Pete was sure enough trying to buy time, that much was clear. All the chips he had were in the middle of the table or were a part of my winnings. This was his last hand, his last hope to save his pride—not to mention his bride—and he knew it.
Pete knitted his brows. “Give me three more. And make them good ones this time.”
Calamity sat up and dealt three cards. They landed in front of him. “There you go, three of the best.”
Pete slid the cards up close, lifted them by their ears one at time and inserted them into his hand. His heavy sigh showed his dissatisfaction. A poker face Pete did not have.
Calamity said, “Charlie?”
I waved my hand. “Good.”
“How about you, Bill?”
Wild Bill said, “Ain’t this how you lost that li’l squaw, Calamity? The one you named Raindrop?”
Calamity dealt herself a card, saying, “Olivia ain’t no raindrop. She’s more like a thunderstorm.”
Wild Bill laughed and tossed away three cards. “Give me three more, Calam’. And deal from the top of the deck this time.”
“Who do you think I am?” she said, not expecting an answer.
“I know who you are and that’s why I’m asking for ’em from the top.”
Calamity rolled her eyes and dealt three from the top. Wild Bill looked at his cards and flung them down. “Fold. Looks like my losing streak is holding on but good. Bad luck sticks to me like dog shit on a boot.” He rose and walked away, taking the bottle with him.
Calamity said, “Okay, boys, what’cha got?”
Pete laid his cards down face-up. “Pair of black sevens.”
“Gotta do better than that,” I said, laying down a pair of red queens.
Calamity snickered. “Hate to do this to my friends, but…” She fanned out her hand. “Pair of aces.”
Pete swiped his cards to the floor. “Dammit to hell!” He stomped away in frustration.
“Ace of hearts?” I said.
“Yep,” Calamity said. “That there’s the ace of hearts, sitting right there next to her black sister.”
That’s all I needed to hear. I stood up and not on the floor either. I stood on the seat of the chair so I could look down on her. “Well, now that’s mighty peculiar, Calamity. Seeing as how I also got an ace of hearts.”
Calamity sat up ramrod straight. Wild Bill and Pete walked back to the table to inspect for themselves.
I threw my remaining cards down on the table right next to my pair of queens. There was the ace of hearts plain as day and a two of clubs and a nine of diamonds. “Maybe you’d like to explain to us how come you won with a card that you had already dealt out to me?” I said. And, yes, I used a haughty tone because I was playing the victim of underhanded dealing. The problem was Calamity wasn’t dealing to some cowpoke with no brains this time. “I demand an explanation,” I added.
Wild Bill laughed. Calamity did not look amused. She stood, leaned across the table and came eye to eye with me. “Speak plain, Charlie. Are you calling me a cheat?”
I dramatically extended one finger and poked her in the shoulder. “That’s exactly what I’m calling you.” I poked her again. “You pulled that ace out of your sleeve after you already gave the same card to me.” I poked again just for good measure. “I won fair and square and you know it.”
Well, that turned out to be one poke more than Calamity could tolerate. She grabbed the edge of the table and threw it over. Chips and cards fell every which way, leaving me standing in the chair feeling mighty vulnerable.
“I drew that card from the top,” she said. She looked at Wild Bill and Pete. “Ain’t that right? You two saw me do it.”
I poked her again, but this time with words. “Now you’re a liar to boot.”
Wild Bill said, “I knew you’d get caught pulling that ace out of your sleeve someday, Calamity!”
“I never pulled nothing out of nowhere.” She kicked at the pile of cards and chips like a little kid does a pile of leaves and headed for the stairs. She climbed them two at a time.
I called after her, “Where you going?”
“What’re you doing?” Pete asked.
Calamity didn’t answer. She stopped in front of Belle’s door and rapped on it. “I won, Olivia! I won the game and you’re mine now!”
“She did not win! Charlie won!” Pete called out.
Calamity knocked harder. “Get on out here! I won and you’re mine!”
“Screw you!” Belle shouted from the other side of the door.
