Calamity

by Libbie Hawker

  I smiled and shook my head. My heart fluttered at his words—I won’t lie to you and say it didn’t, for every girl likes to hear that she’s wanted, that a man wants to treat her sweet and kind. And oh, doesn’t an ugly girl long to hear it a hundred times more than the rest? But I knew, even as my heart soared, that it never could be. “You’re real nice and respectable, Billy. I know that for sure. But I won’t marry you.”

  “Why not?”

  Why not—what could I tell him? What would he believe in that moment, in the candle light, with just the two of us alone? He would deny the truth if I set it before him: that even a very nice boy would soon grow tired of a thing like me, big as an ox in the traces, with a face like a broken platter. He would abandon me someday for a prettier thing. He wanted—as all men want—a woman who was light on her feet and sweet-tempered, pretty as a springtime flower. What good was cleverness in the end? How far would my good heart take me? I knew better than to gamble when the deck was stacked against my favor.

  Besides, I reckoned it was dangerous to be a wife. True, there was the risk of abandonment in a wide, lonesome world—and for a girl like me, it was a certainty I’d be left alone sooner or later. Wifing never had seemed to set well with my mother, nor with Emma Alton, and they was the only wives I ever had a chance to observe at close quarters. Wives was miserable, sad creatures, far as I could tell. But whores at least was free.

  I never gave Billy Voss his answer—why not, why not? Instead I reached around to the back of my dress and undid the knot in my strings with practiced fingers. My bodice loosened and slid down my shift with a whisper I could barely hear over the rain, over the raspy, choked sound of Billy’s breath.

  “Come on,” I said to him. “Get it while the gettin’s good. My candle won’t burn much longer.”

  I don’t recall how many weeks it was after the Billy Voss incident before the pool hall gig went to shit. I do remember it was still raining. Those storms had swept the foothills nearly every day, and Fort Laramie was all red mud up to the ankles. Rain and fearful-close thunder had pressed the whole town down under its thumb, making everybody feel cooped up and restless. I blame the rain for bringing my sad affair about so quick, but it would’ve happened sooner or later, storms or no. Nancy had set her bitter heart on putting Calamity Jane in her place from the moment she was busted down to the pool hall.

  It was morning, and I had just risen and splashed my face in my wash-basin, and rinsed out my mouth, and dressed. The usual crowd of boys wouldn’t show up for some hours yet, so the pool hall was quiet down below—no piano, no stamp of dancing feet. I did what I could to pull my hair up into a semblance of style—I never could manage more than a simple bun—and then stood at my window, watching the gray clouds pile up over the hills. Under the dimness of stormy weather, the hills’ reddish hides seemed more colorful than ever, blazing in shades of copper and flame with deep cracks of violet-blue shadow, bright as if they’d been lit by a setting sun, but without the sun’s attendant glow. I thought the scene real pretty and peaceful; I didn’t want to stop looking. But I heard voices outside my door—whispers, a few low laughs, the rustling of dresses. I didn’t like the sounds a-tall.

  I thought to poke my head out into the hall and find out what had caused so much fuss, but when I tried the door knob, the thing would hardly budge. Somebody was holding it from the other side.

  “Come on now,” I said, real properly annoyed. “Who’s over there?”

  The girls laughed louder this time. The laughter held a nasty note, as if a current of wild glee flowed through them all, whipping them up to a frenzy.

  “Let me out,” I said, pulling and pushing on the door. “T’ain’t funny.”

  “Why don’t you bust through like the big dumb bull you are?”

  Oh, Nancy. The moment I heard her wicked little sneer, all my surprise vanished.

  “What’s the point, Nance?” I said. “You’re acting like a jackass and it’ll only make you look bad in the end.”

  “Stuff it up your cun’, Calamity Jane.”

  The girls all hooted over that. Typically, I was the only one who used such colorful language.

  “Enough now,” I said, and pulled hard on the door again, wrenching the knob with all the energy I could muster.

  Nancy let go suddenly; I staggered back as the door flew open, stumbled against my bed so hard that I sat down upon it. The girls leered at me through the door, grinning like feral dogs.

