Forgiving

by LaVyrle Spencer

  By the time the meeting adjourned it was past midnight. Noah and Sarah, both weary, headed for Mrs. Roundtree’s together. The town was oddly quiet, even the saloons and gambling houses, as if in respectful acknowledgment of the disastrous news. The theaters had closed and their lanterns had been extinguished. The hitching rails were nearly empty. The sky wore a milky blanket of clouds that held out all starshine and moonlight. Main Street wore a crust of frost on its rutted wagontracks. Beneath, it was soft from the day’s commerce. A wind chased down the ravine, bringing the distant call and answer of two owls, and off to their right the creek rustled.

  They climbed the path to Mrs. Roundtree’s with heavy footsteps, up the crude zigzagging steps to one landing, then another, and finally to the front door. Noah opened it and let Sarah enter before him. In the parlor a small oil lamp burned. Josh was asleep on the settee, half on his belly, with one leg cocked. A brown blanket had slipped toward the floor.

  They studied him awhile in silence, reminded again that his loved ones were some of those most threatened.

  “Poor Josh,” Sarah said softly.

  “Yeah. Who knows what’ll happen.”

  “Don’t say that, Noah.” She bent to pull the blanket over the boy’s shoulders. “I’ve come to love his family, especially Emma.”

  When she turned she found him watching her with a strange look on his shadowed face. She had called him Noah without realizing it. The look fled and he said, “Don’t worry. They’ll be fine.”

  “They’re such good people.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  Another silence while their antipathy slipped another cog.

  “You go up first,” he said. “I’ll turn off the lantern.”

  She was halfway up the stairs when the light went out behind her. In the blackness she faltered, reached out for the wall and ran her hand along it for guidance. She heard his footsteps behind her, tiptoeing on the creaky wooden steps.

  She stopped. Behind her, so did he.

  “Mr. Campbell?” she whispered.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you pray?”

  Silence... then, “Sometimes.”

  Silence again before she whispered, “Tonight would be a good time.”

  The thought settled around them. Somewhere the house cracked and she continued up the stairs with him at her heels. Her door came first, on the left. She located the knob and turned it, then herself... to face him.

  “Good night,” she whispered.

  It was as black as the earth around a tree root. She had a sense of Noah Campbell close enough to touch, were she to reach out. In the absolute lightlessness she caught the smell of leather from his vest and a hint of coal smoke from the extinguished lantern.

  “Good night,” he whispered. “See you in the morning.”

  The last thing she heard was his hand rubbing along the wall, guiding him to his door, which opened and closed.

  The whorehouse looked different in broad daylight. Noah had never been here in the morning before. When Flossie let him in, the light from the open door flashed across the dim parlor, then disappeared, leaving them in gloom. He followed Flossie through the room, through the smell of last night’s cigar smoke and whiskey, past the nude who smiled down from the murky shadows, past the bathing room with its strong stink of sulfur and saturated wood, to a room on the left where Rose Hossiter was sprawled on a dingy settee, snoring.

  Flossie passed a cluttered desk and snapped up a green windowshade. Sun exploded into the room.

  “What the hell...” Rose shielded her eyes and rolled like a walrus, trying to see behind her. “What the goddamn hell you doin’, Flossie!” She scooped up a whiskey glass from the floor and flung it at the Indian woman. It crashed against the desk. “Get out!”

  “Marshal’s here,” the Indian woman said and left the room.

  Rose’s unfocused eyes found the man at the door. “Marshal...” She struggled to rise. Her elbow caught the sheeny pink fabric of her robe and dragged it down, exposing one fleshy breast. She scraped it into place with a rubbery movement. The kohl she’d applied last night had taken a journey down her face. Her brassy hair listed in a scraggly knot behind one ear. She dished it to her skull with two pathetic pats but it sagged again and a hairpin bounced to her shoulder. Her mouth formed a wavery line as she smiled.

  “Little early in the morning, isn’t it?”

