by Pete Dexter
The sheriff kept his arm around Solomon, smiling at Mrs. Langrishe. He said, "I think Mr. Star and I are going to take our leave early, and satisfy ourselves on Mr. Tan's condition."
It looked to Charley like Solomon was already satisfied.
A moment after they left, Mrs. Langrishe sat down next to him on the davenport. The Negro walked by with more wine. "Well, well," Charley said, feeling what he'd already drunk, "keeping the sabbath."
She closed her eyes. "A kindness," she said. "I tried to do a simple kindness, and it turned out morbid. I should never have come to this place."
Charley patted her hand, wondering if what she had done upstairs was included in the kindness or the morbidity. "It could of been worse," he said. He finished the wine in his glass and looked past Mrs. Langrishe for the Negro.
"I hope the shot didn't distress Mrs. Hickok," she said.
Charley wet his finger and ran it around the edge of the glass, but failed to produce music. "I expect she's hard to startle," he said. He looked toward the far end of the room, wanting to see her or the Negro.
"She has beautiful manners," Mrs. Langrishe said. "She appears so reserved, yet so determined . . ."
"There is an uncommon directness to her," Charley said.
Mrs. Langrishe turned on the cushion to look at him. "Do you find directness an attractive quality in women, Mr. Utter?"
"I find it a relief," he said. He saw from her face it wasn't the answer. He spotted the Negro and stood to wave him down. Glasses were exchanged, two for one. It was unpleasant stuff, but it grew on you, and he drank one before he resumed the conversation.
"This drink is closer to love than love itself," he said. He was looking at the glasses together—one full, one empty—when he said that.
She smiled at him and cocked her head, waiting for him to finish. He noticed the freckles on her chest again—where had the freckles been when they were upstairs?—and the tendons in her neck where it met her shoulders. He was hypnotized by her tendons. "Was that a toast?" she said. " 'This drink is closer to love than love itself?"
He felt himself changing ten ways a second. "Just that it grows on you until you need it," he said.
She smiled at him from the davenport, complimented, and he smiled back. It seemed to him that they were suddenly getting along better.
"Perhaps you would care to see the rest of the house," she said.
"That's a thought," he said. She took his arm and they went back up the stairs to the little room on the third floor. This time, though, he stopped her hands before he was halfway unbuttoned and stared into her face.
"What?" she whispered.
He shook his head, trying to remember what. "It's these tendons," he said, touching her neck. "And these freckles into your dress." He touched the freckles with the tip of his finger, moving from one to another. "I need time to count these freckles."
She put her hands on her hips and turned once in front of him, stopping halfway around to look over her shoulder. He touched the back of her neck and kept his fingers motionless while she turned under them.
He unfastened her dress from the top, one button at a time. She stood very still, and little bumps came up all over her chest. He kissed the bumps where he saw them, and then sat on the davenport, feeling dizzy.
She stepped out of her dress and all the silk and ruffles beneath it. She turned around again, slowly, and as she faced the window he reached out and touched her bottom. She stood still and he moved his hands over her cheeks, trying to think of something to say about them that she would like. They were soft and cool, and he saw the little bumps again, above his hands on her back.
"Do you like what you see, Mr. Utter?" she said.
He kissed the small of her back, and she moaned. Then he answered her, and she moaned again. "They're just damn near identical," he said.
He put one of his hands on her leg then, just above the knee, and slid it up until his thumb touched her bottom. He heard her breathing change, he felt a wetness in her hairs. He separated her lips and then pushed a finger inside, surprised at how small the opening was. It was nothing compared to Lurline's. Of course, Mrs. Langrishe didn't associate with the notorious. "I've got to ask Lurline sometime if bad men have naturally bigger peeders," he said out loud.
Mrs. Langrishe had been moving into him in a subtle way, but she stopped. "I beg your pardon?"
He said, "I was wondering if bad men had bigger peeders than normal citizens." She pulled away from him and turned around with an expression Charley didn't remember seeing before. It didn't look like anything you learned being an actress.
