E. Doctorow - Welcome to Hard Times

One day I came back to the cabin in the evening and there was no fire on the stove or supper on the table. Then she stopped doing laundry. And then I was the one sweeping dust, every morning, every night. The load gets heavier and you shift to it, that’s all, you can accommodate yourself without even realizing.

A man came up to me in front of Swede’s tent and said: “Mayor I was just by your place to post a letter but nobody answered the knock.”

“My wife’s always home,” I said.

“Well yes, and I saw smoke from your chimney pipe, the Mrs. Mayor hard of hearin’?” He grinned at me.

“Give me your letter,” I said, “I’ll take it now.”

I went down the street. It was a warm day and no wind blew. A heavy stench of life filled the air, flies stuck to your clothes and you had to rub the gnats off your face.

“Molly!” The door was latched and I banged it and banged it until she let me in.

“Listen,” I said, “you’ve got to stop this!”

“I don’t want filth in my house.”

“You think everyone knocks is the Man from Bodie?”

“Keep away from me!”

“People come to me with business, you run in the dugout. Someone wipes his feet and takes his hat off and you curse him!”

“Every manner of filth and dirt, every tramp, every stinking lowlife!”

“You are getting a name in this town, Molly. I don’t like you acting this way!”

“Get out then! They’re all like you. All the filth. They’re no worse than you are, damn you!” And she ran into the back room and slammed the door.

That was the way she was acting. It was as if each person coming into town was taking away a little more of her air to breathe. What could I do? I see now what was going on but can I say I saw then?

Jimmy accepted her disposition, it should have bothered him that she began to ignore him most of the time, but he saw her only a certain way and he was rewarded whenever she came back to him with a rush of feeling. He kept up his duties to her like a faith. For instance people knowing who he was would sometimes give him their dollars for the water. I was keeping no strict records on such payments, but I knew he turned over to Molly as much money as he ever gave into my hands. Where she hid it I didn’t know, or what she wanted to do with it. I knew she wasn’t making plans to leave, she was past making plans for her life, if I could have foreseen I would have put her on the stage myself, I would have bought her a catalogue dress and bonnet and packed her a satchel of greenbacks saying Go on Molly, you were right and I was wrong, the look of your cat’s green eyes will stay with me, go as far as this money takes you and leave Hard Times to the Mayor …

But one night I found out where the money went.

“Blue.” Her whisper coming across the room. “Blue, you sleeping?”

“No.”

“Why aren’t you sleeping? What’s on your mind, Blue, that you can’t sleep?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me. Tell Molly your trouble.”

“What?”

“You want to come over here, you want to come to your Molly? Alright. Alright.” I heard her moving in her bed, making room for me.

“I was just thinking of that letter come for Archie D. Brogan,” I said quickly. I didn’t know what had got into her.

“He’s got a letter?”

“A letter addressed with a typewriting machine. I wish I knew what it said, that’s all.”

A giggle: “Well you fool, why don’t you open it?”

“Go to sleep Molly.”

“Come here Blue. Come give me a hug and forget that letter you say is worrying you out of your sleep. It’s not any letter is it? You know what it is, come on, come to your Molly.”

I had not thought of her that way for how long? How long had it been since she turned, little by little, so compliant, that I felt I was some duplicate Bad Man taking his pleasure?

“I want to whisper something. I really have to tell something in your ear—”

I am a foolish man, I shall always have to go to Molly when she calls, knowing everything, expecting anything, I will still go. I put my feet over the side of the bunk and she cried, “JIMMY!” Loud enough to wake the town, “JIMMY!” she screamed.

And there at the door, the dim light of the cabin behind him, he stood torn out of his sleep and a shotgun cradled in his arm, the boy.

“You’ll keep away from me now Mayor? You’ll stay away? You try to touch me and you see what’ll happen to you? You see you lechering old bastard!” And that was her voice I recognized.

With a groan I was at the boy, wresting the gun from him. He was half asleep, he stumbled over to her bed and fell into her arms, making sounds like he was shivering. “There, it’s alright Jim, Molly’s alright, don’t you fret—” I took his arm and I pulled him away. “Go on to your bed,” I swung him past me, “go on or I’ll whip you good!” I herded him all the way back to his cot, shoving him so that he fell down the step into the dugout. “Oh oww!” he cried, rubbing his toes, and I left him sitting there and crying.

That new oily double-barrel glinting blue was in my hands and I swung it like a hammer against my desk but the stock didn’t break. Through the door there was Molly sitting up, holding the blanket up to her neck, her hair was down and she was giggling at her joke, the laughter came out of her closed mouth in fits. I threw the gun at her. It hit the wall and fell behind her. She stopped laughing, her mouth set in a prim smile, righteous and suffering, and that was the face I slammed the door on.

I sat down and held my head in my hands. How could one man have been so blind stupid in his life! God help me for my sight, my heart went out to this child. Was everything, even her old sweetness to me, a design on him? She was training him for the Bad Man, she was breaking him into a proper mount for her own ride to Hell, and I hadn’t seen it till now, I hadn’t ever understood it was not me who suffered her, it was Jimmy.

When it was decently day I went over to Zar’s place. “Pour you a breakfast Mayor?” Mae said quietly when I stepped through the doors. “You look as you could use it.”

The place was mostly empty, a few people were sleeping at the tables. The night air was still in the room, it was cool but it smelled bad.

“Bert not here yet?” I said.

“Can’t expeck him to leave a cozy bed jes’ cause he has a job to do,” she said, pouring, “can’t expeck him to leave his Chink honey.”

I took my drink.

“’Smatter, Blue, that wife o’ yourn givin’ ye a time?”

“What?”

“Man looks like you do in the mornin’, either it’s his wife or his liver. Ain’t got no liver trouble so far as I know.”

“You don’t look so good yourself,” I said. She had no color in her face, she was not so plump any more. “You not enjoying the prosperity, Mae?”

“What do you want, Mayor, goddamnit.” She was rubbing her forehead. “Don’t know what it’s like to breathe any more. Used to be jes’ the week’s end, these days every night is Saturday.”

Zar came clumping down the stairs. He dressed fancy now. “La la la,” he was singing, he came over and pinched Mae’s cheek. “Maechka,” he said, but she pushed his hand off and went to sit down with her glass.

“Blue,” the Russian turned smiling to me, “you are the man I am meaning to see. I have important business to talk.”

“Not now Zar.”

“Of course now. You have just to listen.” He carefully took from his pocket a folded piece of newspaper. “At Silver City I see there is Company, for three hundred dollars they will go anywhere with steam drill and dig the water.”

“So?”

“So I tell you and you won’t be mad. I am thinking closely of sending for them. That way I have my own well.”