  “Sorry to wake you, Rose.”

  She yawned and the smell of her fetid breath filtered across the room. “What time is it?”

  “Ten-thirty.”

  She grunted and sat up, dropping her wide, bare feet to the floor. “Middle of the night,” she said and bent forward toward an oval table. Her robe gaped to her waist as she reached for a skinny cigar and lit it with a stick match. Smoke poured from her nostrils and mouth as she sat back and said, “Well... haven’t seen you around here in a while.”

  He made no reply.

  “Some problem, Marshal?”

  “’Fraid so. I’m going to have to shut you down for a while.”.

  “Shut me d——!” In the middle of the word she started hacking. The sound cracked in her throat twice. She had a disgusting way of sticking her tongue out when she coughed. Finally she got control.

  “What do you mean, shut me down?”

  “You and all the others along here. We have five cases of smallpox in town.”

  Rose got to her feet, closing her robe. “What the hell do I care about smallpox?”

  “With the business you run, you’d better care.”

  “Now, listen, Marshal, you know we put our customers through a carbolic bath. Probably keep ‘em from getting the damn pox.”

  “You know as well as I do that won’t kill smallpox.”

  “Aw, come on, Marshal, have a heart.”

  “Can’t,” he said. “The town council made the rule and I’ve got to enforce it. I’ve got to quarantine you, Rose.”

  “For how long?”

  “Couple of weeks, probably.”

  “A couple of weeks! And what we supposed to live on for a couple of weeks?”

  “Now, Rose, I’ve been in here enough to know how much gold comes through that door each night. You could shut down for a couple of months and not feel it.”

  She studied him awhile, put down her cigar in an ashtray and sidled across the room to him. “Tell you what, Marshal.” She took him by his lapels. “I’ll make you a real sweet deal. You shut the others down and hang your quarantine sign out front, but leave my back door open. I’ll cut you in for ten percent of the take for as long as I’m open exclusively.”

  He removed her hands from his jacket.

  “I can’t do that, Rose. We’re trying to prevent an epidemic here.”

  She advanced again, one hand on a hip. “I’ll throw in anything on the menu, no charge—anything you want and as much of it as you want for the duration. How about that?”

  “Rose...” He held up both palms.

  “Who’s your pick? Eve? You always took a shine to Eve.”

  “I don’t want Eve. I don’t—”

  “One of the Frenchies then. How about Ember? Ember ever had her mouth on you, Marshal?”

  “I don’t want any of them.”

  “I’d come out of retirement myself. Haven’t been with a man for a while but I haven’t forgotten what you fellas like. I could do you good, Marshal.” She reached for his crotch.

  He caught her wrist in a steel grip. His stomach lurched.

  “No deals, Rose. Tell your girls as of now you’re shut down.”

  “You’re a handsome man, Noah...” She reached to caress his face with her free hand. His head jerked back. Their eyes locked while Rose’s hand froze, halfway to its destination. She pulled free of his grip and yanked her bodice in place. Her expression turned contemptuous. “All right—get out of here, you sonofabitch, and take your fucking star with you.”

  She spun and retrieved her cigar. When he left the room she was
blowing smoke toward the ceiling.

  Outside, he sucked the clean air and felt as though he needed a carbolic bath himself. All the while he nailed the quarantine sign to her door his mind kept returning to that room and the sight of her rolling up from sleep looking like a bad case of winterkill; her callousness and dissipation, the stench of her, her pathetic attempt to appear seductive, her soulless eyes when he’d recoiled.

  He shuddered once, as if she’d reached him.

  That night at supper he was already seated when Sarah Merritt entered the dining room. She took her place across from Noah. She said hello to everyone else, finally to him... quick, quiet, with scarcely an encounter of eyes. Her face was clean. Her hair was wet on the sides, drawn back into its tidy, tiny twist. On either side of a center part a shallow natural wave nudged her forehead. Her blouse was gray with a white standup collar and sleeves with puffy tops and tight white cuffs.