"It seems like it would go the other way," he said. "I mean, if it was a thing to make you one way or the other, it seems like a little peeder would make you mean."
She was just beginning to smile at him—he knew now that he could make her smile—when they heard the shots. There were four of them, from two different guns. He watched it change her face, and saw she was afraid, and then hateful. The civilities would not leave her alone.
The shots came from outside, and he went to the window. "It's probably a drunk," he said. "A miner or a tourist, of no consequence except to themself."
He got to the window, though, and saw that he was wrong.
Not that she wasn't drunk.
Jane was sitting in the flower garden. He knew it was Jane from her hat and her crutch, which was resting on the ground next to her. She had a pistol in each hand, and was holding them at different angles, one pointed more or less at the window. She cocked the other gun and pulled the trigger, and disappeared in smoke. A pinecone fell out of a nearby tree.
At the sound of the shot, Mrs. Langrishe covered herself with her dress and climbed into a corner of the davenport. "It's nothing to upset yourself," Charley said, watching Jane. She moved her head then, looking skyward, until he saw her chin under the brim of her hat, and then her nose, and then the bottle between her legs. Before he could see her eyes, she cocked the other gun and shot a board off the house. Charley pulled away from the window, and Mrs. Langrishe jumped at his movement, as if he were there to hurt her. "It's nothing to worry yourself," he said.
"Don't look at me," she said, and pulled the dress tighter against her body.
Charley looked back out the window in time to see Jane getting to her feet. She used one of her pistols, pressing the nose of it into the ground and pushing herself up, and the crutch. She stood up, swaying, and collected the other pistol and her bottle off the ground. Then she looked at the house in a vengeful way and started for the front door. "What is it?" Mrs. Langrishe said.
He turned around. She was still pressed into the corner of the davenport, but she was in her clothes. Elizabeth Langrishe's dressing habits defied the laws of time. "It's Jane Cannary," he said.
"It's a woman?"
"In a manner of speaking."
She stood up and walked to the window. Jane was gone. "Why would a woman be shooting a gun in my yard?" Mrs. Langrishe said, "Unless she was attacked . . ."
Charley shook his head. "There's nothing in the Black Hills to attack her," he said.
"Where did she go, then?"
Charley smiled an uncomfortable smile. "She may of invited herself to the party."
This time Mrs. Langrishe did not wait for him at the bottom of the stairs. By the time Charley got to the second floor, she was at the other end of the hallway, holding her skirts away from her feet, heading down into the party.
Charley felt an obligation to stop her, but he didn't know how. Mrs. Langrishe was a woman of sudden passions. The thought crossed his mind that Jack Langrishe might have lost his interest in womanhood and taken up crushing hands after he married her. A woman like Mrs. Langrishe, you might need a diversion.
The voice of Jane Cannary carried up the stairs and into his thoughts. Drunk and hoarse, she could not hide her apprehensions that she didn't fit. "I am here to see this woman claims to be married to my Bill," she shouted. "I aim to clear this up so I can g
et on to my career."
Charley moved to the top of the stairs. From there he could see her, standing in the doorway, squinting under the brim of her hat, holding a gun in one of her hands, leaning on the crutch with the other. The bottle was stuck into her coat pocket. Jane reeled, pointing the pistol at everything she saw. There was a weed stuck to the mud in the barrel.
Mrs. Langrishe was standing close to her, in a circle of guests. The resolve in her face was gone now, and Charley was struck again by how deep her fears went. He started down the stairs for Jane.
She sensed the movement and turned, falling back into the door, pointing the gun at the ceiling over his head. Her crutch bounced on Mrs. Langrishe's pine floors. She said, "Don't move, fancy, I'll shoot your peeder out your ass."
Charley came down the stairs. "It's only me," he said. "Nobody fancy."
"I seen who it is, Mr. Necktie," she said. Losing the crutch freed her left hand, and she reached into her pocket and found the bottle. She spit the cork on the floor next to her crutch.
