(1986) Deadwood

by Pete Dexter

  The Bottle Fiend looked around the room, then out the window. He seemed happy to look down where he'd been before. Boone watched him, not knowing how to put things so he would understand. "You're the one that commits suicide," he said after a while.

  The Bottle Fiend held out his shirt collar to show him his neck. "I hanged myself and et poison eggs," he said. "And tried to shoot myself once, too."

  "I heard about you," Boone said. He sat back down on the windowsill and the soft-brain took the chair over by Lurline's dresser.

  "A soft-brain shoots himself in the head, so what?" the Bottle Fiend said.

  Boone shook his head. "I never said nothing like that. What I heard was that you wasn't afraid." The Bottle Fiend stared at him and waited. "How many bottles you got there?" Boone said.

  The Bottle Fiend pulled the sack close to his chest. The sound was fragile and nervous, but it settled. "I ain't going to take them from you," Boone said, smiling the way he'd seen other people smile when they talked to children. "I just wondered how many you had."

  "Eleven hundred and forty-seven," the Bottle Fiend said.

  And that made Boone smile for real. "Where did you hear a number like that?" he said. He thought bottles must be like money to soft-brains.

  The Bottle Fiend shrugged.

  Boone took his pistol out of its holster and held it up for the Bottle Fiend to see. "You ever shot a gun?" he said.

  The Bottle Fiend nodded his head, but he didn't try to touch the gun. "I promised to Dr. Sick to quit," he said. "So he give me the bathhouse instead."

  Boone smiled and nodded. The muscles in his jaws hurt. "What I meant was did you ever shoot anybody but your own self. Not that that don't count. . ."

  The Bottle Fiend turned in his chair and looked the other way. It was quiet in the room. The Bottle Fiend ran his finger over one of the little bottles on Lurline's dresser. It was clear glass with a red cap, shaped like a drop of sweat. Boone thought it was her France perfume, but he wasn't sure. "You like them little bottles?" he said.

  The Bottle Fiend moved his hand from that bottle to the next one, which was larger and regular-shaped. And then to the toilet water. It came from San Francisco; Lurline told him that when he'd first commented on her smell. Lurline was proud to have things from foreign places.

  When he had finished touching the toilet water, the Bottle Fiend turned back around in his chair and looked at Boone again. "I ain't stupid," he said.

  "I never said you was," Boone said. "I just asted if you liked them little bottles, because if you did, maybe I could let you have one if you did something for me." Boone tried to think of which one Lurline wouldn't miss.

  The Bottle Fiend shook his head. "Not one," he said. "I need six."

  Boone started up off the windowsill after him, but he made himself sit back down. He could almost feel the Bottle Fiend in his hands. It wasn't his peeder that led him around, but sometimes the feel of breaking somebody's bones did; it rushed over him in a way that he couldn't hold himself back.

  He smiled, showing too much teeth. "I might could give you two," he said, "if you could do something for me at the bathhouse." Boone moved the gun closer to the Bottle Fiend, who gave no sign of taking it.

  "I promised Dr. Sick," he said.

  Boone said, "I ain't sayin' to shoot yourself. I'm talkin' about something else."

  The Bottle Fiend turned back to the dresser and picked up the perfume from France.

  Boone moved over next to him, still holding the gun in his hand. "There ain't but seven here," he said. He took the bottle out of the Bottle Fiend's hand and looked at it closer. It had little bumps in the bottom and a picture of an angel on the top, where it smoothed out. The Bottle Fiend looked up at him, wanting it back. "This here's a damn fine bottle," Boone said. "I could give you this one and some of the others . . ."

  The Bottle Fiend picked up the toilet water, which came in a quart size, and moved it away from the smaller bottles on the dresser. He said he needed six.

  Boone put his hand over the Bottle Fiend's mouth. The Bottle Fiend didn't move or try to get it away, he just stood still and stared at him, not even a little fearful. It wasn't the way Boone thought soft-brains would be.

  "All right," Boone said. "If I was to give you this France bottle right now, that means you got to do something for me with the gun." He took his hand off the soft-brain's mouth and put the bottle back on the table to see if they had an agreement.

