Wild at Heart

by Layce Gardner

  I said, “Shakespeare wrote ‘All that glitters is not gold.’ The Merchant of Venice.”

  “What book? Where’s Venice?” Pete asked, showing his ignorance.

  “Belle just means to say that a person’s outward appearances can be deceiving. Like fool’s gold,” I said.

  Pete turned sharply in my direction. “You calling my Belle a fool?”

  I started to answer that he was the fool, but Belle must have sensed an argument coming on because she jumped in, saying, “I’m just sad, and that’s the extent of it. I come by it natural enough. All the womenfolk in my family have a streak of sadness running through them. My mother, her mother, her mother’s mother, dating clear back to Christ. My very own mother died from her sadness.”

  She sat down at Pete’s table and rummaged around in her cleavage. She brought out a small bottle, smoky brown in color. (What I wouldn’t have given to be that bottle!) It had a white label glued across it with the words Tincture of Opium written on it. I know because I’ve seen this same bottle clenched in her fist while she dreamed in her bed many a time. Pete and I watched with interest as she unscrewed the cap and peered inside the bottle.

  “That’s laudanum, ain’t it?” Pete asked. “You feel sickly, Belle?”

  She held the bottle over her opened mouth and shook it. When nothing came out, she slammed it on the table and placed her face in both her hands. Pete picked up the bottle and looked at it. “It’s empty.”

  “So sad,” she muttered between her fingers. “Sad when it’s empty, sad when it’s full.”

  I had the uneasy feeling she wasn’t talking about the bottle.

  She reached out and snatched the bottle away from Pete’s hands. “My mother died from her sadness and I most likely will too.”

  “Your mother died from melancholia?” I asked.

  “She said her mother died from sadness,” Pete corrected.

  That’s what melancholia means.”

  “Then why didn’t you say it if that’s what you meant?” Pete argued.

  I had my mouth open to respond when Belle interrupted. “I was fourteen years of age when the sadness swooped down and claimed her.”

  I closed my mouth, hoping she would say more. I had never heard Belle talk much about her past. I knew she was on the run from an abusive husband, but I had only gathered that from the hints she dropped. I never pried, figuring she would open up when and if she wanted.

  Pete and I sat raptly. She talked in a rush of words, like they were overflowing from a full cup somewhere deep within her.

  “I was out on the porch of our house, this was back in my hometown of Chicago. This was before the Great Fire. It was the middle of July and so hot the crickets were popping like popcorn on a hot stove. I was out on the porch swing hoping to catch a breeze. I was reading and Mama was snapping beans for supper. Papa had run off the year before with a floozy from the brothel. I knew he wasn’t ever coming back, but Mama still held out hope. We were about to lose the house to the bank and eating off the generosity of our neighbors. Mama got in the habit of doing everything out on the porch so she could steal looks down the road, checking to see if Papa was coming home. Mama’s sitting there with a tin of string beans, snapping and looking down the road, snapping and looking. And I’m reading aloud from the Good Book. Reading to the beat of her snapping. Snap the bean. Plunk in the pan. Snap. Plunk. Snap. Plunk. Snap. After a verse or so I realized I never heard that last plunk. I looked over and…”

  Pete leaned forward in his chair. “What happened?”

  Belle tucked the bottle into her bosom and patted her chest. “…Mama was frozen.”

  Pete gaped. “Froze? You said it was the middle of summer.”

  Belle shrugged. “Middle of summer and she was frozen to the spot. Looked like a statue except with skin on it. And holding a green bean.”

  I nodded my head and added, “Catatonia.”

  “No, she just wasn’t moving. Like the Bible story about Lot’s wife.”

  “How could she be froze?” Pete asked.

  “Like this.” Belle pushed her chair back from the table, held both hands in the air over her lap like she’s snapping a green bean, tilted her head like she was looking down the street and froze. She sat as still as a wax figure. Pete and I held our breath. After a moment, Belle relaxed and scooted back to the table. She said, “Her eyes were open and staring down the road at nothing. It was like her soul flew out of her body, leaving it stuck to the chair.”

