E. Doctorow - Welcome to Hard Times

“Wave, girls, wave!” Zar shouted.

And they did, jumping and waving their kerchiefs, calling “Hey! Hey!” until the miners began to ride down.

The sun was just setting. Zar snapped out orders to the girls and while they got busy preparing he took me over to his wagon and gave me a bag of flour, some strips of dried beef and a can of lard. He was smiling, I was his frand again.

But I wasted no time tucking that barter in the dugout.

A few hours later there were a good dozen mules and horses roped out by the tent. Singing was coming from inside and it was a strange sound in the night air. Those miners hadn’t taken but a few minutes to get over the wonder of the town ruins; one or two had put off their interest in the new whores for a few moments while they rode out to the graves to take off their hats.

But I talked with one man I knew, Angus Mcellhenny, a short old digger who kept a pipe in his teeth and had likely shot a hundred grubstakes before he gave in to work company lodes. Angus couldn’t believe what had happened.

“Just one of them Blue?” he kept saying.

“Just one Angus.”

“They roam in packs mostly, they like to put on fer each other.”

“Well he was alone.”

“My God. The doorty bastard. Say him once more.”

“Well he was a big man, a head taller than me, and he had this blaze over one side of his face. But what you’d remember are his eyes. He had eyes like a spooked horse.”

“Sure. I know the mon. It would be Clay Turner.”

“He was headed your way.”

“My God, likely he rode right by the camp.”

“You know him?”

“I know of him. Why he should be dead, he went bad years ago.” Angus took his pipe out of his mouth and spit: “I wish him in Hell, he’s been ridin’ too long.”

There was a big laugh from the tent and the tall girl came out leading a man by his ear. He was guffawing, he was well along. Angus and I stepped out of the way as she led him around to the side of the tent and pushed him up in the covered wagon and climbed in after him.

“Blue,” said Angus, “come have one with me and we’ll drink to old Flo, God keep her.”

It was hot enough for midnight in that tent. Kerosene lanterns were hooked to the tentpoles and they threw a yellow cast over all the smiling faces. Over on one side the Russian had a bar set up, a plank laid across two sawhorses. His sleeves were rolled and a big apron was tied around his stomach and he was drawing whiskey from a cask to fill the orders of the girls. Zar was in a sweat, his face was red, his eyes bright. On the plank right by his hand was a shotgun. And on the ground by his feet was a sack into which he dropped the silver the girls brought him, or the pouches of dust.

“On house frand,” he shouted, and poured two drinks in tin cups. Angus Mcellhenny and I drank to the memory of redheaded Florence.

Some of the customers were sprawled on camp meeting chairs, some on the ground; there were those who made a point of pinching the dumpity girl or the Chinese as they went by, there were a few gathered around Adah, who was leading the singing and playing on an old melodeon.

All I need in this lifetime

Pretty girl and a silver mine …

is what they sang but the song broke up when one man in back of Adah leaned over, put his hands in her dress and gave her a good shake. Adah shrieked, stood up and slapped him smart, and that made everyone laugh including her.

Adah called to the dumpity girl: “Do your dance Mae!”

And then all attention was fixed on Mae as she lifted her arms above her head and began turning around and around. The miners started to clap time and she spun faster and faster until her skirts rose and showed her legs above the shoes. At the height of the dance she stopped suddenly and yanked a man to his feet and led him right out of the tent while everyone laughed and yelled after him. The tall girl — Jessie, they greeted her — brushed back in a minute later and she went directly to sit on the lap of a glaze-eyed boy who still had his pimples. I saw the Chinagirl, dressed in a red satin shirt and bloomers with a yellow sash around her waist, she was on her knees offering a drink to one grey old fellow who stared at her while he pulled on his beard. He reached for her instead of the whiskey but she held up her hand and smiled, I suppose she had to wait her turn for the wagon.

These girls knew how to work, they didn’t pick but the drunkest of the lot, or the least able. It looked to me like Zar the Russian had an establishment that put old Avery’s to shame.

Angus Mcellhenny still wanted to buy me a drink and I let him. But when he turned away and got caught up in the revelry I took the cup and left. The song began again and I could hear it as I walked through the cold air to the dugout:

All I want before I’m old

Big fat woman and a mountain of gold …

In the dugout Molly and Jimmy were chewing on strips of the dried beef like a pair of dogs, lying there with only the light of the glowing stove, listening to the sound of the frolic outside. It was a mournful sight. I poked up the fire, and with our skillet and some lard I made up a batter of flour-and-water cakes. I gave two of the cakes to Jimmy and put two down in front of Molly. She turned her head away.

“Molly,” I said, “I have some liquor here and if you eat those cakes you can wash them down with the liquor.”

She said nothing. But at that moment I heard a woman’s voice just outside: “Not that way you old ass!” At the same time someone stumbled against the dugout and one of the roofboards fell inside, hitting Molly on the back. Molly set up a yell and I picked up the board and ran out. That dumpity girl, Mae, was pulling her customer back to the tent while he laughed and coughed and stumbled along.

Well I put the board back in place and I sat down against the sod wall so I could watch and keep the drunks away. I sat there sipping the whiskey Molly didn’t want; it was good whiskey and it warmed my gullet, but the rest of me grew cold in that chilly air. The windmill creaked in the darkness and one of the horses would nicker now and then and I must have heard twenty verses of that song rising out of the tent. But what I listened to was the talk coming through the sod wall at my back.

“Go ahead,” it was Molly’s voice, “take a look. Go on now, is it bleeding back there?”

“No.”

“Alright, you’re a good boy … I knew your Pa.”

“Yes.”

“He liked Flo—”

“Yes.”

“He’s dead now, for all the good it did him.” There was no answer, but a burst of shouts and laughing came over from the tent. “Why d’you cry!”

“I–I ain’t.”

“So he’s dead. There’s worse than that, look at me. You don’t have to cry for Fee. How old are you?”

“He said twelve.”

“When?”

“I don’t — I don’t remember.”

“Twelve. Well you’re small for your age. Go on and eat up that prairie cake, you want to grow into a man don’t you? Oh God my back is on fire, oh Christ! … Go on and eat, little boy, I can tell you a man is hard enough to be even with proper eatin’!”

Later I fell asleep sitting there and through the night I kept waking to the shrieks of the women or the roar of the men. The light streaming from the tent fixed in a yellow square on my mind and from time to time I saw figures buck through it and disappear like phantoms beyond its edge. Toward the dawn I was aware of some mules trotting off and when the night lifted and I woke, stiff in the grey light, I could see miners sleeping all around, like stones.

I got up and walked about and came on Angus Mcellhenny: he was slumped and snoring in Hausenfield’s old bathtub which sat out in back of the ruins like some stranded schooner. The sight of Angus that way did not cheer me up, I felt a great melancholy looking on him in the gloom of the grey morning. What good anyone could come to on this ashen townsite I could not see.