(1986) Deadwood (30 page)

The Bottle Fiend looked at him, and the match went out. When Charley lit another, the soft-brain was still staring at him. The Bottle Fiend puzzled. "I keep track of the bottles" he said, "not the number." And Charley stood there lighting matches and sipping whiskey until he ran out of matches.

The Bottle Fiend put the canvas curtain back and lay down on the floor. Charley's eyes had accustomed themselves to the room, and he could see the outline of the soft-brain in the corner. He sat on the ledge of the only window in the cabin and sipped whiskey and slapped mosquitoes. "I'll wait until you nod off," Charley said, but the Bottle Fiend didn't answer. His breathing had already evened out, and in a minute he began to snore.

He was flat on his back, unprotected. Charley tried to remember if there was ever a time when he could go off to sleep like that, if there was a time when he wasn't covering himself up. "Little friend," he said to the corner, "you might have found yourself the ticket."

The Bottle Fiend's place had mellowed Charley, and he walked the length of Main Street, thinking of dropping his whiskey in the mud and going back to the hotel. He couldn't make up his mind. The closer he got to the badlands, though, the less inclination he felt to abandon the bottle.

He stopped at the Bella Union, which he ordinarily avoided because of the tourists. All the talk tonight was of Handsome Dick, who had already finished his business with the sheriff and returned to the badlands. The Bella Union was full of eyewitnesses telling each other they'd of done exactly what Handsome did.

Charley listened and had a drink, then he walked next door to Nuttall and Mann's. The talk there was about Handsome Dick too, but at least at Nuttall and Mann's the eyewitnesses were calling each other liars. Harry Sam Young saw Charley and set a brown-eye on the bar in front of him. Ever since Bill died, Harry Sam Young had been setting up free drinks for Charley anytime he came in. "I guess Handsome Banjo Dick Brown shot a farmer over to Langrishe's," the bartender said. "Everybody here seen it."

Charley said, "Everybody in this town saw God rest on Sunday." Charley put the shot glass to his lips and cocked his head. The bar whiskey was rougher than his own, and he fought himself to swallow it. He understood that Harry Sam Young needed to give him free drinks because of Bill, and he didn't want to spit that on the floor.

"It was self-defense, I heard," the bartender said. "It must of been on account Seth Bullock already let him go." He refilled Charley's glass.

"The way it happened," Charley said, "it won't take a hundred-dollar lawyer to get Handsome off. The farmer threw an axe."

"Self-defense," the bartender said.

Charley shrugged. "He put four shots in him, after he was dead."

A pilgrim leaned between them and said, "Somebody throwed an axe at me, I'd shoot him too."

Charley drank the new shot, and then put his hand over the top of the glass so Harry Sam Young couldn't reload. "You ever notice," he said to Harry Sam Young, "the ones who know what they'd of done are always the ones who never did it?" He stood away from the bar then, tired of talking about dead farmers and Handsome Banjo Dick Brown, and walked out into the street. His moccasins sank half a foot, and it occurred to him that he hadn't noticed the mud once since he heard of Bill's death.

He was frightened at the things he got used to.

He looked at the Gem, undecided. Lurline had hurt him sincerely last night, and he had seen how the hurting fed on itself once he'd agreed to it. She had made him yip, biting his leg, and he had determined then to return himself to normalcy at the first opportunity.

He weighed the night, and it did not strike him as such an opportunity.

He walked into the Gem looking for her. Al Swearingen was sitting in a corner, and averted his stare the moment Charley's eyes came across him. The whore man had kept himself scarce since Charley had showed him his knife. Charley guessed you did not run a line of whores without learning something about what to leave alone.

Charley took a drink from his bottle and surveyed the room. He satisfied himself Lurline wasn't there; he climbed the stairs toward her quarters. On the way up, he glanced again at Al Swearingen's table and saw that the whore man was watching him, smiling in a way that set off a warning. Charley ignored it. He knocked at Lurline's door. There was noise inside, but no answer. He tried again, and this time he heard her voice. "Who is it?"

"Charles Utter," he said.

"Go away," she said. "I'm sick."

