E. Doctorow - Welcome to Hard Times

He pushed me over and jumped up and delivered a kick in my side and ran off down the trail. It was a powerful kick and well aimed, I feel it now on a deep breath. Below in the town there was no sign of Molly. But as I sat up and looked I could hear a clatter somewhere and a moment later out of the tent two skirted figures stumbled into the sun, locked together. Someone shouted and people were running from all directions, pouring out of the saloon, the store, to make up a circle around those two. Another moment and I saw Jimmy arrive, ducking into the crowd.

It was Molly rolling around in the dirt with Swede’s wife Helga. Molly had made up her mind to take affront because the woman had been feeding up her boy. As I ran down I could hear people yelling encouragement. But by the time I made my way through the circle Jenks and Swede had pulled the two women apart. They stood glaring, wild-haired and gasping, scratched and mussed so you could hardly tell one from the other. Molly’s dress was torn in front. “Lookit thet tit,” a man said.

Later I stood in the cabin holding a hand to my side, watching the boy bathe her scalp where Helga had pulled out the hair. Molly was moaning on her bed. There was a knock at the door and it was Swede, wringing his hands. Behind him, down the street, was the sound of his ranting wife.

“Blue, dis is a bad tang, my vault, forgive my Helga, my vault—”

“You big dumb stupid Swede!” I shouted. I could feel the water come to my eyes. How was it his fault? What in Hell made him think he must take the blame?

I say that was the true end of me no matter what happened after. Sharp as the boy’s kick in my side, clear as the pain, was the sudden breathless vision I had of my unending futility. Who as well as I and what I am could have ensured the one’s madness and the other’s corruption? But we won’t think about it: I tried to keep my heart by taking it out of doors. And how long was I able to do that? One week? One hour?

Some of these spring-comers paid for lodging and moved into one of Isaac Maple’s cribs. And there was cabin space for those willing to share beds. But the town wasn’t big enough to take on everyone and nobody was doing any more building. Those who had the money to build were making it too easily in other ways. “Who cares where they stay,” Zar said to me, “they are drinking my whiskey, they are bouncing in my beds!” So after a while there were squatters staked out in back of the buildings, living out of their wagons, lying down for the night under lean-tos. And it began to make trouble.

I mean people would throw their slops into the alleys. Some didn’t care where they did their business and it got so you were hard put to walk in the street without putting your boot down in a mess. One morning Molly found a drunken man peeing against the door, and it drove her to distraction, she cried the whole day. I tried to call a meeting at the well of all the people who owned streetfront, some of them had privies in back, but not all; but only Jenks and Isaac and Swede came. Jenks said: “Jes watch yer step in all yer do. Hit’s good fer the land. How do the Indian get his greens up if not by shittin’ on ’em all winter?” Isaac was righteous: “Nobody cares a damn,” he said, “but if they all come up with dysentery ’tain’t themselves they’ll blame but each other.” Isaac had the right sentiment but he was a busy man. It was Swede and I who ended up digging and fencing sumps behind each side of the street. That Swede would do anything you asked of him, he would tilt his head away from his wen and close his eyes and nod yes — no matter what it was.

Well the sumps helped but not much. And there were other troubles too. A few of the job hunters were men not easy to look at, there was one fellow who had running sores all over his face, another, an old man, who was humpbacked with hands twisted and swollen out of shape. Isaac came to me claiming whenever one such came into his store everyone else cleared out and he lost business. It was not true, of course, he just wanted me to run these people out of the town. “Speak to Jenks,” I told him, “Jenks is the peace officer here.” Then Zar joined the protest, he refused to serve the hunchbacky one day and the man, in resentment, ran over to Mae and Jessie and waved his crippled hands in front of their eyes. Zar told Bert to throw the poor fellow out but Bert wouldn’t step out from behind the bar. The Russian came running to me and I told him he’d best serve the man his drink and he’d leave then twice as fast and with no trouble. “It’s easier in the end,” I said. But Zar like Isaac was for running these people off and Jenks finally rounded up three or four of them at gunpoint and shooed them away into the flats; but at night they were back, they wanted work like everyone, and for a while they made their way behind houses and took their meals behind Swede’s tent from what Helga handed out to them through the flap. And after a while they came into the store again and the saloons and so the trouble was not ended but in fact greater, with greater hard feelings.

One morning the egg lady found one of her three chickens with its head wrung off; she was an old-timer in the West and she told her sorrows to nobody, but grabbed up her cane and went into Zar’s Palace swinging. She must have been a teetotaler to blame only the whiskey for her lost hen, she bruised a number of shoulders and broke some bottles and a row of glasses Zar had proudly imported from the East before she was finally herded out; and that was my problem too because I was the one who had to gentle her.

The weather was getting hotter; and each morning of prosperity that would start out fresh and easy to breathe was turning into a day more hot and burdensome than the last. Every time Alf’s stage came in, or a freight wagon, all I wanted to see was some Eastern engineer, a man in black, with plans in his pocket and wages to give out. On Saturday night with the miners pouring in the town and the street filling with the noise of frolic from one end to the other I found Angus Mcellhenny lighting up his pipe in front of the stable.

“If the Company is going to lay a road,” I asked him, “why in hell don’t they start in?”

“Blue it’s many years I’ve been diggin’ the earth and I’ve seen fortunes in my shovel. But I’ve nought to show for it but my calluses and m’ mind is as weak as it ever was. I dinna know.”

“Well what do you hear around Angus?”

“Don’t pry at me my ferlie friend. I know nothin’. We are diggin’ hard six days o’ the week and keepin’ our eyes on the ground. I can tell you no more.”

“Alright Angus. But tell Archie D. Brogan when you see him there’s a letter in his name down here.”

He took the pipe from his mouth: “Who from?”

“It doesn’t say, Angus, it’s only his name on the front. You’ll tell him?”

He nodded and walked away.

It baffled me that Angus should be so close-mouthed, it wasn’t like him. Meanwhile the same questions I had put to him were being asked of other miners and none of them liked it, the hungry looks in the eyes of the towners didn’t go well with them. Some newcomers, not happy about waiting around, had gone up the trail looking for work at the lodes; and though they had ridden back, sourfaced, the same day, it didn’t sit well with the diggers that a lot of men were in the country wanting jobs. There was no love lost between the two groups that Saturday night. The miners, having their pay to spend, sort of took over at the saloons. One thing led to another and Jenks was kept fairly busy breaking up scuffles, once or twice he even had to draw his pistol to get things quiet. In our cabin I was at the desk trying to put some order in all my papers, and Molly sat with sewing on her lap, and we heard clearly the screeches of the ladies over at Zar’s every time a fight started. Molly’s hands shook so she couldn’t work the needle, she dropped her hands in her lap and I saw out of the corner of my eye how frightened she was. Every few minutes Jimmy would come rushing in to tell of the latest fuss, sweat on his forehead and such joy in his eyes he could hardly speak without stammering: “Old J-Jenks, he took care of ’m alright, socked ’m on the head, poom, like th-that—”