Forgiving

by LaVyrle Spencer

  The big ox hadn’t the grace to be affronted. Instead, he threw back his head and laughed while half the room laughed with him. When he’d finished, he pushed his hat to the back of his head and hooked a thumb over his holster belt.

  “You’re a regular little spitfire, aren’t you?”

  Incensed by his cavalier attitude and his amused eyes, she removed her spectacles and rose to her feet. “If you’ll excuse me, Marshal, I’ve got a newspaper to get started.” She gathered her belongings, stood beside her chair and raised her voice. “Gentlemen,” she announced to the room at large, “my name is Sarah Merritt. I’ve just arrived from St. Louis and I plan to publish a newspaper here in Deadwood. I’m looking for two things, and I’d be very grateful if any of you could help me find them. First, I need a building to either rent or buy—preferably one made of wood instead of canvas. Secondly, I need news. No editor can print a newspaper without it, so please... feel free to stop me wherever you see me and tell me what’s happening up and down Deadwood Gulch. I want the Deadwood Chronicle to be your newspaper.”

  When she finished speaking, someone in the far corner cried, “What do you say, boys, how’s about a welcome for the little lady?” A cheer rose from dozens of male voices (all but Campbell’s) and at last they closed in, offering their hands to be shaken, introducing themselves—men with names like Shorty and Baldy and Colorado Dick and Potato Creek Johnny; men with broken teeth and unwashed clothes and hands as rough as the terrain they mined; men with tintypes in their pockets and wives back home; women-starved men offering obeisance.

  They told her where to find Craven Lee about available property, Patrick Bradigan about the $1.50 he’d loaned her, and where to find her printing press, which had arrived by mule train and was stored at the freight office run by a man named Dutch Van Aark.

  Throughout their welcome, Marshal Campbell stood by observing, leveling her with his distracting watchfulness, speaking one last time as she headed for the door.

  “See me about getting a license for that newspaper of yours.”

  She flounced out disregarding him, thinking, I’ll see you in hell first, Campbell!

  She began with Craven Lee, who’d laid out the lots for the town and acted as its realtor. She found him in a log cabin on Main Street, but learned he could do nothing for her at the moment. The list of prospective buyers, it seemed, was as long as a Norwegian winter, and the best he could advise was for her to stay where she was. At least she had a roof overhead and a bed at night.

  She went next to find Bradigan at the Buffalo Hump Saloon, where he had begun his morning imbibing to ward off the trembles from the previous night’s round. She marched in and once again made heads turn—all but Bradigan’s. He was facing the bar with a glass in his hand.

  “Good morning, Mr. Bradigan,” she said behind his shoulder.

  He cranked his head around slowly before removing his elbows from the bar and straightening in the bone-by-bone way of the seasoned drunk.

  “Good morning, Miss Merritt.” She was surprised he remembered. He aimed for his hat but never quite touched it.

  “I owe you a dollar and a half in gold dust.” She found her pouch and tugged at the drawstring.

  He watched her with bloodshot eyes, digesting her message for some time before replying in a heavy Irish accent that came as slow as a spring thaw. “No, pretty colleen. Mine was the lucky pouch. ‘Twas my pleasure, most sortainly.”

  Not by the longest stretch of the imagination did Sarah consider herself a pretty colleen. “Mr. Bradigan, please...” she returned quietly, flashing a glance at the bartender and several patrons who were watching and listening. “I pay my debts, and last night I wasn’t altogether sure you knew your money was being taken.”

  He lifted a forefinger, gave a wobbly smile and turned back to his glass of whiskey. Hoisting it, he saluted her. “Welcome to Deadwood, Miss Sarah Merritt.”

  Realizing she would not get Bradigan to accept her gold, she handed the pouch to the bartender. “Here. Please take out a dollar fifty’s worth and buy Mr. Bradigan whatever he wants.”

  Before she left, she said, “Thank you again, Mr. Bradigan.” He faced her foursquare and silently bowed over his whiskey glass.

