In Calamity's Wake (6 page)

N
ED
W
HEELER WAS BORN SICKLY IN UPSTATE
New York. He grew up bookish and pale, dreaming of Western adventure. At twelve he wrote a short novel about a girl named Wild Edna who dressed in men's clothes and rode beside a man named Dangerous Joe. Wild Edna would shoot a fly out of the air if she thought that it might light upon Dangerous Joe. Ned wrote four more books from the point of view of a daring female. He read his stories to his mother every night when she came to tuck him in, sit beside him and take his temperature. Twasn't long before Wild Edna became Hurricane Nell, who in turn grew a foot in height and became Giant Susan, the Girl Bandit. The women were outlets for his illness. Some months Ned could barely breathe and then his heroines became opera singers. When he grew weak they would dance in halls before senators, and once,
before the dazzled president. When he grew strong they grew weak and became imperilled damsels rescued from moustaschioed villains by a pale boy from New York.

At twenty Ned began to send his stories to the Philadelphia story papers. By then he had read in the newspapers of Calamity Jane, her comings and goings across the countryside. Every woman bandit, lady sheriff and melting sweetheart in his imagination fused into one and was named after Jane. His stories sold so well and were so popular with readers that Ned Wheeler and Calamity Jane were married in the press without ever meeting each other. Stories in the papers of her real adventures became tinged with something he was proud to call a Wheeler-esqueness. She was now the Heroine of the Hills, embroiled in scandal for her reckless love of Deadwood Dick, the Black Prince of the Road. Artists sketched her for the cards that came with chewing tobacco. Perhaps she found herself there once or twice, unravelling the packages.

Ned's stories attracted the attention of two New York publishers, the canny Mr. Erastus Beadle and Mr. Robert Adams. Mr. Beadle and his assistant Mr. Fox visited Ned one day with a plan. Mr. Fox was a small man in a black bowler hat. He stood a
bit behind Mr. Beadle, his head barely reaching the other man's shoulder. He stepped quickly back and forth, one foot to another, in obvious excitement. Mr. Beadle was as tall as Lincoln with a long slender nose and deep-set eyes. His voice, when he spoke, was soft and persuasive.

Mr. Wheeler, said Mr. Beadle, we have an idea for a new form of reading material. I believe it will be popular.

We'll call it the dime novel, piped Fox, although we could sell it sometimes for a nickel. Yes, said Beadle with wide smile, it will be a kind of booklet, released weekly, with an illustration of your story on the cover. I believe that millions of people will read your work, sir, now that millions can read. Millions of people, men and women from New York State to Santa Fe, will come to know your Calamity Jane and love her deeply, as you so obviously do.

That night Ned's mother visited for dinner. As she peered into the stew on the stove, counting out the pieces of beef and carrots and onions, he told her about Fox and Beadle. She lifted her face, wet with steam, and crowed and stamped her feet.

Oh, Ned, she said, I have always loved your stories, especially the ones with Fearless Frank!

Mama, calm down. It's only new. Who knows what printed stories will do?

Oh, Ned, she said. She grabbed his face and kissed him. I don't care. I've felt so many times that you were writing yourself back to life!

S
HE VISITED HER BROTHER
, E
LIJAH, IN A
holding cell before he was transferred to the penitentiary in Wyoming to serve five years for trying to defraud the railroad. He had forced stolen cattle onto the tracks to be killed and then filed claims for their replacement.

The guard was polite, asking after her day as he brought her to Elijah's cell and offered her a wooden stool. The jail was a wheelless wooden boxcar attached to the sheriff's office. The room was long and narrow. The doors on either end of the cart were left open to facilitate some breeze. It was September, hot still, and the mad colours of the trees, gold, pink and red, were visible through those doors. The room contained three small cells divided from one another by bars. It was a set of cages like the ones she had seen in travelling circuses.

Elijah was in the middle cage. He pulled himself over on a stool and gripped the bars. She sat and looked at her little brother. He was shaved bald. His skull was lumpy and his forehead cut and bruised. He had gained a lot of muscle and he looked just like their father, with his same rounded shoulders and thick neck. All the fat had melted from Elijah's face and his features were stark, almost brutal. There was hardly any trace of the soft sweet hammy boy. He shook his head and reached through the bars to cuff her ear.

It's a nice place, she said.

Oh, thank you.

They play music?

They fiddle for me.

What do they feed you here?

Oh, pastries filled with warm apples and ham and bread, hot fresh bread, thick with butter, and yam soup with cream, and I drink whisky every night to fall asleep.

Well then, you eat better than ever. You look like someone danced on your face.

He covered his eyes with a thick hand. Don't say that.

