by Bill Albert
“Sure, Nate, I heard you. Boy Giant! Don’t know where it’s all going sometimes. I sure don’t.”
“Where what’s going?” Nate asked.
“Nothing,” Buffalo Bill replied. “What about the Indians, boy? You been selling to them too?”
No, sir! I wrote.
“No? Well, that’s something anyway. Ain’t nothing worse than liquor to an Indian. Don’t know why. Tough as they are. It’s . . .”
“You gonna believe this boy, Colonel?” Barnum asked hotly. “He’d sell gin to my goddamned giant he’d sell to anyone and those damned Injuns drink like there’s . . .”
The Major lumbered up out of his chair.
“Now, Henry. There ain’t no call to take that tone with the Colonel. He’s only doing what he thinks right. No call at all to take that particular tone.”
Buffalo Bill raised his bandaged hand.
“Just hold her up there, John. Now look here, Henry, if the boy says it’s no, well, I kinda believe him. Ain’t like he knew about your giant. Hell, I didn’t know about your damn giant! Might have bought him a drink myself if I had the chance.”
Buffalo Bill laughed. After a second the Major joined in. Barnum spluttered.
“Colonel I gotta protest here!” he said. “Boy’s . . .”
“Listen, Will,” said Salsbury, “Let me take him into town. Turn him over to the police. They’ll get him settled.”
“I got another letter from General Miles this morning, Nate,” said Buffalo Bill. “Those damn politicians still got him bottled up in Washington. Imagine that. Sometimes you wouldn’t think there’s a war going on, would you?”
“Colonel Cody,” Barnum started again. “Sir, I’ve simply gotta . . .”
“Sure, I know,” said Buffalo Bill. “I know.”
“Maybe we’ll be able to find him a . . .” the Major began.
There was a loud crash. Mike had fallen over.
“The Devil!” he screamed, rolling on the floor trying frantically to unlock his legs. “I’m tellin ya it’s the Devil!”
“Will somebody get the man out of my tent!” cried the Great Scout in exasperation. “In fact, all of you can get out. Go on. Leave the boy, Henry. Can’t think with all you . . .”
“But . . .” Barnum protested, “I got . . .”
“OUT!” shouted Buffalo Bill.
The tent emptied. It was just Buffalo Bill and me.
16
You never know what’s going to come in handy to get you by in this life. More often than not it’s what you least expect. For me at the Wild West it wasn’t riding, roping, or shooting, none of which I could do anyway, or even carrying coffee pots and dishes and peeling potatoes, which after a time I could do. No, it was the Spencer copperplate hand I had learned so reluctantly from Dr. Cohen at school in New York. That was the only thing which stood between me and an Ohio orphanage.
“I know I shouldn’t be doing this,” Buffalo Bill announced. “Old Nate is going to raise the roof and Barnum will be right there alongside him, but I reckon as how I need you, boy, so I’m going to give you one more chance and I’m going to give you a brand new job where I can keep a close eye on you. Whadda you think about that?”
I extended the backs of both hands close together and swept them up and down towards him.
Buffalo Bill smiled broadly.
“They been teaching you the sign? I’ll be damned! Excuse me, son. Right proper too.”
You eat sunrise? he signed.
I shook my head.
He pushed a china cup across the desk and filled it from a tall silver pot. He added milk and sugar, stirred with a spoon and signed for me to drink.
“Hard to tell with Indians,” he said, while I sipped the lukewarm coffee. “With their murdering and scalping and all, they still hold a lot of store by being straight-up honest.”
Thumb towards myself, scissors motion across my lips and my hand flipped over, swinging it back and forth across my chest—I didn’t lie.
“So you say. And I believe you too. Sure I do. But you got caught selling firewater. That’s plenty enough for someone like Sunset Buffalo Dreamer. Don’t matter to him you wasn’t selling to the Indians. You were selling. Hard, I know that, but they’re hard folks, the Sioux. Have to be hard to survive. Get no second chances out there on the plains. No sir.
“So what we going to do with you?” he boomed at me.
