(1986) Deadwood

by Pete Dexter

  It seemed to her an occasion for another reception. "Any woman married to Mr. Hickok has the social graces," she said. "I am certain of that."

  "Whatever you want, blossom," he said.

  She sat at her desk to make an invitation list. She decided to hold the reception at home. The theater was too big, and she wanted the affair to feel warm. She decided on Sunday afternoon, coffee and rolls and sweet butter. "Do you think we should serve liquor, Jack?"

  "If you want, blossom."

  "I don't think so," she said. "It might still be too close to the assassination." She made her list, beginning with Mayor Farnum, Sheriff Seth Bullock, and Solomon Star. Then she added all the businessmen in town, except tavern owners, owners of theaters of ill repute, Jews, and coloreds. Then she added the most amusing bachelors she knew in Deadwood and finally, Charley Utter.

  She did not consider Charley Utter amusing—although she did remember the way his member rose up under her touch as they sat in the theater, and again in her living room before his imbecile friend had fallen through her window. She had no use for soft-brains, or those that encouraged them, but she overlooked that now. Charley was Bill's true friend, and she wanted the widow to feel herself among friends.

  "Perhaps we could serve wine. That might warm the event without reflecting disrespect."

  Jack was looking at himself in the dressing mirror, pulling his moustache up to see his teeth. She saw that he was on his toes; he always stood on his toes in front of the mirror.

  "Whatever you want," he said.

  When he had left her room she counted the names on the list. There were thirty-three. She pictured herself and the widow of Bill Hickok, entertaining thirty-three men.

  She changed clothes and put a shawl around her shoulders—it was September, and the afternoons could turn unexpectedly cold— and went out of the house.

  "Perhaps you could invite Mrs. Hickok to the theater," he said as she walked out the door.

  She kissed the top of his head. "Jack," she said, "the woman has just lost her husband . . ."

  Elizabeth Langrishe found Agnes Lake Hickok sitting at a window table in the dining room of the Grand Union Hotel, looking out over the street, eating asparagus and eggs. Her first thought was that the woman was too old. Her presumption was that Bill's wife would be beautiful and young and helpless. Mrs. Langrishe had looked forward to offering her the advice of a mature woman.

  But the lady sitting next to the window was at least thirty—Mrs. Langrishe's age—and not pretty in an ordinary way. There was something self-assured about her, though. Yes, it was Bill's wife. Mrs. Langrishe watched her half a minute and changed some of her thoughts about Bill Hickok.

  Agnes Lake suddenly looked up and met her stare. Bill's wife had eyes like Bill himself—like there was nothing playful in this world—and the thought blew through Mrs. Langrishe's mind that this woman might shoot her.

  She walked across the room, hearing her feet on the floor, conscious of her clothes and what another woman of her own age and experience might make of them. She stopped over the table and Mrs. Hickok looked up with flat eyes and no interest.

  "Mrs. Hickok?" Agnes Lake nodded. Elizabeth Langrishe smiled a believable smile—she could smile at her own hanging—and offered her hand. Mrs. Hickok took it, and Mrs. Langrishe sensed its uncommon strength. She had never encountered a woman with hands like these. They had the same thickness as Jack's, but Mrs. Hickok's were rougher to the touch, and harder. They were too clean to have done field work.

  "I am Elizabeth Langrishe," she said. "My husband operates the legitimate theater . . ." Mrs. Hickok stared at her, waiting. "We were friends of your husband's," she said. "Not close, but Bill often enjoyed an evening at the theater."

  Elizabeth Langrishe let go and Agnes Lake put her hand in her lap. "He had an appreciation of the fine arts," Mrs. Langrishe said.

  "I didn't know that."

  Elizabeth Langrishe sat down, feeling vaguely poleaxed. "He was a man of a multitude of interests," Mrs. Langrishe said. Then she blushed and put a hand against her cheek. "Here I sit," she said, "telling you about your own husband . . ."

  "I am grateful to know anything you might tell me," she said, and Mrs. Langrishe saw her a different way. "Bill and I weren't together long."

