In Calamity's Wake

by Natalee Caple

  You need to see it.

  I sat silently staring into the envelope while she fidgeted. At last she sighed and said, You’ve come a long way. I’ve come a long way too. I was born in Liverpool, England. Do I sound strange to you?

  I nodded.

  My accent is softer now. It’s mixed in with the sounds I learned here. My husband says that I have an American snore. Come on now, this isn’t a sad day.

  I looked up, out the window, squinting at the white circle of the sun until my retinas ached.

  That’s a letter from your mother. Your mother has been my best friend for many years. I would venture that you must have some ill feelings towards her but I know the woman and I know what having you did to her. That’s a letter she wrote just for you. I helped her with part of the writing. Belle Starr helped her with the rest, until Belle was shot. Do you know the Bandit Queen?

  I shook my head and then my head shook the whole rest of me. The other women had gone quiet; they were listening. Dora fidgeted, pursing her lips as if she were deciding my fate.

  Well, Belle was a good woman. Her family left Missouri after a Union attack. Her father’s livery was burnt with all the animals in it. She got in with Jesse James and the Youngers. But she was a good woman. Your mother is a good woman too.

  I don’t know where I’m going, I said. I suddenly wanted off of the train. The women in the car were suffocating me with their sweet smells and rustling.

  Well, you can always come by my place.

  Are you inviting me to be a prostitute?

  No, no. She shook her head and waved a hand at me. It’s okay to be scared, she said. I would be scared. I’m sure your mother, as much as she wants it, is scared of the day she sees you. Listen to me, at her worst she is not the worst but at her best—she is amazing. I know you are angry and that’s fair. But you had better see her now. She’s not well. There will not be another chance.

  I TRAVELLED to Deadwood with Dora but I refused to speak to her again. All the resentment I had left in me was aimed at her for chaperoning the last leg of my journey and preventing my exit. I chose a small white hotel and took a room. I did not go to the Green Front. I needed some privacy to read what my mother had left me and to decide on my fate.

  I left the windows open to draw some air in. I lit the black iron stove in spite of the heat and sat on a braided rug on the floor because the light from the little fire was better there. I let the sweat run into my eyes. I did not want to turn on a lamp in case anyone from the street should see me. My breathing was laboured. My hands could barely operate. I turned over the pages and read her words. It seemed so strange that I could not hear, that I did not know, her voice.

  Martha

  The True Life and Adventures of Martha Burke

  by

  Martha Burke, aka Calamity Jane,

  aka Your Mother

  YOU WILL ALREADY KNOW THIS BUT YOUR father was Wild Bill Hickok and my name was Martha Canary. I asked that you be named Martha and not Jane because Jane was never my name. Some people will tell you it was my middle name or that it was a name for a kind of woman like John is a name for a kind of man. But I want to tell you that you were named Martha after me.

  I cannot tell you everything so I am choosing what I’d like you to know. For instance you should know that I am not writing this but speaking it. I cannot write or read. It is a great shame for me to tell you this. I asked that you be taught to read and write because I know how stupid, how crazy, looking at the letters and not knowing what they say makes me feel. It makes me feel the more stupid now when I am telling my life and not knowing really how it comes out. My friend, another woman like me, who shoots a lot, is writing this down. I will ask her to copy it and I will give it to people I trust and if you ever find any of them they will give you their copy. Believe me, whoever gives you this is my good friend, whatever history makes of us.

  I was born in Princeton, Missouri. It was something we celebrated every May 1st, so I assume that is my birthday. If I have kept count right then I was born in 1852. My father and mother were natives of Ohio. I had two brothers, Elijah and Silas, and three sisters, Mary, Lena and Anne. I was the oldest. My mother died of washtub pneumonia in 1866 when I was fourteen. My father died of Salt Lake City when I was fifteen. I became then the mother of my five younger siblings.