The light through one tiny window shone narrow rays on the bucket that still held his shit and piss. Flies gathered there and on a tray with a little empty bowl,
and on the pillow that lay at the head of a cot so narrow she knew he must sleep on his side.

I'm all right. You look like someone replaced my sister with my brother.

She laughed and slapped her knee. Her brother's nose was obviously broken and his eyelids were misshapen.

They beatin' on you?

Don't look at me. Look at you. What would Mama say?

She could smell the vinegar of old sweat on his clothes. His teeth were big and yellow from nicotine. But his smile was the same uncertain line.

She would say, The two of you get to sleep! Tomorrow we are going to a wonderful place where your father and I will be rich and you and your sisters and brothers will all stay together. A pony for every child!

Well, that's true. She was crazy hopeful right up until she died. Lena said you had a baby?

Martha nodded and sighed raggedly. I had a few. I don't have any now.

I'm sorry, Marthy.

It's all right. I had a stepdaughter, Jesse. She was Steer's daughter. I tried to do well by her. I tried to get her into school. I took her to Deadwood with me and introduced her all around as mine and they held a big benefit to raise the money to send her. And everyone
was happy and drinking and cheering and congratulating me. When they handed me the money I was so overcome I offered to buy them all drinks and I spent it all, thanking them.

Elijah laughed sharply. The guard looked over.

Steer beat me, she said. He stabbed me and he hit me in the head with a rock. I hollered at him and I hit back. But I left before he killed me. I left Jesse with him. He wouldn't hurt her. She was his.

Don't cry, Marthy. I'm sorry, Marthy. I should have been with you.

No. You're my little brother. I should have been watching you.

No one could watch me. I always was bad.

No, stop it. You never were bad. You did some stupid things. So, you like insurance fraud?

It don't like me.

Can I do anything for you?

No. You need to leave me behind, he said. He snorted and wiped at his nose with his sleeve. She remembered this action.

When we were little do you remember how I was always catching rattlesnakes with my hands? he said.

Yes. I remember them wrapped around your arms.

And you said, Fuck you, Elijah, let them go. You
never understood I couldn't let go—once I had them I had to cut their heads off or they would turn on me.

You could have let them go by throwing them.

I cooked them up in soup with yams and we all ate it.

That's right, we did. They were delicious. You did a real good job feeding us. Elijah, remember when we were scouts together?

Yes, I showed you how to be a boy. We watched the war together and we never gave away her secrets.

Remember skating on the river?

In our army boots.

Can you be good, Elijah, when you get out of here?

I tell you, Martha, I won't get myself hung, but there is no reason for me to be good.

She studied him in silence. Their faces were level. You look so hard, she said.

He blinked and his chin quivered. I'm not hard, Marthy. I'm not good but I'm not hard.

I know, Elijah. You won't get yourself hung. You'll go to Heaven on a whirlwind. You're my little captain. You're our pony boy. Remember Annie on your back?

He nodded, his chin tucked up tight to his collar. I'm glad they didn't live to see us, he mumbled. I'm glad they didn't live to end up this poor.

Shh, I'll tell your fortune. Guard, she called.

The guard looked over from the doorway. She saw him in silhouette against the sunlight. He was a skinny, disinterested man, wearing a too-large uniform.

Please, can you bring us water and a cloth so I can tell my brother's fortune?

The guard was at the end of his shift. He knew who she was and he was pleased to eavesdrop for a story to tell. He had no sense of anything bad that could happen so he brought her a shallow painted basin filled with water and a little cloth.

Come nice and close, Elijah, she said.

He pushed his face against the bars. She brought the wet cloth to his eyes and wiped away the dirt and dried blood. She lifted his eyebrow with her thumb to see a cut on his eyelid.

They really hurt you. Move your head back a bit so I can reach all of your face. Kneel here in front of me and give me your hands.

He knelt and she held his hands, turning them over and over and wiping at the lines and in between his fingers. She soaked his fingertips to loosen the grime and used her longest nail to clean beneath his. She kissed his knuckles and put her forehead in his palms.

Take off your shoes and give me your feet, she said.

He sat down and pried off his shoes and tore his
socks from his wounded feet. She washed her brother's gnarled toes, the bony outcrop of a bunion and red ragged sores on his ankles. When she was finished the water in the basin was black. She stirred the dirty water with her finger and leaned over, studying the mud and how it settled.

What does the water say? Elijah asked.

It says you are good. You were always a good brother and I love you and you should always call on me if you need me.

