Evening, I called out. Evening—where am I?
She stopped in the middle of the street and looked at me. Heaven, she said.
What?
Only a joke. This is Enchant, she said.
I calculated how long we had been walking the streets and not seeing anyone and I thought, I must be dreaming. But when I tested the smell of the air and I stomped my feet in the dust it seemed as if, in spite of the absence of children or birds to match the sounds I could hear, and in spite of the blue shadows creeping over the doorways burdened with weeds, the town felt alive. I looked at the woman, who had stayed in the middle of the street, and her mouth was full of teeth and her eyes blinked the way that living eyes blink. I had been so long used to silence. For a year my father had been so ill and I had driven away other chatty people to spend my life with my horse or with my father or with books. I had spent so much time being carried over the earth or as a bodiless person treading through memories and stories, I did not know much about real bodies, how solid they were or what size they should be. So when this woman spoke again and pointed I just went where she told me, to a house beside a bridge. I knocked on the door and the woman walked up behind me, opened the door, went inside, closed it, then opened it again and said hello.
Where can I find lodging? I asked her.
You can stay here. I knew you were coming. Your father told me.
My father? My father is dead.
That must be why his voice was so weak. She shrugged. If you’re looking, you may find someone still among the living tomorrow. You have nothing to lose by taking a look around. What are you called?
My name is Miette, I told her, although my name is Martha after my mother. Only my father called me Miette and then only when we were alone. Little crumb, it means in French, sweet little thing. It made me happy every time he said my name.
IN THE house it was as if she had been waiting with everything prepared for me. New candles were so freshly cut and lit in the dining room that the wicks still flared. Two places were set at the table. Baskets of breads and fruit and plates of meat were arranged between the settings. A chipped green vase held wild-flowers that strangely had no scent. That she had done all this within the second or two of closing the door and then opening it again was impossible. I heard music and I saw by the table a large stand on which sat a black box with a bugle sticking out of it. A tan cylinder rotated, horizontal, on top of the box. Music strained out of the wide brass mouth of the bugle, a human voice singing some song. It was in French.
It’s Creole music, she said, when she saw me looking at it. It’s a Louis Moreau Gottschalk song. Haven’t you ever seen a phonograph before?
I shook my head, no. The only music I knew were songs the Blackfoot sang, and hymns.
She laughed and motioned me into a dark hall where I could barely discern the doorways from the rest of the walls. By the light from the candles on the table behind me I could see bulky shadows loom in otherwise empty rooms, cast by what I could not tell.
I’m a friend of your father, she said. I have some of his things here. People leave me their things. They stop here on the way to somewhere else and leave behind things for me to store but they never come back. I have had to burn my own furniture to make room for all the odds and ends that people left. I’ll fix you a good mattress and you can stay in the room where I have his belongings. I think he left a bed, a pillow and a chest.
My father stayed here?
Yes, he stayed here on his way to the church. We were close friends. How is he?
He died.
You said that. He must have thought I had forsaken him. We always promised that we would see each other again and take the last steps of life together. We were the best of friends. Did he ever talk about me?
No. Are you sure you mean my father?
I drew his picture from my pocket and showed it to her.
She smiled and grabbed the little picture and kissed it. Then she held it to her nose and smelled the fading herbs and melting chemicals and my sweat.
Yes. That’s him. I went with him the day this photo was taken. I said, You should have a picture of yourself so you can remember what you looked like before you left me behind. He was here getting ready to cross the border into Heaven. He crossed a few times before he stayed away. Of course, that was years ago and I was a young girl being wicked. I loved him very much. I loved him very, very much and I ask myself sometimes if I might have married if I’d never met him. I ask myself about the true nature of that deep love. When you let yourself feel that much you ruin your chances of a happy marriage.
She sighed and handed me back the picture.
So, he’s dead, she said. That’s strange. He was so pretty, and so sweet. It made a person want to love him. It made a person happy to love him. Well, I will catch up to him. I know a few shortcuts to Heaven and God owes me a small favour. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t speak to you like this. It’s only that you’re his daughter and so it feels to me as if you might have been my daughter.
He adopted me.
Of course he did.
It was clear to me by now that she was insane. Loneliness had turned her empty rooms into storage for the phantom belongings of people she may or may not have ever known. When we reached the room she meant for me she opened the door and inside there was no bed, no chest, no furnishings of any kind. On the ledge of the open window was a small stack of books holding back the frayed curtain. She left me there and I unpacked my sleeping bag. After a minute I went to the window and picked up one of the books. I turned it over in my hand, stroked the spine, felt the leather cover, set it down. I went back to my pack and took out the one possession of my father’s I had been unable to leave behind. It was a copy of Jules Verne’s novel Five Weeks in a Balloon. I knew it, every chocolaty French word, and I knew the signature on the inside leaf.
