Etta: A Novel

by Gerald Kolpan

  And so, Diary, my predicament. I cannot imagine a life that does not now include Miss Eleanor Roosevelt. And though I lament the possibility of encouraging her affections beyond what my heart can offer, I cannot desert her. Her heart is now one with mine: as much a part of me as my visions of Harry Longbaugh, or my memories of Utah, or the derringer in my left sleeve.

  know who she is,” the little man insisted. “You know where she is.”

  Laura Bullion would have laughed if she hadn't known all he was capable of. The priest's collar and robes were so incongruous as to make him seem something from a comic opera, a vision from the four-a-day vaudeville. But the blazing eyes, now as always dark pools of madness, removed from her heart all thoughts of merriment.

  “Today I am your father confessor, bitch. No screws, no wardens listening. I've come to take your confession.”

  Laura looked at the false priest through the bars of her cell. She had always been afraid of Kid Curry. Everyone was, save Ben and Butch and Harry.

  “There are two things you can give out, and as far as I am concerned one is as good as the other. You can tell me where she hid our goods, but I figure for that you got no answer. So you can tell me where she is, and I'll dig it up. You and Kilpatrick will get your cut; I'll enjoy her a little before she dies—or maybe even after.”

  “Fuck you, Curry,” she said.

  “I know you're a brave girl, Laura,” Curry said, “and I admire you for that. But Etta Place is a dead girl. And the dead ain't worth your life.”

  Laura lowered her head as she spoke, avoiding the two freezing coals fixed upon her.

  “Never give her up,” Laura said, spitting the words at Curry. “Kill me? Do it and hell welcome you. Maybe I'll beat you to it, shit heel. I'm here for five years. Kilpatrick's got ten more. This skirt'll hang me good. This belt too. That gun a yourn'll do just as fine.”

  Curry began to feel the temperature of her fear begin to rise. A slight smile came to his lips. “Your living or dying means precious little to me, girl. And you're right that my killing you buys silence, not talk. But my intention is to kill your Tall Texan.”

  Laura raised her eyes toward him. “Bullshit,” she spat. “He's in here.”

  “No, you're in here, in a nice inside ladies' tier high up over the plain. Kilpatrick—well, he's right off the street with a window for ventilation. I could shoot him dead from my horse or standing on a box or with my eyes shut. It wouldn't even be good target practice.

  “But your Ben, now that's different. With Cassidy and Sundance he's conspired to humiliate me ever since we began to ride. They've told me what to do and where to shit and now separated me from my goods and took the food from my mouth.”

  “You lying shit.”

  “That's no way to talk to clergy. No, Della, I speak the gospel, and the truth is, if I don't get the whereabouts of your Pretty right quick, I am honor-bound to keep my promise in the name of Our Lady and aim my iron through those bars at your man's slicked-down hair and make it explode, brains on stone.”

  Logan could sense her weakening. For him this was nearly as good as the kill itself. To bend the helpless to his will had been a source of the purest joy since childhood, when dogs and, later, horses were conquered by it. Her despair warmed him up like good wine.

  “Brains on stone,” he murmured. “Brains on stone.”

  She trembled more deeply, the first tear mapping her cheek.

  “Brains,” he said, and paused. “On—”

  “New York City,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “New York City, cursed bastard,” she hissed through hot tears. “New York City! No address! All I know!”

  She seemed to deflate in grief and her hands covered her eyes.

  “You know more,” he demanded.

  “Devil eat you alive, bastard! All I know and all you will know. All you will ever know. Kill him! Kill her! Kill us all and be damned!”

  Kid Curry studied the sobbing Laura Bullion. Had she truly revealed all? It was hard to know without employing the methods he had used all his life. The back of a hand, the quick twist of an arm, or a pistol to the head of a mother's child had always been sufficient to bring him everything he wanted. But here, in an open jail cell and dressed in the raiment of clergy, these options were closed to him. This time, instinct would have to suffice.

  Kid Curry rose in his black robe and pushed his wooden chair back into its corner.

