E. Doctorow: Welcome to Hard Times

“Molly, oh Lord, Molly stop it, stop it—” I shouted stumbling up, going for her. It was an endless frenzy, I cannot describe what she was doing, God have mercy on her, I saw the boy’s horror, for how many endless moments did he endure it? And how else could he speak, finally, when he had to call her and claim her as a right? How else could he make the sound of his need, create it true again? He spoke as she had taught him, manfully, with the proper instrument, booming of birth.

It was the moment Turner’s arms had closed around Molly as if in embrace. My hand was over the muzzle of the gun but the blast killed them both. Fainting, I could hear people outside tipping over the water tank, and it was that sound I listened to, the spread of water, an indecent gush.

And now I’ve put down what happened, everything that happened from one end to the other. And it scares me more than death scares me that it may show the truth. But how can it if I’ve written as if I knew as I lived them which minutes were important and which not; and spoken as if I knew the exact words everyone spoke? Does the truth come out in such scrawls, so bound by my limits?

But for Helga I have the town to myself, who’s not dead is scattered over the plains. The air is hot, and dry and still. The light of the sun parches me, my mouth is filled with dust, I cannot make spittle. There is no wind to stir the welcome banner, not a cloud. Only the flock of buzzards — sometimes rising, fluttering from some imagined scare — makes an occasional shadow. The street is busy with the work of jackals and vultures, flies, bugs, mice. Together they make a hum of enterprise.

I can forgive anyone but myself. The way I’m facing I can see out over the flats as the afternoon sun bakes colors across them. Who am I looking for, Jimmy? He’s gone, he’s riding hard, that mule and rig will take him places, another Bad Man from Bodie, who used to be Fee’s boy.

I seem to remember a man saying once they would build a railroad along the wagon trails west. It will bring them along the edge of the flats with their steam engines. I can see if I peer hard enough, I can see those telegraph poles up there like stitching between the earth and sky. Am I dying that slow?

This morning, before I started this, when the pain was too much to sit with, before my arm turned numb, I walked up and down seeing the fruit of the land. Isaac is dead in his store. In the rubble of Zar’s Palace that Mrs. Clement is dead although I don’t see a mark on her. The dealer must be upstairs. Mae is lying across a table, her dress pulled up around her neck. Her skull is broken and her teeth scattered on the table and on the floor.

In front of his bar lies the Russian, scalped expertly. The bullet he got was in his stomach — a red stain over his apron — he must still have been alive when John Bear reached him. As much as anything it was the sight of Zar, who once struck the Indian from behind, which got me to take my books out here and sit down and try to write what happened. I can forgive everyone but I cannot forgive myself. I told Molly we’d be ready for the Bad Man but we can never be ready. Nothing is ever buried, the earth rolls in its tracks, it never goes anywhere, it never changes, only the hope changes like morning and night, only the expectations rise and set. Why does there have to be promise before destruction? What more could I have done — if I hadn’t believed, they’d be alive today. Oh Molly, oh my boy … The first time I ran, the second time I stood up to him, but I failed both times, no matter what I’ve done it has failed.

Helga is standing here, she will watch me die. Who will take care of Swede’s wife? The mortal stench is everywhere, especially on me, and there is so much carrion in this town I wonder every buzzard on the land won’t be here before the sun sets. It has crossed my mind to set the street afire — that would scatter them. But there’s no wind and it would be hard work, harder than I can do.

And I have to allow, with great shame, I keep thinking someone will come by sometime who will want to use the wood.

E. L. DOCTOROW’S work has been published in thirty languages. His novels include City of God, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World’s Fair, Billy Bathgate, The Waterworks , and The March . Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle awards, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. He lives in New York.