I sat and fell in love again with the words and the voice I remembered. How I loved the unicorn-shaped balloon, half full, rising with the trade winds to travel across Africa. I climbed into my sleeping bag, pulled it up to my neck and read, listening to my father as if he lived in me. I could not count how many nights he wasted candles reading me to sleep. And in the mornings I would translate the story and write it out in a notebook. I translated to myself again, here in the semi-darkness, remembering at once his voice:
One must never forget how fragile, the equilibrium of a balloon, floating in the atmosphere. The loss of what seems an almost insignificant weight is enough to displace the thing and send it up into dangerous altitudes. But the doctor knew well how many pounds to carry and how slowly to consume fuel and food and brandy.
Nor did he forget an awning to shelter the wicker car, reinforced with steel. Nor did he forget to count the coverings and blankets, all the bedding of the journey, nor some fowling pieces and rifles, with their spare supply of powder and ball.
Here is the summing up of his various items, and their weights:
FERGUSON, 135 POUNDS
KENNEDY, 153
JOE, 120
WEIGHT OF THE MAIN BALLOON, 650
WEIGHT OF THE SECONDARY BALLOON, 510
CAR AND NETWORK, 280
ANCHORS, INSTRUMENTS, AWNINGS, AND SUNDRY
INCLUDING UTENSILS, GUNS, COVERINGS, ETC., 190
DRIED MEAT, PEMMICAN, BISCUITS, TEA,
COFFEE, BRANDY, 386
WATER, 400
APPARATUS, 700
WEIGHT OF THE HYDROGEN, 276
BALLAST, 200
TOTAL: 4,000 POUNDS
Four thousand pounds floating over lions and boars and wildebeests!
Yes, Miette. That’s enough for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll read more. Let me pray with you before you sleep. He closed the book and kneeled beside me.
HE HAD always held the book. The weight of it in my hands was new. I sniffed it and flipped through the pages. Near the back was a folded piece of paper, tucked in, separating chapters. I opened it and read:
Dear Sir
or Father or Brother,
I know a man who knows you and he says you are good and he is a very good man so I believe it.
I have a baby inside me who will be coming out soon. It is the child of Wild Bill Hickok who I love more than horses. If it is a boy he should be named James, for that is Bill’s name, and if it is a girl, then Martha after me. You are a thousand miles away but I will ride to meet you at the border if you will take this one. I am no mother, except that I know enough to get out of the mothering business. I know you live in the Badlands in Canada and I live in the Badlands in South Dakota so maybe it is something like home. I know you are a wandering bishop and so I think I understand you better than other religious men who think they can never be wrong. I am often wrong but I consider it a strength to say so. I don’t know this one inside me at all, but I want to find a home for it far away from me with good sober people who will love it and keep it safe.
Please send me some word and tell me if you will take my baby and call it an orphan. And if you take this one, please don’t teach it to speak French. I don’t want it to grow up crazy.
Sincerely,
Martha Canary
He left everything in this room his last time through here.
I looked up and the woman was in my doorway. She was in a nightgown that made her look like a rag doll.
What time? I said, while I recovered myself and pushed down a sudden swell of anger at her for spying on me in the dark.
Keep them. There are more secrets in those odds of furniture than I can decipher.
Thank you but I can’t take the furniture.
He left them the time he came to get you. You were two months old and half dead, wrinkled and thin and yellow. We spent every minute trying to get some water into you. Your mother rode with you tied to her back. Your face was in the sun and she didn’t stop even once to feed you. She was the ugliest woman I ever saw, tall and filthy, and she smelled like liquor. I couldn’t ever imagine who would make love to her.
I sucked on my tongue and then said, I don’t believe you.
Suit yourself, she said and shrugged and left.
I silently cursed her a liar and named her Hag. I heard her singing a lullaby to herself deep in the darkened house.
Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry
Go to sleep, my little baby
When you wake, you shall have cake
And all the pretty little horses
Blacks and bays, dapple and greys
All the pretty little horses
And mama loves and daddy loves
Oh they love their little baby
When you wake, you shall have cake
And all the pretty little horses
Blacks and bays, dapple and greys
All the pretty little horses
Blacks and bays, dapple and greys
Coach and six white horses
Way down yonder, down in the meadow
Lies a poor little child
The bees and the flies are pickin’ out its eyes
The poor little child crying for its mother
Oh, crying for its mother
Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry
Go to sleep, you little baby
When you wake, you shall have cake
And all the pretty little horses
Blacks and bays, dapple and greys
Coach and six white horses
Blacks and bays, dapple and greys
All the pretty little horses.
Martha
SOME SAID SHE WAS A HIGHWAYMAN, A ROAD agent, that she was involved with opium running, that she led gangs of Indians to lynch white men prospecting in the sacred hills. It can be said, wrote one skinny upstart, that Calamity Jane knows more about jail than about scouting, trooping or even bullwhacking.
SHE WAS known to liberate horses. After quarrelling with one husband, Steer, who beat her, hit her in the lip with a rock and tried to stab her, she tried to get him arrested. When that didn’t work, when he beat her again with the heel of his boot, she tied him to a mule and left him in a stable. She took his saddle and his horse and rode right out of marriage.