  The Bottle Fiend looked at the other bottles and shook his head.

  Boone studied him, trying to decide. What it came down to, if the soft-brain messed it up and told about this, nobody would listen. If he got Bill, they might not even hang him, figuring he didn't know better. There was an asylum for soft-brains in Bismarck full of killers that didn't know better. Boone had heard they painted pictures with their fingers in there all day long. In some ways, Boone thought, he wouldn't of minded being a soft-brain himself.

  He took the cap off the toilet water and left it open on the dresser. Then, one by one, he opened the other bottles and emptied them into it. No sense in getting Lurline mad at him if he didn't have to. The Bottle Fiend watched everything he did.

  When he'd finished, the toilet water was pink and about an inch higher in its bottle than it had been. Boone's fingers stunk in a way that wouldn't wash off, he knew that without trying. There was something chemical in all those perfumes that didn't agree with each other. He put the caps back on the bottles—starting with the toilet water—and the fumes wasn't as strong. "Now," he said, sliding all six of the empties across the dresser to the soft-brain, "all these here is for you."

  "I need six," he said.

  "Goddamnit," Boone whispered, "that is six." Boone felt himself reaching for the soft-brain's throat, but stopped himself again. Instead, he moved the empties into a new spot on the dresser, counting each one as he moved it so the soft-brain could see he wasn't cheating. "One, two, three, four, five, six."

  "That's what I said," the soft-brain said.

  Boone said, "Good," showing teeth again. "That's good. You got what you want. Now here's what you got to do for them." He went into Lurline's dresser drawer and found the .44 caliber Smith & Wesson derringer he'd given her. It was about the size of a canary. Boone had shot it once, and it had felt like he was holding a firecracker when it went off. He put the gun in the soft-brain's hand and wrapped his fingers around the handle.

  "It's little-bitty, ain't it?" Boone said. The Bottle Fiend looked at the derringer. "Now what you got to do is when a certain party comes into your bathhouse again, I want you to put this little-bitty gun up next to his ear and pull the trigger, so they can hear it."

  For the first time, the soft-brain looked scared. "Don't worry," Boone said, "it's just little-bitty. You walk up behind him, like you was bringin' water, and put it just behind his ear. Up close . . ." He stood the soft-brain up and took his seat, then he moved the hand holding the derringer until it was right behind his own ear. "You see?" he said. "Right there, and then you pull the trigger."

  The soft-brain's hand dropped as soon as Boone let go of it. "And then," Boone said, "all them bottles is yours, fair and square." The Bottle Fiend looked at the bottles. "You can take them now," Boone said, "but they ain't yours until it's done."

  "What's done?" the Bottle Fiend said.

  Boone got out of the chair and went back to the window, thinking how to put it. "For the bottles," he said. "You like them little bottles, don't you?"

  The room was suddenly quiet.

  Boone quit trying to be polite. "You and me made a deal," he said, "and nobody backs out after they made a deal." He took the knife off his belt and held it up where the soft-brain could see it. "If they back out," he said, "they get their gizzard cut." He watched to see if the Bottle Fiend was scared of a knife. Everybody was scared of something, it was just harder to locate in a soft-brain.

  He moved in for a better look at the knife. He touched the blade with the tip of his finger
and smiled.

  "Git away from there," Boone said. The Bottle Fiend pressed on the blade—Boone could feel the pressure—and then ran his finger the length. It happened before Boone understood what he was doing, and for all the things he had seen and done, including cutting the head off Frank Towles and spending the night with Calamity Jane Cannary, nothing had ever made him feel the way he did when he looked down at the blade and saw the tip of the soft-brain's finger hanging there, half on, half off, next to a smear of blood.

  "What in Jesus' name?" he screamed.

  The Bottle Fiend was holding the finger in his other hand, along with the derringer. The blood was running down both of his arms and dripping on the floor, and he had a look on his face that was somehow the opposite of Boone's feelings.

  "I don't want to shoot nobody with a little-bitty gun," the Bottle Fiend said.

