Badlands

by Melissa Lenhardt

  “Bring the basin of water,” I ordered Drummond.

  A gingham dress draped over the back of a chair. An empty beer stein sitting next to an oil lamp on a small table. An 1868 calendar with a drawing of a bird’s-eye view of Chicago nailed to the corner post. A cot, low to the ground and covered with a cloth, stained with the fluids of dozens of men and Clara’s blood. The sum total of this woman’s possessions. I covered my mouth as the true depth of hopelessness and despair of these women’s lives hit me.

  Drummond tossed the stein into the corner and placed the basin on the table. I sprinkled carbolic in the water and dropped my instruments and a couple of squares of cloth in. When I turned around, Drummond stood before me, pants around his ankles, his penis hanging well past the tail of his shirt. I sighed, fully aware he was trying to intimidate me. Or frighten me. Or test me. I glared at him. “I’m a married woman. I’ve seen it before. Turn around and lie down.”

  With a smirk, he did as told, but not before removing his coat and draping it over the chair. I pulled the chair near the bed, set the basin on it, and lifted the back of his shirt. A boil the size of a walnut jutted out from the top of the crack in his buttocks. I placed a carbolic-soaked cloth over it and put two more into the water. Drummond hissed.

  “If that hurts I can’t imagine how you drove a wagon.”

  “It wasn’t easy.”

  “Tell me about your route.” I held the lamp near the boil and dabbed gently around it to sterilize it. It was red and tender around the base, and the bulb of the boil was filled with pus. It was a difficult location, with a high chance of infection once I lanced it. But there was no other remedy, to my knowledge.

  “I stay near the railroad, from Grand Island on, and down to Denver.”

  “Wouldn’t taking the train be safer?” I set the lamp down and picked up my scalpel.

  “I started on the train. Lugging a box of medicine from town to town.”

  “The caravan is a step up, then?”

  “Indeed.”

  I held a carbolic-soaked cloth next to the boil and hovered my scalpel above it. “Are you ready?”

  Drummond inhaled, nodded, and buried his head in the pillow. I pressed the scalpel into the boil and just managed to dodge the stream of pus that shot out of it like a geyser. Drummond’s scream drowned out my yelp of disgust. I cut through the boil as Drummond sobbed quietly into his pillow. “It’s almost over,” I said, mopping up the seeping pus with one of the cloths, tossing it onto the floor, and grabbing another. By the time all of the fluid had drained, I’d used every piece of cloth that had cushioned my bottles of medicine, save one, which I wanted to use for a bandage.

  “Mr. Drummond, I need to bandage your wound, but I need long strips of cloth. There is nothing here that is clean enough, and I don’t have a bandage that long. Do you have a clean sheet in your caravan?”

  He nodded. I patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

  “Key’s in my jacket pocket,” he said.

  The inside of Drummond’s caravan was neat as a pin, much to my relief. I stripped a sheet from the bed built into the inside front and searched through his drawers for scissors. I found them in the third drawer, next to a brass-and-glass syringe. Why would a snake-oil salesman need a syringe? I opened the upper cabinets and found all manner of ineffective patent medicines, mostly the purple bottles of Mugwhumps Specific. In the bottom cabinets I found what I suspected was his true line of goods: cannabis, opium, laudanum, and vials of morphine. No wonder the whores didn’t run him away from Calico Row for his medicines’ ineffectiveness.

  Someone pounded on the caravan door, and I almost dropped the vial of morphine I held. I replaced it, closed the cabinet, and picked up the sheet and scissors. I opened the caravan door to see Reverend Bright, red-faced and lifting his arm to pound on the door again.

  “Helen!” His brows furrowed in confusion, and he tried to look around me. “What are you doing in there?” His voice was harsh and accusatory.

  I closed the door behind me and padlocked it. “Not what you think. I treated Drummond for a minor complaint, and I need a bandage. I might ask what are you doing, banging on his door?”

  “I wanted to talk to him about the dope he’s selling these women.”

