Welcome to Hard Times

by E. L. Doctorow

  Well the sumps helped but not much. And there were other troubles too. A few of the job hunters were men not easy to look at, there was one fellow who had running sores all over his face, another, an old man, who was humpbacked with hands twisted and swollen out of shape. Isaac came to me claiming whenever one such came into his store everyone else cleared out and he lost business. It was not true, of course, he just wanted me to run these people out of the town. “Speak to Jenks,” I told him, “Jenks is the peace officer here.” Then Zar joined the protest, he refused to serve the hunchbacky one day and the man, in resentment, ran over to Mae and Jessie and waved his crippled hands in front of their eyes. Zar told Bert to throw the poor fellow out but Bert wouldn’t step out from behind the bar. The Russian came running to me and I told him he’d best serve the man his drink and he’d leave then twice as fast and with no trouble. “It’s easier in the end,” I said. But Zar like Isaac was for running these people off and Jenks finally rounded up three or four of them at gunpoint and shooed them away into the flats; but at night they were back, they wanted work like everyone, and for a while they made their way behind houses and took their meals behind Swede’s tent from what Helga handed out to them through the flap. And after a while they came into the store again and the saloons and so the trouble was not ended but in fact greater, with greater hard feelings.

  One morning the egg lady found one of her three chickens with its head wrung off; she was an old-timer in the West and she told her sorrows to nobody, but grabbed up her cane and went into Zar’s Palace swinging. She must have been a teetotaler to blame only the whiskey for her lost hen, she bruised a number of shoulders and broke some bottles and a row of glasses Zar had proudly imported from the East before she was finally herded out; and that was my problem too because I was the one who had to gentle her.

  The weather was getting hotter; and each morning of prosperity that would start out fresh and easy to breathe was turning into a day more hot and burdensome than the last. Every time Alf’s stage came in, or a freight wagon, all I wanted to see was some Eastern engineer, a man in black, with plans in his pocket and wages to give out. On Saturday night with the miners pouring in the town and the street filling with the noise of frolic from one end to the other I found Angus Mcellhenny lighting up his pipe in front of the stable.

  “If the Company is going to lay a road,” I asked him, “why in hell don’t they start in?”

  “Blue it’s many years I’ve been diggin’ the earth and I’ve seen fortunes in my shovel. But I’ve nought to show for it but my calluses and m’ mind is as weak as it ever was. I dinna know.”

  “Well what do you hear around Angus?”

  “Don’t pry at me my ferlie friend. I know nothin’. We are diggin’ hard six days o’ the week and keepin’ our eyes on the ground. I can tell you no more.”

  “Alright Angus. But tell Archie D. Brogan when you see him there’s a letter in his name down here.”

  He took the pipe from his mouth: “Who from?”

  “It doesn’t say, Angus, it’s only his name on the front. You’ll tell him?”

  He nodded and walked away.

  It baffled me that Angus should be so close-mouthed, it wasn’t like him. Meanwhile the same questions I had put to him were being asked of other miners and none of them liked it, the hungry looks in the eyes of the towners didn’t go well with them. Some newcomers, not happy about waiting around, had gone up the trail looking for work at the lodes; and though they had ridden back, sourfaced, the same day, it didn’t sit well with the diggers that a lot of men were in the country wanting jobs. There was no love lost between the two groups that Saturday night. The miners, having their pay to spend, sort of took over at the saloons. One thing led to another and Jenks was kept fairly busy breaking up scuffles, once or twice he even had to draw his pistol to get things quiet. In our cabin I was at the desk trying to put some order in all my papers, and Molly sat with sewing on her lap, and we heard clearly the screeches of the ladies over at Zar’s every time a fight started. Molly’s hands shook so she couldn’t work the needle, she dropped her hands in her lap and I saw out of the corner of my eye how frightened she was. Every few minutes Jimmy would come rushing in to tell of the latest fuss, sweat on his forehead and such joy in his eyes he could hardly speak without stammering: “Old J-Jenks, he took care of ’m alright, socked ’m on the head, poom, like th-that—”

  “Jimmy,” I said, “you stay in here now, go on to bed, it’s late. You hear me, son?” But he would never hear me.