  As a child I always had a fondness for adventure and outdoor exercise and an especial fondness for horses. I began to ride at an early age and continued to do so until I became an expert rider. At ten I was able to ride the most vicious and stubborn of horses. In fact, the greater portion of my days and of my life in early times was spent on the backs of biters and buckers, and I loved it.

  That was in Missouri. You see it was not all slave-keeping and war. The poor, and we were very poor, still had the big sky and the animals that ran over the earth and what we knew about roots and berries and how to fish. It was not like in the cities. We could live. But Missouri was burnt out after the war. There was so little left and so many memories of dead bodies, shot, burnt and frozen. I saw them in my dreams, lined up by picket fences. As soon as the war ended and people were free to move they moved West. The East was still divided North and South, steeped in what no one could believe had happened, not the politics anymore but the fresh recall of violence. Everyone was destitute. In the West the freed slaves, the disenchanted Union men, the guerrillas and countless impoverished Southerners came to a rough reckoning.

  In 1865 we emigrated from our home by the overland route to Virginia City, Montana. It took five months to make the journey. My mother was still alive, although to think of it, she was weak and she coughed. On the way the greater portion of my time was spent hunting along with the men. In fact I was hunting whenever I was awake. In this way I became as good a shot as I was a rider. I could braid a rabbit’s ears with bullets. At all times, with the men, there was excitement and adventures to be had. The women were hot and miserable, trying to keep their children clean and safe and laundry done and food cooked.

  By the time we reached Virginia City I was considered remarkable. I was as good a shot and as fearless a rider as any boy my age. In fact my recollection of being a child was not that I was like a boy or a girl; instead I was like an animal that people praised for being useful.

  I remember many occurrences on the journey from Missouri to Montana. Crossing the mountains the trails were in such poor condition that we often had to lower the wagons over ledges by hand with ropes. I was right there beside the men, burning my palms as we held on. The ground was so rough and rugged that horses were of no use.

  Many of the streams in our way were noted for quicksand. The men told stories around campfires about how it looked like regular sand but if you stepped in quicksand it would suck you down and every move you made would pull you faster until you suffocated. Your best bet was to hold still until someone threw you a rope and pulled you out.

  That, I said, cannot be true.

  My father smacked me hard for talking back.

  But there were places that were so boggy that unless we were very careful we would have lost horses and all. There were also the dangers brought by streams swelling on account of heavy rains. The men had a silent hierarchy that somehow told them who was the best to select where to cross the streams. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to how they chose the spot. On more than one occasion I mounted my pony and swam across the stream several times merely to amuse myself while they plunged into the deepest parts after making a wrong decision. I did have many narrow escapes with my pony. Both of us almost washed away. But, as pioneers, we all had plenty of courage. In the end the group of us, dumb and smart, skilled and clumsy, overcame all natural obstacles and reached Virginia City.

  Mother died at Blackfoot, Montana. Elijah and Silas cried, but me, Lena, Mary and Anne had too much to do. Lena made Mother a dress to be buried in. Actually, she finished a dress that Mother had been working on for weeks to wear at Christmas. We all had matching dresses th
at she had made first and we wore those to the funeral. Anne polished our brothers’ shoes, Mary helped me make a meal. The little mite was a better cook at six than I will ever be. By seven she had as many little cuts and burns on her hands and forearms as our mother.

  We left Montana for Utah in spring of 1866, arriving at Salt Lake City during the summer. Our father had drunk the equivalent of all the whisky he had abstained from during his marriage in the space of several months. When Mother was alive he was prickly but hard-working. After her death he was as removed from us as if he had gone with her. He might have come out of it but instead he died. We remained in Utah for a little while and then went to Fort Bridger, Wyoming Territory, where we arrived May 1, 1868. Then we headed on the UP Railway to Piedmont, Wyoming. The answer to why we went anywhere was simple: money. There were six of us and only two (myself and Elijah) who were old enough to get paid for working even the most menial jobs.

  We rode the railway, Elijah and me taking tickets and the others just filling in seats unless they polished shoes or carried bags for a few coins. We didn’t sleep lying down until 1870.

