E. Doctorow - Welcome to Hard Times

What my mind sees now is the winter, November. The cabin is double-boarded, snug against the wind. Just inside, by the front door, is my desk, Swede’s table which I’ve bought from him. There are shelves on the walls filled with provisions, pegs hung with extra boughten clothes for all of us, a commode with an ironstone jug and washbowl. Mr. Hayden Gillis sits at my desk looking a long time at my books, a man all the way from the office of the Governor of the Territory.

“What have you charged for your lots Mr. Mayor,” he says shortly, turning around to face me.

“Well nothing to speak of. I put down witness stakes whenever someone claims a section he intends to build on. And he signs the ledger and I sign, that’s all.”

“You are not the promoter of this townsite?”

“No …”

“Would you believe it?” Molly says wiping her hands on her apron. “Anyone who wants, gets.”

He looks from her to me — a short man with a large head, hair falling back to his shoulders, small features down near his chin. “Your records are thorough. But I see no mention of your election as Mayor.”

“Well no sir, I just come by the title. You see it got around how I was keeping a write on things. And then when we found there’s going to be a road through us why people began to claim this piece and that along the street, and I kept things straight for them so there would be no fights. Mr. Zar, that’s the Russian, and Mr. Maple the storekeep, they’ve been building for when the crowd comes to lay the road. Zar owns the big place down the street and the public house opposite. Isaac has the store and he’s the one put up those sheet-iron cribs to rent. They are the big owners right now.”

“But for this place and the windmill not a foot of streetfront do we own,” Molly says angrily, “my husband likes to see other people make the money.”

“Alright Molly.”

“Somebody is going to drill another well, it’s bound to happen although Blue doesn’t see how. Then where will we be? I’ll tell you Mr. Gillis, this is more than an honest man standing before you, you can trust his records for they show against him!”

“Well,” the man says as he stands, “I think I’ve seen enough.” He pulls at his hammer-claw coat, takes his stovepipe from my desk. “If you will come with me, sir,” he says to me, and to Molly he nods.

Outside, although it is cold and the sky heavy, Zar and Isaac are waiting with their hats in their hands. We all four walk up to Zar’s new place, not a word being said as the man strides in the lead, badly bowed in the legs and rocking with each step. Jimmy darts in from nowhere and begins to walk behind him in imitation until I take a swipe at him and he’s gone again.

Isaac whispers to me: “Blue, if ye get the chance ask does he know Ezra Maple. He’s a travelin’ man, could be he’s met my brother along the way.”

I would like to ask it for Isaac, along with a few questions in my own mind, but the official is not a man who allows himself to be put upon. While the others wait at the bar we go upstairs to the room he’s taken (hastily given up by Jessie the day before) and he sits down at a table by the window and works with a sheaf of papers and ink stamps for a bit, muttering to himself as if I wasn’t even standing there.

“Every time someone puts a little capital into this Territory I’m called in by the Governor and sent on my way. It doesn’t matter I suffer from the rheumatism, nor that I’m past the age of riding a horse’s back. If a man files a claim that yields, there’s a town. If he finds some grass, there’s a town. Does he dig a well? Another town. Does he stop somewhere to ease his bladder, there’s a town. Over this land a thousand times each year towns spring up and it appears I have to charter them all. But to what purpose? The claim pinches out, the grass dies, the well dries up, and everyone will ride off to form up again somewhere else for me to travel. Nothing fixes in this damned country, people blow around at the whiff of the wind. You can’t bring the law to a bunch of rocks, you can’t settle the coyotes, you can’t make a society out of sand. I sometimes think we’re worse than the Indians … What is the name of this place, Hard Times? You are a well-meaning man Mr. Blue, I come across your likes occasionally. I noticed Blackstone on your desk, and Chitty’s Pleadings. Well you can read the law as much as you like but it will be no weapon for the spring when the town swells with people coming to work your road. You need a peace officer but I don’t even see you wearing a gun. I look out of this window and I see cabins, loghouse, cribs, tent, shanty, but I don’t see a jail. You’d better build a jail. You’d better find a shootist and build a jail.”

Then he turns and goes to his Gladstone traveling bag, unlocks it, burrows under some things and comes up with a labeled bottle of whiskey and two small glasses. He rubs the glasses with the flap of his coat, and then glancing up at me with that small face in that big head he hands me a glass and pours: “The jail can wait, but now let’s drink to the end of your tenure.”

Well everything he’s said I stow in my mind, only thinking now what his visit means: it will be a long year of expectations but by the spring they will come true.

I don’t remember tasting whiskey as good as that. A few minutes later I walked down the stairs while the anxious faces looked up at me from the bar: Zar, Isaac, Swede, Bert Albany — none of them would do. Before anyone could say anything I went out and up the street to the stable and found Jenks sleeping just inside the door. I shook him awake and dragged him back to Hayden Gillis. And at the top of the stairs, while everyone below looked on amazed, and while Jenks himself stood wide awake now with his mouth open the man stuck a tin star on his jacket and swore him in as a Deputy Sheriff, salary twenty-five dollars a year payable the following year.

“You ever kill your man?” Mr. Gillis asked Jenks.

Jenks turned red: “Yessir, reckon …”

“Good. You’re running this town now. See to it these folks make up a pot for a jailhouse. Get the records from Mr. Blue here and keep them neat. First time you get a serious outlaw, undead, write a letter to the capital and we’ll put a circuit judge on to you. Here’s paper. Town charter. Census list forms. Petition for statehood you can get people to sign when there’s nothing else to keep you busy.”

Then the man was clumping downstairs with his bag in his hand and his stovepipe hat and out the doors he went without a nod to anyone. Isaac Maple called up to me: “Blue?” But I shrugged and he ran out after. Everyone else crowded around me at the bar. What did it come to, this man’s visit? What was happening? I smiled because there could be no doubt. “Rest your mind Zar,” I said to the Russian, “all the money you’re in for will come back at you double.”

Jenks, in the meantime, was standing on the stairs with that sheaf of papers in his hand, glancing down at the badge on his coat and then toward the doors and back again at his chest. He was well confounded. But then he began to appreciate what had happened and as he came down each step his wolfy smile got wider and wider.

“Wal,” Zar shouted, “we are OK and without worry now Janks is Sheriff!”

Everyone laughed. Jenks came up to the bar and said to Bert who was tending: “Somethin’ fer everman heah!” and he waved his hand grandly. In the drinking that followed Jenks laid his papers on the bar. They must have fallen off in the fun, I found them later on the floor, bootmarks all over them. I gathered them up and tucked them inside my vest.

Jenks’s being a lawman didn’t change things much. People still came to me with what was on their minds; and I still kept the ledgers. I was ready to give them to him any time he asked. But maybe a month after Hayden Gillis had been through, the Sheriff came to me saying as he’d allow me to do the paperwork for him considering how busy he was on the street keeping an eye on matters — and how, besides, I knew how to write. And from then, as before, he had no part in anything that was on my desk, except to come in once or twice each day to look over my shoulder if I was sitting there, to nod sagely, but more likely only to get a free meal from Molly. So far as I know nobody in the town paid Jenks much attention except to make a joke of him now and then; but Molly and Jimmy treated him with respect and deference and it made him feel more the man he was supposed to be. He paced the street regular, wearing a gun in an open holster from his belt, and his star carefully displayed. And sometimes Jimmy followed a few steps after him and it got so you could tell where Jenks was by spotting Jimmy at some door along the street.