  "No woman understands her husband all the way through," Mrs. Langrishe said. "I have been with my Jack nine years . . ." She had begun to say she didn't understand him at all, but she stopped, suddenly not wanting to lie. She shook her head. "Jack isn't like your Bill," she said.

  Agnes wiped at the corner of her mouth with a napkin. She felt ashamed for what she'd said about herself and Bill. "No," she said, "I don't expect many are."

  She thought of him then, when she met him, coming into her tent behind the circus, dignified and reeking of whiskey. He'd taken off his hat and bowed, and introduced himself as James Butler Hickok. It took her five minutes to realize who it was. She had been sitting in her circus tights, and pulled a blanket over her legs, pretending to be cold. It was peculiar. She never worried how they appeared from the trapeze or the tightrope.

  Mrs. Langrishe was smiling in a kind way that didn't fit her. "He was highly esteemed," she said.

  Agnes Lake was suddenly impatient; she didn't know with what. "What did he do?" she said.

  "Do?" Mrs. Langrishe smiled at the question. "He was Bill Hickok."

  "What did he do?" she said again. "He wrote once that he and Charley Utter were mining gold, he wrote another time that they were into business." She looked at her plate like something on it had moved. "I knew him better than that."

  Mrs. Langrishe tried to remember what Bill did, but she'd never heard it discussed.

  "Where did he stay?" Agnes Lake said. "Where did he take his meals?" She looked out the window, as if it wasn't possible this was the right place. When she looked back into the dining room of the Grand Union Hotel, she was blinking tears. She didn't try to brush them off, and there was no other sign in her face of what she felt.

  Mrs. Langrishe covered Mrs. Hickok's hand again. "He stayed with Charley," she said. "They had a little camp on the creek."

  Agnes waited.

  "I don't know where he went for his meals," she said, "but he kept healthy, you could see that. He carried himself well . . ."

  The tears came down Agnes Lake's cheeks, but her voice stayed dry. "I don't mean to question you," she said, "but I never met a human being that struck me as helpless as Bill, and I never understood how he got by. Before we married, or after."

  "He was esteemed. People took care of him."

  Agnes Lake shook her head. "People don't take care of anybody," she said. "Not all their lives."

  The two ladies fell into a silence that was no more uncomfortable than their conversation. Elizabeth Langrishe moved her hand off Agnes Lake's, and then it came to her. "Charley took care of him," she said.

  Agnes Lake thought it over. She said, "He wrote me a letter of comfort when Bill was killed."

  Mrs. Langrishe said, "There's some out here that need others to take care of." And they sat quietly, both of them forgiving Charley Utter for things he never did.

  "I had planned to invite several of Bill's friends into my home this Sunday," Mrs. Langrishe said. "I'm sure Charley will be among them."

  Agnes Lake said, "That was very considerate of you."

  And it occurred to Mrs. Langrishe that perhaps it was. "I'm pleased to offer my home. Bill's friends have wanted to make your acquaintance."

  And they went quiet again, Elizabeth Langrishe feeling as if something had already been done. To Agnes Lake, it felt like the beginning of a fall.

  In the afternoon Charley took Jane to visit Bill again, she insisted. They stayed ten minutes, and then he drove her back down the hill to his camp beside the Whitewood. He stayed at the Grand Union now; she had no place else.

  He unhitched the horse and tied him to one of the wheels. He drew the animal a bucket of creek water, and fed him oats in a b
ucket.

  "Where you headed?" she asked when he'd finished.

  "I have business to attend," he said.

  "What if I need somethin'?"

  He looked at her a minute, and then crossed the street and bought her a bottle of whiskey. "That's all I can do," he said.

  She took the cork out of the bottle and smelled what was inside.

  "I'm going to need more morphine," she said. She took a drink from the bottle but her lips barely opened. She wanted to look thirstier than she was.

  "I'll try to find the doc," he said. He'd bought her morphine before in Chinatown.

  "You'll forgit all about me," she said.

  "No, I'll send the doc."

  She said, "You can't wait to get away from here."

  "That's true," he said.

  Doc O. E. Sick was not in, but he'd left a pencil and a pad of paper beside his door for messages. Charley wrote,

  I regret to report I got another victim, although this one was none of my doing. Her name is Jane Cannary, and she is staying in my camp and in need of morphine. I will settle accounts at your convenience.