  Pete let out his breath and drew in another. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing I could do. Grown men couldn’t even budge her. I closed her eyes ’cause it was too spooky looking.”

  “She was dead?” Pete asked.

  “No, her heart was beating. I held a mirror to her mouth and there was sure enough breath. Long and slow but she was breathing. She sat on our porch like that, frozen to the spot for over a week. I put a blanket over her head at night like she was a parrot in a cage. I spent most of the days sitting on the swing, pretending to hold conversations with her just to keep up appearances for the neighbors. But Mama never moved or answered. Then one afternoon after about a week she just crumpled to the floor like some old scarecrow stuffed with hay.”

  “Well, if that don’t beat all,” Pete mumbled.

  “I ended up being taken in and cared for by the doctor who pronounced her dead. His name was Rufus P. Bartholomew. And it was no act of charity either. He was mean as a snake and twice as deadly.”

  I filed that name away. It wasn’t often that Belle dropped clues about her past and when she did I collected them like fine china.

  “You marry him?” Pete asked.

  Belle shook her head. “He had a wife already.”

  Pete sat up straight like he had a lightning bolt move through him. “Maybe that’s why you always want to be moving from one place to the next. So you don’t go freezing up in the bones like how your ma did.”

  “That’s what worries me, Pete. It could be heredity, you know, passed down from one generation to the next.” She lifted the mug to her lips and froze.

  She didn’t move. She didn’t blink. Seconds ticked by.

  Pete and I both sucked in air and stared at her motionless form with the glass held to her mouth. Her eyes were glassy and unseeing. A fly lit on her nose, but she didn’t move or anything. She sat that way, frozen, for all of ten seconds before Pete jumped to his feet, crying out, “Belle! Wake up, Belle!”

  I admit I was somewhat alarmed. I pulled out my dishcloth and holding it between both hands, twirled it around until it was taut. I snapped the rag at her lower half.

  Belle came to with a laugh. She rocked back in her chair, pointing at our faces and laughing to beat the band. “Had you going,” she snickered. “You should’ve seen your faces.” She slapped the top of the table and laughed some more.

  Pete sat down and pouted. “That weren’t funny. Not funny at all.”

  I laughed at Pete like I had been in on the joke all along. Belle pointed at Pete’s red face, saying, “Look at him, Charlie, he ’bout had a regular conniption fit.”

  I managed to nod and laugh along with her even though my heart was still pounding from the fright of it all. I said, “Pete isn’t that smart, you know. If his brains were dynamite he couldn’t blow his own nose.”

  That proved to be more joking than Pete could handle. He took off his hat and slapped it down on the table. He aimed his words in my direction. “At least I ain’t no skinflint like you.” He looked at Belle and added, “He was all ready to set you up in the corner and charge people a penny a peek.”

  I got mighty tired of this line of joking. Once people find out you’re of the Jewish persuasion all they can do is joke and laugh at you for being tight with money. I just happen to have a good head on my shoulders for business, unlike most of my contemporaries. I’d sooner get made fun of for being a dwarf than I would for my bloodline. That’s why I jumped up so sudden my chair keeled over backw
ards. I slapped my dishcloth at the table and said, “A man’s got a right to make money in his own establishment. Belle makes more money than I do and that’s not right.”

  For some reason or another Belle found this to be funny. She laughed so hard she held her belly with both hands. I turned my wrath on her. “In fact, Belle, I do believe we’re not settled up for the past week.”

  She stopped laughing.

  I ignored good sense and kept blathering. “It’s a damn shame when a whore makes more money than an honest man.”

  Belle’s face turned ashen. “What’d you call me?”

  “You heard me. A whore. A sporting woman.”

  Belle stood upright and put her hands on her hips. “I’m not holding out on your cut, Charles Engleman.”

  “A painted lady,” I said.

  Belle glowered down at me. “And I don’t like it that—”

  “A daughter of sin,” I interrupted.

  “—you’re insinuating that I am!”

  “A nymph of the prairie.”

