by Pete Dexter
Charley looked at his hands and felt his brain tangle. "He drank what he drank," he said.
She said, "I heard he'd lost his functions."
"Where did you hear a story like that?" It always surprised Charley, the rumors that got around.
"He never come near an upstairs girl," she said. "Nobody ever seen him near Chinatown, which he wouldn't of sunk to anyway. Bill hated celestials."
"Bill didn't hate anybody more than a minute," he said. "He never let himself fall into that."
"Then how come he drunk so much?" she said.
Charley looked over at the bed, and saw that Lurline had got herself undressed, down to her undies. "It's a sure sign," she said. Her undies were black and red and attached to her stockings by garter belts. Charley loved accessories, and felt the start of a humming in his peeder, only it seemed distant, as if it were in another room.
"He had been let down a lot," he said.
"I never heard anything along those lines," she said.
"There's nothing you ever heard about Bill that's true, except by accident," he said. He took a drink, and then another one.
After a while he looked over and saw Lurline was watching him. "Tell me something true about Wild Bill," she said.
He looked through the hole in the top of the bottle and made himself dizzy. "I already did," he said. "He'd been let down."
Out on the street, one of the miners had slipped in the mud and the other one was sitting on his chest, trying to get his thumbs in his eyes. Charley knew that someone was about to get bitten, even before he heard the scream. The miners had closed the circle around the two men, now the men were rolling on the ground, and Charley noticed the bulldog then, standing behind them, watching the fight through their legs. He felt a wash of affection for the dog, and reminded himself to purchase the animal some pickled eggs the next time he saw him out drinking with Pink Buford. The dog watched the fight without enthusiasm. Charley expected he was not impressed with anything that bit and let go.
He heard Lurline come off her bed and cross the room. "What's you lookin' at out there?" she said. She did not go to the window, though. She stopped behind Charley, and he felt her breath behind his ear.
"A dog watching two men fight," he said.
She put her hands on the back of his neck and smoothed the muscles all the way down into his shoulders. She took the tip of his ear between her teeth, and bit him. He did not move a muscle, unless you counted his peeder. She said, "Are you a fighter too?"
He felt her take his ear in her mouth again, more of it this time. "It's never come up much," he said.
Her hands went around to the front of his neck, and her fingertips stroked his throat, soft, at the same time she bit down again on his ear. "You're too good-natured for fighting," she said.
He shook his head and she changed ears. "It isn't that," he said. "It's something else."
She bit his other ear, and then took a little of the skin beneath it between her teeth and bit that too. She bit hard, but not quite hard enough to complain about. "It don't matter," she said. "Everybody in this town's a fighter. You're different."
Charley sat still. "Yes, I am," he said.
She moved then, rose up behind him until he felt the warm press of her stomach where her teeth had been before. She cradled his head into her body, and he let himself be cradled. In a moment, he saw that her intentions were not motherly.
She reached down, still holding his head against her, and touched the outline of his peeder under his pants. She used one finger, and ran it the length. "You ain't that different," she said.
He found the bottle on the floor and took a long drink. "Let me have a look at you," she said. He sat still and watched her unbutton his pants, one-handed from behind. "There's some men that won't let a lady watch them undressed," she said.
She worked from the top down, no hurry at all, and the head of his peeder rose out of his trousers, a button at a time. It reminded him of Jesus rising from the dead, and he did not shake that thought from his head, but held on to it, so the Lord could see how bad he'd gone.
"Stand up," she said, behind him.
He stood up, and his pants dropped around his moccasins. He held on to his bottle, and when he took the next drink he saw it was about half gone. A bottle, he decided, was like a trip. You couldn't be stopping every mile to see how far you'd come. She ran her hands over his legs and found the scars where his brother Steve and the Ute had shot him. She put her finger in the darker scar, which belonged to the Ute, and looked into his eyes.
She didn't ask, and he didn't say.
She moved her hands again, around in back. It occurred to him then that they were standing in front of the window. When he tried to move, she sank her nails into the flesh at the back of his legs. She pushed deep, but not deep enough to complain about.
"Don't move," she said.
He stayed where he was. "You'll make a spectacle of us both," he said. She smiled, and he saw that's what she intended. In a moment, she lowered herself onto her knees. It had been weeks since Charley had spent himself, unless you counted the episode in the water, which he didn't, and at the sight of her on her knees in front of him he felt the beginnings of that sweet cramp before she so much as touched him. It began, and then passed.
A line of jizzom seeped from his peeder, strung half a foot, and then dropped onto the floor. He felt her hair against his legs, and then her teeth. This time he tried to pull away, but his feet were still encumbered in his trousers, and she had her arms around his knees. She moved her mouth and bit him higher.
He looked out the window and saw that the miners were still fighting, locked as still as sleep in each other's holds. He took another drink from the bottle and she moved to his other leg. It was not as painful as when she'd bit him before, it had lost the surprise. She moved up again, into the spot where his leg met his body, and bit him there too. She took his jewels in her hand and looked up
into his face. "You're good-natured," she said, "and you keep yourself clean."
"You bite strangers," he said.