  Boone took the derringer out of his hand and put it back in Lurline's drawer, spotting her things with blood. "Don't do nothin' else," Boone said. "Just wrap your finger up . . ." He looked around the room and found a pair of Lurline's lace panties near the closet. They were the color of Key lime pie and manufactured in New Orleans, Louisiana. She'd told him about that like New Orleans was someplace he should of been, and Key lime pie was something he should of ate. He picked them up off the floor and wrapped the soft-brain's finger.

  The blood was down the front of his shirt now, and on his pants and face. Boone had never seen as much blood from an inconsequential opening. It was on the windowsill and the floor and the walls. Every time the soft-brain moved, he left blood somewhere new.

  Boone doubled the panties back over the finger and squeezed. "Here now," he said, "you squeeze this." The soft-brain smiled and tried to unwrap the finger.

  Boone slapped him once, to bring him out of it. The look on the soft-brain's face changed then, went completely dead. "Now listen," Boone said, "git yourself down to the bathhouse and clean up. If anybody asts, you don't remember how that happened, but you was sawin' wood."

  "I don't want to shoot nobody for you," the Bottle Fiend said.

  "I don't know what you're talkin' about," Boone said. "You're a soft-brain, cuts his own person and eats poison eggs, I never had nothing to do with it."

  The soft-brain seemed to understand that. "Do I get the bottles?" he said.

  Boone took his arm and pulled him to the door, dripping blood as he went. "You don't get nothin' because you wasn't here," he said. "And if you said elsewise, I'd tell Doc Sick what you done." He picked up the sack of bottles and wrapped the top of that around the hurt hand, then he pushed the Bottle Fiend out the door.

  "I don't need them bottles anyway," the soft-brain said. That stopped Boone for a minute, and before he closed the door the soft-brain said something else. "The thoughts in them bottles, every one of them is about little-bitty guns."

  Boone listened at the door while the Bottle Fiend went down the stairs, dragging the bag on the steps behind him. Then he looked at the room, covered with blood, and the dresser with all of Lur-line's perfume bottles sitting empty in a line. He didn't see there was anything to do about the blood—when it dried you didn't notice it much anyway—but he did sit down at her dresser and fill up the little bottles again, replacing the caps as he finished each one. It was a long job, and Boone held one hand in the other as he poured to stop the shaking in his fingers. It took most of an hour, but he stayed with it.

  There wasn't no sense in getting Lurline mad for nothing.

  The man who would kill Wild Bill Hickok had been in Deadwood since late winter.

  His name was Jack McCall, and he had come to the Hills from Cheyenne with Phatty Thompson and eighty-three cats. Phatty paid twenty-five cents a cat in Cheyenne, and meant to sell each of them for ten dollars in Dead wood. There was a rat problem in the northern Hills, and some of the upstairs girls wanted cats for company. He correctly surmised that once one got a cat, all of them would want cats.

  Phatty found Jack McCall begging nickels and running errands for whores at the Republican Theater in Cheyenne, and told him he looked like just what he needed. "Yessir, I am," McCall said. Nobody had ever said he was what they needed before. He was a weak-looking Irishman with narrow shoulders and no butt end and a face like a rodent, which was something Phatty Thompson noticed when he picked him out of the crowd of hobos that stood outside the Republican begging change.

  Phatty thought a man that looked like a rodent would have a way with cats. He had constructed a two-hundred-pound wooden crate that fit into the back of his wagon, and he kept the cats there as he collected them. In the four days he spent buying cats, the crate became the most popular attraction in the city. Every time Jack threw a new torn inside, it was life or death until the animals decided where the new one fit into the order of things. Sometimes one wouldn't fit in at all.

  Jack McCall loved the sounds of a cat fight, he recognized the screams from his own secret thoughts. His job was feeding and care of the cats, and removal of the dead. They killed each other about two a day. Phatty Thompson bought chicken heads in twenty-pound sacks and Jack McCall would toss them to different parts of the cage. Sometimes he threw a head between two of the toms so they would fight. He had favorites among the cats, and made sure they always got fed. Others—the smallest ones and the ones that were scairt—he left them huddled in their corners and never tossed them nothing.