  Belle crossed her arms over her bosom. “Business is bad ’cause of you, not me.”

  “What’d I do?”

  Pete added his two bits. “You bit my coin! How’s that supposed to make a feller feel?”

  “See?” she said. “Pete’s the nicest guy in the territory and you offended him too!”

  I sputtered a bit. I was running out of steam and Belle knew it. She threw me a scalding look, stuck her nose in the air and strode toward the door. “I’m going next door to the ol’ Number Ten. They appreciate me over there. They know a refined lady when they see one.”

  “Shady lady, you mean,” I couldn’t help but add.

  Belle stomped out. The doors swung wildly behind her. Pete grumbled some words I couldn’t make out and threw his boots on top of the table like he was daring me to comment.

  “She was going to leave anyway,” I said. “She’s run out of laudanum and going over there to purchase some more.”

  Pete glared at me.

  “Mark my words,” I said. “She’ll come back and won’t remember a word of what happened. And all the money she owes me is going right into that habit she’s acquired.”

  Pete stood and squinted at me like he was squaring off for a fight. “You been taking a percentage of her earnings?”

  I looked up at him and said in my own defense, “This is my place she’s soliciting in. What am I supposed to do, let her stay in that room for free? I have to sleep on top of the bar or on the floor while she’s rutting away on a feather mattress I shipped in all the way from New York City. It’s well within my rights to take a cut of her earnings.”

  “You ain’t got no rights. She’s the reason half the boys even come in this place. They’d sooner drink next door where the rotgut’s not cut.”

  “I don’t cut my whiskey.”

  “You’re a lying sack of horsepucky. Everybody knows you cut your liquor. I can smell the turpentine from clear down the street. I’d polish my boots with it, but it’d eat up the leather.”

  Even a patient man like myself can only stand so much. I yelled, “That is an out-and-out fabrication.”

  Pete put one hand on his pistol butt like he was thinking about shooting me. “You give Belle a cut of your liquor profits?”

  “There isn’t any profit. And if there were, you’re damn tootin’ I wouldn’t give it to her. That’d be plain asininity.”

  “You calling me an ass?”

  “That’s right! You are a sorry jackass, Pete Weston!”

  Pete drew his gun and pointed it down at the top of my head. I stared up the barrel at him. He stared down the barrel at me. Three tense seconds passed.

  A gunshot shattered the silence.

  ***

  Pete’s eyes widened. He lifted his gun and looked at the end of the barrel. I patted the top of my head to see if it was still intact. Pete looked from the gun down to me. I looked down at my chest, checking for bullet holes. We resembled actors in a vaudeville skit, each of us trying to figure out where the gunshot came from and where it went.

  The swinging doors blew open and banged against the inside walls. We turned to look. We stood motionless for a long, silent moment, but the only thing that came inside was a cloud of dust. The gust of wind died and the doors flapped shut.

  Pete and I exchanged a mutual look of confusion. And just when I was about to speak, there came the sound of boots clomping down the boardwalk. The footsteps were slow and steady and you could tell they belonged to a man who was sure of where he was going.

  Pete and I inched backwards, keeping one eye on the doors. Another gust of wind blew the doors wide and this time a man was standing there. He walked all the way in, stopped and stared at us. The doors swung shut behind him.

  He was dressed in a hodgepodge fashion: U.S. Army pants and Army-issue knee-high boots, a buckskin-fringed jacket covering a colorful Indian shirt. There was a wide brimmed hat on his head cocked at a jaunty angle. Two Colt .44s were strapped to his thighs and an ammunition belt was looped around his waist. The bullets in the belt sparkled like they had been spit-polished one by one.

  A rattlesnake dangled from his hand. He lifted the snake and cracked it like a whip. Then threw back his head and laughed. It was an eerie sort of laugh and sounded somewhat like a coyote howling. He tossed the snake in our general direction and it flopped across Pete’s boots.

  I wasted no time climbing the nearest stool. I’ve never been partial to snakes, residing low to the ground like I do. I guess Pete was of the same mind because he scrambled backwards, tumbled into a stool and fell hard on his sit-upon. He lifted his gun and aimed it at the snake while trying to crab crawl backwards.

