E. Doctorow - Welcome to Hard Times

Well the minute he did that I had Zar step up and meet him, and Miss Adah, who shook his hand and made him blush, and Jenks, who nodded and blinked his wolfy eyes, and the Chinese girl and Jimmy. Bear had gone back to his shack and Molly stood straight by the door of the cabin and would not come over. But it was a proper welcome Isaac Maple got even so.

A few minutes later the tall girl, Jessie, came out of Zar’s place smoothing down her hair. Then Mae followed supporting Alf who was laughing and blinking in the light. Alf had consumed a good amount of whiskey, he looked us all over standing around the stage and said: “Yessir, the spirit o’ life, spirit o’ life, yessir.”

The old man on the box moved over to the driver’s side and took up the reins and we helped Alf to sit up next to him. I gave Alf the forty dollars and the ordering list I had worked up for Zar and Isaac which he stuck in his vest.

“See you again Alf?”

“Tha’s right Blue, tha’s right!” He lifted his hat and his head went back as the old man flung his whip out and the wheels spun up dirt.

I felt pretty fair watching that wagon line out its dust over the flats — like I had done a good day’s work. But in the evening, over our supper of salted beef newly bought from Isaac Maple’s barrel, Molly couldn’t see I had done anything to be satisfied of.

“We’ll have to pay for this meat ten times what we could have by buying it ourselves,” she said.

“Well Molly I don’t favor keeping a store. Settling Ezra’s brother here puts money in the town.”

She looked at me. “The town! Oh Mayor you don’t fool me one bit—”

“What?”

“You’ll rope in every damn fool you can just to make up a herd. There’s surety in numbers, ain’t that what you think?”

“I don’t think that.”

“I know you Blue,” she giggled, and Jimmy watching her laughed too. But then Molly’s face went cold and she gazed at me: “Mayor, all the soft yellow spines in the world stack up to nothing when the Bad Man comes. I’ll tell you that, I know it.”

After that it was a race against the weather. Jenks began to build something with what lumber he could reclaim from the old street and it was clear to me whatever it was he was having a bad time. He finally admitted he wanted to raise a barn for his wagon and three animals. When Zar and I heard that we told him we would fetch wood from Fountain Creek and help him build a good enough stable if he would put up our horses without charge. He agreed, and we made two trips with both wagons — Zar’s and the black stage — and we weren’t choosy about the wood. I thought we could use every hand we had to advantage, it was a lot of work what with stalls and all; but Isaac Maple, who had rented Zar’s big tent for his own shelter, had no horse of his own and he saw no reason to join in; and Bear the Indian would have nothing to do with any of us while Zar was in our company — he spent most of his time away in the rocks, preparing traps I suppose and bringing down all the brush he could find.

All during these days Jimmy worked close by me in everything. He took care of the pony, he cut roots and gathered manure for fire, he cleaned the stove and helped with the chinking of the barn walls. He was always at my side and heeding whatever I told him to do. But I remember the way he watched her when Molly one morning went over to the old street and poked around in the rubble till she found the stiletto she had dropped the day of the fire and came back to nail it, teary-eyed, above our door.

And each morning the sun came up weaker and whiter, like an old man rising from his bed, and each morning’s chill was slower giving up the ground. Till finally I stood one day with the sun at its height and there was no warmth at all, but a shuddering breeze running down the neck and up the legs and lifting the clothes from the body. The winds were light but they brazed the flats with their cool blow and we hadn’t much time till winter.

The stable was not roofed before the true cold came, we drove the horses into the enclosure of the four high walls and while they snorted so you could see their breath and turned from one corner to another we took the corral apart and got some of the shaven logs up for joists. There was no good way of keeping warm except by moving. When the roof was up tolerably we made a railing of the remaining corral poles to go along in front of all the buildings — from the doors of the stable past Isaac Maple’s tent and past Zar’s place and the windmill to the door of the cabin I had built for Molly and Jimmy and me. A Dakota blizzard will freeze your eyes shut and drive you from your direction faster than your senses realize. I have known men to die in a drift a few feet from their doors because they had no rail to go by.

All during this hurried-up preparation against the winter I kept thinking how much we could use a good carpenter like Fee. A skilled man like that and it would not matter so much that the nails we had were soft and the lumber rotten. I worried what a blizzard might do to the stable roof. I took down the blades of the windmill to keep the water in the ground. Winter is a worrying time, you have to tuck your chin in and burrow down somewhere and hope there will still be something when the spring comes.

I had no clothes but the ones I wore, Molly had only her white dress and Jimmy had not even a hat. His pants didn’t cover his ankles and I had to tie a bit of rawhide around one of his shoes to keep the sole from flapping. We were not fit to meet the winter out of doors, and I knew when it set in in earnest we would have just our roof and each other to keep us from freezing. And that would be no comfort in a real blow.

For one week running the sun didn’t show through at all, the skies filled up grey and then snow began to sweep in on the wind. If you stood the bite long enough to take a look there was no more line between earth and sky. The flats were grey, the rock hills were grey and the wind, thick with snow, flew around your face in gusts so that you could even doubt your own balance, you could not be sure you were standing on ground or rising, without breath, in the sky.

The cabin I had built onto the dugout was not good against such weather. The door shook against its latch and snow came through the wall and settled in the corners. I moved the stove back to the dugout and we retreated there to sit with blankets around our shoulders and watch the glow of the fire in each other’s faces.

These were strange quiet moments. We didn’t have much to be proud of but I had to allow we were better off than we might have been. I could take satisfaction from the thought that bitter as she was, Molly had never made to leave the place I offered her; and that Jimmy might have done otherwise than jump to work at my side and heed every word I told him. A person cannot live without looking for good signs, you just cannot do it, and I thought these signs were good.

But I looked at Molly sitting near the stove, her head was turned to the side and her hands were folded in her lap and she was gazing at nothing and her eyes were lost listening to the wind and snow outside — and in that quiet moment it was plain to me if she didn’t up and leave the first chance she had it was because no other place could she so savor the discouragement of her life. And Jimmy, who worked so willingly, the first day I came to the old town I saw Fee planing a board and his son holding one end for him. I had never once seen the boy linger at something useless the way most children will. He had watched his Pa stumble out of the Silver Sun and he had taken him by the belt — and that was work too. Jimmy was a child fitted to the land, using all his senses to live with what it gave him, and if he did his share and did as I told him why it was because he knew no other way.