E. Doctorow - Welcome to Hard Times

“That’s his business, please ma’am, the way I see hit I can’t shoot all those people down in much health.”

“Just him ,” Molly gripped his shirt again, “just him, just that Bad Man from Bodie, you know what he did to me, you have any idea?”

“Well—”

“Jenks I promise good things, I swear, I can do more than those two on the box put together. Do you believe that?”

That brought Miss Adah out of her daze. Everything Molly had been saying suddenly made her stand up and point her finger: “Why I always knew,” she said with a voice of surprise, “yes I did, even when I passed on my wedding dress to you, that you was no lady.”

Down the street someone near the door of Zar’s Palace turned and saw the woman’s figure atop the coach. He said something and then a few men had separated from the crowd and were running toward us, shouting. The Bad Man was putting a match to everyone.

“Oh Lord, Jenks—” Jessie screamed, and she took up the reins. The Sheriff started to climb to the box but Molly grabbed his arm. At the same time I found myself slapping the horses’ rumps just as Jimmy did, although I think we had different reasons. And off lurched the coach, Miss Adah falling back on the roof.

The wheels spun up a cloud of blue dust under the moon. A minute after they were gone, three or four men hooted by on their horses, giving the chase, choking us standing there, flattening us against the cabin wall. I never saw either of those women again and I don’t know what happened to them.

“Oh lookit thet!” said Jenks. “Godamighty,” his voice broke, “lookit what hew done to me!”

Molly giggled: “Sheriff honey, you’ll listen to me now, won’t you?”

I’m trying to put down what happened but the closer I’ve come in time the less clear I am in my mind. I’m losing my blood to this rag, but more, I have the cold feeling everything I’ve written doesn’t tell how it was, no matter how careful I’ve been to get it all down it still escapes me: like what happened is far below my understanding beyond my sight. In my limits, taking a day for a day, a night for a night, have I showed the sand shifting under our feet, the terrible arrangement of our lives?

I can’t remember her foul words, poor Molly, what she said to Jenks, but only that it kept Jimmy rooted where he stood; and that by and by Jenks was spinning his Colt and checking each chamber, his simpleton pride rising like manhood to her promises. Or did he really believe he could stop the riot by killing Turner? At the far end of the street a bunch of men were running out of sight toward John Bear’s cabin. Next to the saloon Isaac’s store was locked and dark, but already someone was banging on the door.

In those moments I was unable to act. The way I am, I will do as well as anyone until a showdown. But also I was raging that Jenks could believe this woman cared for anything but herself and the Bad Man. The wolfy fool licked the syrup of her words and was marching up the street almost before I could run back inside and get my gun from the drawer. Molly ran in the dugout, already praying with that cross of hers. Jimmy, holding the shotgun slack in one hand, was in a stupor. “Get back inside!” I said to him.

I ran to catch up with Jenks: “You know what you’re doing?”

He was trotting like a hero: “Reckon,” he allowed himself to say. I wasn’t worth too much of his attention now Molly’s declarations were in his ears.

“Well I hope you find it worth it, Mr. Sheriff,” I said. “But you better have a plan!”

“Stay back—”

“You’re a damn fool. He won’t give you the time to sight. This ain’t a target to shoot, this is a Man from Bodie!”

“I kin get ’m awraht.”

I wanted to believe him. On the left side of the street one side of Swede’s tent was buckling and there was the clatter of pots and kettles. I could see now to the end of the street and in the bright blue shadow they were knocking John Bear’s shack to pieces. I thought Yes, can one shot do it? It will scatter the flames and the fire will go out.

That was the idea I held on to like my life, it moved me to action, it was a clear simple thought and I took it over from Jenks, becoming the fool he’d been, lifting the fool’s hat from his dead body to fit on myself, becoming Molly’s final fool, as I am now. But who could not in the face of such ruin, with the race burning crazy in that moon’s light? It was justice to kill him, the single face, the one man; I had to do something and what was most futile made the most sense. It was a giving in to them all, every one of those accursed people rolling over each other in the still warm dust of the street, scampering this way and that to find what to destroy.

But I wasn’t going after it the way Jenks did. He marched up the steps holding his polished pistol and he pulled one of the saloon doors back. “Hey!” he cried, raising the gun to sight, but the flood of light from inside made him blink, and what easy game he was bathed and blinking against the dark. After a great second’s silence there was a rush for the door, men stumbling outside, their shadows looming long on the lighted porch, down the steps, shadows turning into men in the street. Jenks was knocked off his balance, he tried to right himself, his gun hand was swinging wildly.

I heard Zar’s voice, “No, no!” and maybe the Russian was going toward the door thinking in a panic of the mirror in back of his bar, or the lamps hanging so grandly above the sawdust. I think it was Jenks’s wild shot which caught Zar in the stomach. From inside the Bad Man’s gun sounded twice, but Jenks was hit twice, the first shot took him in the chest and spinned him around, the second surely broke his neck. Jenks did a clown’s tumble down the steps and there he was twisted double, his face in open-mouthed surprise looking up at me from under his arm.

He’s still there, they’re all as they are. I can write with one hand but I can’t dig. Horses shied away from his fall, a man was running toward me, I thought What is he going to tell me? but he had a barrel stave in his hand. I held up my gun and he veered off like a dog on a richer scent.

Across the street Swede’s restaurant was a pile of canvas, humping and shifting, a living thing. He was pulling his wife out from under and I ran over and helped him. We put her on her feet and she grabbed Swede and held on to him, sobbing and hugging him. He was crying too, holding an iron skillet in his hand, his anger making him cry, and when it got the best of him he broke out of her grasp, cursing, and started to beat at the movement under the canvas, swinging that skillet with all his strength.

Helga pulled at him, trying to get him away. People were running every which way, meeting and grappling in the street. It was a lunatic town.

“Swede,” I cried, “get her out of here!”

He came to his senses, I have a glimpse now of his face suddenly calm under its shock of hair, white in the moon’s color. He picked up his wife and walked away quickly, straight out past the sump, going toward the shadow of the rocks.

From Zar’s Palace issued a woman’s rising voice of moans stopping short in one deathly scream.

I had remembered a bale of barbed wire standing behind Isaac’s store, a big spool of it, maybe Isaac from Vermont had been expecting the herds to come to Hard Times. I made for it, proud of my cunning; and I was in such a fever with my idea, the tear in my side didn’t hurt, nor the thought of Molly and the boy awaiting what might be, nor the moment’s glimpse I had, going down the alley of the looters beating down Isaac’s door. Through the walls of the saloon I could hear Turner begin to sing drunkenly, throw the furniture around — and it was thrilling to concentrate my hate.