E. Doctorow - Welcome to Hard Times

“Jimmy,” I said, “you stay in here now, go on to bed, it’s late. You hear me, son?” But he would never hear me.

He gave one glance to Molly and ran out, leaving the door open wide.

She made no move to stop him, sitting there her eyes fixed on nothing, one hand on her throat’s cross, the other knuckled against her teeth.

A day or two later and the sun not even up, Bert Albany rapped on the door until I heard him, and with the sleep still in my eyes I went with him up the street to Zar’s place. The faro dealer was lying on the floor there, ashen white, and a big red rent in his vest where he had been stabbed. Jenks was standing nearby, clutching the collar of that little hunchback, his gun was drawn and sticking in the man’s back. Bert told me the faro dealer had been lending out money to people at high rates, sometimes winning it back at his table. He had a list, Bert saw it, of the men indebted to him. The hunchbacky had been sitting there losing all of his loan, and when it was gone he jumped up and stuck a knife in the dealer’s belly.

The dealer was quiet, concentrating on his breathing, he was in his senses enough to know to lay still. I went out to John Bear’s shack. It showed even then the signs of resentment, the door was splintered, a board or two was gone from the roof. I woke the Indian up and gave him to understand there was someone needed doctoring. He came with me up to the saloon but when he saw it was Zar’s place and the Russian waiting at the door, he turned on his heel and went back the way he came.

Zar and I carried the dealer up to one of the rooms, Zar being careful every step not to get any of the man’s blood on his clothes. Miss Adah, with her hair in braids and a shawl over her nightdress, said she’d sit with the man and see what she could do.

When I came back down the stairs Jenks and his prisoner were gone, the few people who had watched the goings-on had drifted away. Zar offered me a drink but there wasn’t anything I wanted less. Outside was the sound of hammering, and from the porch, in the grey light, I saw Jenks in the front of his stable. He had put the hunchback in Hausenfield’s old boarded-up hearse wagon and was nailing the door shut.

“Jenks,” I went over to him, “what in God’s name are you doing!”

“Hit’ll do fer a jail, don’t ye thank?”

“You could tie him up without putting him in there!”

“Mayor, I is Shurff an’ I ain’t seen m’ pay yet. Don’t you fret, I’ll see he’s fed and stretches his laigs. Swede’ll proffer his leftovers. This man has stabbed a man, he’s got to pay.”

“You’ve thought it all out have you?”

He nodded: “Ah reckon we’ll requar that circus jedge,” he said solemn with his decision.

I looked at him. “Jenks,” I said, “I remember when you used to sleep most of your days and here it is not dawn and it’s clear to me you’re a changed man, thriving on his duty.”

He grinned. “Y’ll write thet letter fer me? Fer thet jedge?”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

The night was paling. I walked back toward the cabin in my untucked shirt and my bootlaces flapping. In the dirt against Isaac’s porch a man was asleep. On Zar’s steps another was huddled over his knees coughing fit to wake the dead. I should have been feeling sympathy for that dealer but I was feeling the pain of my own breathing.

Jimmy and Molly were still asleep. In the aftermath of her great battle he had taken my bunk to be near her if she needed, and the dugout had been left to me. But I was too shaken to lie down again, I boiled some coffee and sat at my desk looking at that letter for Archie D. Brogan, thinking Here rises another morning, a little hotter than the last. If someone from the mines doesn’t begin hiring soon, Jenks’s wagon will be filled to overflowing. Once there was work, once there was money, I told myself, everything would be alright. It was the promise of a year, a settlement growing towards its perfection. That was my notion but the only thing growing was trouble; and it made me shudder to think whatever perfection was, like the perfection I had with Molly, it was maybe past, silently come and gone, a moment long, just an instant in the shadow of one day, and any fool who was still waiting for it, like he dreamed, didn’t know what life is.

I counted the savings in my drawer — some two hundred fifty dollars’ worth — and I went out and hired four men who said they knew carpentry, and I sent them on a hunt for wood. The terms were three dollars apiece for each day they took to get up an office for me against the south wall of the cabin. After I did that there was a gathering in front of the cabin and I spoke to a number of people, one at a time. One man said he knew the printer’s trade and I gave him backing of seventy-five dollars to start up a press in the town. Another, an old drover, claimed he knew where if he could get a dozen head of fat prime cattle at three dollars a head, he would have them across the flats in a week and would sell them for slaughter for ten dollars. I told him to go ahead. A couple of people I lent money to straight off at a rate of one percent, and by noon I had gotten rid of all my money except what I needed to keep the three of us.

I went outside and stood up on a box in front of the windmill and I made an announcement to the people that gathered. I said until the roadwork began all water was free to anyone not owning property on the street. “The banner means what it says, boys!” I cried like a true politician. “There’s a payday coming for all, but until it comes we’ll wait together!” Nobody cheered but I didn’t think they would.

In all that time Molly stayed in the back room with the door shut, the boy carrying her cups of tea or some food.

I wasn’t finished by any means, I planned to write a letter to two or three of the banking companies in the Territory, asking them to consider opening up a branch in the town. I was tempting myself to ride up to the lodes with Brogan’s letter to see if I could commit someone to a hiring date. My mind was teeming with plans to keep the temperature down and the money fluent. Toward dusk Zar came barging in the front door. I had expected him.

“Mayor, what a frand is this!”

“What do you mean Zar?”

“I tell you I shall drill a well and then you cut your water prices. Is this the way a frand does?”

“Why you told me you would drill only for your own use,” I said, “I shouldn’t think it would matter to you.”

“This is dirty business, you are making angry a dangerous man!”

At that moment he didn’t look so dangerous. He had on his fancy check vest and kneecoat and a hempen cravat and around it all was his barkeep’s apron. He raged on, not even knowing he gave himself away, till finally I said: “Now you listen to me, Zar. You’re sending for a well driller? Fine, you’ll make it back soon enough, just go right ahead. You can hire out a good half dozen men to put up a windmill for you. While you’re at it think up a couple of more jobs so you can give out wages. God knows you’ve made enough money not to have to sweep your own place.”

“What’s this?”

“These people are lying around here spending their cash and they’re not making any. We’re grabbing everything they have—”

“Is this bad?”

“It could be. The Company seems to be taking its own sweet time about the road. Until it gets going we’re in a bad position. You can’t just take out, you have to put back in too, you’re a businessman, you know that.”

“I do not make whiskey to give away, frand. I do not tell a man to keep his money so he can spend it across the street.”

“Alright, you can still hire some of these people, give them a way of paying for your wares.”