I spilled the coffee on my pants. The Colonel didn’t notice.
“You see this, boy?” he asked holding up his damaged hand. “Caught in a damn door. Can you credit that? Closed the damn door on my hand, she did. I guess the way things were, I’m lucky it was only my fingers!”
He winked at me. I didn’t know why so I had to let it pass.
“Doc says I can still use this one to pull the trigger,” he waggled his index finger, “but no way I can hold on to a pen. That’s why I need you. You’re going to be like my own private personal letter writer. That fancy writing of yours is sure going to set them back on their heels at Scout’s Rest. Think you can do that writing for me? I just sort of talk and you . . . Yes? Good. I thought you could. Of course, I got Mr. Decker, secretary to Mr. Salsbury and me, but that’s strictly business. I need someone who can write real pretty and someone who can keep his mouth tight closed.”
He started to laugh but quickly caught himself.
“Sorry, boy, I know it ain’t no laughing matter and I don’t mean to fun you, but you’re, so to speak, made special for this kinda job.”
He picked out a cigar from a wooden box on his desk and held it up for inspection.
“Now the only thing we gotta do is decide what we’re going to call you. Newborn Buffalo Calf?”
Sunset Buffalo Dreamer had given me that name and he had taken it away from me.
I shook my head.
“You must have had a regular name before the old Chief found you. Course you did. What was it, son?”
Meyer Liebermann belonged to Helen and Nathan Liebermann, and I figured that since my mother died at Castle Garden before she could give me a name I didn’t rightly have one. I was free to choose any name I wanted, free to be anyone I wanted. If it was good enough for Benny December, it was good enough for me.
So, I became Carl Garden and Buffalo Bill Cody’s personal private letter writer.
17
Finally I was where I had wanted to be from the first day, up front with Buffalo Bill. Without meaning to, Benny had done me a good turn after all. Like the Colonel had said, Nate Salsbury was furious, called him a soft touch and more that I didn’t hear. Henry Barnum wasn’t too pleased either. His sideburns went into a regular flap and flurry. But there was nothing either of them could do. Buffalo Bill was the boss and that was that.
“Damn me, if ya ain’t landed yerself the right way up, Mouse,” Benny said, enviously.
We were sitting on the steps of Buffalo Bill’s railway carriage watching the men loading up for another move. There was a great deal of shouting and crashing, dust from the horses swirling up, everybody rushing around. Three to four hundred men, five hundred horses, plus all the gear. It was quite a sight. The first time I saw it there seemed to be total confusion, but that was just me seeing it. When all the commotion died down everything had fitted together. The entire show had disappeared flat onto the train like one big jigsaw puzzle.
“Ya did real good not saying nothin about me. I surely do owe ya one, Mouse.”
Benny was smoking a cigar butt and spitting pieces of tobacco. He was real excited by my sudden good fortune.
I had been at my new job for only a week or so. I can’t say whether I was liking it or not. I was seeing and hearing lots of unexpected things which didn’t fit real good. I mean, even before I met him I suppose I knew that Buffalo Bill wasn’t like they wrote about him in the Dimes. Being clos
e around to him there was no way I could now see him other than how he really was. Older, for one, and softer. Then there was that damn buckshot. There were other things about him as well that kept knocking me sideways. I fixed it all up in my head for a time by deciding that Buffalo Bill had simply retired from the adventure business.
“He been treatin ya right?” asked Benny, blowing a sliver of smoke. “Bet ya’ll be hearin all kinds of choice stuff too. Hangin around all the time. Jesus! And there ya is with nothin but a squeak to be tellin it with!”
I signed that there was nothing to tell.
“Ya don’t expect me to believe that, do ya? All that writin ya been doin for Cody, listenin to ‘em and all them bigwigs, and nothin? Come on, Mouse, you talkin to yer ol’ friend Benny here. Remember me?”
I remembered right enough, and I wasn’t too unhappy that I couldn’t tell him more.