  “Bless you, my child,” he whispered, and, turning on his heel, he sauntered through the cell door.

  When she was sure he was gone Laura Bullion collapsed on the small scarred table. She knew Curry would not rest until he had found Etta, and now he knew where to look. It was no comfort that she had provided him with only half the truth: the city but not the street and number. In the days to come, she would gaze blankly into her hand mirror, one of the few possessions allowed her in this place, and ponder her choice. Her man or her friend? To live or to die?

  And if she chose not to leave this world of sorrow by her skirt or her belt, would half the truth prove good enough to live on?

  he long years in the saddle had ruined the nether regions of Colonel William F. Cody. As a rough youngster, both pony express rider and Indian scout, he had lived atop a horse hour after hour, day after day. Later in life he became a soldier in the Grand Army of the Republic and a famed Indian fighter, both occupations requiring a life lived largely mounted. And so, as the years went by, his equestrian existence exacted a painful toll.

  These days, as his show's host and a ruling sultan of the show business, he was only required to appear on horseback ten or twelve minutes of every performance. But all too often even that short time had proven more than ample for the hemorrhoids inside him to assert themselves. Like individual campfires built one upon the other, each seemed hellbent on consuming some searing fuel upon which he was now cruelly and unavoidably required to sit.

  As Buffalo Bill had only just completed the second show of the day this winter afternoon, it was probably not the optimal time to audition before him. When Peg Leg Elliott introduced his beautiful companion to the great man, Etta was surprised to receive not the usual up-and-down appraisal of her charms, but an agonized wince with slammed-shut eyes and a grimace of yellowed teeth. Only after Buffalo Bill had released a long hiss like a rattlesnake in high season did he extend his hand to her. She was disappointed to find his handshake weak and distracted and him short of breath.

  “Boy here … tells me … you are familiar with the … workings of the … Winchester rifle,” Buffalo Bill said, his eyes watering.

  “Yes, Colonel Cody,” Etta said. “My father raised me to be familiar with both firearms and horses and taught me some proficiency with each.”

  Buffalo Bill nodded his head before turning to bellow at a young man passing by who was dressed as a tartar horseman. “Riley goddammit! Where the blazes is my chair. Bring me my chair!”

  The young tartar answered in a voice rich with West Virginia coal. “Right away, Colonel—”

  “My chair! Get me my fucking chair now!”

  “Yessir—”

  “GET ME MY GODDAMN FUCKING CHAIR!”

  These were not words with which Etta was unfamiliar. Although it had been many months since she had heard such oaths fly freely through the air, she found herself reacting to them as she might have in more genteel days. Cody caught the look of disapproval in her eyes.

  “You'll forgive me, Miss … Miss?”

  “Place,” Etta said.

  “Miss Place, you'll forgive me my language. But this is a circus, not a Sunday social, and if you're going to live among circus folk, the language is likely to be served with a side order of salt. I myself am especially prone to misspeak when the miseries of the piles are upon me, as they are at this moment.”

  The tartar returned, carrying the chair Buffalo Bill had sought with such urgency. Etta had never seen its like but soon divined its purpose.

 
It was an ornate thronelike affair in the finest black walnut, hand carved with scenes from Wild West performances: here, the Battle of the Little Big Horn; there, the surrender of the Oglala Sioux. And at the apex, where the sitter's head would rest, the sharp relief of Buffalo Bill himself in profile. Beneath it the legend read, COL.W.F.CODY, PROP.

  As Etta and Peg gazed upon the amazing creation, they marveled that it had no actual seat. Instead, there was only a hole surrounded by what appeared to be an overstuffed ring of cotton or horsehair covered in a soft natural cowhide. The material was for all the world like the suede of the jacket the great man wore, minus the long fringes and the silver and turquoise buttons of the Plains redskin.

  Buffalo Bill lowered himself gingerly into the great chair and once again expelled a long and tortured hiss. When at last he was seated he looked up at Etta, his eyes brimming with tears.

  “Well, Miss Place, let's see … what you can do.”

