E. Doctorow - Welcome to Hard Times

She would take no part in the life on the street, she began to stay inside, only sitting sometimes out in back when the weather was fair, looking at the view west of the rocks and the flats. I did the buying for us and Jimmy brought her the news. He was good at that, always managing to be where something was going on; and then he’d run to Molly to tell her about it. In that way she had all the news; and Jimmy had all her opinions. Molly’s opinions were much the same about everything. Whether it was someone come on the stage, or some rumor about the road, some new business of Zar’s or Isaac Maple’s, or some measure I had taken — she didn’t like it. Everything fell under her tongue and there would be suppers where I would eat while Molly would talk on and on, her mind wandering over each person, each foot of ground, and I’d be finished and my coffee drunk and her plate would hardly be touched. Jimmy listened to everything she said like it was gospel, no matter what she spoke of or how many times she’d said it before, he would drink up her words like they were mother’s milk.

There was only one person who Molly would tolerate and that was Jenks — not because he was anything but a fool but because he was so handy with guns. Jenks’s name never felt the whip at our table and that was why he was one of the few people Jimmy had a talking acquaintance with. Many’s the time I saw the boy helping Jenks at the stable, mucking out stalls, running errands. For pay Jimmy got to coddle the animals, and sometimes the boon of a lesson in gun handling. I found him at it once, holding a Colt shoulder-high, clicking off the trigger at the barn walls while Jenks held a stick under his wrist and ran a patter: “Hold’m steady, sonny, squeeze’m, squeeze’m, don’t yer pull, thet’s hit, line’m steady …” I tried to put a stop to it and that’s when I found out Jenks was teaching the boy just to oblige Molly, who had asked him the favor.

Now there is no wrong in showing a boy arms except it was like everything else Jimmy was getting. And the effect of it all wasn’t lost on other people. He was thickening into his father’s son but the look on his face was Molly’s. Mae told me privately, because she didn’t want to make any fuss she said, that she greeted the boy one day looking out her second-story window, and in a sudden rage he picked up a stone and threw it right up, hitting her in the chest. Isaac Maple caught him once pocketing a handful of shells from the counter. I settled with Isaac but it wasn’t the money that bothered him. And there was no settling at all with John Bear: the Indian’s garden patch was more than food to him, there was no one else who could make a plant grow. But one day he woke from his nooning and there was his greens all stepped on. He never thought of Jimmy, for some reason he made me understand it was Zar he blamed — unlikely as Zar would be to do such a thing. But I knew who it was. And I thought it wouldn’t do to talk to him or lay a hand to him. I thought it was Molly who needed reaching.

“Molly that boy gets wilder each day. He’s turning mean.”

“Is that what you think?”

“He threw a rock at Mae.”

“Well I hope it was thrown true.”

“Molly this is Fee’s boy—”

“I’ll tell you what’s rankling you Mayor, he’s a fondness for Jenks, he looks up to Jenks. And it burns don’t it?”

“Jenks has nothing to do with it!”

“Were you any good with a gun Mayor maybe you could teach the boy some manliness.”

“That’s not manliness.”

“Oh I’ll tell you it is, it is, Mayor—”

“Well is it manliness to step all over the Indian’s patch?”

She looked at me. Then she went to the door and called the boy and a moment later Jimmy came inside and stood in front of her.

“Was it you ruffled up those plants?”

The boy glanced at me with a disgusted look on his face: “No.”

“Was it?” Molly grabbed his shoulders and shook him and he went scared: “Yes ma’am.”

One two three she put the slaps smart across his face.

“You do such as that again, I’ll have your hide. You hear me?” She screamed: “You hear me?”

Well that wasn’t what I wanted either, I could have hurt him myself if it would serve the purpose. As it was he hated me as he fingered the slaps Molly gave him. A night or so later I found my ink jar turned over and the cover of one of the ledgers all soaked. It riled me and I was ready to forget anything but my own anger and light into the boy no matter what purpose it would serve. But as I turned there was Molly in the dugout, his room now, watching the boy get ready for bed.

“Look at them shoulders,” I listened to her murmur. “Molly’s Jim is gettin’ tall and strong, ain’t he? Molly feeds him up good and he’s turning into a sure enough man, isn’t it so? Big Jim they’ll call him and he’ll take care of his Molly, yes he will …”

This was the time of our greatest prosperity. Small clouds of gnats hung in the yellow evenings and horses tied up to the porch rails were touching rumps. Every rising sun saw another cone of dust sprouting up from the flats. People needed work; and it was like all the West was following the smell of it on the spring airs, like the scent of water on the desert. What were my feelings, did it make me uneasy to see our town as a refuge? How many times I would open the door to see wheels turning past us: it was a dusty couple pulling hard on their handcart, or a Pike County bunch filling a flatbed wagon, one limping beside with his kneecoat and Bowie belt, an old long rifle on his shoulders. You could tell the Pike Counties if only by their coughs. A man rode in one day wearing a dirty white linen suit, a roll of green felt was across his saddle, he was a faro dealer. And there was much bidding between Zar and Jonce Early to get the man. Zar got him. There was a raggedy old woman come along, nothing in her wagon but a pile of rags and a crate with three squawking chickens; and she made money selling their eggs for a dollar apiece. But most of the arrivals had just themselves to offer a boss and the money was going into the pockets mainly of those already settled on the street.

We were all doing a brisk business. People paid in every kind of exchange for my water — U.S. silver, greenbacks, Territory scrip; and when I wasn’t busy seeing to the well I was noting Express orders and taking mail. There was another stage on the line now and we had two arrivals each week. If you went into Isaac Maple’s store (“Maple Bros.” it said on the outside in paint, Isaac’s hope lettered for all to see), if you went in there, there was always someone ahead of you — even though Isaac had the Chinagirl helping him wait on customers. The store had every kind of stock you could wish, sugar, flour, foods canned and in brine barrels, preserves, dry goods, cutlery, carpentry tools, tar paper, rolls of barbed wire, tobaccos, anquitum for lice, corn starch, bottled lavender water and honey and castor oil — you’d think you was in Silver City.

Directly across from the store, every morning and evening, there was always a crowd in front of the tent, which Swede rented now for his eatery. They would stand there waiting for the big fellow to let them in. For twenty-five cents you could eat a breakfast of flourcakes and coffee, for fifty cents a dinner of salt pork, coffee and biscuits made up by Helga. I ate there myself once Molly stopped cooking.

As for the Russian he couldn’t ask for better business, even with his competition across the street. Whenever someone rode in it was usually to “Zar’s Palace” he went for information, since it was the tallest building in the town. Bert, behind the fancy bar over there, would send them to my door; or if it was Swede in his restaurant, he would wipe his big hands on his apron and lead the stranger over to me. There was nobody from the mine set up in the town as yet and so I kept a list of all those who wanted work. I didn’t state myself as an agent for the mine, in fact I was always sure to make it clear I wasn’t; but it helped me to know who was in town and besides I was able to use the chance to get another signature on the petition for statehood. And it always gave the stranger a feeling of having done all he could do until the hiring began, to write his name down. I must have had a half a hundred names on that list.