence between that saloon door and me there was no movement. But all around there was riot: people were banging on sheet iron, attacking Isaac’s rented boxes down the street; someone was trying to get his wagon going but his horse shied and reared; it was the moment I saw, from the corner of my eye, the hunchback scuttling out of Maple Bros. store with his arms laden, a roll of yard goods streaming out after him.

  Well he had the darkness he wanted, if he’d kept the light he might have seen the wire, but he needed to know where I was, where he’d be shooting. He came out, those doors snapping back against the wall, just a shape, a shadow with a hole of fire in its center. Even before the thwack in the horse’s side I had let go my shot. I heard a roar of surprise and saw him fall across the porch, a shadow becoming a man hideously stuck on those infernal barbs.

  It is so easy if you have the conviction. I stood up and fired two more times, missing him but not caring, feeling the wonder of the event like a child. A fine spray of blood from the bay’s neck covered one side of my face, I could taste it. The Bad Man was trying to get off the wire, but I had hit him in the leg and he couldn’t raise himself. Swede didn’t have to swing down with that plank, he hung over the edge trying to bash the Bad Man but there was no need, his reach was too short. “No, Swede!” The man turned over on his back on his bed of barbs and shot straight up through the wood.