Wild Bill laughed and settled into a chair. He crossed his legs and lifted the bottle to his lips. If you didn’t know better you’d think he was sitting in the box seat of an opera house and enjoying every bit of the drama unfolding on the stage.
I jumped off the chair, ran across the room and took the stairs as fast as I could. By the time I had hoisted my body up all twenty steps, Calamity had worked herself into quite a state. Her face was so red I thought she might have ruptured something important. She tried the doorknob, but all it would do was wiggle a bit.
She stood back and bellowed, “I said, get out here right now!”
Belle answered with: “I don’t care who won! I don’t belong to nobody but my own self!”
Calamity took two steps back and eyed the door. All of a sudden, she took a running start, leaped forward and bashed the door with her body. The jamb cracked but didn’t open. She backed up again, lowered her shoulder like a battering ram and made another run for it.
A split second before contact, Belle opened the door from the other side. Calamity connected with nothing but air. She careened inside Belle’s room and crashed to the floor. She skidded clean across the room before the wall stopped her.
Belle slammed the door shut.
***
The next part of the story happened, behind a closed door, between just Calamity and Belle. One of the advantages of being is a dwarf is that a keyhole is right at eye level and if passing by I almost cannot help but see what’s on the other side of the door. This allays my guilt somewhat when I snoop.
Here is what happened as I saw it through the keyhole:
Calamity picked herself up off the floor and dusted off the seat of her pants. It looked more like a maneuver designed to buy time rather than from actual need. She gathered up her hat from where it had landed and sat stiffly on the edge of the bed with the hat balanced on her knee.
“Don’t make yourself too comfortable,” Belle said. She had her fists balled up and resting on her hips, a sure sign that her hackles were up.
Calamity smiled in that crooked way of hers and said, “Let’s skip over the arguing part, Olivia, and get straight to the packing part.”
“Packing?”
“You want to go to Frisco, don’t you? I can make sure you get there.”
Belle harrumphed, turned her back on Calamity, looked at her own reflection in the mirror and patted her hair all over. “Now why would I go to all the trouble of packing a case. You’d just leave me like you did before.”
You see how women are experts at turning the tables? They never miss a chance to bring up past wrongs. Calamity reclined on the bed, propped up on her elbows, still wearing that fool’s grin. She said, “You’re gun-shy. I can appreciate that.”
Belle stopped patting her hair and looked in the mirror at Calamity’s reflection. She didn’t look like she approved of what she saw.
Calamity said, “I’m asking you for one more chance, Livvy.”
Belle gave her the back of her head and said in a flat tone, “I may just stay on here. If Charlie would have me, that is.”
If I would have her? Of course I would! I must admit my heart jumped a little at this pronouncement. Then I remembered that Belle was probably only baiting Calamity and I swallowed my heart back down my throat.
Belle continued, “After all, I got a business going on here. And I’m awful damn good at it.”
If I were Calamity, I would have walked up behind Belle and buried my
nose in those tendrils of loose hair on the back of her head. I would have kissed her neck until I felt her body yield to mine and her heart was putty in my hands. But did Calamity do that? Not on your life. Calamity sat up and put her boots firmly on the floor and her hat firmly on her head. She walked to the door. I was about to move from the keyhole when she stopped and turned back to Belle. She said, “You’re right, Belle. You’re a whore and you’re good at it. It’s best to stay here and entertain the cowboys.”
Now that got Belle’s goat. She spun around and spat, “Fair’s fair. Now we’re both nursing a broken heart.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Calamity responded. “I ain’t got no heart.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“I came in here with my hat and my heart in my hand, Olivia. Short of getting down on my knees I don’t know how else to make it up to you.” She put her hand on the doorknob and said, “May I be the first to wish you happiness in your life with Pete.”
I jumped out of the way just as she opened the door and stepped through. If she was surprised to catch me peeping, she didn’t act it. She shut the door just as the water pitcher crashed against it.
