E. Doctorow: Welcome to Hard Times

So we all stood scattered on the flats looking back at the town — the boy Jimmy Fee, John Bear, Ezra, and the rest — some with gear, some by a horse or a buckboard, some with bundles and some, like me, with nothing. Overhead the sky was heavy with clouds, a wind was blowing, and although it couldn’t have been much past noon, the day was black. We watched for a long time. Every once in a while we could hear a scream or something crashing, small sounds now in the flats. And then, after a long silence, flames began to lick out of the saloon. Hausenfield’s horse in front whinnied and pulled back on his ties and then the Bad Man came carrying a chair on fire. He whooped and threw the chair across and it landed on the porch in front of my office. Then he saw something and ran across the street. What he saw was Fee’s ladder still leaning where it was left against the stable. He picked up that ladder and went around poking out windows with it and when the wind had caught the flames and both sides of the street were framed in fire, he used the ladder to knock down the porch beams, jumping aside and hollering when the hot wood fell into the street.

But then the bay was going mad so he untied him and got on his back and held him to a walk toward the rocks. We couldn’t see the man for a long while after that, but finally Ezra Maple pointed to the hills: He was well up on the trail toward the lodes, lighted for a moment by the fire down below him, picking his way through the stone and not even looking back. He disappeared again and that was all we saw of the Bad Man from Bodie, though we waited to make sure. The rain finally began to come down hard and we stood watching it fall into the fire and watching the fire lick up at the rain.

The Silver Sun made the brightest flame and the cleanest smoke. Once or twice part of the roof blew into the air above the fire — and that would be Avery’s kegs of alcohol. By and by the rain began to let up. The wind came back and whiffs of the smoke blew out on the flats. Off to the left of me Major Munn, the veteran who liked to call Molly Riordan daughter, was standing up on his buckboard with his arm raised. He was a bent old man with long white mustaches, and he was yelling into the smoke and roar which came out to us on the wind: “If I’d had you before me at Richmond, I’d have put the ball in yer eye, God help you, I killed twenty like you when I was younger,” his voice piped over the flats. “Let the sun drop you in the badlands and let you not die before the shit of prairie dogs is in yer mouth and the buzzard’s claw is on yer belly. May yer pizzle fry in Hell and your eggs wither to peas, may the marrow boil in yer bones and yer eyes melt in their holes for what you done here, God damn you, God damn you …” He was shaking his fist toward the town but for a moment I had the feeling it was me he was cursing.

Then the fire’s roar smothered his words, and a gust of smoke hid him from my sight. When it cleared again I saw that Major was not up behind his horse, but down on the ground under him. I ran over: he had toppled with a stroke, his fist was still rigid, there was froth on his lips and a rattle in his throat. I put my hand on him and his eyes opened and he stared at me and died.

Someone leaning over my back said: “Well I have seen the elephant.” Others came to look at the Major and it was enough to break the spell of the fire. People began tying down their gear, pulling cinches tight. In a few minutes half the town was strung out across the flats, only the women in the wagons looking back.

The rain didn’t hurt what fire there was but it cut the wind down and that saved two structures: in the back of what had been Hausenfield’s place the gawky windmill over his well was still standing; and at the far end of the town, near the rocks, the Indian’s shanty was untouched. By the time the sun came out again everything else was gone, only some quarter posts still stood, charred and half eaten, and also one or two half-burned house sides where Fee had used green lumber.

When I walked back a few little fires were still working along the ground and smoke from the ruins was rising straight up into the sky. The street was covered with ashes and everywhere you looked there were mice running in circles, dozens of squeaking little miseries twisting around in the dirt, flopping from their bellies to their backs. A jackrabbit was jumping into the air, trying to get off a jumble of glowing timbers, but he couldn’t jump clear. I almost expected one-armed Jack to come tugging at my sleeve to tell me what a fine sight that was.

Stepping high over the rubble I found my desk upended and smoking. The drawers were burnt out and I found just the covers left of my ledgers. My mattress was gone too, it was a corn-husk mattress, the best I ever slept on. The only other thing of mine I could identify was a patch of brown blanket. The desk and the blanket and the ledgers I had bought from a lawyer who had passed through a year before, dumping everything he owned so as to march on unencumbered up to the mining camp in the lodes.

I kicked around in the debris and finally saw something else: it was my habit to keep my fortune of two pouches of gold dust under the floor of my office, but the pouches were gone and my dust stood in two solid cakes. Those nuggets sat there like somebody’s eggs. There were other people poking around in the rubble up and down the street and I wondered what any of them would say if they found a pair of balls lying independent like that. I tried to pick up the gold but it crumbled and spilled and I only got a few pinches into my pockets. I didn’t try to reclaim the rest, after just a few minutes in this smoke and heat my face was grimy, my eyes were watering and my clothes were about dry although the rain had left me drenched. There was a terrible stench over everything that made me remember the people lying under the Silver Sun.

All that was left of the saloon were the three steps leading up to the porch, and there was a small fire under them. Just beyond, up where his store had been, Ezra Maple was taking inventory, pushing boards aside, kicking his ruined goods. He was the one who saw Molly lying on the ground in back of the saloon rubble.

“Blue! Look here!”

She was lying face down, the whole back of her dress was burned away. I kneeled down by her side and after looking hard I was sure she was breathing.

“She’s alive,” I said to Ezra.

“Well what do you mean to do?”

“We can’t leave her here this way.”

I straightened up and saw John Bear pulling his travois back down the street toward his shack. I yelled at him but he didn’t turn around so I had to run and get him. The three of us picked Molly up by the hands and feet and carried her over to the Indian’s hut. The front of her dress hung down like a flag.

“Wait a minute,” Ezra said, wanting to stop, “it’s not decent.”

“You can’t cover her up,” I said, “her whole back is burned.” From her shoulder blades to her ankles, Molly was covered with blisters. We laid her down on the hard earth inside Bear’s place and then the Indian went out and drew some water from Hausenfield’s tank. When he came back he scraped a pile of earth from his floor and poured the water on it till it was a mush; then he took a tin from his pack and sprinkled whatever was in that tin — saleratus maybe — on the mud; then he spread the mixture along Molly’s back and haunches and legs and covered it up with some kind of flat weed he had. John Bear was a true doctor, there was no hesitation in his moves. By the time he was finished Molly was moaning, a good sound although I didn’t like to hear it. I stepped outside and a shadow passed over my eyes.

I don’t know where the buzzards come from but they’re never late. Three or four were making slow circles above the town, another few over the flats. I had left the Major’s body out there, lodged against a back wheel so his pony couldn’t run. But one of the carrion birds glided down, spread his big wings and perched on the buckboard and I saw the pony shy. A second later I heard his whinny and then he was rearing; the wheel rolled over the Major, and the pony was trotting free toward the town, pulling the rig with him, leaving the old man’s body exposed to the birds.