"You ain't no stranger," she said, and bit him again. Softer, though. More playful than before, like something had been agreed to that she could do what she wanted. Charley pulled on the bottle again. He still intended to drink all there was, but the reasons weren't as clear.
When he looked outside again, some of the miners were looking back. He tried to move away from the window, but she stopped him. She tightened her hand around his jewels and pulled him half a step to the side, and then she took the head of his peeder in her mouth.
She put her teeth in, not enough to complain about. He felt his legs begin to shake, and this time the cramp couldn't be headed, and then the jizzom was running out of him and down both sides of her mouth and dropping on the floor.
When she had let him go, he sat back down in the chair with his pants still around his ankles, and studied the little puddles on the floor. "There is something alive in that," he said, after a few minutes.
She had wiped her mouth off on a pink towel and sat down on the bed. She stared at the floor too. "I never thought of it like that," she said.
"It's dying now," he said, and took another drink. The alcohol seemed to have lost its spark, and he thought the air might have killed that too. "It's similar to a polliwog," he said, "removed from its pond before it had time to grow lungs."
Lurline leaned closer to the floor. "I never thought of it, I swear."
"There," he said, "I saw it move."
She shook her head. "I never liked to see nothing suffer," she said.
"That's sweet talk for a biter," he said.
She smiled without looking up. She said, "It is alive, ain't it? It has to be, or elst nothing could come of it. I never thought of none of this..."
Charley wet his finger in the bottle and ran it over his eyelids. It was an Indian trick that gave you energy to keep drinking. She was lying on her stomach now, with her chin resting on her fist, stil
l watching the floor. "I didn't see it move," he said. He didn't want to pass out and leave her there all night nursing his jizzom. "It's dead now, anyway," he said. "It can only last about two minutes in this heat . . ."
She would not let go of it, though. "I never thought of jizzom except something left behind, like a mark after they slapped your face."
"Who slapped your face?" he said.
She shrugged. "Everybody slaps upstairs girls," she said. Charley pushed another swallow down his throat and lost his balance putting the bottle back on the floor. He caught himself just before he fell off the chair. "You're too jumpy," she said. "Anybody else, they would of let themself fall where they may."
"I've been drunk on the floor," he said. "Myself and Texas Jack Omohundro, in a blizzard in the Rockies. He told me he hated Texas."
"Were you partners with Texas Jack too?" she said.
He shook his head. "I just took him hunting," he said. "He was more Bill's friend than mine, but neither one of us loved him."
"You're a strange one," she said. "Dying jizzom and true love." He smiled at her and kicked the moccasins off his feet. She said, "You planning to sleep in the window?"
She got off the bed and pulled his trousers off, untangling one foot at a time. She helped him up and over to the bed. He held on to the bottle. He tried to drink lying down and spilled cold whiskey over his chin and chest.
He lay on his back and she sat over him, one leg on each side, and unbuttoned his shirt. She was smiling again. She used her fingernails the length of his chest, down to his stomach. "Well, lookit here," she said a minute later. "I thought you was tired."
Charley looked. He picked his head up off the pillow and saw what she was talking about. "It's a death dance," he said. "Don't pay it any attention."
She adjusted her undies and fit herself over him. She began to move up and down, looking him in the eye. "If it pounds nails, it's a hammer," she said.
Charley watched her eyes until the movement made him dizzy. He took another drink, and saw that he was less than an inch from the bottom.
"I don't know what you got to finish that for," she said. "It's going to make you good and sick in the morning."
"Maybe blind," he said, and closed his eyes.
A little later she bit him again, on the chest. He opened his eyes
and saw that they were still embraced in fornication. He knew time had passed, he didn't know how much. There was no feeling at all in his peeder.
"How come you bite so?" he said.
She pulled back until her face was almost in focus. He saw her shrug. "Somebody's got to squirm," she said, "that's what fuckin' is.".
He put his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her down to him and kissed her cheeks. "How old are you, to think something like that?"
"Nineteen," she said.
He woke up sick and sorry and alone, Lurline was gone, her black and red undies hung on the bedpost. He lifted his head to see them better, and it felt like something heavy and sharp-edged was balanced in there, and it fell frontwards as he moved.
He stood up slowly and looked at his body. There were dark blue bruises up and down the insides of his legs and on his chest. Scratch marks that slid down his stomach like rain on a window. He looked closer at his legs, and saw the imprint of her teeth.
His pants were over by the window. He broke a sweat getting into them. The bottle was on the floor, lying on its side. A fly sat on its lip. There was a puddle of liquor collected inside, near the neck. The whole room smelled like whiskey.
He found his shirt under the sheets, wrinkled and smelling of Lurline's perfume. He sniffed it, and the humming began in his peeder. His moccasins were back under the chair. As he bent to pick them up, the weight in his head moved again, and he froze until it settled. He found a comb in the dresser and ran it through his hair, and then walked out the door, down the steps, and into the barroom of the Gem Theater.
The whore man was standing behind the bar. He smiled at Charley, and there was a difference in him from the night before, as if he knew the condition of Charley's body, or as if somehow they were the same, now that Charley had sinned.
"The price for the night is ten dollars," the whore man said.