She took a drink and her eyes watered. Charley took a step down the stairs. "This isn't any way to act," he said. She aimed the gun in the direction of his head and he stopped. Women were known for pulling the trigger when their eyes watered. The circle of guests opened between them, not to interfere with her trajectory.
"I don't need some damn fool tellin' me how to act at fancy parties," she said. She looked around the hallway then, at the guests and then at the ceiling. "I might just shoot this place up."
One of the women screamed, and that seemed to please her. A smile came across her face, and some of it came into her eyes too. "Now, where is this claim-jumper says she was married to my Bill?" she said. "Give her up or I'll make a scene . . ."
Charley was three stairs from the bottom, watching the gun, wondering how deep the mud went up into the barrel. He pictured the cylinder exploding and blowing apart all the glass in Mrs. Langrishe's house. He wondered how it got to be his concern. "Jane," he said, "you got a barrelful of mud in there."
"Then you wouldn't mind," she said, squinting down the barrel at his head, "if I was to squeeze off one in your direction." He stood still and waited to see if she would do it. She held him there a minute and then smiled and lowered the gun. "I couldn't shoot a friend of Bill's," she said. "It was a promise I made him before he died."
There was movement in the circle of guests then. Jane started, pointing the weapon at a dozen different people, and then Agnes Lake stepped out of the circle. She stood half a head taller than Jane, twice as strong, wise as the Bible. Her dress was a red color and her face was smooth and calm. "Well, well," Jane said. She lowered the pistol halfway to her side and stared at Agnes. Charley saw the chance to take it away, but he stood where he was.
"I heard you claimed you was the wife of Bill Hickok," Jane said. Agnes didn't move or answer. She looked as if she were trying to decide what this was in front of her.
Jane looked around the room, as if she had just noticed where she was. "I'd better get some answers," she said to the guests—not to Agnes—"Bill never told me about nobody else." Jane straightened herself as she spoke, trying to match Agnes Lake's height. She put her bottle back in her pocket and pulled the brim of her hat down until it bent the tops of her ears. She brushed at some of the weeds sticking to her coat. Then she considered Agnes Lake again, who still hadn't moved. Jane took a step backward and someone laughed out loud. She pointed her gun in the direction of the sound, but without an intention to shoot.
"I am Agnes Lake," Agnes said then. Her voice was slow and even. Charley noted the change that came over her in the presence of violence, it was the opposite of Mrs. Langrishe's change. "I married Bill Hickok in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in the spring of this year," she said, "and he took me back to my home in St. Louis until he could locate a proper position."
Jane shook her head. "Bill would of mentioned it," she said. "He never said a word."
The guests began to notice Jane's smell, and edged away, smiling at each other. Charley said, "Let me take you somewhere else, Jane."
She looked at him, as sorry as she had ever been in her life. "Where?"
"Somewhere else," he said.
She looked at him a long minute, and then turned back to Agnes Lake. "Bill loved me," she said. "Me and him were partners."
Then she said, "He was my husband as much as yours." She had dropped back to normal height and was leaning against the door frame, her crutch and the cork to her bottle on the floor at Agnes's feet. One of the guests laughed; this time Jane didn't bother to point her gun.
"Somebody give me my damn crutch," she said. "This ain't my kind of party." Charley stepped toward the crutch, but Agnes Lake bent first. She handed Jane the crutch and then patted her shoulder. Jane jumped at the touch.
"A man like Bill, there must have been a lot of us that loved him," Agnes said. Jane shook at the words. "And he loved us back," Agnes said, "in his own way, each of us different."
Jane blinked and wiped at her eye. Charley thought she would cry. "You ain't too bad for a fancy," Jane said. "I'm surprised Bill didn't mention you." And then, still holding a gun, and in front of forty witnesses, Calamity Jane Cannary bowed her head and did as much of a curtsy as her bad leg would allow.