I’m going to add the cost of a new pitcher onto what Belle owes me. Breaking that pitcher was uncalled for. While I was thinking all this, Calamity laid her palm against the wood door and stood mighty still. I wondered if she was thinking about how it was only that two-inch door that separated her from her true love. The distance between her and Belle had shrunk from two thousand miles to two inches. But those last two inches seemed impenetrable.
She reclaimed her hand and sighed. I’ve heard that same sigh from a lot of men. She looked down at me and said, “Now’s your chance, Charlie. Go see if you can break her. I ain’t had no luck.”
“You know what I think?” I asked.
“Did you hear me solicit your advice?”
I gave her my two bits anyway. “Pick up the pieces of your heart and get back in there. Tell her what you’re truly feeling. That’s all she wants. To know what’s in your heart.”
“She ripped my heart clean out, Charlie. Then she stomped on the pieces till there weren’t nothing but powder left.”
“Your heart’s like your thumbnail. It’ll grow back.” That didn’t sound as poetic coming out of my mouth as it had in my head, and Calamity must have thought the same thing judging by what she said next.
“You read too much. Not every story has a happy ending.” She plodded away with heavy steps and I followed her trail down the stairs.
She had a point. I probably did read more than was good for me. If this were a romance in a book, true love would be rolling around on the bed right now with wedding bells sounding off in the distance. And being teethed on happily ever afters, I couldn’t stand the thought of any romance turning out badly, no matter how unconventional the main characters were.
As Calamity headed down, Pete rushed past us up the stairs. He was obviously going to carpe diem his girl. He politely knocked on Belle’s door.
Calamity headed for the bar and the nearest bottle of whiskey. Wild Bill was draped over the top of the table, snoring into his arms. I stood in the middle of the staircase where I could watch Pete and Calamity at the same time.
Pete knocked a little louder. “Belle, honey, it’s me. Pete. Your fiancé?”
There was no answer from behind the door. I hoped Belle hadn’t gotten into the laudanum again and dosed herself too liberally.
Pete tapped on the door and said, “Belle, honey, I’ve been thinking…Now don’t get mad at me, but maybe going to Frisco ain’t such a good idea.” Everything Pete said sounded more like a question than a statement, like he was looking for Belle’s approval to even have a thought of his own. “As a matter of fact I’ve been thinking maybe we were rushing into this wedding and we should wait on that too.”
I couldn’t believe my ears! Pete was telling Belle he didn’t want her anymore? Then it dawned on me. He was taking Calamity’s advice and reining Belle to the left when what he really wanted was for her to go right.
“Screw you too!” Belle shouted behind the closed door. “Screw you and the horse you rode in on!”
Pete pulled back from the door with a sour expression on his face. He looked over at me and said, “She didn’t have to say that about my horse. That was uncalled for.”
Calamity called out, “Let the little woman stew in her own juices for a while, boys.”
Pete sighed. It was the same sigh I heard from Calamity only moments before. We both headed down the stairs to commiserate with Calamity and Wild Bill.
***
I have attended more than my fair share of funerals, but none were sadder than the four of us sitting around that table. We had passed yet another bottle in a clockwise circle, each taking a swallow before handing it on. Once the circle was complete, we all sighed in unison, then picked up the bottle and sent it around again. We did this until it was empty and we were full.
Pete placed the empty bottle in the center of the table. We all quietly stared at it. I resisted an urge to stick a flower down the neck of the bottle just to give us all something pretty to look at. Finally Pete said, “I don’t get it.”
“Get what?” Wild Bill asked. He seemed more sober than the rest of us. Maybe that was because he had taken a siesta after the card game. Or maybe it was because I was drunk myself. Maybe both.
Pete kept his eyes locked on the bottle. “I tell her the exact opposite of what I mean and she’s supposed to come running to me. I tell her I don’t want her to go with me, which means I really do. But it didn’t work. She’s still up there and won’t have nothing to do with me. What’d I do wrong?”
Calamity put a sympathetic hand on Pete’s shoulder and explained, “There’s another rule, Pete, and it trumps the first one: A woman’s always going to do the opposite of what you want.”
Pete scratched his head.