  Nancy leaned into my crib and mooed like a cow, which set the other girls to screaming with amusement. I lumbered up and started toward them. I only meant to push my way through and go about my business—ignore them all for the rest of the day—but as I came toward them, the girls shrieked and scattered as if I’d drawn a gun.

  They went clattering down the stairs in a frantic pack, with Nancy at the back, hollering down into the pool hall, “Help, help! Jane’s ’bout to kill every one of us!” She sounded properly panicked, as if I posed a real imminent threat to life and limb, but she kept looking back at me as she went, and there was no mistaking the glitter of mischief in her eyes.

  The girls spilled right out the hall and into the street, holding up their skirts so they wouldn’t get muddy. I walked slowly after them, kind of stunned, though goodness knows I should have stayed inside and let them flap about like the silly hens they was. I don’t know what drew me out into the street. Maybe it was the sheer force of Nancy’s will. It was considerably powerful.

  Rain had tapered off for the morning, but the ground was still plenty wet. The girls flocked into a ring with Nancy and me right in the center. They was all laughing, grinning at each other with their cheeks flushed pink and their eyes a-glowing, cheerful as if we was all about to set off for a nice, friendly picnic.

  Nancy strutted right up to me, the mud splashing under her neat little boots. She jabbed a sharp-nailed finger into my chest. “You’re cheating us out of a living, Calamity. Every one of us.”

  I squinted down at her, plum unable to believe what I was hearing. “The fuck you talking about, anyway, Nance?”

  “You heard me. You’re taking more than your fair share of the men.”

  I spat into the mud to show her what I thought of that. “More than my share?” I said. “I don’t take nothing but my share. If you want a bigger share, you’d best start working as hard as I do.”

  “We work plenty hard.”

  “None of you’s willing to do the things I’ll do for the boys. That’s why they like me so much. If you want more action, you’ll have to work for it!”

  Nancy shoved my chest again. I stumbled back a few steps, but I didn’t fall. I knew she was trying to rile me; I was resolved not to take the first swing. Let her throw the first punch, I told myself—and then when I knock her to the ground, everyone will be obliged to declare that I acted in self-defense.

  “Come on, you big ugly cow.” Nancy advanced again. I didn’t like the thought of skittering back any farther; it would only make me look weak and afraid. So I planted my feet in the mud and waited for her. She pushed right into me, nose to nose, jabbing me again with that damnable nail, lacquered and bright in the light of day. “Nobody wants you here,” she said. “Nobody likes you and none of us wants you hanging around any longer, taking money from our purses.”

  I darted a quick glance at the sidewalk. Men walked by, going about their business. I worried that a man might hear Nancy’s accusation and mistake me for a thief. I had worked hard, and with considerable care, building a good reputation in the town of Fort Laramie. One stray rumor that Calamity Jane had thieving tendencies could ruin my livelihood in a matter of hours. So I spoke up real loud, making damn sure every passing gentleman heard me. “I ain’t taken a thing from anybody, except what the men give me of their own free will. I don’t steal, Nancy, and you know it. Just ’cause I’m better at business than you, that’s no cause to get nasty. Jealousy don’t become you, anyhow. Green’s as ugly on you as that bunkum shade
of red you slapped all over your hair.”

  “You want to see ‘slapped all over,’ you half-baked bitch? I’ll show you!”

  Nancy flew at me, clawed hands whirling like a tornado. She was everywhere at once, yanking my hair, kicking my shins, slugging away at my arms and my middle—and worst of all, flailing with those deadly nails, trying to scratch up my face or maybe gouge out an eye. I took her blows easily enough, for thought she was mighty energetic, she wasn’t terribly strong. But I didn’t want to see my face scored and scarred by that cat’s talons. I was already saddled with the handicap of ugliness; red welts across my cheeks and forehead wouldn’t have done a lick of good to improve my situation. I threw my arms up to protect my face while I tried to evade Nancy’s fury. My boots slipped and skidded in the mud.

  “You better get away from me,” I shouted through my arms. “I don’t want to hurt you!”

