(1986) Deadwood (38 page)

He saw the preacher again, laid out on a table in back of the barber shop. One of his long, thin arms hung almost all the way to the floor. The boy moved on the cot, clearing his head of the picture, and in a little while another came.

And this picture was the evil side of the Lord. It had a beard and a hard peeder, and it came after him while others held him helpless. When he opened his eyes the room was dark. He was afraid again, and a sweat had broken out over his chest and stomach and head. Afraid right down to his fingers and toes.

He lay on the cot, listening for noises in the night. He remembered the preacher had seen things in his sleep too, and had been fearful of them.

The boy tried to remember what the evil side of the Lord had looked like, but it would not come back. He couldn't remember what it had done, but he still shook in its consequences. He lay the rest of the night with his eyes open, afraid to return to his dreams.

And the next night he went back to his spot on the floor, and the dreams did not follow him there.

He stayed out of the preacher's cot.

In the mornings he got up as soon as the sky turned rose in the north and made a fire. He ate the preacher's food and then straightened his house. Then he walked down the steep hill into Dead-wood, dressed in the preacher's black coat, and wandered the streets, waiting to confront the evil side of the Lord. Knowing he wasn't ready. He covered the town from south to north, and then entered Chinatown.

Sometimes the whores in the badlands threw firecrackers at him from their windows, sometimes Johnny the Oyster—the Trickster of the Badlands—would induce him to sit on a tack. But the boy kept to his purpose, at least as long as the sun was up. At dusk he returned to the cabin and lay in the corner, trembling at the thought that the thing he looked for during the day was looking for him at night.

He kept no track of days or weeks, and did not know how long he had been at his work when he finally saw what he was after.

He had walked to the far north end of Deadwood and was coming back, stalled at the fork in the road where Main Street and Sherman Street divided, when he saw Al Swearingen. The boy did not recognize him in the ordinary meaning of the word—he did not remember him from the wagon train or the afternoon Swearingen and the others had come to his camp by the White-wood—he only looked at him and felt afraid clear through, and knew as clear as the moon in the afternoon sky, he was looking at the evil side of the Lord.

Swearingen was crossing Sherman Street when the boy saw him. He turned a corner and headed east on Wall Street, about two hundred yards south of the fork. The boy began to run. By the time he came to Wall Street, Al Swearingen was just reaching Main, and turned north, back toward the Gem Theater.

The boy ran, throwing mud up over his shoulders, his feet making sucking noises in the street. And there was a different kind of sucking as the air came into his lungs. He reached Main Street in time to see Swearingen turn into the theater, and the boy stopped running.

When he caught his breath, he walked to a bench in front of the Bella Union, across the street from the Gem, and sat down to think. In a few minutes he realized he couldn't remember the man's features, except his beard.

The evil side of the Lord had took a man's body, and looked out through his eyes. The boy stayed the rest of the day, watching the doors, but the man never came out. He considered the chance that the evil side of the Lord might have disguised his looks, but it was not his features that the boy had recognized.

The boy did not leave the bench until the sun had moved behind the hills and the air had turned cool. He did not keep track of time, but he noticed the season was changing. He stood up, still watching the Gem Theater, and began to walk back up Main Street to the south.

And that night, lying on the floor in the dark, the thought suddenly came to him that he occupied the preacher's cabin the same way the evil side of the Lord occupied the bearded man's body.

The air in the cabin was cold and the boy curled into himself, and he wondered if it was cold where the evil side of the Lord was too.

The news that Bill Hickok's wife had moved into a room at the Grand Union reached Mrs. Langrishe at home, a few minutes after she returned from a reception for General George Crook and his officers.

The general had led his men into Deadwood the day before and spoken from the steps of the hotel. He described the destruction of a small Indian village at Slim Buttes, and spoke his hopes that the U.S. Army would be brought into the Hills permanently to protect the good people of Deadwood from the dusky foe and all those who would befriend them.

He was then greeted from one end of town to the other; women and men both kissed his hand. He lost more than a score of men in the badlands, that many being pulled from their horses by the whores and taken into the dark corners of the Gem and the Green Front and the Bella Union.