  The gunslinger brayed that laugh again and said, “That rattler’s dead, boys. I shot it in the head. Damn thing was spooking my pony.”

  I said the only sensible thing that came to mind. “Killing a rattlesnake brings bad luck.”

  “You know what’s worse luck?” the gunslinger said.

  Pete and I shook our heads in unison.

  “Getting bit by one.” The gunslinger guffawed at his own wit.

  Pete got to his feet, hovered over the dead snake, then poked at it with his revolver. I never have understood the obsession of poking at dead things, but at the moment, I was too interested in the gunslinger to comment on the morbidity of it all.

  The gunslinger walked to the bar, looked into the mirrored bar back and tipped his hat at his own reflection. I went behind the bar and studied him out the corner of my eye. He wasn’t what you’d call handsome. He was beardless, had high cheekbones, deep-set gray eyes the color of brackish water and dust-colored hair. He wore it long and curling over his ears and it looked like he’d cut it himself with a dull knife. Something about his face rang a bell, but I couldn’t quite place him.

  He propped his elbows on the bar and looked me up and down. “You some kind of dwarf?”

  I nodded.

  “I heard tell of one of your kind before. Never seen one of you in real life though.”

  I guess nobody had ever told this man that remarking on a person’s deficiencies wasn’t polite. “That so?” I said, wiping on the bar with my cloth.

  “He drowned in the Mississippi.”

  “Is that right?” I said.

  “After he was shot full of holes for cheating at a game of cards.”

  I looked away and polished harder.

  “You know of him?”

  “Not all dwarfs know each other,” I said.

  He didn’t take offense to my remark. He looked sidelong at Pete, who was dragging the snake out the doors. He watched Pete toss it into the street, then said to me, “You in the business of selling liquor?”

  I tucked my cloth away. “What’ll it be?”

  “Your strongest libation and plenty of it.” I pulled a green bottle off the shelf. The stranger stared in the mirror, watching Pete sit down at a table.

  “I said your best stuff,” the gunslin
ger said. “Not that rotgut.”

  I nodded, replaced the green bottle and pulled a bottle of premium applejack out from under the bar. I poured the golden liquid into a glass and pushed it in front of him. I sat the bottle down on the bar in case he wanted to help himself to another.

  Without looking at the glass, he grabbed the bottle and raised it to his lips. He swallowed, grimaced, then smiled at me. “That hits the spot, all right.” He ran his hand across his mouth and eyed both me and Pete. I was busy polishing again for want of anything better to do with my hands, and Pete was tapping his fingers on the table. “You two look as nervous as long-tailed cats in a room full of rockers.”

  Pete stopped his drumming. I ventured, “Not many strangers pass through here.”

  “You got a name, barkeep?” he asked.

  “Charlie. Charlie Engleman. I own this place.”

  “Who’s that feller?”

  “That’s Pete Weston.”

  The gunslinger took another swig from the bottle, then walked over to the wall, being drawn there by the wanted posters. He perused each one while making short work of the bottle. Pete threw me a furtive glance, raising his eyebrows and looking at the stranger’s back as if to ask, “Who is that?” I shrugged my answer.

  The gunslinger must have sensed our silent communication because he turned and looked at us. Pete looked away from the hard stare. I forced a toothy smile.

  The gunslinger sat at a table over in the shadows. “So, Charlie, owner of this here fine establishment that caters to the whims and desires of the Deadwood populace…You got any ceiling experts roundabouts?”

  “Any what?”

  Pete spoke up. “He wants to know where the whores are.”

  “Oh.” Ceiling expert. That was a new one on me. I’d have to remember that one. “Well, you just missed her.”

  “When will Belle be back?” the gunslinger asked in a too-casual tone.

  Pete answered before I could. “No telling. She works on her own time.”

  I chanced a question. “How’d you know her name was Belle?”

  “Ain’t all whores named Belle?” The gunslinger laughed. Pete tittered nervously.