  “You couldn’t hurt me if you tried!” Her attacks never ceased, even while she spoke. She was an inexhaustible well of hatred. “I’ll beat you to a pulp, you damn bloody clout! I’ll shove your head up your own rotten hole! God knows it’s loose enough to take it, what with all the men you’ve been luring up to your room. What are you doing to trick the men into sleeping with you, huh? That’s what we all want to know. ’Cause it’s a sure thing they ain’t doing it of their own accord! Just look at you! The only man who’d pick you out of a crowd is the kind of who’s got a secret hope of finding a prick hiding under your petticoats.”

  Nancy had really begun to shriek by then, letting her vile accusations fly right up to the new-made rooftops. As I ducked behind my upraised arms and cringed away from her onslaught, I could see fellas cutting their eyes toward the fight, or hurrying along the sidewalk to put themselves clear of the commotion. If I didn’t stop Nancy’s madness in short order, she would grind my good reputation into the mud.

  So I swung out hard, nice and sudden, with my big, square, work-roughened fist. It caught Nancy smack in the jaw. She turned halfway around, eyes wide and staring but blank as undyed cotton. Then she swayed on her feet for a moment and pitched forward, face-first, into the mud.

  The circle of girls fell deathly silent. Half of them gaped down at Nancy, who was now sprawled most ungracefully in the street. The other half stared at me with a kind of half-frightened, half-thrilled sparkle in their eyes. No one said a word.

  “Better flip her over,” I told the girls casually, “’less you intend to let her drown in a puddle. It’s all one to me.”

  I made my way back into the pool hall, but I could hear them scrambling and murmuring behind me, rolling Nancy onto her back. Somebody called for smelling salts. One of the girls ran past me into the hall and up the stairs, no doubt to fetch the salts and bring Red Nancy around. I was sore—not from Nancy’s beating, which hadn’t troubled me much more than a few gnat stings—but sick at heart and angry. I had made a place for myself in Fort Laramie. For the first time in my life, I was mistress of my own fate, with enough jingle in my purse to give me hope for a good future. Nancy and her friends had thrown my hope out into the street like a bucket of slops, and all because they coveted what I had worked so hard to build.

  I didn’t feel like working that day, or that night, for after what had transpired in the street, I knew I’d never be able to drive the scowl from my face and make the gentlemen smile. To this day, I’ve never had the knack some whores possess, the ability to wear a mask of false emotion. I lament that particular failing, for in my trade, there’s no skill more valuable than making a man believe you’re having the time of your life—or tricking him into thinking he can’t frighten you, that you’re cool as winter in the face of his violent rages. I’ve always worn my heart on my sleeve—or on my unlovely face, as it were—and at the age of fourteen I certainly had no hope of keeping a smile fixed firmly in its place. Now I knew the whole damned pool hall to be a nest of vipers, and every one just itching to bite my heel. So I begged off work with a head cold for an excuse, and spent the day laying in my bed, glowering through the window when the rain returned.

  As a brief and feeble sunset colored the sky outside, I could hear the hall below coming to life. The music grew livelier, and the rhythm of girls dancing—their feet stamping in time to the fiddle and piano—pounded all through the building. Now and then gusts of laughter made their way upstairs, the big, booming laughs of men intertwined with women’s soft giggles. I strained to listen every time, trying to discern from the confines of my crib whether Nancy’s voice was among them.

  I had clocked her pretty good, I knew, for she’d gone out cold right there in the muddy street. She must have a hell of a bruise by now, I reckoned—maybe even a swollen face. I didn’t feel a speck of pity for her, nor the least bit of remorse. A good, sound beating was no more than what she deserved. I was merely trying to discern whether it was worth venturing downstairs and trying my luck with the gentlemen, for I had begun to feel a little less sour by then, and some of my confidence was returning.

  In that very moment, however, I heard a hesitant step outside my door. “Jane?” The voice called so softly I could scarce hear above the noise downstairs. But I recognized its source: Delia, a blonde girl not much older than me. She hadn’t been among the crowd in the street that morning.

  I opened my door. Delia was waiting on the threshold, twisting her fingers together in an anxious sort of way. She glanced over her shoulder to be sure no one was coming up the stairs.