  “Talk? You looked like you wanted to fight.”

  “We have no chance to save these girls if he keeps returning to sell them opium.”

  I stopped in the middle of the street. “How many women have you and Portia saved?”

  He jerked his head back. “Why?”

  “I’m curious. How many?”

  “Two.”

  “And where are they now?”

  “Both married good Christian men.”

  “Farmers?”

  “Miners.”

  “They went from spreading their legs for money to spreading them for free and having to do chores sunup to sundown?”

  “It’s a more respectable life than prostitution.”

  “Only a man would think so.”

  “You can’t mean to say you think prostitution is a good life for a woman.”

  “Of course not, but we object to different things. You object to what they do. I object to how they are forced to live. Have you seen inside Stella’s tent?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s deplorable. Why are they forced to live that way? Because they have no other options, no other way to earn money. Society only values women’s bodies and what they can do for men. Take care of them, make their children, or give them pleasure.”

  Flushed and angry, I walked off. The Reverend followed. “What would your husband think, you talking about marriage in this way?”

  I stopped abruptly and stuck my finger in Reverend Bright’s chest. “Don’t you dare talk to me about my husband as if you know him. We had a marriage of equals in every way.”

  “That is a blasphemy in the eyes of God.”

  “It’s a good thing I don’t care much for what God thinks, then, isn’t it?”

  By the expression on the Reverend’s face, his opinion of me hit rock bottom. In for a penny, in for a pound. “If you want to save whores, you should educate them so they can stand on their own two feet, not have to rely on a man.”

  I entered Stella’s tent, leaving the Reverend red-faced and gaping at me. Wonderful. I’d managed to befriend and alienate Portia and her husband before lunchtime. I pulled back the curtain dividing Clara’s crib and found her on her knees in front of the cot, fellating Drummond. I dropped the curtain closed and turned away.

  “Be done in a moment, Mrs. Graham,” Drummond said, slightly breathless but without a bit of shame. I would have left except my medical bag was in the crib and, though I found him absolutely reprehensible, I couldn’t leave Drummond’s wound untreated. I sat at the table, cut the sheet into strips, and was starting to tie four strips into one long bandage when I heard Drummond’s completion.

  “Now will you give me it?” Clara said.

  “That was hardly long enough for a full dose.”

  Hardly long enough? “From this side of the curtain it was an eternity.”

  Drummond opened the curtain, the bottom half of his body naked. “I feel a new man,” he said. “Would you like to finish me off?”

  I stood. “You see this gun, Mr. Drummond? I know how to use it. If you ever speak to me that way again, or even speak to me with a passing hello, I will pull this gun and blow your brains out.” His grin slipped. “Clara?” The whore came around the divider. “Come here.”

  She shuffled over to me, all of her coyness from earlier gone. In front of me was a young woman who might have been pretty at one time but was now a whore desperate for escape into an opium-induced stupor. Drummond watched us. I waved at him in dismissal. “Leave us be.”

  Clara nibbled on the side of her thumb.

  “What is he giving you?”

  “I don’t know, something new. He said I’d like it better than the opium.”
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  I sighed. Morphine, most like. “Clara, do you want to die in this crib?”

  She dropped her hand. “You sound like Ollie. I don’t need no preaching. I just want to relax a little before the johns come tonight. It’s Saturday, and we’ll be on our backs all night.”

  “How many men do you service?”

  She shrugged one shoulder. “Thirty on a good night.”

  I rubbed my temple. Thirty men a night, and Cheyenne was growing exponentially. With that kind of use, and the dope, she would be dead in a couple of years. “How old are you?”

  “Don’t rightly know. Twenty, or thereabouts.”

  Drummond came out of the crib, fully clothed, smug and sure of himself. I looked toward the outside at where I’d left the Reverend, and back to Clara in the middle, trapped.

  I can’t save everyone. But shouldn’t I at least try?

  Yes.