  Charley "Colorado Charley" Utter

  He went back to the Grand Union for fresh clothes on the way to the bathhouse. Alphonso the Polite himself was behind the desk, wearing his bartender's uniform. Alphonso bowed, Charley bowed back. Alphonso always bowed when he saw Charley, it was not impossible that he was part Chinese.

  "There was a lady by, sir," he said.

  Charley stopped dead in his tracks. His first thought was that it was Jane, which was a sight more pleasant than his second thought, which was Matilda. "Was she limping?" he said.

  Alphonso shook his head. "She carried herself with strength and bearing," he said.

  "How old?"

  "I couldn't say," he said. Alphonso the Polite never commented on a lady's age. He handed Charley an envelope with his name written in careful script on the side opposite the seal. "She asked me to deliver this personally," he said.

  Charley gave Alphonso a dollar and stared at the envelope. It wasn't Matilda's writing, hers was smaller. And she pressed harder into the paper. He put it in his pocket and walked down the hallway to his room.

  Dear Mr. Utter,

  I received your letter concerning Bills death on the 27th of August, and came as soon as my obligations in St. Louis were fulfilled. I am staying in room ip of this Hotel, and am Anxious to meet with you to discuss the circumstances frankly.

  Thank you for your Prompt attention.

  It was signed Agnes Lake Hickok.

  Charley refolded the note and put it back in the envelope. It slid in easily, as if the matter itself wanted to be put away. He thought of Jane then, drinking whiskey, shooting morphine into her veins, and sitting out in front of his camp claiming that she was Bill's widow.

  The first thing Charley determined was to keep Agnes Lake away from the camp. The second thing was to keep Jane drunk. Not wild drunk—he didn't want her shooting off guns to announce herself—but to find the place that bordered on wild, where she turned morose, and to keep her there until Agnes Lake left the Black Hills.

  He put the envelope on the table next to his bed and found a clean shirt and fresh socks in the drawer. He liked having a drawer, it was a neatness you could see just sliding it open. In the weeks since Bill's death Charley's orderliness had slipped away from him, and left him open to every kind of trouble the wind picked up and blew his direction. It was unsettling, not choosing your own trouble, and Charley's instincts pulled him in small ways back to his natural protections. He closed the drawer and centered the envelope on the table and headed for the bathhouse. There was a bath at the end of the hall, but Charley was accustomed to the Bottle Fiend's company, and did not like to bathe alone.

  The Bottle Fiend was napping in the chair beside the door when Charley came in. His arms were crossed and his chin rested against his chest. He looked ordinary as boiled potatoes. The thought came to Charley that the Bottle Fiend only gave himself away when he talked, or fell through glass windows, or walked up and down Main Street with his gunnysack collecting bottles. It seemed to Charley those things could be avoided.

  He stepped up onto the porch and his shadow crossed the Botde Fiend's face, and he opened his eyes. He looked tired and old. Charley never thought of him that way—young or old—and it surprised him to see the age so clear. "You look wilted," he said.

  The Bottle Fiend checked the gunnysack next to his chair; the bottles shifted and made flat, musical sounds. "It's the general's pony soldiers," he said.

  The general had ordered all his officers and men to bathe, and more than one hundred of them had lined up outside the bathhouse. "They left all these bottles," the soft-brain said, and touched the sack.

  Charley said, "Did you remember to charge?"

  "American soldiers don't pay for nothing," he said.

  "Who told you that?"

  "Them."

  Charley took off his shirt and pants and sat down in his regular tub. The Bottle Fiend heated water and poured it over his shoulders. "Did the biter die?" he said after a while.

  Soft-brain or not, the man had the knack of sliding into a conversation.

  Charley said no. He hadn't seen Lurline in three weeks, and then she was sitting with Handsome Banjo Dick Brown at the Eate-phone on Main Street, cutting beefsteak into bite-size pieces for him.

  As long as Charley could remember, it was always too much peeder business or none at all. Mostly none at all. "I shook hands with the general," the soft-brain said, "and the lady was there that had us to the theater. She could bite you . . ."