  Looking at her seemed to remove the sullied feeling he’d worn since morning.

  The vaccine points came in by Pony Express from Sidney, Nebraska, in time to ward off a full-scale epidemic. Nevertheless, Sarah and Noah had two of the hardest weeks of their lives. She, with a paper to run, also acted as organizer for the inoculation clinic and the volunteer nurses. He, with the law to maintain, acted as organizer for the volunteer carpenters and tried to keep the whorehouses under quarantine. Two more people died—a miner known as Bean Belly Kelly and a Kentuckian named Yarnell whose occupation remained uncertain. They were buried in Mt. Moriah Cemetery near Preacher Smith and Bill Hickok.

  Sarah felt obliged to attend their funerals. Without a preacher in town, it fell to the general public to give the men a proper send-off with a decent show of mourners. On the afternoon of Yarnell’s burial, however, she was working at the pesthouse herself and missed the ceremony. She went up later with a crepe-paper rose to pay her respects.

  It was peaceful as she climbed the steep incline to the cemetery that hung on the mountainside southeast of town. The earth was snowy and the smell of the pines keen. Their trunks—rusty red and scaly—stood straight as compass needles in the windless, overcast day. A bluejay scolded and left a bough bobbing. A porcupine waddled up the path before her. A squirrel, alerted, stopped munching a pinecone and waited as she passed.

  She reached the top of the incline and stopped.

  There were the gravestones, and sitting beside one, with his head hanging and a whiskey bottle wavering on one knee, was a man. He was dressed in dirty buckskin. His blond hair hung in unkempt ribbons, the same dull mushroom color as the fringes on his jacket. It covered his face while he sat in sodden slumber, one leg outstretched, the other forming a triangle against the earth. The snow beneath him had melted as if he’d been there for some time.

  Sarah approached silently. Passed him. Read the grave marker—William Butler Hickok—and proceeded to the fresh mound beyond, where she laid her paper rose. After a moment of reverence she returned the way she’d come, circling wide to leave the drunk undisturbed. But a twig snapped as she passed and he lifted his head.

  The drunk was a woman.

  The bottle teetered on her knee as she stared at Sarah.

  “Guess I fell asleep,” she mumbled.

  “I’m sorry I disturbed you.”

  “S’all right. I was jss...” Her words trailed away and she stared blearily at Sarah’s skirt. In time she lifted her chin and asked, “You know me?”

  “You’re Miss Cannary.”

  “S’right. You know what they call me?”

  “Calamity.”

  “S’right.” She sat awhile, weaving, then remembered her manners.

  “Want a drink?” She lifted the bottle.

  “No, thank you.”

  “I’ll have one myself then.” A strand of hair got caught between her lips and the bottle. She strained the liquor through it, then smeared the whiskey off her lips with the back of a hand.

  “You come fer the funeral?”

  “No.”

  “You know ‘im?” She gestured with the bottle toward Yar-nell’s grave.

  “No.”

  “Me neither. I come to see Bill.” She leaned forward from the waist and peered at Sarah. “You know Bill?”

  “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t.”

  She pointed with the mouth of the bottle at the stone behind her. “This here’s Bill.” She pivoted around, dragging her legs in the mud to drape a hand on Hickok’s headstone. “Say h’lo to the lady, Bill. A real lady, not a whore like me.”

  Sarah stood transfixed, feeling like ah intruder.

  Jane leaned her face against the stone, closed her eyes and gave a great sigh. “He left me. Promised to marry me but he never did. Hell, I could ride and shoot as good as him ’n’ skin mules ‘n’ drink any man under the table... but it wasn’t good enough for him...” Tears seeped from her eyes and she curled herself to the gravestone. “Why’d you leave me, Bill... God, why din’t you face that door... you always faced the door....” Her pitiful weeping moved Sarah. She went to the woman and knelt, taking her arms.

  “Miss Cannary, please... you’d better get up. Let me help you.”