  CHAPTER

  18

  Dear Mary,

  I’ve been starting and stopping this letter for weeks. The urge to speak to you overshadowed every time by the knowledge that my letter will not be received with joy or equanimity. I understand if you blame me for your brother’s death. I will never forgive myself for being the cause of his downfall. If I had kept my distance from him, as I knew I should, he would be alive today. The knowledge is almost too much to bear. A pall has fallen over my existence, and I’m not sure it will ever lift, nor do I want it to. I don’t want to move on and be happy if Kindle isn’t with me.

  I wish I could find comfort in your God. I have tried, but there is no solace, no voice speaking to me. I don’t blame Him. I’ve ignored Him for years, to only call out when I’m in pain. He is rightly angry with me and, truth be told, I’m angry with Him.

  I am sure you visited with Kindle before the trial, and he possibly told you the story of his capture. Rosemond Barclay helped me escape, at Kindle’s request, she says. I still don’t believe her, but, both being orphans with no friends, we have come to the conclusion that having each other is better than no one. At least, that is the conclusion I have come to. I suspect Rosemond genuinely likes me. I cannot fully trust her yet. Maybe in time.

  We have settled in Cheyenne. We get along tolerably well. She seems to have found a genuine happiness, and has lost the hard edge of her personality I’ve known from the beginning. She and Cheyenne are kindred spirits, both working hard to polish off their rough edges into some semblance of civility. Rosemond is a painter and has opened a sign business, and is doing well, well enough that she has obtained the respectability she craved in a short time. I am nursing the portion of the population the doctor refuses to care for, and working toward saving enough money so I can return east to see you, pay my respects to Kindle’s grave, and continue on to my family in England as originally planned.

  My days have fallen into a rhythm. Waking, making breakfast, cleaning up, going across the tracks to visit patients, stopping by the Posts’ general store on the way home to pay down on the gun they sold to me at a high interest rate after I confessed to stealing it (I do not feel safe without one now), picking up orders for Rosemond and whatever supplies she needs, returning home to fix a late lunch. The afternoons are filled with suture practice—I have transitioned from needlepoint to working on a dead piglet to more closely mimic human flesh—and walks around town. Occasionally, I will stretch canvas on frames for Rosemond, or do other odd jobs to help her stay on top of her thriving sign business and fledgling portrait business.

  Kindle is never far from my mind. When I am alone, tears prickle my eyes and flow freely down my cheeks during whatever task I perform. I fall asleep crying, and wake crying. If Rosemond sees my red eyes each morning, she doesn’t mention it, a small gesture of grace I appreciate.

  Every day as I walk through this new life, as I talk and smile and cook and sew and visit my patients, I think: this is the life I should have had with Kindle, then realize it was the life I argued with him about, that I pushed back against. At this moment, I would gladly give up my profession for a routine day with Kindle.

  I finally had the courage to write because I need a favor. Do not be indignant; the favors aren’t for me. A woman named Portia Bright and I have started teaching women to read. Prostitutes, specifically. These are women who have no hope of any life but servicing men and dying in a filthy crib, either from being beaten by a john or by an overdose of opium. It’s our hope that a little bit of education will allow them to leave the life and stand on their own. Most of these women just want to feel valued, and have someone see them as something other than a body to be used. Teaching them to read and write is a small step on a long road. Will we be successful? I do not know. But I am convinced that I need to try. I have seen so much death, been responsible for too much, that I want to be responsible, if even in a small way, for bringing hope into someone’s life.

  We are in the process of raising money for a library in Cheyenne, and the committee chair has promised that a portion of the money will be spent on readers. Until then, we are reading out of the Bible and using the few books we can borrow from other women in town. If you have any books from your library to spare, it would be greatly appreciated.