  He gave one glance to Molly and ran out, leaving the door open wide.

  She made no move to stop him, sitting there her eyes fixed on nothing, one hand on her throat’s cross, the other knuckled against her teeth.

  A day or two later and the sun not even up, Bert Albany rapped on the door until I heard him, and with the sleep still in my eyes I went with him up the street to Zar’s place. The faro dealer was lying on the floor there, ashen white, and a big red rent in his vest where he had been stabbed. Jenks was standing nearby, clutching the collar of that little hunchback, his gun was drawn and sticking in the man’s back. Bert told me the faro dealer had been lending out money to people at high rates, sometimes winning it back at his table. He had a list, Bert saw it, of the men indebted to him. The hunchbacky had been sitting there losing all of his loan, and when it was gone he jumped up and stuck a knife in the dealer’s belly.

  The dealer was quiet, concentrating on his breathing, he was in his senses enough to know to lay still. I went out to John Bear’s shack. It showed even then the signs of resentment, the door was splintered, a board or two was gone from the roof. I woke the Indian up and gave him to understand there was someone needed doctoring. He came with me up to the saloon but when he saw it was Zar’s place and the Russian waiting at the door, he turned on his heel and went back the way he came.

  Zar and I carried the dealer up to one of the rooms, Zar being careful every step not to get any of the man’s blood on his clothes. Miss Adah, with her hair in braids and a shawl over her nightdress, said she’d sit with the man and see what she could do.

  When I came back down the stairs Jenks and his prisoner were gone, the few people who had watched the goings-on had drifted away. Zar offered me a drink but there wasn’t anything I wanted less. Outside was the sound of hammering, and from the porch, in the grey light, I saw Jenks in the front of his stable. He had put the hunchback in Hausenfield’s old boarded-up hearse wagon and was nailing the door shut.

  “Jenks,” I went over to him, “what in God’s name are you doing!”

  “Hit’ll do fer a jail, don’t ye thank?”

  “You could tie him up without putting him in there!”

  “Mayor, I is Shurff an’ I ain’t seen m’ pay yet. Don’t you fret, I’ll see he’s fed and stretches his laigs. Swede’ll proffer his leftovers. This man has stabbed a man, he’s got to pay.”

  “You’ve thought it all out have you?”

  He nodded: “Ah reckon we’ll requar that circus jedge,” he said solemn with his decision.

  I looked at him. “Jenks,” I said, “I remember when you used to sleep most of your days and here it is not dawn and it’s clear to me you’re a changed man, thriving on his duty.”

  He grinned. “Y’ll write thet letter fer me? Fer thet jedge?”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  The night was paling. I walked back toward the cabin in my untucked shirt and my bootlaces flapping. In the dirt against Isaac’s porch a man was asleep. On Zar’s steps another was huddled over his knees coughing fit to wake the dead. I should have been feeling sympathy for that dealer but I was feeling the pain of my own breathing.

  Jimmy and Molly were still asleep. In the aftermath of her great battle he had taken my bunk to be near her if she needed, and the dugout had been left to me. But I was too shaken to lie down again, I boiled some coffee and sat at my desk looking at that letter for Archie D. Brogan, thinking Here rises ano
ther morning, a little hotter than the last. If someone from the mines doesn’t begin hiring soon, Jenks’s wagon will be filled to overflowing. Once there was work, once there was money, I told myself, everything would be alright. It was the promise of a year, a settlement growing towards its perfection. That was my notion but the only thing growing was trouble; and it made me shudder to think whatever perfection was, like the perfection I had with Molly, it was maybe past, silently come and gone, a moment long, just an instant in the shadow of one day, and any fool who was still waiting for it, like he dreamed, didn’t know what life is.