  It was one o’clock by the time she stepped back onto the street. One o’clock and hopefully the residents of Rose’s were up. Sarah headed toward the badlands with great trepidation, doffing her jacket and carrying it on her arm. It had warmed considerably and flies buzzed above the dung in the streets. A constant stream of wagons moved up and down Main Street competing with the foot traffic. Of the dozens of faces she saw, none were female. She began to understand why both she and girls of her sister’s ilk were such attractions in Deadwood.

  At Rose’s the front door was unlocked—a surprise. She’d expected to have to find a rear entrance or bang on the door until her knuckles were bruised to get an answer. Instead, it opened at her touch and she entered the same dim, smoky room as last night. Not a soul was in it. The smell of stale whiskey and unwashed cuspidors permeated the place, accompanied by the the strong sulfuric stench she’d detected last night. The room was unlit. The red tassled draperies were drawn against the noon sun with only a thin triangle of light filtering in at the bottom where the tassles brushed the floor. In the gloom, Sarah looked around, observing what she’d only glimpsed last night: the picture of a fleshy nude reclining on a fainting bench with a veil twined between her thighs and her private hair showing; a sign on the wall with a finger pointing toward the hall, saying BATHS REQUIRED; another with the heading MENU. She moved up close and read it.

  THE BATH

  THE TRIP

  THE FRENCHY

  THE HALF & HALF

  THE SHOW DATE

  THE OUT DATE

  Startled, Sara realized the menu had nothing to do with food. Feeling debauched, she looked away.

  A door to the left of the stairs stood open and she proceeded through it, to a long hall with an opening at the far end where voices, window light, clinking dishes and the smell of food announced a dining room. As she moved toward it, the sulfuric smell grew stronger. She reached its source—a room off the hall to the left, with a huge copper bathtub, wooden barrels of water, an iron stove for heating it and damp wood floors. Her revulsion freshened when she realized the required baths were laced with carbolic acid... for delousing.

  With pinched nostrils she continued toward the far end of the hall, where she stopped just short of the doorway and listened.

  “... could tell he never did it before. The bulge in his pants was bigger than a ham bone, so I says to him, I bet you hung like a bull, sugar. Get that big guy out here and let’s have a look at him.”

  “Did he?”

  “Too scared. Just stands there with his Adam’s apple jumpin’ and his face redder than a branding iron so I had to take control. I take his hand and put it on hisself, just to see what he do and he—”

  Sarah stepped to the doorway. “Excuse me.”

  The story stopped. Everyone turned to stare at Sarah in the doorway.

  Adelaide sat at a table with four other women—Flossie among them—wearing a royal blue dressing gown and eating chicken stew and dumplings. At a cast-iron stove on the far wall a fat woman tended a coffeepot. The black woman who’d been speaking let her glance move from Sarah to Eve and back.

  “Adelaide, I’d like to talk to you.”

  Adelaide’s face hardened. “What are you doing here! I told you last night I didn’t want to see you. Now, get out.” She resumed her eating.

  “I’ve come a thousand miles to find you and I’m not getting out until we’ve had a chance to talk.”

  “Flossie.” Adelaide signaled with her fork. “Get rid of her.”

  The Indian woman pushed back her chair and Sarah experienced another bolt of fright. But her father had taught her a newspaperwoman’s first qualification must be courage. “Now, just a minute!” she said firmly, entering the room with her heart clunking,
pointing a finger at Addie. “I’m not one of your customers you can have bounced onto the street. I’m your sister, and I’m here because I care about you. You can have me thrown out or probably beaten if you wish, but I’m not going away. Our father is dead and I’ve brought you your share of the inheritance. I’ve also brought his printing press and I’m setting up business in Deadwood, so you can either talk to me now or have me plaguing you persistently. Which will it be?”

  Her show of bravado stopped Flossie and emboldened Sarah, who pinned her sister with an unremitting gaze. When Addie stared back stubbornly Sarah said, “Furthermore, I have a message for you from Robert. In that regard you have three choices. I can deliver it to you in front of your friends, or print it in the first issue of the newspaper, or you can take me to someplace where we can talk privately. Which will it be?”