  Elijah and I joined General Custer as scouts at Fort Russell, Wyoming, in 1870. Up to this time I had always worn skirts and dresses, but Elijah had the bright idea that we could both join the army if we lied a little about his age and a little about my sex. The boys pitched in to show me some moves, walking and sitting, and farting and spitting. Sniff your own farts, advised Silas. Boys like to smell their farts. The whole thing entertained them greatly. Lena altered some pantaloons and a shirt and jacket for me. Mary cut my hair and Annie just sat there squealing with delight at my transformation. I was a good-looking boy, prettier like that than I was as the girl underneath. I interviewed well. I was young enough no one wondered about my voice.

  Wearing a soldier’s uniform was a bit awkward at first. It was stiff and heavy on my shoulders and legs, heavier than my skirts and blouses. Elijah and I commiserated about becoming men. But I soon got to be perfectly at home in men’s clothes.

  I had big plans for us and I spent many hours staring out at the coulees or counting eagles, imagining Elijah and me working side by side forever and Lena marrying a rancher and Silas working on the ranch with Lena’s husband, growing up brown and muscular, and Mary becoming a schoolteacher and Annie a mother.

  But Annie died in my arms of yellow fever and so did Mary and Silas. Elijah disappeared into the army and then into the prisons. Lena did marry a rancher, and that was the end of my family.

  I went to visit Lena once, when I was pregnant with you. She laughed so hard she cried to see me waddle to the door with my potbelly hanging over my belt and my legs so bowlegged they might be a wishbone. And then she just cried when I asked her if she would take you. She cried at her kitchen table with her eight children like brown flowers turned towards the sun, looking on at their weeping mother. She said, Good Lord forgive me, I can’t. I can’t even feed all of these. I know it’s my flesh and I love you, I do, so much, but I can’t, Martha. I just can’t. Good Lord, please forgive me.

  It was then I looked at her and realized that she looked as broke as our mother in the days before her death, and I lied to her. I said I would keep you. We hugged and kissed each other a dozen times when I left. I turned back so many times my horse was confused. You were born in Sundance. A lady doctor who was my friend from Deadwood, and had a practice in Sundance as well, delivered you in her office on December 1, 1876.

  But, back to when I was a scout. I was in Arizona up to the winter of 1871 and during that time I had a great many adventures with the Indians. I met their scouts and saw their camps and it reminded me of being a child camping outside with my brothers and sisters after our parents were dead. Although I found it easy and best to avoid conflict when called upon, I performed the most dangerous missions. I drew a reputation for getting myself and others safely out of many a close circumstance. I was considered the most daring rider and one of the best shots in the Western country. In truth, after the deaths of Mother, Father, Anne, Silas and Mary, I was reckless because I didn’t care if I lived. I had no designs on life. I couldn’t even imagine the future. Once or twice I think I set out to get myself killed and then just changed my mind at the last minute. Maybe that’s how heroes get made out of men.

  After that campaign I returned to Fort Sanders, Wyoming, and remained there until spring of 1872, when we were ordered out to the Mussel Shell Indian Outbreak, sometimes called Nursey Pursey. In that war Generals Custer, Miles, Terry and Crook were all engaged. It was because of something that happened in Goose Creek that I was christened Calamity. Goose Creek is where the town of Sheridan is now. Captain Egan was in command of the post. The Indians were fighting back. I admired them sometimes when they fought us. We were sneaky liars, negotiating in the daytime, and stealing their supplies and horses at night so they would starve and hopefully surrender out of desperation. But on this occasion we were ordered out to quell an uprising of the Indians, and were there for several days. There were numerous bloody skirmishes during which we started to look foolish to ourselves. Six of the soldiers were killed and several were severely wounded. Often I was a nurse through the evening to the men.