  Charley shook his head. "That one's likely to bite something off," he said. He turned in the tub and looked over his shoulder. "What's all this talk of lady biters anyway? I don't remember that you took an interest."

  "I heard some things," the soft-brain said. "That you shot Handsome Dick over an upstairs girl."

  "I shot him because he was about to shoot me."

  "I heard it was an upstairs girl. You bested him in a gunfight, and then give him his life."

  "I shot him from under a bed," Charley said.

  "Whose bed?"

  Charley dropped himself deeper into the tub, until the water covered his shoulders. The soft-brain said, "I heard you was the best gunfighter the Hills has left."

  Charley saw where it was going then. He said, "Oh shit."

  "They said you was as good as Bill." And a little later, "Bill got shot."

  Charley said, "There isn't anybody knows that better than me."

  "Gunfighters get shot."

  Charley heard the worry in that, and thought worrying must be unnatural to the soft-brain, and regretted bringing it into his life.

  "I wasn't intended for that," he said. "It was an accident."

  "Because you wanted to get bit."

  "Because there isn't anybody that can't be shot." The Bottle Fiend sat still, waiting. Charley's thoughts turned to Lurline; he had ideas to hire her to run a house for him in I^ad, where things were quieter.

  He had considered it from every business angle, and couldn't see that it was worse than the other things he'd done for money. It wasn't being a whore man itself that he was against, it was the way whore men treated their girls. His would come and go as they pleased, quit if they wanted. The only rule he'd settled on was daily baths, and some of the upstairs girls had inclinations that way on their own.

  The soft-brain said, "Did Bill know that he could get shot too?"

  "Don't worry about Bill," he said. "He met God by now, and he was ready. He didn't keep secrets from himself, what he was, and in the end he was ready."

  "I'm ready to meet God," the soft-brain said.

  "Not yet," Charley said. "There's plenty of time, when things take their natural course."

  "Not too much," he said. And Charley wondered at the things that the Bottle Fiend's heart told him, and that they never scared him. "I'm ready," he said, "I got a present."

 
The Bottle Fiend touched the sack of bottles.

  "You going to give all those to God?" Charley said.

  "I'm going to turn over my secrets," he said.

  And, reflecting on it there in the bath, it seemed like they were talking about the same thing.

  The presence of Bill's wife in Deadwood affected Charley's sleep, which was fitful even before her arrival. He lay in bed all night, trying to concentrate on old arguments he'd had with himself over the whorehouse in Lead. Her note lay on the table next to his bed; he could not keep her out of his thoughts. It felt like Bill himself had come back to ask where he'd been the last days of his life. He left his bed before sunrise and collected his gelding at the livery. He rode uphill into the mountains toward Lead, and the sun broke behind him before he reached town. In the sudden warmth he thought for a moment he had gleaned something about night and day and what happened to Bill, that things came to relieve each other. He tried to put that into words but it wouldn't fit.

  It was one of the mysteries of his life, the thoughts he had that existed without words. Bill had once said the same thing.

  The house he meant to buy was on the north side of Lead, at the lowest elevation in town. There were five bars within a hundred feet, and that was as close to a badlands as Lead had. The house itself had been built for L. D. Kellogg, who was sent out from California by the mining speculator George Hearst to buy the Homestake Mine and every property adjacent. Kellogg had arrived with his wife, and moved out of the house within one week. His wife was intolerant of drinking. The house had stayed empty since—anyone with the two-thousand-dollar asking price preferring to settle in Deadwood.

  The structure had eleven rooms and a balcony off the second floor. There were brass door handles and locks, and little hooks in the walls where Mrs. Kellogg had hung pictures. Standing in the living room, you could hear Mr. Hearst's men digging the first mining tunnel in the Black Hills. It was a distant sound, you had to hold still to notice.

  Charley stood in the front room now and listened. The house had a peaceful feeling, and while the feeling lasted he walked uphill two hundred yards to the bank, woke the manager, and signed over a draft from the Bank of Colorado for two thousand dollars. It took fifteen minutes to settle the sale—George Hearst owned the bank too.