  Adelaide set her teeth, threw down her fork and lurched to her feet, rocking her chair onto its back legs. “All right, dammit, but five minutes and that’s all! Then you either get out of here under your own steam or Flossie will help you out. Is that understood?” She stalked out the kitchen door, down the hall and up the stairs with her royal blue wrapper flapping, leaving Sarah to follow.

  Before leaving the kitchen, Sarah pointed a finger at Flossie’s nose and said, “You ever lay a hand on me again and you’ll be sorry.”

  Upstairs, Addie led her along a skinny dark hall into the third room on the left. The door slammed behind them and Addie swung to face Sarah, her arms crossed tightly beneath her breasts.

  “All right, make it quick.”

  Since temerity had worked so far, Sarah tried a little more. “If this is the room where you do your work, I refuse to speak to you in it.”

  “This is my own room. I work next door.” She nodded sideways. “Now get on with it because I’m getting mighty impatient with you, big sister or not!”

  “This is where you live?” Sarah surveyed the grim little room with its single cot, a curtain of the roughest unbleached muslin on the window, theater posters tacked to the rough walls. There was a rug, a coverlet, a cheap dressing table, mirror and one chair, a commode stand, and on the floor beside the door a china washbasin. A line of hooks on the wall held a collection of sleazy, bright-colored costumes much like the one Addie had been wearing last night. The only objects to warm the room in any way were some faded paper roses on the wall and, on the bed, a stuffed cat made of red, shaggy fox fur. The sight of it plucked at Sarah’s heart: it was the only hint of the Adelaide she remembered: as children they’d never been without a pet cat.

  “I see you still have a cat,” she remarked with a reminiscent smile, shifting her regard to Addie, who raised one eyebrow and kept her arms crossed.

  “Say what you have to say.”

  What Sarah wanted to say was, Why? Why this place? This profession? This apparent hatred for me, who never did anything but be the mother you never had? But she’d get no answers yet; that was clear.

  “Very well, Addie.” She spoke quietly, all traces of harshness gone. She opened her organdy pouch. “Father died last spring. I sold the house and the furniture and the Market Street Building. All I kept was the press and his desk and the few things I’d need to set up business. Here is your half of the money.”

  “I don’t want his money!”

  “But Addie, you could leave this place.”

  “I don’t want to leave this place.”

  “How could you not want to leave this place? It’s horrible.”

  “If that’s all you came for, you can take his money and get out.”

  Sarah studied her sister sadly. “He never got over your leaving, Addie.”

  “I don’t want to hear about him!” Addie insisted. “I told you I don’t give a damn about my father!”

  In spite of Addie’s virulence Sarah forced herself to continue. “He contracted the bronzed disease about a year after you left. At first I only noticed that he was looking a little feebler, but then his mind became weak, his appetite grew capricious and in time his digestion ceased functioning. By the end he was unable to hold anything down and he suffered an extreme amount of pain. The doctors treated him with everything that’s been rumored to help—glycerine, chloroform, chloride of iron—but Father’s debility only grew worse until he shriveled up like a baby bird. He was always a proud man; it was very hard on him. I was managing the paper alone by then. Before he died, he made me promise I’d try to find you. He wanted us to be together, as we should be.” With added tenderness Sarah said, “Addie, you’re my sister.”

  “An accident of birth.” Addie turned away and stared out the window.

  “Why did you run away?” When Addie refused to answer, Sarah entreated, “Was it something I did?... Please, Addie, talk to me.”

  “Women who work in places like this don’t talk to outside women. You’d best learn that.”

  Sarah studied Addie’s shoulders for a long time before asking softly, “Was it something Robert did? He’s wondered just as I have.”

  The back of Addie’s hair was coarse as boar’s bristles, uncombed, showing sections of her skull where her natural blond showed like the white at the throat of a purple iris. The sight of it brought a sorrowful expression to Sarah’s eyes.

  “You hurt Robert so badly, Addie. He thought you loved him.”

  Addie said, “I wish you’d go.” The choler had left her voice; it was as quiet as that of a doctor asking a visitor to leave the bedside of one gravely ill.

  After a stretch of silence Sarah said softly, “Robert has never married, Addie. That’s what he wanted you to know.”

