And then you see that wasn’t my last blunder at all, for I didn’t kill Turner I stopped too soon. It was still the Trick that made me cry out my misery and feel the shame of my being. Had I finished my work I would have only damned myself. All around the fights were going on, miners and towners trying to cripple and kill one another, hate riding their voices, gleaming on their knives, imprinted behind their running boots. And none of it had to do with Turner. He was just a man, my God! I felt his weight, I felt the weight of him over my shoulder, I smelled the sweat of him and the whiskey, it was blood that ran from his head and matted his hair. He had lost part of a staring eye on the barbs, his leg was broke, all my senses were glutted with him, I held his wrists together in my hands, and stumbled past that patient horse standing in the street and bleeding to death—and what else but the continuing Mockery could have given me the strength to tote him to the cabin?
“Alright Molly? Is it alright now? Is this what you wanted Molly?”
But she didn’t hear me. She stood against the wall as far away as she could and watched me drop him on the table. I could hardly catch my breath, I thought my head would burst and I remember falling and crawling to the cabin door and leaning my back against it because I felt if I lay down I would never be able to get up again. And I wish now I could not have seen what happened, or if I had to see it that my mind could split me from the memory. I would like to die on some green somewhere in the coolness of a tree’s shadow, when did I last sit with my back against a tree? the wish is so strong in me, like a thirst, I believe I must perish from it. When I think that Ezra Maple might have put him up on his mule and ridden him off to learn the storekeep’s trade; or that I might have taken him away myself, in those first hours, before Molly ever put her hooks into him, a carpenter’s son, just a hollow-eye orphan—a groan pushes through my lips like my ghost already in its Hell before I am dead. Helga walks up every few minutes, her hair hanging straight down, and she stands gazing at me with her mad eyes while she slowly tears her dress to tatters. Is it Molly again, those eyes? Is it all the eyes of those dead faces? I think no man has ever had such a watchfulness of dead faces, I have farmed the crop of this country, the land’s good yield along with Men from Bodie.
I told him to get by the door for it wouldn’t be minutes before the looters would reach us. I said with what breath I could gather, “Jimmy, over here, stand here with that gun.” But he was looking at her as he’d been looking for the year or more, he couldn’t do anything but look at her. It was his suffering, it was what she demanded.
What caution was Molly’s, what disbelief as she slowly moved toward Turner, the man of her dreaming, the great insulter, lying helpless in his own stinking juices on the eating table. Yes it was him alright the same one sure enough by God it was him and no need to wave her cross for protection, a knife would do, the stiletto, now she would use it. A jab to see if he was still alive, a gentle stick to hurt him awake, and he flinched and groaned. Back she jumped and then forward into another place and he tried to writhe away from the point. “Eh?” says Molly. “Eh?” as if to say remember me? remember your Molly? “Eh?” does this make you remember, or this, or this!—almost dancing with the grace of retribution.
“Molly, oh Lord, Molly stop it, stop it—” I shouted stumbling up, going for her. It was an endless frenzy, I cannot describe what she was doing, God have mercy on her, I saw the boy’s horror, for how many endless moments did he endure it? And how else could he speak, finally, when he had to call her and claim her as a right? How else could he make the sound of his need, create it true again? He spoke as she had taught him, manfully, with the proper instrument, booming of birth.
It was the moment Turner’s arms had closed around Molly as if in embrace. My hand was over the muzzle of the gun but the blast killed them both. Fainting, I could hear people outside tipping over the water tank, and it was that sound I listened to, the spread of water, an indecent gush.
14
And now I’ve put down what happened, everything that happened from one end to the other. And it scares me more than death scares me that it may show the truth. But how can it if I’ve written as if I knew as I lived them which minutes were important and which not; and spoken as if I knew the exact words everyone spoke? Does the truth come out in such scrawls, so bound by my limits?
But for Helga I have the town to myself, who’s not dead is scattered over the plains. The air is hot, and dry and still. The light of the sun parches me, my mouth is filled with dust, I cannot make spittle. There is no wind to stir the welcome banner, not a cloud. Only the flock of buzzards—sometimes rising, fluttering from some imagined scare—makes an occasional shadow. The street is busy with the work of jackals and vultures, flies, bugs, mice. Together they make a hum of enterprise.
I can forgive anyone but myself. The way I’m facing I can see out over the flats as the afternoon sun bakes colors across them. Who am I looking for, Jimmy? He’s gone, he’s riding hard, that mule and rig will take him places, another Bad Man from Bodie, who used to be Fee’s boy.
I seem to remember a man saying once they would build a railroad along the wagon trails west. It will bring them along the edge of the flats with their steam engines. I can see if I peer hard enough, I can see those telegraph poles up there like stitching between the earth and sky. Am I dying that slow?
This morning, before I started this, when the pain was too much to sit with, before my arm turned numb, I walked up and down seeing the fruit of the land. Isaac is dead in his store. In the rubble of Zar’s Palace that Mrs. Clement is dead although I don’t see a mark on her. The dealer must be upstairs. Mae is lying across a table, her dress pulled up around her neck. Her skull is broken and her teeth scattered on the table and on the floor.
In front of his bar lies the Russian, scalped expertly. The bullet he got was in his stomach—a red stain over his apron—he must still have been alive when John Bear reached him. As much as anything it was the sight of Zar, who once struck the Indian from behind, which got me to take my books out here and sit down and try to write what happened. I can forgive everyone but I cannot forgive myself. I told Molly we’d be ready for the Bad Man but we can never be ready. Nothing is ever buried, the earth rolls in its tracks, it never goes anywhere, it never changes, only the hope changes like morning and night, only the expectations rise and set. Why does there have to be promise before destruction? What more could I have done—if I hadn’t believed, they’d be alive today. Oh Molly, oh my boy … The first time I ran, the second time I stood up to him, but I failed both times, no matter what I’ve done it has failed.
Helga is standing here, she will watch me die. Who will take care of Swede’s wife? The mortal stench is everywhere, especially on me, and there is so much carrion in this town I wonder every buzzard on the land won’t be here before the sun sets. It has crossed my mind to set the street afire—that would scatter them. But there’s no wind and it would be hard work, harder than I can do.
And I have to allow, with great shame, I keep thinking someone will come by sometime who will want to use the wood.
E. L. DOCTOROW’S work has been published in thirty languages. His novels include City of God, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World’s Fair, Billy Bathgate, The Waterworks, and The March. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle awards, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. He lives in New York.
2007 Random House Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 1960 by E. L. Doctorow.
Copyright © 1988 renewed by E. L. Doctorow.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon
are trademarks of Random House, Inc. READER’S CIRCLE and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1960.
eISBN: 978-0-307-76297-9
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Doctorow, E L
Welcome to Hard Times.
I. Title
PZ4.D6413We5 [PS3554.03] 813’.5’4 75-11408
www.thereaderscircle.com
v3.0_r1
Don’t miss E. L. Doctorow’s latest book
All the Time in the World: New and Selected Stories.
Visit ELDoctorow.com to learn more about E.L. Doctorow’s books.
Welcome to Hard Times Page 17