  There is a woman here, a Negro prostitute, who is pregnant (most likely with a white man’s child, though it could be a Chinaman or Negro’s child, as well) and does not want to keep the baby. For the cost of a one-way ticket, I have offered to bring the baby to you and your orphanage. I can’t think of a safer place for a child such as this. She should have the child in a couple of months, and I will leave as soon as possible. Cheyenne is pleasant enough, as frontier towns go, but I cannot seem to feel settled here, no matter how routine my days are. My body hums with a nervous energy, a need to move, to escape.

  Please telegram if I and the baby are not welcome so I can make other arrangements for the child.

  With Warmest Regards,

  Laura

  “What’s this I hear about you amputating a man’s foot?”

  “Good morning to you, too, Amalia,” I said. I noticed Lily Diamond across the large, open-sided tent, bustling over to us.

  The sun was rising in a burst of orange and pink on the eastern horizon as the town readied for a spring festival to benefit the future library. Instead of a staid fund-raiser in the confines of one of the numerous Cheyenne hotels, the committee had planned it as an outdoor spring festival, celebrating the end of a long, cold winter. It was a brilliant move, as almost every resident of Cheyenne, regardless of class, occupation, or color, had been buzzing about the fair for weeks. Amalia Post, as chairwoman of the library committee, was everywhere at once but made time to quiz me about an event I had hoped to keep secret for a while longer.

  Three weeks after visiting Calico Row the first time, I’d returned one early evening, dispensing mercury to the afflicted whores and talking about the importance of using sheaths consistently for protection against venereal disease and pregnancy, and offering to teach the women to read. The latter suggestion received as much teasing and scorn as the suggestion of using sheaths, but I saw cautious interest beneath their brittle, suspicious exterior and suspected that in time they would come around.

  I was in Monique’s crib, checking on Lavina and assuring the women there was no ulterior motive with my offer to teach them to read, when we heard a commotion outside and went to see what was happening. Two young men were carrying another between them, entreating Jesper to help. A thick trail of blood followed them.

  “In here,” I said. They looked at me in shock for a moment, a white woman in their neighborhood ordering them around, until Monique gave the same order and they obeyed without question.

  The man’s foot hung to his leg by a thin strip of muscle and his dark complexion was turning gray from loss of blood. I quickly fashioned a tourniquet to stop the bleeding and save his life, and stared at the injury. I’d seen enough amputations in the war I could’ve done my own even without years of training. But I also knew if I healed thi
s man, I would bring unwanted attention to myself, in the form of Dr. Hankins, who thought so little of the white widow ministering to the denizens of Calico Row he hadn’t bothered to meet me. I agreed to help and exacted a promise of secrecy from the people assembled around the boy’s bed, a promise that hadn’t lasted a day.

  “Yes, yes, it’s a fine day,” Amalia said. “Is the rumor true?”

  “Are you asking her about the Negro?” Lily said.

  “Yes.”

  I sighed. “To be honest, it was hardly an amputation. The foot was held on by merely a thin piece of muscle. More a snip and a suturing.”

  Lily Diamond gasped. “Helen, why would you do such a thing?”

  “He would have died if I didn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you call Dr. Hankins?” she asked.

  “There wasn’t time.”

  “I doubt Roger Hankins would have hurried over to help a Negro. He’s a Rebel,” Amalia said.

  Lily blanched. “I’m a Southerner, too.”

  “As am I,” Rosemond said, sidling up to the group with Portia in tow. This morning Rosemond had diligently scrubbed dried paint from her cuticles, and didn’t reach for her paint-splattered work clothes. Instead she wore a dress with large, bright green flowers on a buff background. She was turning heads, men and women alike, and I appreciated for the first time the beauty and charisma that had made her so successful as a madam in Saint Louis. Portia seemed dazzled, and though she tried to show interest in the conversation, her gaze kept sliding to Rosemond.

  “And I don’t hold it against either of you,” Amalia said. “Will the boy survive?”

  “Of course he will. My sister is a brilliant nurse,” Rosemond said, showering me with a fond smile. It was a far cry from the reaction she had when I arrived home, bloodstains streaked across my shirt and skirt.

  Godammit, Laura! Do you want to get found out?