  I counted the savings in my drawer—some two hundred fifty dollars’ worth—and I went out and hired four men who said they knew carpentry, and I sent them on a hunt for wood. The terms were three dollars apiece for each day they took to get up an office for me against the south wall of the cabin. After I did that there was a gathering in front of the cabin and I spoke to a number of people, one at a time. One man said he knew the printer’s trade and I gave him backing of seventy-five dollars to start up a press in the town. Another, an old drover, claimed he knew where if he could get a dozen head of fat prime cattle at three dollars a head, he would have them across the flats in a week and would sell them for slaughter for ten dollars. I told him to go ahead. A couple of people I lent money to straight off at a rate of one percent, and by noon I had gotten rid of all my money except what I needed to keep the three of us.

  I went outside and stood up on a box in front of the windmill and I made an announcement to the people that gathered. I said until the roadwork began all water was free to anyone not owning property on the street. “The banner means what it says, boys!” I cried like a true politician. “There’s a payday coming for all, but until it comes we’ll wait together!” Nobody cheered but I didn’t think they would.

  In all that time Molly stayed in the back room with the door shut, the boy carrying her cups of tea or some food.

  I wasn’t finished by any means, I planned to write a letter to two or three of the banking companies in the Territory, asking them to consider opening up a branch in the town. I was tempting myself to ride up to the lodes with Brogan’s letter to see if I could commit someone to a hiring date. My mind was teeming with plans to keep the temperature down and the money fluent. Toward dusk Zar came barging in the front door. I had expected him.

  “Mayor, what a frand is this!”

  “What do you mean Zar?”

  “I tell you I shall drill a well and then you cut your water prices. Is this the way a frand does?”

  “Why you told me you would drill only for your own use,” I said, “I shouldn’t think it would matter to you.”

  “This is dirty business, you are making angry a dangerous man!”

  At that moment he didn’t look so dangerous. He had on his fancy check vest and kneecoat and a hempen cravat and around it all was his barkeep’s apron. He raged on, not even knowing he gave himself away, till finally I said: “Now you listen to me, Zar. You’re sending for a well driller? Fine, you’ll make it back soon enough, just go right ahead. You can hire out a good half dozen men to put up a windmill for you. While you’re at it think up a couple of more jobs so you can give out wages. God knows you’ve made enough money not to have to sweep your own place.”

  “What’s this?”

  “These people are lying around here spending their cash and they’re not making any. We’re grabbing everything they have—”

  “Is this bad?”

  “It could be. The Company seems to be taking its own sweet time about the road. Until it gets going we’re in a bad position. You can’t just take out, you have to put back in too, you’re a businessman, you know that.”

  “I do not make whiskey to give away, frand. I do not tell a man to keep his money so he can spend it across the street.”

  “Alright, you can still hire some of these people, give them a way of paying for your wares.”

  He looked at me, his anger forgotten: “Blue, I think you are losing your mind …”

  “I have lived around this country a long time, Zar. Take a look at the faces along your bar; if you can’t read the meanings you don’t stand to last very long.”

  “They say you are giving away money—”

  “I’ve invested some.”

  “Blue, frand, I’m sorry I have screamed. You are a sick man.”

  “You’d better give some thought to what I’m saying—”

  He stomped over to the door shaking his head. “Alright,” I said to him, “I hope you’re hiding your gold in a good safe place.”

  But when he was gone I had to ask myself: Could I be wrong? Was I running scared? If things were really tight neither the Russian nor any of the others would have to be told what to do. The situation was not all that bad. Isaac Maple, for instance, I knew for a fact he credited anyone who said he knew Ezra, his brother. Every poke came into town, it didn’t take him one day to find out how to get by Isaac, all he had to say is he’d seen Ezra, and was it at Bannock or Virginia City, it was all the same, he got down on Isaac’s books …

  Was this not a way of hoping; or was I just being typical of myself, unable to do something in the morning without regretting it at night?

  If Jimmy understood what I had done he gave no sign. Nor did I hear from Molly. I slept well at night, there were no sounds to waken me. In the morning Jimmy dragged in that bathtub from the well and pushed it into their room. He went back and forth with a bucket, I suppose Molly had decided to cleanse herself of what filth she could. When he had filled the tub he sat outside her door, his neck flushed red to his ears and that cursed shotgun across his knees.