Then she pulled the brim of her hat down over her eyes and walked out the door. Once it had closed, Mrs. Langrishe excused herself and could be heard a few minutes later, in the back, emptying her stomach. The guests exchanged small smiles, and added Mrs. Langrishe's discomfort to the stories of the afternoon. Charley found the Negro in the kitchen and sat down next to him in front of the west window, intending to drink what was left of the wine.
"That Miss Calamity," the Negro said, "she surely do know how to light up the room."
Charley nodded. "It was getting dull, with only the Chinese shot," he said. The sun was moving toward the hills, long shadows lay in the yard. He thought of Bill in the ground; he wondered if Jane would find someplace and go to sleep. The guests had begun to leave and Mrs. Langrishe stood at the door, looking pale, thanking them for coming. There was dried blood on her floors and the smell of gunpowder hung dead in the air.
"Thank you for joining us," she said.
He did not see Agnes Lake until she sat down in the chair next to him and poured herself a glass of the wine. She looked at the Negro, who excused himself to a different part of the house. "I got to help the missus clean up," he said.
They sat still and looked out the window. "I am leaving here tomorrow," she said. He thought she might be asking him to come along. She put her hand over his and left it there, and it was more private than anything that had gone on with Mrs. Langrishe upstairs.
In the yard the shadows had moved and grown. He felt the shadows coming for him before he was ready.
"Bill had his own life," she said a little later. "And he left it unfinished. This place is unfinished too."
He said, "This place feeds off its dead." He poured from a fresh bottle of wine. He said, "It feels like there's something more to do."
She smiled at him and shook her head. She spoke so deep in her throat Charley could barely hear it. "He had his own life, and he lived it unfinished. There's some like that, people and places . . . It isn't what's left to do at the end, it's the things left unfinished along the way." He thought she might be asking him again.
"That was a kind thing you did," he said, meaning her meeting with Jane.
She looked at their hands on the table. "He had his own life," she said again, "there's nothing to blame or forgive in that, it was just his life. The way he lived it leaves an ache in your heart, but that's my heart and yours, not Bill's."
"There's no hurry to leave," Charley said.
She squeezed his hand and finished what was left in her glass.
She nodded toward the door, where Mrs. Langrishe and her guests were thanking each other for being there. "I'll leave Bill to them," she said. "They'll keep him alive."
"They don'
t know the first thing."
She smiled at him and filled their glasses. "That wasn't accidental," she said. She held her glass between them and he touched it with his. He wasn't sure what they were toasting, it wasn't Bill.
"Mending hearts," she said, sounding like Bill now. Sounding like Bill forgiving him.
"Things ought to of happened another way," he said.
And she touched him a different way—maybe the way she'd touched Jane—and drank her wine. It left the tips of a tiny wet moustache on her lip. "Things don't care how they happen," she said, "that's left for us, to care." And he thought she was asking him again, and he would have gone with her then, if he had been sure.
In the door, Mrs. Langrishe had thanked the last of her guests and turned to the kitchen, watching him and Agnes holding hands across the table. He picked up something ungracious in her expression.
"I'll picture what you did for Jane," he said. "That will stick with me." Agnes smiled at him—a smile like Bill's—and leaned across the table to kiss his cheek. He felt the wine on her lip. Then she stood up, straightened herself, and started for the door. The sight of Mrs. Langrishe stopped her cold.
"There's no need to hurry off," he said.
And then she was crying. Not sobs and wails—that didn't fit her—just crying. He stood up and put his arms around her again, the second and last time in their lives. He whispered in her ear. "Mending hearts," he said. "We got mending hearts."
And in two minutes Agnes Lake had composed herself and wiped the wine and tears off her face, and Charley stood, nose to nose with her, wanting to go with her wherever she went, from then on, for all the lost places of his life. He said, "You don't have to hurry off."
And she smiled at him again—he swore he could see Bill in it— and she said good-bye.
He tried to walk her back to the hotel, but she shook her head— it didn't look like much more than a sudden chill—and left him there in the kitchen, with Mrs. Langrishe watching him from the front door.