“That means if you want her to go to Frisco with you and you tell her not to—”
“That’s what I did,” Pete interrupted.
Calamity continued, “She knows that means you really want her to, so she won’t.”
Pete wasn’t the only one confused. I scratched my head this time.
Pete closed his eyes, deep in thought, and I could almost hear the whiskey sloshing against the gray matter inside his thick skull. “So that means,” he said, “what I really got to do is tell her to come running to me and she’ll think I don’t want her to and so she will.”
Calamity grinned and slapped Pete’s shoulder, saying, “That’s right, pardner, that’s right.”
“So,” he continued, his brain straining under the weight of the idea, “I should’ve told her the truth in the first place. It’s the same thing, right?”
“Now you’re getting it,” Calamity said.
Pete buried his face in his hands. Wild Bill hiccupped and narrowed his eyes at Calamity. “What’re you up to?”
Calamity winked at Wild Bill and said, “Just helping a friend, Bill, that’s all.”
Pete groaned and doubled over like he had stomach cramps. “My life ain’t nothing but a jumbled up mess. I lost my woman and my job all in the same day.” He looked up at Wild Bill with big puppy dog eyes. “Can I go bounty hunting with you, Wild Bill? I ride just as good as anybody, I reckon. My shooting ain’t half bad, nothing a little practice couldn’t cure.”
“I’m not in much of a moving frame of mind,” Wild Bill said. “I might even settle down right here in Deadwood. It’s as good a place as any to drink out my days.”
Depression hung like a black cloud over Wild Bill’s head. Depression, when unchecked, resulted in inertia and I reckoned that filled more boneyards than bullets did.
Calamity said, “I don’t know what you got to bawl about, Bill. I’m the one who lost her one true love.”
Pete snapped back at her, “You ain’t the only one with troubles. This here man killed his
own brother, or did you forget about that?”
Wild Bill slapped both hands down on the table. “Now why you’d have to go and remind me all over again.” He stood. He wavered. He turned and weaved toward the doors. He came to a sudden halt and I saw his shoulders jerk up and down a bit. When he turned back around, tears were coursing their way down his face and sopping his mustache. He didn’t bother to hide the tears or even wipe them away.
Calamity, Pete and I were so surprised at the big man’s show of emotion, you could have knocked us over with a feather duster.
“I didn’t get a chance to pray over him,” Wild Bill mumbled. “I couldn’t even send him off proper.”
“It’s all right,” Calamity said.
“No, it’s not all right!” Wild Bill said. “It ain’t all right at all. If I knew how to pray, I’d get down on my knees right here and pray his way into heaven, but I don’t know how. What kind of man don’t know how to pray? I’ll tell you what kind. My kind. I’m a fool. A drunk. A killer. A lousy husband. I ain’t good at nothing but shooting tin cans. And the occasional man. I didn’t even give my own brother a proper burial. I’ll be carrying that burden with me the rest of my life.”
That was when he began to openly sob. I have never seen a more pitiful display of unrestrained emotion. I am not saying that a man doesn’t have a right to cry, I’ve even done it myself, but at least I had the good sense not to do it in public and cause discomfort for the people witnessing it.
Calamity let him wallow in his self-pity a full minute before approaching him. She slung one arm over his shoulder and led him back to the table. He snuffled up his tears some, and Calamity said, “I know how to pray.”
He looked at her. “You do?”
“It’s just one prayer that I was taught as a child. It ain’t much, but it’s something, you know? You reckon it’s too late to offer it up to him?”
“I don’t know.”
“It couldn’t hurt none,” Pete said.
“They say prayers float straight up to God’s ears,” Calamity reasoned. “Maybe Tame Bill will hear it, grab hold good and ride the prayer straight up to heaven.”
Being an agnostic, I was about to pshaw that whole line of idiot reasoning, but when I saw the look of hope on Wild Bill’s face, I sewed my lips shut. Maybe that’s what prayers were really for. Not for the afflicted or the dead, but to supply hope for the living.
Wild at Heart Page 10