He took a drink of the bottle and stared at his feet. He felt himself sway. He heard her voice again, closer. "It ain't nothing contagious," she said. "Just let me rest, and I'll be fine . . ."

And suddenly Charley knew, as certain as his birthday was July, the whore man had beaten her up, and she didn't want him to see it. Charley started back down the stairs for him, but he stopped halfway and returned to her room. He wanted to see her for himself, to have that in his mind when he encountered Al Swearingen.

This time he didn't knock. He moved quietly, not to scare her, and turned the door handle without a sound. The floorboards had warped at a spot a foot and a half into the room, and the door hit there and braked. The room was half-lit, and at the sound of the door, two faces came up off the bed. They looked like ghosts. Hers stayed where it was, his rolled toward the bedpost. Charley saw the holster hung there, and dropped to the floor. He heard a chair break and found his knife in his hand. He found that he'd covered the distance between the door and the bed.

Charley never stopped, or thought, or saw it happen. One minute he was standing in the doorway, and the next minute he had Handsome Banjo Dick Brown's jaw locked in one arm and was holding the knife against the pulse in his neck. In the second that had taken, Handsome Dick had reached behind himself with his gun and the muzzle was pressed into Charley's leg. Charley held him dead still. "I been shot in the leg before," Charley said into Handsome Dick's ear, "have you had your throat cut?"

Handsome Dick could not answer, but he shook his head, an eighth of an inch, back and forth. It was all that Charley's purchase allowed him. "Let go, songbird," Charley said, "or I'll do it." The struggle had gone out of Handsome Dick's head, but he held on to the gun.

It was pressed into the very spot Steve's shot had found. Charley remembered the powder burns. For a while, that was what hurt him most. "Let go of it," Charley said again. "This isn't a dirt farmer that's on to you now."

It wasn't until after Handsome Dick's gun dropped and Charley let go of his jaw that Lurline spoke. "What in Jesus' name?" she said. Charley ran his hands through his hair in a way that Bill used to do, and waited for his dizziness to pass. Handsome Dick had dropped onto the foot of the bed when Charley let go of his jaw, and he lay there, stark naked, holding his throat with both hands. Charley kept an eye on him anyway, because Handsome Dick always got even. "I ast you a question," Lurline said.

"You didn't," Charley said, and he sat down on the bed next to Handsome Dick. "Just because it starts with
what
doesn't make it a question."

"I thought you was different," she said, and that was a question. She was sitting up in bed. He saw she was wearing her red and black undies, and felt a poke of remorse that she shared them with the others. He felt no such poke that Lurline shared herself. An upstairs girl was an upstairs girl, things were what they were. "I thought you was gentle," she said.

Handsome Dick was looking up at him now, as if that had been his understanding too. Charley shook his head. "It's not one way or the other," he said. "A person isn't all one way."

He noticed his bottle of J. Fred McCurnin then, over by the door. It had somehow landed mouth-up when he'd dropped it. It hadn't broken, from what he could see it hadn't even spilled. He stood up, unsteady, and collected it. He held on to the door when he bent over to pick it up. It was hard to see how, three minutes before, the same human being could have covered the same distance in something less than a second and put a death-hold on Handsome Dick's head.

"You and me was different," she said. "It wasn't no business involved, and then you cut a man's throat on my bed."

Charley looked at Handsome Dick, who hadn't moved. A skirt of blood hung from a single pink line high on his neck. "His throat isn't cut," Charley said. Handsome Dick sat up slowly and looked at the blood on his hands.

"I think you damaged my voice box," he said.

Lurline looked at Handsome Dick when he said that, and then back at Charley. "See what you done?" she said. "You have damaged his voice box."

"I saw him put five shots into a farmer," Charley said, "four after he was dead. I don't stand still while a man with those sporting inclinations goes after his shooter."

"Self-defense," Lurline said.

"I saw it," Charley said, looking at the singer. "I know what it was."

"He threw an axe," Handsome Dick said. He patted the side of his neck and then looked at his hand. The blood had stopped running and was beginning to dry.

"You surmised he was going to reload?" Charley said.