Charley stopped in the middle of the room. There were eight or nine tourists already drinking away the morning, but no whores— except one asleep on the piano—no gamblers of consequence. The whore man's words carried to every corner of the room.
Charley walked to the bar. "I don't recall your name," he said to the whore man.
"Al Swearingen," the whore man said. "We met on the wagon train you come in on."
"I didn't forget where we met," he said, "or the conditions. I forgot your name."
"Swearingen," he said. "I own the Gem and every girl in it." He smiled, and Charley remembered how his beard had looked, still wet with the boy's jizzom. He put that thought out of his mind, having done all the thinking about jizzom he cared to last night. "And you ain't got Wild Bill around to protect you now."
Charley took the pearl-handled knife out of his belt and held it sideways in front of the whore man's nose. For half a minute the only thing that moved was the whore man's throat. "I tell you this one time only, Mr. Swearingen," he said. "Don't ever ask me for nothing when I'm wearing a wrinkled shirt. I don't like to be addressed by a whore man before I get a bath and a change of clothing, so everybody can tell us apart."
The whore man didn't answer, and Charley let him go.
He walked out of the Gem and went to his camp. Nothing had been touched; the boy hadn't been back. He did not dwell on the boy or family entanglements. He picked up his toilet and a clean shirt and walked toward the bathhouse, thinking of Mrs. Langrishe.
In the aftermath of serious drinking, his peeder defied common sense and decency.
The bottle fiend took a dollar from Charley and watched him undress. He was transfixed by the bruises. He stood still, holding two buckets of hot water, and stared at Charley's chest and legs. "What kind of injuries is those?" he said after a while.
Charley sat down in the tub and waited for water. "Bites," he said. "Now start this bath and I'll find you a bottle later on."
"What bit you?"
"Teeth," Charley said. The Bottle Fiend put one of the buckets down and poured the other one into the tub. It was hot water, and Charley began to sweat.-
"Heat's the best thing for drunks," the soft-brain said. "Hot water takes the poison out the skin. I don't know about bites . . ."
He poured the other bucket in the tub, and the hot water took what strength Charley had, all except his peeder. He dropped his chin into his chest and closed his eyes and thought of being bitten by Mrs. Langrishe. He wondered what sort of left turn his brain had taken.
"What bit you?" the Bottle Fiend said again. He brought two more buckets of water and poured them over Charley's shoulders.
Charley shook his head. "I bit myself," he said, and then he opened his eyes and saw the Bottle Fiend's mind at work. "Don't think it," Charley said. "You understand? Just don't think it. . ."
"I can't help what I think," the Bottle Fiend said.
Charley said, "There isn't a soul that drew breath on this planet so far committed suicide biting himself to death."
"You bit yourself," the Bottle Fiend said.
"It wasn't a suicide," Charley said. "It was something different."
The Bottle Fiend was standing over him, and the sweat ran into Charley's eyes and stung them when he blinked. "How is it different?" the Bottle Fiend said.
"It was different," he said. "God as my witness." He got a picture then of the Bottle Fiend sitting in his chair by the door, bleeding, holding a piece of his own shoulder in his mouth. Then he got a picture of Mrs. Langrishe sitting over him in the same attitude as Lurline last night.
The Bottle Fiend went for the last two buckets of hot water. "When you tell me something," he said when he came back, "is it true?"
"As much as you're ready
for," Charley said.
The Bottle Fiend reflected on that. "That's what Doc Sick said."
"He looks out for your interests," Charley said.
"Sometimes," the Bottle Fiend said a few minutes later, "I wisht I didn't have nobody looking over me. Sometimes I want to know everything the way it is."
Something in that bothered Charley. "Don't ever wish for something you don't know what it is," he said. "You might get it." Then he handed the soft-brain five dollars and sent him out for a bottle of whiskey. "Nothing pink or clear," he said. "I want brown American whiskey. And when I'm done, you can have the bottle."
Seth Bullock had a nose for trouble, and this was it.
Overnight, Solomon Star had lost his interest in business. Bullock had been business partners with him nine years, before Deadwood in Bismarck, and he noticed the difference from the morning Solomon quit complaining over the books. Two different days in the last week, he hadn't as much as sharpened a pencil.
On Monday, as a test, Bullock said, "You think we need a new porch on the place?"
Solomon Star shrugged. He never even asked how much porches cost. He was sitting at his desk, open-collared, looking at the ceiling. In nine years, Bullock had never seen Solomon at work without a tie. He couldn't remember seeing him star-gazing indoors either.
Before, his nose was always in the balance books. He knew where the money went and where it came from. He kept track of interest rates, and borrowed sometimes even when they didn't need capital. He argued with Bullock over orders and supplies, he argued over the money Bullock gave to widows and orphans and other public causes. He argued, but he gave in. Bullock had a long-range plan he never saw, and in the end he trusted that it was there.
And in that way Seth Bullock and Solomon Star depended on each other, and understood each other the way different people sometimes do—each of them thinking he saw the other better than the other saw him.
"We could ship some hardwood up from Colorado," Bullock said, worried now. Something depended on the balance between them, and he saw it had changed.