What I was hearing and seeing was that Buffalo Bill was under attack. Not from savage redskins, outlaws, rustlers, desperados, and the like, but from ordinary people who wanted to meet him, shake his hand and most of all wanted to just plain look at him. Not the same as they looked at Billy Baker or the Johnson Midgets maybe, but not too far off. Crowds of people, especially boys about my age, waited outside the tent to catch sight of him, they surrounded him in the street, followed him wherever he went. There were the old pards down on their luck and coming around for a handout, people asking for jobs, businessmen trying to make deals and, of course, the ladies. They fairly buzzed around him like swarms of blue horseflies. He would smile, bow and kiss their hands like the gent that he was. All those people were sucking at his lifeblood, but that was nothing to Buffalo Bill, who had more than enough lifeblood for twenty ordinary men. Anyway, he loved attention, especially from the ladies. With each smile, with each fluttering pair of eyelashes, he puffed up another notch.
The letters I was writing for him were women letters too, mostly to his wife, his two daughters, and his four sisters. The Old Scout was up over his curly gray hair in women one way and another.
“Never let the women hog-tie you, Carl! Some thinks they is the weaker sex. You’ll always be hearing that, the weaker sex, the gentle sex and all that kinda soft soap. Well, don’t you believe it, boy! Not for a gosh darn second. That’s just what they wants you to think. Gets you nice and comfortable, smiling all contented like some fat, belly-tickled hound and then, Bang! the jaws of the trap slam shut and they got you by the . . . by the . . . foot. Like an old wolf. Just like that old wolf you might have to chew the darn foot clean off to get yourself away.”
I guess Buffalo Bill was that old wolf or close enough to it. Most of his letters were to his sister Julia, who with her husband Al Goodman was taking care of his ranch in Nebraska. The letters were mainly full of complaints about his wife, Lulu.
I wrote the letters on stiff paper along the top of which in fancy print it read:
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World
Summer 1898
In the right-hand corner were little round pictures of Buffalo Bill and Nate Salsbury.
“Dearest Julia. You know how it’s been all these years,” Buffalo Bill dictated, flicking a long ash off his cigar. “I get tired of it, with no real home life to look forward to at the end of the season. Not that I don’t love you and all those fine kids of yours. Of course I do. And Scout’s Rest too. And my two darling girls. It’s only that sometimes I wish I had gone through with the divorce back in ‘83 when she corralled all my money as well as the house and other stuff in North Platte and wouldn’t give me one blessed dime to start the Wild West, saying I was a fool with my money, which of course was my money—You underline that was, Carl—and that it would all vanish and we would be ruined and poor again just like before.—She sure got that wrong, Carl. Ha! Sure did. You getting this all down? I ain’t going too fast for you? Good. I’m back onto the letter now. OK?—But I guess for a man like me divorce is not on the cards. I gotta reputation to look after. Lord help us if Buffalo Bill got a divorce—You put an exclamation point after that, Carl—No telling what would happen to the Wild West then. Still, maybe it’s better than both of us being cranky and miserable as sin all the time. She don’t like my friends, never has,” he said reaching across the table to stub out his cigar. “Too rough for her and that’s the long and short of it I reckon. To tell the truth, can’t say I care for her friends either, especially those spiritualists always fooling with their darn ouija boards and such nonsense. Of course, like you are always telling me, it ain’t a perfect world, so I guess I’ll just soldier on like always. Which brings to mind my friend General Miles, who has gone down to Florida ready to cross over to Cuba but says he don’t need me right now, which is all for the best I reckon with the money we got sunk in the show and more we got to be making this season to clear the debts. Of course, if he calls I will have to go, money or no money, Julia. It wouldn’t be right not to and I got my reputation as a loyal American to think about, although I gotta admit my heart isn’t in it, but the people are calling strong for the war and if the chips are down I’ll stand by America like I always done. Even Nate says I’d have to go. Right now I gotta be getting back to business here, which is going smartly enough except for catching my hand a nip, which ain’t nothing to be worrying about but explains this fancy writing, which you’ll know for sure ain’t mine and might be wondering why. Best regards to Al and love to the children.”