  In spite of all my accomplishments the men found it hard to respect me. The soldiers thought because they never saw Indians when I was scouting that I was a bad scout. I saw my job as being primarily a protector to the men I led, leading them away from danger. As a child I had seen a Confederate soldier shoot a Union officer who was his own cousin dead. I had seen grief come from every direction. I thought it no mistake that the Indian campaigns came on the heels of quashing secession. I knew that both sides, the North and the South, were sick with what they had done and somehow that was driving them to do worse; shame is a great engine and the Indian wars were partly that engine running on leftover madness from the civil war. I refused to lead anyone towards that madness.

  One night while returning to the post we were ambushed. We were riding too far apart but we were only a mile and a half from safety. I heard some shots and I looked back at Captain Egan behind me. He reeled in his saddle and began to slip from his horse. I turned my horse sharp and rode at a gallop to him. I put my full self into getting there in time to catch him and yank him onto the front of my horse. I caught him still falling and he was bigger than me so the weight practically pulled me down as well. But I lifted him onto my horse and let him lie like a blanket in front of me. It must have hurt him to be in that position as we raced to the fort. But the others died or got hurt so bad they had to quit for home. I was fine and Captain Egan, on recovering, thanked me and said, I name you Calamity Jane, the Heroine of the Plains. It was a joke. He was grateful but he never thought that highly of me and he never meant to rename me. But I have borne that name up to the present time.

  At the end of that campaign we were ordered to Fort Custer, where Custer City now stands. We arrived there in the spring of 1874. It was sunny but cold at night. Mist in the mornings made it so the world was wiped away and then gradually reappeared. The flowers were out in full force; at times it was as if the horses were swimming the blossoms were so high and plentiful. The Black Hills were beautiful, the way they folded into each other. There were happy animals everywhere and birds in the sky. I listened to the turkey vultures, nuthatches and even the frogs as if they were singing for me. I watched the lovely beavers playing by slapping their tails. I talked to the sunflowers, which were tall as me, and I ate the violets. I felt something about South Dakota that felt so sweet and good it almost hurt.

  We remained around Fort Custer all summer until we were ordered back to Wyoming, to Fort Russell near Cheyenne, in fall of 1874. We remained there until spring of 1875 and then we were ordered (happily) back to the Black Hills to protect miners from the Sioux. That country had been controlled by the Lakota Sioux since they had defeated the Cheyenne in 1776. The Hills were sacred land and were supposed to be covered by the Laramie Treaty. But Custer’s expedition there
found gold and nothing could keep the white man out once that news spread. The gold rush brought the army in. We shouldn’t have been there, even by our own laws. The Indians got even madder as they realized that the army, which was supposed to be keeping outsiders out, was fighting to protect the miners and settlers. So this turned into a war that some whispered was sparked on purpose by Ulysses S. Grant because he hoped the gold would cure his personal depression. No one denied that the country’s depression, which had lasted three years, scared everyone inside and outside of the army.

  So that’s what happened. You might have heard about different battles: the Battle of Little Bighorn, the Dull Knife Fight, the Battle of Slim Buttes; it all comes down to us telling them to stay on a space of land and then finding something we wanted there and telling them to get off of it. What were they to do? Bighorn was one for them; Dull Knife and Slim Buttes were two for the army. Both sides took terrible losses. No matter who was winning, the soldiers were getting thin and impatient. A lot of soldiers traded bullets for mining equipment and just yelled bang, pretended to die, and disguised themselves to start anew. Eventually both sides gave in to another treaty and the boomtowns became part of the United States of America. I remember walking in Deadwood after that treaty with the strange feeling that all the criminals around me had suddenly been knighted.

  In spring of 1876, we were ordered north with General Crook to join the Generals Miles, Terry and Custer at Little Bighorn River. I was the bearer of important dispatches and as the most reckless I was given the job of swimming the Platte River at Fort Fetterman, riding ninety miles to bring news back and forth. I was so wet and cold for so long that I woke up every morning thinking I was dead. I contracted a severe illness and was sent back in General Crook’s ambulance to Fort Fetterman, where I lay in the hospital thinking of my family for fourteen days.