  “You can come in, if you want to talk,” I told her.

  “That’s not a good idea. If I were seen coming out of your crib afterwards, Nancy would light into me next. I just came up to warn you, now that the night’s getting good and lively and nobody is likely to tell that I’m missing just yet.”

  “Warn me—what do you mean?”

  “Nancy’s awful chapped at you.”

  I laughed. “’Course she is. I knocked her clean out. Did she show her face down there among the men?”

  “She did. She’s got a shiner, and she’s been telling everyone who’ll listen that you attacked her.”

  “What a load of horse shit,” I said in disgust. “Everybody knows it ain’t true. She attacked me first, the bitch.”

  “We all know the truth, but no one will say boo to Nancy. She just about runs this place now, as long as Madam isn’t here.”

  I felt a chill way down deep in my stomach. Nancy could tarnish my good name with this rumor, almost as fast as she could do it with her lies about me stealing money from the girls’ purses.

  Delia understood my grim expression. She reached across the threshold, took me by the arm. There was such trembling of urgency in her touch that I went colder still. “Jane,” she whispered, “Nancy is dangerous. She already hated you before, but now—after you knocked her down in front of everybody and gave her a big ugly bruise, besides—she’s ready to do you in.”

  “She can’t do me in,” I said, not at all confident that I was right.

  “She can, and she will. She’s awful mean, Jane, and she has it out for you now. She’s been telling the other girls she intends to take a knife to you.”

  “A knife? Do you think she’s serious?”

  “I know she is. Nancy’s crazy; she’ll do anything, anything at all that comes into her head. She’s dead set on seeing you out of this pool hall for good—and probably out of Laramie, too. One way or another, she intends to be rid of you. I came to warn you.”

  I stood in silence for a long while, listening to the music and the stamping of feet, the innocent laughter below. If Delia was right, and Nancy was so damnably determined to put me out for good, then I would only get her off my back by fighting all the harder. I must do some real damage to Nancy, beyond a mere clocking on the jaw. If I hoped to frighten her out of her hate, I would have to hurt her badly. It was either that, or I must allow her to hurt me badly—maybe even kill me. There wasn’t any other way to placate a fiend of Nancy’s sort.

  “I can’t fight N
ancy again,” I said quietly. “If I do, I’ll have to really let her have it. Otherwise, she’ll never leave me be. What should I do, Delia?”

  Even as I asked the question, I knew the answer. Delia knew it, too. She pulled me into a rough hug, then held me firmly by the shoulders, at arm’s length, as if she had already reconciled herself to my going.

  “I got to leave,” I said, defeated. “Leave the hall, leave town… there’s no other way out of this mess.”

  “I know it,” she said. “I’ll miss you, Calam. If you pack up your things now, you can be off before Nancy comes looking for you. She won’t come until most of the boys have gone away for the night, so you’ve got a couple hours yet. I’d help you pack, but if I’m away too long somebody might come looking for me. Nancy can’t know that I warned you.”

  Miserable, I nodded. “I don’t have much to pack. That’s one good thing, at least.”

  “There’s a good boarding house on the next street over, right next to the livery stable where you keep your mule. Take a room there for the night. Nancy won’t think to look for you in a boarding house; she’ll never suspect you’ve decided to skip town. Then you can ride at first light.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” I said as Delia turned away—already headed back to the hall below, to the world of fun and admiration that were hers by right, seeing as she was a pretty girl and all.

  It took me no more than a few minutes to dress in my old riding trousers and shirt. Then I bundled up my three pretty dresses and the few small possessions I owned. I wrapped the whole lot in a wool blanket from my bed—a gal could always do with an extra blanket on the trail—and paused for one last look at my little crib. Cramped though it was, and despite the nature of the work that went on there, that lone, narrow room had been my home for months—and the best home I’d ever had, too, a place entirely my own, obtained through my own cleverness and commitment. I didn’t like to leave it, for that crib was a signal to me that I could do the impossible, if I just set my mind to it. I was clever enough to carve out a place for myself, even in a world that was never meant for me—even when the deck was stacked against me.