  Outside the front door there was a crowd gathered—for what? What more did I have to do? And then Archie D. Brogan showed up. He must have pushed aside a few of them, there was a lot of grumbling and a few shouts behind him when the door opened.

  “Are you that Blue feller? Mcellhenny tells me you’ve a letter in my name. Brogan.”

  I stood up. “That’s right. It’s been here more than a week.”

  “Say what?”

  “It’s been here in my desk a long while—”

  “Why that son of a bitch sot, I’ll fix his hide, he just now told me last night. Well give it here.”

  It was clear he was a mine boss. His hat was off but just to fan his face, he was a beefy man in his corduroys and he suffered the heat. I got the letter and handed it to him.

  “Too bad you had to make a special trip,” I said, “you mostly get your mail up at the camp, don’t you?”

  “What the hell business is it of your?” he said ripping open the envelope. And then, as he stood there puzzling out the words his florid face went pale. He stuffed the paper in his pocket and stomped out, leaving the door open wide.

  Outside they made a path for him and he walked up the street to Zar’s Palace. Bert was standing by the door and I motioned him inside.

  “Bert, what’s troubling you, what are you doing here?”

  “Well Mr. Blue the girl is getting big as a melon and we don’t have a bed yet for the chile to be born in. I want us to have a real furniture bed, you know how I mean, but I’m already two weeks ahead on my pay—”

  “Won’t Isaac Maple order on your word?”

  “No sir, he knows me. Also, he’s been paying my honey wages and I can’t—”

  “Alright, Bert, listen, I’ll loan you for that bed whatever it costs—”

  He stammered, he looked sorry he had joined the crowd at my door. He was a fine gawky young fellow and I remember thinking, unwillingly, how just a few years older than Jimmy he was.

  “Alright, Bert, you pay me when you can, now listen. That man just walked out of here, Archie Brogan?”

  “Sure, don’t have to tell me that’s Mr. Brogan—”

  “Go on back to your place and keep your eye on him. He has a letter I’d give my arm to know what it says. Man has a drink he sometimes talks out loud, you know what I mean?”
>
  “Sure, Mr. Blue—”

  “I wanted to say something to him about the road, he could put all these people out here to work if he had insructions, go on now.”

  I showed him out and closed the door. I had been waiting for the mine boss to come down for his letter; and now that he had my heart pulsations ran so fast I could hardly keep myself sitting down. I bit off some plug and chewed and listened to the noise outside one door and the silence inside the other. The boy was gazing at me. I thought Well let me write Jenks’s request to the capital, let me compose my letter to the banking companies. But nothing I could do would matter if the mine didn’t lay its road. Why had that note been addressed to Brogan care of the town? Why had Angus said nothing to him for over a week?

  I stepped outside and walked quickly up the street to the saloon. Some of those people walked along with me. “I’ve no news, I’ve nothing to say,” I told them as I walked. “I’m going in for a drink, anyone who’d care to stand me one is welcome to come along.” That put them off and I went into Zar’s and stood by the bar until I caught Bert’s eye.

  He put a glass in front of me and poured: “Upstairs, Mr. Blue, he bought a whole bottle and went upstairs with Jessie.”

  “Well this is a working day,” I said softly, “he must have something grand to celebrate.”

  “He said not a word. He didn’t even act he knew who I was. Just took a bottle and marched up there with Miss Jess.”

  Mae came over, pushing her hair back on her temples: “I wish that bastard would hurry up and die. How are you Blue?”

  “Mae.”

  “That goddamn dealer. Two days he’s been lying up there bleeding all over my bed. I don’ understand ol’ Adah, she sits up theah you’d thank ’twas her own man dyin’.”

  “Well,” I said, “she has a feeling for such things.”

  “Hell, he’s jest a-festerin’ away. And Lord if it don’t serve him right. First day he was here he wanted me to go upstairs just for the love of it. You hear me Blue? ‘Why you cheap bastard,’ I tell him, ‘I’ll go with you and you pay me like anyone else!’ And you know he wouldn’t? How do you like that for a dealer! One on the house Bertie, if’n you please.”