He cut the end off another long cigar, lit it, and drawing in the smoke turned to stare out the railway carriage window. I reckon he wasn’t so much looking out the window as examining his reflection because after a moment he smoothed back his long hair and sat up straighter.
“I don’t expect you understand all this carry-on, boy, being at the tender age you’re at. Fact is, it don’t matter much, as how you can’t tell nobody. You see, when you’re young and full of vinegar, well you think you can do just about anything there is to do. Riding with the wind I was. It’s only later on that you find out you’re carrying all manner of things that slow you down. All kinds of people as well. It’s like . . . Well, I can’t rightly explain, but just to say that you gotta be darn careful where you put your foot and what you load up in your old saddle bags!”
I couldn’t follow what he was trying to tell me. It was like that a lot of the time with Buffalo Bill when he got to dictating letters. Seeing my confusion, he laughed and rested his hand on my knee.
“Don’t pay me no mind, Carl! Just Old Buffalo Bill letting off the steam! Here, let me see that letter . . . Dog my cats, boy, you do write a fine hand! Wish I had your education. Yes sir! Boy don’t realize what a help a proper education is when he’s young. Always fighting it. Of course, with me I didn’t rightly have a choice. Had to support the family when I was your age. No time for education then. No time to learn me something fine like this!”
Buffalo Bill waved the finished letter at me and then squeezed my knee hard. I looked up. He had tears in his eyes. Well, not exactly tears dripping down, but you could see he was getting ready.
“You know doncha, Carl, I had me a son? Kit Carson Cody. Kit Carson Edward Judson Cody. Little Kit. Look, see here?”
He took a small silver-framed picture from his pocket. A little boy with a sad pout and long curled hair leaning against a tree branch cradling a rifle.
“Would have been how old now? A grown-up man. Twenty-eight years old. Five he was when he was taken from us. The scarlet fever. Never figured somehow to be left only with daughters, fine girls though they are. No one to carry the name, you see. Yeah, poor little Kit.”
Benny took a last puff and tossed his butt on the ground.
“Big deals, Mouse! Somethin real important. I just know there’s somethin real important! Shit yes! Tell ya what, why don’t ya write it down and we can get Crazy Mike to read it out to me? Whadda ya say? . . . No? Mouse, Mouse! Damn it all to hell, Mouse!”
There was no way I could get Benny to believe that I had nothing to tell him about Buffalo Bill.
18
It all began with my own story, the one that set me moving down the road to Hyman Budnitsky, the Madison Square Garden, the Wild West, Sunset Buffalo Dreamer and Buffalo Bill. I guess from the beginning I had been running away from my story and towards all those better ones in the Dimes. But that didn’t matter any more, for I was with the genuine article and Buffalo Bill was always pleased to oblige. After all, he was the kind of tale that could never be reduced to ashes.
“Yellow Hand? You want to know the authentic true story, do you? All them fireside yarns one after another clouding it up. But, I’ll tell you how it really happened between me and Yellow Hand.”
We were alone in the main room of his railway carriage. It was plush with purple velvet—little gathered velvet curtains with tasseled pulls, soft velvet chairs and a sofa, even the walls were covered in thick red damask, dark and sticky like the inside of a stomach. The car had three bedrooms and a dining room too. The Great Scout lived high off the hog and no mistake.
Outside they were setting up the Show. It was early in the evening, and I had just finished a letter to his daughter Irma.
“She’s a darling girl, my Irma,” he said proudly. “Going to come join us soon, when the Show gets out of Detroit.”
I was sure to get less time with Buffalo Bill then. I thought I might even lose my job.
He filled his glass from a crystal decanter and sat me down right next to him on the sofa.
“Let’s see now,” he said, leaning back and stretching his arms across the top of the sofa. “Yellow Hand. It was back in ‘76. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse had got the Indians fired up all because of gold being found in their sacred Black Hills. Prospectors and settlers were moving in and the Indians didn’t take to it at all. Pretty soon all over the plains Indians were on the warpath and playing merry hell with the Army. I got called up to scout for General Crook. Arrived there too late though. Custer got himself caught at the Little Big Horn and you know what happened to him and the Seventh.”