SHE ARRIVED in Rawlins to see the swinging bodies of Jim Lacy and Opium Bob. Reporters crowded around her and scribbled on their pads. She called the sight of the two dead men in the middle of the town seeing the elephant, which meant reaching one’s destination, witnessing a flood or an epidemic, or encountering something that makes you go back the way that you came.
SHE TOLD a reporter who was sure he had her pinned for a stagecoach robbery that it might have been the night she married Jesse James.
It was a night for madness, she said.
A MAN named Maguire walked the streets of Deadwood handing out a colourful pamphlet to tourists. The pamphlet described the first time he saw her:
I saw a GIRL in neat-fitting gaiters, a coat, pantaloons of buckskin, a vest of fur-trimmed antelope skin, and a broad-brimmed Spanish hat on the back of a bucking angry animal. She hung onto the beast. She throwed herself from side to side. She hollared a war-whoop, and patted its neck. She rode that beast of Hell on up over the gulch, over ditches and through reservoir and mudholes, praising it through its fury, until it damned well gave in and loved her. I didn’t ever see no other such an animal turned from demon to angel.
IN CHEYENNE the newspaper editor was so afraid of her that when she arrived in town and marched into his office to tell him to make his journalists stop printing lies he escaped through the skylight, leaving his trembling adolescent son to take down this message:
Print in the Leader that Calamity Jane, the child of the Regiment and pioneer white woman of the Black Hills, is in Cheyenne, or I’ll scalp you alive, and hang you to a telegraph pole. You hear me and you don’t forget it.
Calamity Jane
RIDING THROUGH Wyoming, into a remote mining camp, she found miners beaten and starving, their food, their horses and their equipment stolen by road agents, and themselves left without boots to figure a long trek over stony land to help. She rode to a grocery store ten miles away. She told the owner that men were dying and she needed help. He was intractable, arms folded over a big belly framed by suspenders. On the counter she saw a novel, placed down open-faced. She smiled.
Do you know who I am?
He looked at her and he looked down at the book’s cover and he looked back at the guns strapped to her body.
Who am I? she asked.
She returned to the camp with food and blankets.
The storeowner became famous for being robbed by the Heroine of Whoop-Up.
SHE APPEARED in paintings and prints as a heroically pretty girl with flowing hair and dark-lined eyes, or else first as a man and then as a woman. Songs were written about her or adapted to refer to her. She sometimes sang those songs to herself as she drifted between states. She liked “Crazy Jane,” but more often she sang the one that sounded ideal.
Jane was a farmer’s daughter,
The fairest one of three,
Love in his arms had caught her,
As fast as fast cou’d be;
William was a soldier,
As brave as brave cou’d be,
And he resolv’d to marry,
The fairest one of three,
The fairest one of three,
The fairest one of three,
And he resolv’d to marry,
The fairest one of three.
Lena thought it wiser,
A rich man’s wife to be,
And so she took a Miser
As old as old cou’d be,
Annie felt Love’s passion,
But wish’d this world to see
So chose a Lad of Fashion,
The dullest of the three,
The dullest of the three,
The dullest of the three,
So chose a Lad of Fashion,
The dullest of the three.
Lena’s spouse perplext her,
A widow soon was she,
Annie’s liv
’d and vext her
As well as well cou’d be.
But Jane possest true pleasure
With one of low degree,
They were each other’s treasure
The happiest of the three,
The happiest of the three,
The happiest of the three,
There were each other’s treasure
The happiest of the three.
Miette
I WOKE BEFORE THE HAG AND WENT OUTSIDE TO use the privy. Water dripping from the roof tiles gouged cups of mud out of the earth around the stone patio. The night was short and the morning air tasted new. I was sitting on the pot staring at a leaf stuck in one of the cups of mud; it startled every time a drop struck it. A storm had passed without me knowing it. Ragged hens huddled nearby on a roost, shivering to get the water off their feathers. I watched the clouds retreat and the spiteful sun emerge to send shocks of heat down on the rocks, which sparkled like the backs of frogs.
What’s taking you so long on the privy, girl?
Nothing.
If you stay there too long a snake will come and bite you.
Go away, I muttered. Leave me alone.
She left me and I retreated into memories of an old friend, the Blackfoot woman my father called Zita after his sister and after the saint who had angels bake bread for her while she tended to people in need. I worked at a memory of flying kites on windy days. The three of us ran beneath the volcanic-looking columns of hoodoos.
Those are bad mothers, she said of the hoodoos. They were turned to stone and their heads were knocked off.
I WAS jealous of Zita’s children. I needed her so much that I hid the kites when they tried to play. Zita sent them running home.
When the wind pulled too hard I called, help me! She put her hands over mine and together we tugged the somersaulting kite back from the sky. My father with his green eyes like glistening bottle-glass laughed at us wading in the long prairie grass.
In Calamity's Wake Page 3