E. Doctorow: Welcome to Hard Times

“Look there Blue!”

Across the street, in front of the saloon, the Bad Man’s roan stood shivering where he’d been tied since yesterday.

“Cold got that man’s horse,” Jack Millay said, “he never did see to it.” Even as Jack spoke the horse went down on its knees. That was all we needed — I wanted the man to go away with no difficulty, no trouble to himself. I walked into my office to think, and a few minutes later some fool who couldn’t bear to see animals suffer but who didn’t care if people did, stood a good safe way from the Silver Sun, probably behind some porch, and shot his carbine at the roan.

When I ran out the roan was twitching on his side and the street was empty.

“Who in hell did that!” I shouted.

Then, in a minute the Bad Man from Bodie came out of the saloon buckling his gun belt. I didn’t move a muscle. He looked down at his horse and scratched his head and that was when I stepped slowly back inside my door and closed it. On the back wall of my office, behind my cot, there was another door and I went out that way.

I found Avery standing near my outhouse talking to his other girl, Molly Riordan. Along with the rest of us Molly scooted out of the Silver Sun when the man had taken Flo. She sheltered for the night with Major Munn, the old veteran who liked to call her his daughter; and now Avery had her back and they were arguing.

“You’re a son of a bitch, Avery,” she said to him. Molly was never to my taste, pale and pocked, with a thin mouth and a sharp chin, but I liked the way she stood up to Avery.

“Blue, this son of a bitch wants me to go across there and get ripped open by that big bastard.”

“Not so loud Molly, for God’s sake!” Avery said.

“How do you like this fat-assed son of a bitch? He’s some man, isn’t he Blue?”

“Molly I got stock behind that bar; I got all my money under the counter. I’m telling you everything I got is in there.” To make his point Avery slapped Molly hard across the face and when she put her hand to her cheek and began weeping, he pulled a stiletto from under his apron and held it out until she took it.

“You go on over there and when he holds you around, bring the knife out of your sleeve and put it in his neck. I can’t have that gentleman in my place, I want him out of there.”

Just then a hoot and a holler came from the street. I looked down the alley in time to see the Bad Man prancing by sideways on a big bay. He was on Hausenfield’s good horse.

“He’s not in your place now, Avery,” I said.

The Bad Man was celebrating the new day riding bareback back and forth from one end of the street to the other. Jack Millay met me in the alley: “Hausenfield left his barn door open.”

“Too bad for Hausenfield.”

“That man just walked over and took the bay for his own.”

We watched from the shade: he kicked the horse this way and that, yelling and whooping through the street. When the horse got accustomed, he spurred him up the steps of the Silver Sun and then rode along the porch, ducking low for the beams. The horse kicked over the sack of dried beans in front of Ezra Maple’s store and then jumped back into the street, and the Bad Man laughed and yelped some more. I was hoping he’d stop soon, saddle up, and then go riding toward the lodes. The clouds were moving from the south and if it rained he couldn’t poke a horse up on wet rocks, even if he had a horse. But when he stopped it was at the north end of the street where John Bear had his shack.

John Bear did his cooking on the outside over a stone fire. Next to his shack he had a small plot he had worked on so that it gave up a few tubers and onions. John was squatting by his fire, cooking up some meal, when the man walked into his patch, stepping all over the plants. If John was deaf and dumb what he saw was enough. The man pulled up half a dozen plants before he found an onion that suited him. He wrung it free of its green and wiped it and peeled it and then bit in.

“Breakfast,” I said to Jack Millay.

The man ignored John Bear as if he wasn’t there. He stepped over to the Indian’s fire and lifted up the skillet and walked away with it to sit down with his back against the shack. The Indian didn’t move but just looked into his fire.

Avery and Molly Riordan were standing behind me, watching.

“Here’s your chance to get back to your place, Avery.”

“I don’t know, Blue.”

“Why don’t you just walk across and go on in?”

“He’ll see me.”

Jack said: “Shit, Avery.”

“Don’t run and you’ll be alright. Molly you get inside somewhere. I think you better not be seen.”

Avery walked across stiff-legged, trying not to run, and I saw the Bad Man glance up for a moment from his eating. When Avery got inside the Silver Sun he closed the full doors in back of the swinging ones and pulled shades down over the windows.

“Now what’s that man gonna do when he finds Avery’s bolted the door?” Jack said.

I took a deep breath and walked out into the sun myself. I headed across the street, stepping around the man’s dead roan, and when I got to the porch I coughed and went into Ezra Maple’s store.

Ezra was standing by his window looking at the spilled sack of beans.

“He still sitting there?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll take some plug, Ezra.”

“Help y’self.”

I went behind the counter: “Ezra I want to ask you when the stage is due.”

“A week. Maybe two.”

“Well now what day is this? We get a fair crowd from the mines Saturday night.”

“That’s true …”

“Well what day is this?”

“Thursday.”

I walked over to the window and looked with Ezra at the spillings on his porch: the beans could have been flocks of birds flying high, southerly.

“Not much country, Blue.”

“I took some cartridges with the plug.”

In a while we saw Hausenfield driving his hearse hard into town, pulling on the grey’s traces and whipping his mule. He stopped in front of the store and came in, tripping and cursing.

“Are you here, Blue? You have to do something!”

“Tell me what, Hausenfield.”

“Dat is my horse he has.”

“I saw.”

“Are you not the mayor!”

“Only to those who voted for me.” Ezra smiled when I said that: I had not been elected mayor, I had taken it upon myself to keep records in case the town ever got large enough to be listed, or in case statehood ever came about. I kept the books and they called me mayor.

Hausenfield looked at Ezra and smiled back: “Dat is alright,” he said, “I have my veapon.”

He stalked out and got his gun from his wagon. To this day I don’t know whether Hausenfield meant to shoot the Bad Man or not. Probably, he didn’t know himself. His horse was standing in John Bear’s patch eating off the tops of the plants. Hausenfield marched down there and grabbed a fistful of mane and began leading the horse back to his stable. When he’d gone a few yards, he turned almost as an afterthought and shot twice at the Bad Man who sat watching him — once into the dirt in front of the man, once into the wood above him. The horse reared then and pulled away. Hausenfield fell down in the dust and I thought he would fire again from the ground; but I saw him crawling and trying to get up at the same time, waving his pistol at the horse and shouting in German. This put his back to the stranger who was up and running low, squeezing off rounds into his legs.

Faster than a cat the man was on top of Hausenfield, straddling him with his gun holstered now and swinging at his face with the flat of the skillet.

“He never let go of that pan,” Ezra whispered.

Hausenfield had begun to scream when the bullets hit him but the man swung at his face until he could only moan. After a while the man threw the skillet away and looked up: the bay horse had cantered over to his stablemates in front of the black wagon and that must have given the man his idea. Laughing, he dragged Hausenfield by the collar over to the wagon and threw him in. This happened right in front of Ezra’s window so we had to step back in the shadows. The man closed the door, found Hausenfield’s pickaxe, still caked with the dirt of Fee’s grave, and used it to bolt the door tight. Inside the hearse, Hausenfield was screaming again, pounding on the floorboard. The man jumped up on the driver’s box, brought the grey and the mule around, and began to rein-whip them down the street. Hooting loud, he rode them close to the porch on the other side, and at the last porch beam at the end of the street, he hooked his arm around and stood easily on the rail while the wagon kept on going into the flats. To make sure that the team kept its pace he fired a few shots after it and even the mule ran with his ears back.