  Over the next half hour the showman was treated to a spectacle of shooting and riding he would have heretofore expected only from a man, and a dangerous one at that. In that time, Etta's rifle shot six straight bull's-eyes at thirty paces, clipped a cigarette from the mouth of a terrified Peg Leg (a trick she had read of in the newspapers and had perfected during the cripplingly dull winter months at Hole-in-the-Wall), shot a playing card through the ace, and, armed with two six-guns, destroyed eight clay effigies of Crazy Horse as she galloped in a circle, alternating sidesaddle from left to right. When she had finished, Etta rode toward Cody slowly and deliberately, somehow managing to turn an ordinary saddle gelding into a dressage medalist. When she finally gained the ground before Buffalo Bill, she dismounted in a single graceful arc, standing before him with a face that betrayed no hint of pride or satisfaction, only the calm, impassive expression that he knew from experience marked a champion born.

  Buffalo Bill looked up from his chair, all evidence of pain drained from his face. “And what, Miss Place,” he asked, “are your terms?”

  “Colonel Cody, I am told by my friend Peg Leg that you are a man of character, and so it thus follows that you are also a man of generosity. Therefore, I would expect that the sums to be discussed would be in line with the other riders and performers in your exhibition.”

  Etta brushed some sawdust from her skirt and, adjusting her hat, replaced the Winchester in its saddle holster.

  “As I have achieved no fame in this area, I would certainly not expect to be compensated in the manner of a star the caliber of Annie Oakley herself. But I hope my abilities will be useful enough to you and thrilling enough to your patrons that I may receive a fair salary. The only demand I must make is that you allow me to appear under a name other than my own, as my family would disapprove of my involvement in anything that smacked of the show business.”

  Buffalo Bill leaned back in his special chair, a mistake that produced a full-blooded howl that shook the stadium's rafters. When he finally recovered, he once more appraised Etta Place. “I believe,” he said, “that proper monetary terms can be worked out. As to your name, I would estimate that something over half of the artists in my employ are known to the audience under names not Christian to them. This is only natural as they are, in the main, scoundrels and wastrels known in their true identities to both the police and the Pinkertons, not to mention abandoned spouses and fatherless children. In your case, however, I ask only that you allow me to choose the nom de guerre by which the public will know you.”

  “That seems quite fair, Colonel,” Etta said with a grin, “as long as you don't burden me with something like Agnes Criblecobbliss.”

  “No worry of that, girl,” Cody said, a tear leaking through his mustache and into the corner of his mouth. “In fact, of late one of my performers, under the influence of her no-account, no-talent husband, has taken it into her head to abandon me. As many of her talents match yours, and someone of your ability can easily achieve the rest by practice, I propose that you take her place on our upcoming tour of the tank towns down south. It is unlikely that anyone there will notice any difference, although you are probably a head taller than she and, unlike you, this girl has a face like a birthing sow. Against my advice she has sought to begin a rival show in competition with this one, which has been her family these many years. That is, after the long European jaunt that she and the idiot she married embarked on this very morning. I believe that you will be a more than adequate replacement and better, as this woman could shoot all right but couldn't ride for shit or diamonds.”

  Etta felt excitement building inside her. It would be wonderful to do the trick shooting on occasion, but, oh, the chance to spend every day horseback! To smell the sweet hides, to curry the warm backs. All this and a salary that would allow her to live modestly and avoid the temptation of a dip into the treasure buried in that Brooklyn bank.

  “Thank you, thank you, Colonel Cody,” Etta said. “I promise you that at every performance I will attempt to satisfy the expectations of your audience and make you proud that you engaged me. I can only hope that this decision is a tenth as wise as the one you made so long ago when you discovered Annie Oakley.”

  Buffalo Bill leaned forward in his special chair. His mouth contorted again and the tears returned to his eyes. “That's fine, miss,” he said. “And I really do reckon you'll like that new name.”

  ars Hokanson had eaten Indian fry bread all his life, but never had it tasted this good. The Indian woman who prepared it every day seemed to know just what the white men liked. The bread itself was standard fare but fine: crisp and brown at the edges, pillowish in the middle, and made in a skillet that saw frequent changes of oil. But to this she added ingredients he had never known an Indian to use: sweet pork, chicken with the tang of pepper, beef with salt and onions.