Lurline did not give the singer a chance to reply. She. got up off the bed, crossed the room, and pushed Charley out. He let himself be pushed. "Don't come back in here," she said, and she balled one of her hands into a fist and hit Charley in the chest. She hit him again and again, all the way to the stairs. Charley walked backwards, smiling. Lurline hurt you less hurting you than she did loving you. "This ain't funny," she said, grunting on the word
funny
because she was throwing a fist at the time.

Charley stood at the top of the stairs until Lurline was out of breath. "You was special," she said, and then turned her back and slammed the door.

He looked at the ceiling. "I never said that," he said, out loud. He started down the stairs, and before he got to the bottom he heard Handsome Dick singing scales, testing his voice box.

Charley sat down at a table and looked at his bottle. He thought again of how it had landed and tried to see the reason. He decided he was meant to drink it.

The whore man had gone behind the bar while Charley was upstairs, and Charley moved his chair so he could watch him and the stairs both. He did not expect to see the banjo player again soon, but he couldn't be sure that Lurline would hold his interest the way she did his. A man who named himself Handsome Banjo could not be counted on to stay long-term with any girl.

He was still sitting there an hour later, drinking and watching the whore man and the stairs, when it came to him out of nowhere to find the pretty little girl in Chinatown, the one Al Swearingen had wanted to buy.

It was the kind of thought, once you thought it, you wondered why you never thought of it earlier.

Solomon Star stood naked in his first-floor room at Mrs. Grace Tubb's rooming house, slicking his hair. He dropped his comb into a jar of axle grease and spread it evenly over his head, then he parted it down the middle, testing the straightness with his finger. He pulled the comb straight down from the part, first the right side, then the left, then the back. He touched the crown of his head, looking for misplaced hairs, and finding none, he picked his hat up off the bed and centered it over his ears.

He put on his shirt next, a new shirt with the initials
SS
sewn into the pocket, and buttoned it from the collar down. When that was done, he lifted the collar and put on his tie. It was a bow tie, and he worked several minutes on the knot, checking with his fingers to make sure the ends were even. Then he reached into his top drawer for a tin of talcum—he knew without looking where it was—and dusted himself under the shirt. He pulled on his vest, then his underwear bottoms, and then his pants. He sat down to put on his socks, dark red with the initials
SS
sewn into the sides. People assumed Solomon Star was all business, they hadn't seen his socks.

He buffed his shoes on the bedspread.

Before he left the room, he picked up the wildflowers in a vase by the window. He had picked them north of town that afternoon. Seth Bullock was worried to death. "Picking flowers," he'd said. "You spent a whole day picking flowers?"

Solomon had smiled at him and left the office early.

He carried the flowers across the town now into Chinatown. He took the seat he always took at the theater, and smiled at the celestial. Solomon Star believed the celestial owned the business. He also believed the celestial was the father of Ci-an, the China Doll.

He came over now, all smiles and bows, and asked if Solomon would have a drink. Solomon thanked him, returning the smiles, and waited while he spoke to one of the waiters.

The celestial settled in next to him and said, "China Doll, she miss you."

Solomon Star nodded and sipped the whiskey that the waiters brought. "I know," he said.

"She think you special white man. She wants be only yours."

Solomon nodded and sipped. "Her wish is my own," he said.

"Good," the celestial said. "Very good." He looked around the room, uncomfortable, and Solomon took the envelope out of his pants pocket and put it between them on the table. In it were ten hundred-dollar bills.

"For her dowry," he said.

"Yes," the celestial said. "So she marry white man she wants." Solomon did not understand Chinese ways, but he knew they were interested in money, and that the girl did not have enough to marry.

"Not yet," Solomon said. "White men have only one wife. I must unmarry first." The Chinese smiled, as if that were a small joke between them, and put the envelope in his blouse. "Soon," Solomon said.

The celestial nodded. "Very soon," he said. "I get China Doll now, she sing for you and then you see her tonight, very soon."

Solomon handed the Chinese the flowers. "Take these to her," he said, "from Bismarck." The Chinese took the flowers, smiling and bowing, and made his way up the stairs. The room was full now, more miners than Chinese, sitting at all the tables, standing at the bar and along the walls.