  Facing the window, with her arms crossed stubbornly, Adelaide Merritt felt threatened by tears, but refused to let them form. Behind her, she heard Sarah move toward the door, heard the doorknob turn and the hinges squeak. She knew Sarah was standing in the open door studying her, but she refused to turn around.

  “I haven’t found a building for the press yet,” Sarah said, “but I’m staying at the Grand Central. You can come there anytime to talk to me. Will you do that, Addie?”

  Addie gave no indication she’d heard.

  Sarah studied her sister’s blue wrapper and felt an immense clot of sorrow settle in her throat. On this mortal coil there was no other blood relative than Addie, and Sarah needed very badly to touch her once. They had sprung from the same womb and been sired by the same father. She crossed to Addie, laid a hand on her shoulder blade and felt it stiffen.

  “If not, I’ll come back again soon. Goodbye, Addie.”

  When the door closed, Addie stood a long time, staring out the window at a dry buff ledge where a poor misguided kinnikinnik bush had taken root far from its usual habitat. Its few berries were withering from waxy white to brown, unlike Addie—poor misguided Addie—who had gone from a healthy brown to a waxy white, living within walls where the sun never touched her skin, shut away from decent people, a prisoner by choice if not by circumstance. She had changed her name, and her hair color and her mode of dress and her persuasions. She had run half the length of the country, hoping never again to confront a soul from home. Now here came Sarah to unearth the past with all its promise and sordidness and secret guilt. To bring word of Robert, that wholesome young man of the clean skin and the sinless spirit who had seen in Addie only what he wanted to see. Robert... who had kissed her once with lamblike innocence... Robert... who had not married.

  Tears were a luxury Adelaide had given up years ago. What good were tears? Could they change the past? Could they heal the present? Could they alter the future?

  Blinking away the few that had formed, refusing to reach up and dry even the corners of her eyes, Addie dove onto her bed and curled her body around the fox-hair cat, clenching up until her knees nearly met her forehead. With her face against the furry stuffed animal she squeezed her eyelids tightly shut. Her bare, dirty feet were overlapped, her toes were curled and her stomach muscles quivering. For minutes only her fingers moved in the cat’s fur. Then
, still coiled, she made a fist and drove it into the mattress. Again. And again. And again.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Five minutes after leaving Rose’s, Sarah found Dutch Van Aark’s freight office. It was located in a log building which served as a miners’ supply, grocery and, today, a post office. A corpulent man with a walrus mustache was serving a cluster of customers gathered beneath a sign announcing, LETTERS—JUST ARRIVED—25¢. When the group became aware of Sarah’s presence they parted to let her near the counter.

  Van Aark saw her and smiled. He had yellow teeth and a bun-sized lower lip that drooped, exposing his gums.

  “I’ll bet you’re Miss Merritt and you’ve come for your printing press.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Well, it’s here, out back. Come in on a ox train couple weeks ago along with all the rest of your stuff. I’m Dutch Van Aark.”

  He introduced her around and explained, when she inquired, about the mail. It had come in on yesterday’s stage and since the town had no post office, anyone could buy the mail from the stage driver, then sell it to the recipients for a small profit. She recorded the interesting tidbit in her notebook along with the correct spelling of Van Aark’s name. While she was writing, a woman entered the store—wide-beamed, with a workaday face, around thirty-five years old, wearing a homemade dress and cotton bonnet. It took little more than a five-second glance to ascertain she was a typical housewife.

  The two women smiled at one another like long-lost cousins.

  “Mrs. Dawkins, come in and meet the newest lady in town.”

  Sarah moved toward Mrs. Dawkins and the two clasped hands.

  “Mrs. Dawkins and her husband run the bakery here in town.”

  “Hello, I’m Emma Dawkins.”

  “And I’m Sarah Merritt.”

  Their joy in meeting was genuine and the two exchanged a flurry of questions and answers. The Dawkins lived above their bakery and had three children. They had come to Deadwood from Iowa, leaving their families behind. Emma Dawkins was in the freight office today, hoping to find a letter from her sister back home.