  At the end of each day, Phatty Thompson gave him a dollar, which he used to buy whiskey. It was the best job Jack McCall ever had. He was sorry to leave Cheyenne for the Hills.

  Jack McCall rode on the floor of the wagon, in back behind the cage where he could keep an eye on the cats. That's where Phatty put the extra sacks of chicken heads too. Jack did not mind the smell of chicken blood or the ride. For distraction, he would grab an occasional tail through the bars of the crate, and when the cat complained the others would attack it, at least the ones that wasn't fucking.

  That was the only thing Jack McCall didn't like about the job. The cats were fucking all the time. When he saw them at it, Jack would bang on the cage with his shoe. The noise stopped them at first, but the cats soon accustomed themselves and paid no attention. Phatty didn't like cat fucking either. He said it ruined future business.

  They rode unmolested through Wyoming and then up into the Dakota Territory. It was five days to Laramie, and another five into the Hills. The Indians had not yet officially got into their war paint, and it was not considered brave or foolish to travel alone.

  Two days into the Hills, on the north side of Hill City, Phatty drove over a stump on the bank of Spring Creek, hit some ice, and tipped the wagon over. He had been drinking at the time. The crate broke open and the cats ran into the woods. Jack McCall was knocked unconscious and came to in a pile of half-frozen chicken heads.

  There was a cat licking his fingers, another one at his feet. Jack picked them up and put them back in the crate. "I knew you was a cat man the minute I saw you," Phatty said. He was sitting on the ground against a tree. The cats came out of the brush and Jack picked them up and dropped them in the crate. Phatty and the miners slapped him on the back when he was finished and called him a natural cat man, and Jack McCall understood it was the best thing he had ever done.

  In the end, they got them all back but eleven. Phatty gave another five to the miners, and camped there on Spring Creek overnight. The miners built a fire and called, "Oh, Joe . . ." into the night. They talked about their women and children back in the States, about the Indians, about gold. And they talked about Jack McCall. Nobody had ever seen such a natural cat man.

  They got drunk and one of the miners named his new cat "McCall" in Jack's honor. They slept on the floor of a miner's cabin, and in the morning they tied the crate to the wagon and headed toward the northern Hills. Spring Creek was the second place in Jack McCall's life that he was sorry to leave.

  They got to Deadwood in two days and Phatty sold twenty cats for ten dollars each, just getting drunk at the Senate. Th
ere were a few Maltese, which went for twenty-five. "You and me are going into business," he said to Jack that night.

  The next night somebody pried the wood planks off the crate and all the unsold cats escaped, and were claimed by upstairs girls and miners, or anybody lonesome or had rat problems.

  On the same day news of Indian trouble arrived in Deadwood. Norman Storms and Fxldie Rowser were killed south of Cheyenne, William Ward killed and mutilated four miles north of Belle Fourche.

  Jack McCall went looking for Phatty that night to ask when they were going after more cats. He found him in the Senate. They had a chair from England in there three feet across, and they saved it for him to sit in. Phatty shook his head. "We ain't in business no more," he said. "The pilgrims vandalized my cats, and I sure as hell ain't goin' back to Cheyenne now, the way things is with the redskins.

  "The way things is, I'm staying right here until the U.S. Army comes in and kills every one of the red sons of bitches, so we can live safe." He patted his seat when he said "right here."

  Jack McCall said, "I'm a natural cat man." Phatty gave him twenty dollars and bought him a drink.

  "I hate to fire a man as good as you," he said, "but we ain't got a business now."

  Jack McCall waited out the winter in a pine shack on the east side of town. The roof caved in twice under the weight of snow. During the days he moved from one tavern to another, until he was known and avoided all over the badlands. He ran errands for the upstairs girls and sometimes swept out their rooms. He was a natural cat man, but Deadwood was the wrong place for specialists.

  In the morning he woke up on the floor and made a fire. He felt good in the morning, not like hurting nothing. That was when he ran his errands and swept out rooms. Sometimes the girls sent him into Chinatown to pick up their laundry. He went, although he didn't like nobody to talk fast or point too much with their fingers.