M
Y HOSTS
, J
OHN AND
S
ARAH, WERE HONEST
as eggs and they agreed that Calamity Jane had been reported last in Virginia City so I decided to change my route and go through Montana first. In the morning John helped me to pore over maps of the trails and plan my way. Sarah fried me eggs and bid me well, packing me bread and water for my journey. My clothes had been washed. My body was warm and clean after a long bath. I had a big bag of fresh deer jerky. The deerskin I had fleshed and hung for the night and rubbed with salt. I had more bags of salt to take with me. My horse was brushed and fed. The sky seemed like a lovely bright dome such as you might find over a Christmas scene in an ornament.

W
E PASSED
through a great netherlands of hoodoos, under the chins of giant scouts. The air was
so full of ghosts I could hear them. The stone path, uneven beneath my horse's feet, made me feel as if the earth was rocking. We meandered all day over the body of the landscape, around concretions that might be shoulders and ribs and knees of a sleeping being. Echoes dissolved into whispers. We stopped to drink from Milk River and I saw carvings in the stone side of a steep butte, of battles between men with shields. I saw the bodies fall before me again. I saw a rider on a horse, long flowing lines of his headdress behind him and a buffalo before him. It put me off balance, I don't know why, but I was out of time with myself. Something heavy shifted in me.

It was raining when we crossed the border at Sweetgrass and saw the Turkey Track, the narrow-gauge railroad between Lethbridge and the Great Falls. What a strange crossing. The bighorn sheep stared at me like they recognized an idiot.

Looking at my maps I saw the paper was so wet the words were leaking.

Thunder rolled in with the evening from the northwest. The winds seemed warm. My father always said that the winds from the northwest blow warm. I knew that I must find a river. I determined to try at dawn because it was only at dawn and at dusk that I was sure which direction I faced.

I stood in the dark in the rain with my mouth open trying to drink. I filled my satchels with water caught in a circle of tin cans. I knew my horse had been thirsty all day so I watered her first. I felt I might die of thirst even while I drank. What, I wondered, is wrong with me?

T
EN MORE
days passed like this. Rain slowed, stopped, commenced and continued. In the brief breaks the air filled with loud clouds of mosquitos. On about the eleventh day I stalked and killed a long-tailed grouse to eat. I watched it for so long I almost couldn't kill it, but I was hungry and sick of deer jerky. I plucked it and cooked it in a pan over the fire. Having heard its neck break I had no nerve for slaughtering it properly. When it started to smoke I removed it from the fire and I bit into its breast and gagged until all the air came out of me. It tasted like dirt-bird dragged in poison. I had been too hurried to get all the damn feathers off and the fire took too long to burn deep and hot so the bird was half cooked with charred spiky feathers. I threw it on the ground and stomped on its smelly body, swearing and hating myself.

On the thirteenth or the thirtieth day or the three hundredth day we passed through a forest of dead
timber to some sort of dividing ridge where clean waters ran thick and white over the rocks. I remembered that all the rivers flow either to the Arctic Ocean, Hudson's Bay or the Gulf of Mexico. I wondered to where the Bow flows. My God, I was happy to see those beautiful spotty brown trout flip over each other in the shallows. I would have traded my clothes for a fresh brown trout fried in butter, but my clothes weren't worth a minnow's lunch. I washed and swam in the water and drank and splashed. I let my horse rest for an hour while I napped in the sweetgrass. When I woke I saw the brown body of a dead mouse beside me. I closed my eyes and I could feel myself shrinking. My father arrived beside me and crouched down.

Shall we bury it? he asked.

Yes. Will it go to Heaven?

Take my hand. Look at me. It's just a mouse, Miette.

H
OURS LATER
,
close to night, which barely touches down in summer, we descended into the great canal of a coulee so deep that when I looked up from the bottom I saw the raised sides of the riverbed, the sediment stripes of purple, red, tan and black, and the way they towered all around me; it looked like I was surrounded by mountains, mountains eroding underground. We walked along a dry, braided channel made treacherous
with ancient debris. Sinkholes gaped at intervals along the path. We passed protruding tongues of solidified lava. A sparrowhawk floated, looking for the little sweet meats cheeping in holes scattered across the walls. My horse stepped gingerly around rattlesnakes. As we rose out of the valley I saw a band of wild horses, watching us. A shaggy brown and white mare and her foal stood apart from two larger, smooth-coated grey horses.

A fort stood on the east side of the trail. It was a rectangular stockade of cottonwood logs with elevated blockhouses on two corners and over the main entrance. The main door was gone, leaving a broad gaping hole in the front wall. The other walls had been partly disassembled and some of the logs were chopped and piled near a large firepit. The burnt ends of dessicated wood lay crumbled in the centre of a large black circle in the grass and dirt; streaks on the ground traced the absence of long flames.

Hey, I cried, hey out there. The valley behind me threw my voice back.

A figure appeared in the doorway. The sun was shining directly in my eyes and I could not make out if it was a man or a woman.

Come here, the figure said, come here.