  Jane drew her head up heavily, sniffed, and scraped the edge of her hand beneath her nose.

  “Ass all right. I’m jss an old drunk. Leave me alone.”

  “You’ve been sitting on the ground. You’re all wet. Please, let me help you up.”

  Jane lifted bleary eyes. “What you wanna help me for?”

  Because the sight of you breaks my heart, sitting here grieving against your lover’s headstone.

  “It’s time to go down now. You need dry clothes.”

  Sarah helped Jane to her feet and held her upright until she caught her balance. When she stood erect, Sarah gently took the bottle from her hands. “Here, let’s leave that.”

  “Yeah, leave it fer Bill... he liked his whiskey neat.”

  Sarah hid the bottle behind Hickok’s headstone and returned to take Jane’s arm. As they started down the hill Jane waved back over her shoulder and said, “See y’ around, Bill. Save me a place.”

  The downhill grade was steep. Sometimes Jane stumbled and Sarah would reach out to steady her. On Main Street they paused before the newspaper office.

  “I have to go in here,” Sarah said. “Do you have a place to go?”

  “Yeah... I got me a place...” Jane gestured up the gulch as she stood weaving.

  “Wait here,” Sarah said. “Will you wait?”

  Jane nodded as if her chin were weighted.

  Sarah went into the Chronicle office and came back out with a packet containing some gold dust.

  “Go take a hot bath,” she said, handing it to Jane. “Then get yourself a good meal. Will you do that?”

  Jane nodded and stumbled up the street. Sarah hurriedly returned to the Chronicle office, unwilling to watch Jane to learn if she used the gold for a bath and supper or a saloon.

  The following day news reached Sarah that Calamity Jane showed up at the pesthouse, clean and sober, and worked there helping the sick until well past dark. From then until the quarantine was lifted the story was the same—Calamity Jane, who dressed in buckskins, rode like an Indian, swore a blue streak and drank like a man, proved herself a woman of kind and generous nature by giving the tenderest of care to the sick and afflicted.

  Though Sarah occasionally encountered her, Jane would never speak. She would nod, and her eyes would linger warmly, but her silence seemed to say, you’re a lady, I’ll keep my distance.

  A headline appeared in the Deadwood Chronicle when they knew the smallpox had been licked. MARTHA JANE CANNARY SELFLESSLY HELPS THE SICK.

  CHAPTER

  8

  The lifting of the quarantine brought great joy to Deadwood. The brothels reopened, relieving some of the pressures that had led to increased belligerence among the men. Noah was called upon to break up fewer saloon fights. True Blevins returned from the Spearfish, collected his oxen and headed, toward Chey
enne. The Dawkins family was reunited, grateful to have Josh back beneath their roof, even more grateful that Lettie had survived her ordeal with smallpox, though it appeared her face would bear several scars. Sarah returned to being a full-time newspaper publisher, and Calamity Jane returned to the saloons.

  The telegraph brought word that Rutherford B. Hayes and William A. Wheeler had been elected president and vice-president, and it sent word that the quarantine of Deadwood had been lifted. Traffic resumed, bringing a marked increase in freight, the ox trains carrying in a stout supply of winter stores for the remote area before the big snows fell.

  The women of Deadwood were particularly thrilled when a headline in the Chronicle announced the first mercantile items for them: bolts of cloth, spools of ribbon and even shoes of a smaller size. The article went on to note that future generations might diary the domestication of the town by the change in its incoming freight: seeds for spring, along with a barrel of tulip bulbs, which created a stir. Sarah’s plaster arrived—much more than she had ordered, brought by two brothers named Hintson, a pair of plasterers with the perspicacity to realize that the first plastered building would signal a chain reaction and their business would flourish. There came a selection of framed pictures and broadloom rugs to complement those first white rooms, factory-made furniture, and a single umbrella of a color other than black. It was pistachio green with white stripes, and stopped every woman who passed the window of Tatum’s Store.