The next morning, the general and his officers went to Jack Langrishe's theater, where they shook hands with all comers. Mrs. Langrishe dressed herself in lavender and enjoyed the way the officers looked at her chest. She overheard Mayor Farnum telling the general that his men were always welcome at the bathhouse. Which was a study in good manners, because the pony soldiers stunk worse than Chinatown. She sometimes wished the rest of the town was more like Mayor Farnum.

And two hours later her husband came into her bedroom, before she even took off her party dress, and said, "The widow of Wild Bill Hickok has arrived at the Grand Union." Jack's announcements always came out of his mouth sounding like offstage voices.

It seemed to her an occasion for another reception. "Any woman married to Mr. Hickok has the social graces," she said. "I am certain of that."

"Whatever you want, blossom," he said.

She sat at her desk to make an invitation list. She decided to hold the reception at home. The theater was too big, and she wanted the affair to feel warm. She decided on Sunday afternoon, coffee and rolls and sweet butter. "Do you think we should serve liquor, Jack?"

"If you want, blossom."

"I don't think so," she said. "It might still be too close to the assassination." She made her list, beginning with Mayor Farnum, Sheriff Seth Bullock, and Solomon Star. Then she added all the businessmen in town, except tavern owners, owners of theaters of ill repute, Jews, and coloreds. Then she added the most amusing bachelors she knew in Deadwood and finally, Charley Utter.

She did not consider Charley Utter amusing—although she did remember the way his member rose up under her touch as they sat in the theater, and again in her living room before his imbecile friend had fallen through her window. She had no use for soft-brains, or those that encouraged them, but she overlooked that now. Charley was Bill's true friend, and she wanted the widow to feel herself among friends.

"Perhaps we could serve wine. That might warm the event without reflecting disrespect."

Jack was looking at himself in the dressing mirror, pulling his moustache up to see his teeth. She saw that he was on his toes; he always stood on his toes in front of the mirror.

"Whatever you want," he said.

When he had left her room she counted the names on the list. There were thirty-three. She pictured herself and the widow of Bill Hickok, entertaining thirty-three men.

She changed clothes and put a shawl around her shoulders—it was September, and the afternoons could turn unexpectedly cold— and went out of the house.

"Perhaps you could invite Mrs. Hickok to the theater," he said as she walked out the door.

She kissed the top of his head. "Jack," she said, "the woman has just lost her husband . . ."

Elizabeth Langrishe found Agnes Lake Hickok sitting at a window table in the dining room of the Grand Union Hotel, looking out over the street, eating asparagus and eggs. Her first thought was that the woman was too old. Her presumption was that Bill's wife would be beautiful and young and helpless. Mrs. Langrishe had looked forward to offering her the advice of a mature woman.

But the lady sitting next to the window was at least thirty—Mrs. Langrishe's age—and not pretty in an ordinary way. There was something self-assured about her, though. Yes, it was Bill's wife. Mrs. Langrishe watched her half a minute and changed some of her thoughts about Bill Hickok.

Agnes Lake suddenly looked up and met her stare. Bill's wife had eyes like Bill himself—like there was nothing playful in this world—and the thought blew through Mrs. Langrishe's mind that this woman might shoot her.

She walked across the room, hearing her feet on the floor, conscious of her clothes and what another woman of her own age and experience might make of them. She stopped over the table and Mrs. Hickok looked up with flat eyes and no interest.

"Mrs. Hickok?" Agnes Lake nodded. Elizabeth Langrishe smiled a believable smile—she could smile at her own hanging—and offered her hand. Mrs. Hickok took it, and Mrs. Langrishe sensed its uncommon strength. She had never encountered a woman with hands like these. They had the same thickness as Jack's, but Mrs. Hickok's were rougher to the touch, and harder. They were too clean to have done field work.

"I am Elizabeth Langrishe," she said. "My husband operates the legitimate theater . . ." Mrs. Hickok stared at her, waiting. "We were friends of your husband's," she said. "Not close, but Bill often enjoyed an evening at the theater."

Elizabeth Langrishe let go and Agnes Lake put her hand in her lap. "He had an appreciation of the fine arts," Mrs. Langrishe said.