I stilled my horse.

Come here. I want to see you.

I dismounted and walked slowly towards the voice. Come here; let me look at you. Oh yes, it's you. You are the one I have been waiting for!

Who are you?

The voice laughed. Well, I am Calamity.

I stopped walking and blinked and squinted, trying to squeeze the sun out of my eyes so I could see her.

Come here. Come here, she said. She held out her arms to me. Her bony fingers moved like feelers in the air. She was small and her face was wrinkled and sunburnt. Her little eyes scanned my face. She gestured at the sky and I glanced at the white sun. When I looked back, her features were blacked out. She trembled and the smell of alcohol was strong on her breath. She smiled. Her naked gums were brown from nicotine.

At last. I'm so glad you're here.

Who do you think I am?

I have been praying for you to come. Follow me.

I walked behind her, watching her narrow body. She muttered to herself as she teetered along.

We circled the fort to a hole in the ground. It was the mouth of an abandoned well. A thick rope was tied to a fence post nearby and the length of the rope fell down the well.

Go, go down there, she said, pointing. Her arms
and legs were shaking as if she would collapse or dance.

I looked down the well. No. Why do you want me to go down the well?

You have to. You have to. It's a dry well. It's not so far. There's gold down there, a box of gold, and bones, the bones of all my children. Go down and get the gold and get me the bones so I can bury them properly. I will pay you. I will pay you in gold to bring me the bones. I need them. I need to bury my children.

I'm sorry but I have to go.

Spittle gathered on her chin. She shook her head. My children are down there, she cried. You have to help me get them up.

No.

You have to! She clutched her head and wept and gasped. I waited for you! I prayed and I waited for you to come and help me. You can't leave me here alone. Don't you see how dark it is down the well? They were only children. If I can just give them a decent burial. I—Oh please help me. I need for them to go to Heaven. I don't care about myself. I only need my sweet children to be safe in Heaven. They are your sisters and brothers on this earth. You must see how wrong it is for their little bones to stay hidden in a well.

How did they get in the well?

I put them there! She turned and stomped in a
circle. Goddamit, should I have let the animals feed on them? Should I have abandoned them? I was young and strong and I climbed down into the well with each dead one held against me one last time, as if they were sleeping. I let them slip down and I promised I would come back and get them when the war was over. I promised them that I would bury them and mark their graves and they would go to Heaven.

What's your other name?

What?

You called yourself Calamity when I rode up. What is your whole name?

I don't know. I don't have no other name. I'm just Calamity.

Who named you?

The troopers. I followed them and they gave me a name. Get down in that well. Get down there and bring me my babies! Get down in the well! Get down in the well!

I edged towards the well and got down on my knees and peered down the endless cylindrical dark. I took a match from my pocket and lit it and let it fall. I took a stone and dropped it too and listened. There was nothing.

Please. P-please, she stuttered. It's not so deep. The well is dry. I would never spoil nobody's water. My
children are down there. I need to bury my children. I will give you all the gold but what I need to bury them. Please, please. I need my children.

I tested the rope and it held. There were knots tied every few feet and I used these like the rungs of a ladder as I climbed down. The sides of the well were slimy beneath my hands. I felt around and held on with my other arm. Finding nothing I descended deeper.

There's a ledge, she called. Feel for the ledge. That's where the gold is. It's all wedged in a big hole there, halfway down. Have you felt it yet?

No.

I ran my open hand around the wall, rotating on the rope. I slid down another few feet and tried again. I could see nothing. A few more feet and a few more.

There's nothing here, I called.

Can you see the bottom? Can you see the bones?

No. There is nothing here. It's the wrong well.

Nothing? No bones? No skulls? No bag of gold?

No, nothing. I'm coming up.

The rope burnt my palms as I pulled myself up. At the top I climbed out and faced her. She was livid, stomping in the dirt.

I see with perfect clarity, she shrieked, what you have done. You stole my babies. You stole their sweet little bones and the money I hid to pay for their burials.

Tears mapped her cheeks.

No, I said.

Yes! she shrieked. You have robbed me! You have robbed me!

I did not. I looked. The well is deep. I do not even know if it is dry, but there are no shelves, no places money could be hid. You said you were young; if the bodies were ever there I don't think I could find them now.

I raised my hands in a gesture of peace and between my fingers I saw the little black O of a gun muzzle shaking at the end of her arm. Her whole being was aiming itself at me through the mouth of that gun. I thought of the little gun tucked in my belt but I could not bring myself to draw on her.

I swear I have not robbed you. I looked hard. There's nothing in the well, I said. It's not the right well!

I heard a clap and I looked at the ground and watched the grass and stones get sucked back into the earth as I reached up to hold my ear.

You shot me, I said as I fell.