  When she had first appeared outside the Dickinson County jail, she seemed no different from other local hawkers, just another shy, tattered soul selling her wares from a small metal box. Attracted by their rich aroma, Hokanson had purchased a pork-and-peppers for fifteen cents, was transported by its flavors, and bought another. At the end of a week, the squaw had needed a second, larger box to satisfy the demand of the turnkeys—as well as any prisoners who had the price of such a delicacy. At the end of two weeks, she was invited inside and instructed to deliver the bread directly to the men, all of whom, free or not, reckoned they had better things to do than line up in the street for a sandwich.

  The woman usually arrived at noon to begin her rounds. As she neither spoke nor understood English, she finished quickly, there being no opportunity for small talk. On her third Thursday in business, she once again padded through the door of the ramshackle one-story structure and dispensed her creations to each customer. The flavor of the day was ham with roast potatoes.

  Having delivered all she had prepared, the woman smiled and gave a small wave to Murrow Graham, the guard whose post was at the end of the final block. When she returned to his desk near the front door, Lars Hokanson grunted at her through a piece of potato and smiled, expecting the woman to simply grin, nod, and scurry through the door.

  This day she did not.

  It was hard for Hokanson to imagine that a woman so small could handle a shotgun so big. But the twelve-gauge held no apparent awkwardness for her. Before Lars could make a move for his rifle, the woman leaped onto a chair and placed the performing end of the gun squarely in line with his eyes. Turning toward the outside door, she shouted in her native tongue. The cry was answered by a reedy young white man, who strode quietly through the door and into the antechamber. He looked at Hokanson, touched the brim of his hat, and cocked the handle of his Winchester.

  “Mr. Lars,” he said, “I believe you are holding Butch Cassidy here. And Harry Longbaugh and Ben Kilpatrick. This will go much easier on you and us if you would release them into my custody. And I suggest you allow your three other guards to finish their lunch in peace. Raise an alarm and I will send you to the next world.”

  Hokanson though
t of his twenty-dollar-a-month salary and looked into the holes of the shotgun. He rose slowly from his chair and unlocked the iron door that separated the antechamber from Cell Block Number One. With the young man walking behind him and the Indian woman creeping backward before his eyes, Lars made his way down the blocks long corridor.

  “Any of you yardbirds makes a hoot, I'll kill him right here,” the young man stage-whispered to the astonished prisoners, “so eat that flat-bread and shut up, or by God it's your last meal.”

  Convicts quieted, the young man gestured for Lars to open cell thirteen. Butch smiled as the door swung open, and he accepted a Colt .45 from the squaw.

  “Much obliged, Little Snake,” Butch said, tucking the pistol in his waistband.

  “You know that ain't her name,” the lanky man whispered down the row of bars.

  “Sorry, Dave,” said Butch. “Force of habit.”

  By the time he had apologized, they had moved on to cell twenty. Dave Atkins kept his rifle trained on Lars Hokanson as he opened the door. Harry Longbaugh did not smile or speak. No use exchanging pleasantries with a woman who wouldn't understand. He gave a quick nod of gratitude to Hantaywee as she reached beneath her serape and dispensed a second Colt. Hokanson and the young man proceeded toward cell twenty-three to release the Tall Texan.

  “Mr. Hokanson,” whispered Atkins, “I'm sorry we have to bind and gag you, but I guess you knew the rules when you signed up for the game.”

  “I guess I did,” Lars said. “Shame of it is, all I can think of is how much I'm gonna miss that bread.”

  Within minutes, the three outlaws and their liberators were clear of the town. As usual, their mounts easily outpaced the nags of the deputies. They were also aided by the fact that, while Hantaywee was delivering the bread, Dave Atkins had flung the lawmen's saddles into the manure pile at Compton's Livery.