"I didn't know that."

Elizabeth Langrishe sat down, feeling vaguely poleaxed. "He was a man of a multitude of interests," Mrs. Langrishe said. Then she blushed and put a hand against her cheek. "Here I sit," she said, "telling you about your own husband . . ."

"I am grateful to know anything you might tell me," she said, and Mrs. Langrishe saw her a different way. "Bill and I weren't together long."

"No woman understands her husband all the way through," Mrs. Langrishe said. "I have been with my Jack nine years . . ." She had begun to say she didn't understand him at all, but she stopped, suddenly not wanting to lie. She shook her head. "Jack isn't like your Bill," she said.

Agnes wiped at the corner of her mouth with a napkin. She felt ashamed for what she'd said about herself and Bill. "No," she said, "I don't expect many are."

She thought of him then, when she met him, coming into her tent behind the circus, dignified and reeking of whiskey. He'd taken off his hat and bowed, and introduced himself as James Butler Hickok. It took her five minutes to realize who it was. She had been sitting in her circus tights, and pulled a blanket over her legs, pretending to be cold. It was peculiar. She never worried how they appeared from the trapeze or the tightrope.

Mrs. Langrishe was smiling in a kind way that didn't fit her. "He was highly esteemed," she said.

Agnes Lake was suddenly impatient; she didn't know with what. "What did he do?" she said.

"Do?" Mrs. Langrishe smiled at the question. "He was Bill Hickok."

"What did he do?" she said again. "He wrote once that he and Charley Utter were mining gold, he wrote another time that they were into business." She looked at her plate like something on it had moved. "I knew him better than that."

Mrs. Langrishe tried to remember what Bill did, but she'd never heard it discussed.

"Where did he stay?" Agnes Lake said. "Where did he take his meals?" She looked out the window, as if it wasn't possible this was the right place. When she looked back into the dining room of the Grand Union Hotel, she was blinking tears. She didn't try to brush them off, and there was no other sign in her face of what she felt.

Mrs. Langrishe covered Mrs. Hickok's hand again. "He stayed with Charley," she said. "They had a little camp on the creek."

Agnes waited.

"I don't know where he went for his meals," she said, "but he kept healthy, you could see that. He carried himself well . . ."

The tears came down Agnes Lake's cheeks, but her voice stayed dry. "I don't mean to question you," she said, "but I never met a human being that struck me as helpless as Bill, and I never understood how he got by. Before we married, or after."

"He was esteemed. People took care of him."

Agnes Lake shook her head. "People don't take care of anybody," she said. "Not all their lives."

The two ladies fell into a silence that was no more uncomfortable than their conversation. Elizabeth Langrishe moved her hand off Agnes Lake's, and then it came to her. "Charley took care of him," she said.

Agnes Lake thought it over. She said, "He wrote me a letter of comfort when Bill was killed."

Mrs. Langrishe said, "There's some out here that need others to take care of." And they sat quietly, both of them forgiving Charley Utter for things he never did.

"I had planned to invite several of Bill's friends into my home this Sunday," Mrs. Langrishe said. "I'm sure Charley will be among them."

Agnes Lake said, "That was very considerate of you."

And it occurred to Mrs. Langrishe that perhaps it was. "I'm pleased to offer my home. Bill's friends have wanted to make your acquaintance."

And they went quiet again, Elizabeth Langrishe feeling as if something had already been done. To Agnes Lake, it felt like the beginning of a fall.

In the afternoon Charley took Jane to visit Bill again, she insisted. They stayed ten minutes, and then he drove her back down the hill to his camp beside the Whitewood. He stayed at the Grand Union now; she had no place else.

He unhitched the horse and tied him to one of the wheels. He drew the animal a bucket of creek water, and fed him oats in a bucket.

"Where you headed?" she asked when he'd finished.

"I have business to attend," he said.

"What if I need somethin'?"

He looked at her a minute, and then crossed the street and bought her a bottle of whiskey. "That's all I can do," he said.

She took the cork out of the bottle and smelled what was inside.

"I'm going to need more morphine," she said. She took a drink from the bottle but her lips barely opened. She wanted to look thirstier than she was.