E. Doctorow - Welcome to Hard Times

As the day came up I found enough to do: I mixed up more batter for our breakfast, I looked for a pot for Molly’s use, I knocked a frame together for the door of the dugout, I gathered chips for fire from under the feet of the animals still tethered near the tent, I took the Major’s pony out where there was some brush he could work on. As the sun got higher the miners began to stir, and one by one they got up cussing or groaning, and they left. I heard one man say to his mule: “Now Blossom you walk nice and easy so as old Jake’s head don’t topple.” And another, that pimply boy, who looked sick and miserable in the daylight, came over with a crumpled letter in his hand.

“I always post my letters with Mr. Maple,” he said to me.

“Well Ezra’s gone,” I said.

“Alright, you can hold my letter for the stage.” He brought two cartwheels out of his pocket and put them in my hand. “It’s two dollars the ounce and I never say more than an ounce’s worth.”

He was off before I could say yes or no, and I think it was this as much as anything which caused things to go as they did. Zar the Russian was climbing down from his wagon with a whistle on his lips when he saw the boy give me the letter and ride off. He buttoned his shirt and called to me. Together we built up a fire and he brewed some real coffee and gave me a mug. Then, sitting on the ground, he asked me to tell him what, truly, had happened to the town. I told him.

“So,” he said, “was a sudden man.”

“That’s right.”

He pointed to the boy’s letter which I had put in my shirt pocket: “And town is gone but use for town may not be gone. Am I right?”

“You’re right.”

“And will stage come again?”

“I reckon. If it pays.”

“Will come stage again. Will come miners again!” He couldn’t contain himself at the idea, he jumped up and began pacing and pulling his beard, a round barrel of a man muttering to himself in Russian. I drank the hot coffee and watched him. He stopped to look around: he looked at the windmill, he looked at the rock hills, he turned a full circle, looking east over the rubble of the burnt-out street and looking south over the flats to the horizon. The sun was at noon and it bleached the flats almost white with shimmers of yellow or pale green where the ground dipped or lay in the shadow of a cloud.

“Frand,” he said taking a deep breath, “what do you smell?” He looked at me: “You smell the coffee? You smell the horse? You smell the burn in the air?”

I nodded. “Ah, you have not the merchant’s nose. You know what I smell? The money!” He looked at me and that gold tooth showed out through his beard and he was laughing hard, holding his hands on his sides and shaking fit to bust. He laughed so loud that Jimmy came out of the dugout to see.

“You unnerstand what I’m telling you, frand,” Zar said. “We shall be neighbors here!” He leaned over and slapped me on the shoulder. Still laughing he walked quickly over to the tent and went inside.

Well his coffeepot was still on the fire so I filled my cup again and motioned for Jimmy to come over.

“Drink this up Jimmy,” I said. He took the coffee without a word. I noticed he looked better with a good night’s sleep in back of him, those Fee eyes were not so deep in his head.

“Is Molly still asleep?”

“No. She’s saying words.”

“What?”

“She’s saying words to herself. With that cross.”

“Is she praying?”

“Yes, she’s praying.”

When he finished I filled the cup again. “Take this to her,” I said, “she’ll take it from you. Maybe a cup of coffee is what she’s praying for.”

Walking carefully Jimmy went toward the dugout. But then some loud protest caterwauled from the tent and he stopped for a moment and looked back at me.

“Go ahead,” I called, “that’s just those people.”

I put more water in the Russian’s coffeepot and set it back on the fire. Then I stood listening to the awful sounds from the tent. The ladies were sleeping in there and Zar had gone in to tell them they were going to be founders of a new town. It was a furious racket. I could hear him shout and I could hear them shout back. I figured the only one not putting up a squawk was the Chinese, and I was right. In a few minutes she pushed the flap aside and came out, limping a little, to stare at the rocks and the flats and the ruins.

I had an idea at that moment. I went over to the bathtub and rolled Angus out on the ground. He didn’t even miss a snore. I dragged the tub back to the well, washed it out as best I could, and filled it with pails of water. I could see the sun shaking in that water and it showed back the blue sky. Given time to warm in the day’s heat it would be an inviting thing; I have my share of cunning.

As I waited the argument inside the tent fell off until I could hear only one of the women standing up to Zar’s tirades. She appeared outside and it was the plump one, Mae. Mae stalked over to the wagon and climbed in and started to throw things over the side. A pot, a blanket, a carpetbag. “I ain’t goin’ to, no sir,” she was yelling, “y’all can fry here in this hole for all I care!”

Zar had followed her and he was standing by waving his fist: “You think you are too good for this place! You think you know better than Zar what to do! I will kill you with my hands, Maechka!”

For answer she threw out an oval looking glass and it caught him square on the side of the head. I could have laughed but the Russian roared with rage. Jumping up on the wagon he stuck his arm inside and pulled the woman out and threw her to the ground.

“Hey Zar!” the tall one, Jessie, called. “None of that!” She and Adah were standing in front of the tent, red-eyed, watching the battle. In the bright daylight and rumpled with sleep, none of the women looked too good. Their face paint was rubbed off and their hair was hanging and they all looked the worse for wear.

“I say what we do, no one else!” Zar was shouting. And to make his point he was kicking Mae as she tried to get up. When she got to her feet and tried to run he knocked her down and kicked her again. She was screaming and he was saying, “You will shod up, shod up!”

I ran over and pulled him away from the girl, she had given up trying to get away and was just lying there curled up and crying with her head between her arms. Zar let me lead him away but he turned every few steps to curse her in Russian.

The Chinagirl had run inside the tent when Zar came out but Jessie and Adah went over to Mae and helped her up. Adah put her arm around the bruised girl and mothered her. Witnessing this I was ashamed of myself. But I left Zar sitting cross-legged and surly by his cooking fire and I went over to the unhappy women and allowed they could use the bathtub by the well if they liked.

They must not have seen a tub in months. Mae forgot her peeve in a moment and she and Jessie stripped themselves clear down to their hides and took turns sitting in the tub, splashing and laughing like children. They rubbed themselves with a piece of scented soap which Adah brought out to them. “It’s genuine Parisiun!” Adah called to me. “Got it from some son of a bitch what stole it from a Colonel’s lady!”

The Chinese stood off a ways just looking on, and she was smiling with delight. Those two jumping in and out of the tub, red down to their necks and up to their wrists but white everywhere else, were as unmindful of anyone watching as if they had been whole dressed. One watcher was Jimmy, standing against the dugout, and I couldn’t tell him not to, I was another.

That evening I sat at the Russian’s fire and I told him it would be a good idea to put up some tolerable buildings before the stage came. I remembered that Fee bought some of his wood from the mines but that most of it he garnered from dead towns in the territory.