by Peter Bowen
“Most of the people I know you don’t want to meet.”
That wasn’t entirely true, but when you consider Butch and Sundance was about the best-mannered of the lot, and you think on Liver-Eatin’ Jack and Geronimo, who both had their good qualities, and there was far too many embarrassing details out there I’d as soon stayed hid.
“You know Buffalo Bill Cody,” she said.
Oh, God.
“You know Annie Oakley.”
“She’s a very straight arrow and nice woman,” I said. “Her husband’s a bastard.”
“Oh, how I read those Buntline novels when I was a little girl. Yellowstone Kelley! Why did he add an ‘e’ to your name?”
“So if I sued him he could claim the books was about the other Yellowstone Kelley,” I says. “Ned’s no fool. Then all them columns by the Hartford Rodent. I don’t remember him, he looked like an underfed hamster.”
“All true!”
“None of ’em.”
“Thank God,” said Lucretia.
“Actually, my friends are pretty good boys,” I said.
“Your former ladies were an interesting lot,” said Lucretia.
“You talk like they died.”
“They lack the wit to stiffen. I’ll provide it.”
I was beginning to know what a land claim felt like. Stakes everywhere. No Trespassing signs. Gunfire.
There was a methodical tapping on the door panel.
I walked over and snarled, “YASS!”
An envelope was slipped under the door and the tapping went away. I was growing weary of all the nonstop mellerdrammer in this hotel and planned to register in another as “Launcelot Compote,” and as I was airing them objections and criticisms pretty loud when there was a series of thuds, like a mule was kicking the door or something.
Lucretia pulled the covers up to her chin and I threw the door open and a mule backed into the room had a cowboy on it and the cowboy was a nigger and he was grinning, too, and I reached up and grabbed his big old hand and jerked him off the mule and whooped. One of my favorite people in all the world, Bill Pickett.
Lucretia was looking from me to the mule and Pickett and grinning like a dog found a fresh cowflop.
I hauled on my pants and shirt and boots and told Lucretia I’d find us better lodgings and send a note back. The management was coming down the hallway pretty smart and I’d just bet they had the coppers with them.
“I’ll be going, now,” says Pickett. “See you at the show,” and he coaxes the trick mule forward and turns right and there was a sound of muley feet and a lot of boots and splintering doors and I sashayed out to count coup. Bill had rode the mule out the big window at the end of the hall. I went down to look, but they must have landed all right. The sidewalk twinkled with glass.
“We are in mortal danger,” I says to Lucretia. “From my friends. What I guess is that the following news has made the rounds. ‘Ol Luther’s looking serious at that new piece he’s got. We need to help him ’fore he hurts hisself.’ ”
“Piece,” says Lucretia, her eyes looking very bright. She nodded.
“So what we need to do is register at a dozen of the best hotels in town.”
“As Luther Kelly and ‘Piece’?” says my darling.
“I misspoke there.”
“They misspoke,” said Lucretia. “If you’d said it you’d be dead.”
I have had looser escapes from Apaches, with them on horses and me on foot.
“Only way that we’re gonna get any peace ...” I says, halting at the unfortunate reminder, “is do what I said.”
“I don’t want peace,” said Lucretia. “I want war.”
She dressed and we slunk out the back way just as the high yips of my approaching friends signaled the arrival of a herd of whatever at the front doors.
21
WAR RAGED IN WASHINGTON between Lucretia Sams and about two hundred no-good out-of-work train robbers, horse thieves, and bunco artists, not to mention tinhorn gamblers and dice shavers.
My admiration for the lovely lady, who kept muttering “piece” under her breath whilst practicing elaborate skulduggeries grew. Admiration, hell, rank fear. There hadn’t been a military mind like this since Alexander the Great croaked.
All of Buffalo Bill’s employees was trying to find where we had holed up—with such fervor that several hotels hung banners out front swearing that Kelly was not registered there and would further be tossed into the street if he so much as walked into the lobby.
She had struck up an instant alliance with Tom Reed, whose boredom with the practice of law was, in his words, perfect.
We three were eating a hasty lunch from the shish-kebab stalls—too dangerous to perch on chairs for very long—and Lucretia wiped her pretty mouth and said, “What did you do in the Civil War.”
“I,” said Tom solemnly, “was a grocer on a gunboat. It was not strenuous and certainly not dangerous. I knew all the regulations and they did not. I had all my rights and most of theirs.”
“What superb training for high office,” said Lucretia. “I had wondered what got you to Congress.”
“The Representative moved up to Senator and I was next,” said Tom. “Virtue had nothing to do with it.”
Lucretia put on her widow’s black veil and she and Tom went off on some other nefarious errand. I was not told about it on the grounds that “if you should be captured and plied with strong drink you will become indiscreet ...” as Tom put it.
I had found that a safe place to hide was in my office in the War building. I had had the cubbyhole such a short time that the guards didn’t even know I’d arrived.
I knew that Teethadore would wish to have detailed reports on my travels in South Africa and the Philippines, and I scrawled page after page of material that was just a waste of ink.
At sundown we three met at Pratt’s for supper. It seemed that the couple hundred friends I had in the Wild West Show sued for peace, begged for it, actually, as Lucretia and Tom had won all of the combats.
“No contest,” said Tom. “If I were their attorney, I would advise them to die.”
We had a simple supper and Reed joined me in a seegar. He drew in a long breath of Cuban leaf and smiled, happy with his lot.
“My dear,” he said, “I haven’t acted a complete ass in so long. Couldn’t do it in Congress, they are too stupid to get the point. My, this was satisfying.”
“More than welcome,” said Lucretia.
“Speaking of asses,” said Reed, “now that Theodore is President, I may tell you what he said to me a couple months ago. We were in Portsmouth Naval Yard, looking at the laid keels, and Teddy said to me, ‘Tom, when I’m President I am going to paint our fleet white and send it round the world to call at every major port.’
“ ‘Theodore,’ I said, ‘why are you going to do that?’
“ ‘Paint them white or send them round the world?’
“ ‘You’ll paint them white so that they look like your teeth,’ I said. ‘Why waste the public’s coal on a world cruise for vanity.’ ”
“What’d he say to that?” I asked, when I’d quit bellering.
“Nothing. Ain’t spoke to me since and doubt he ever will,” says Tom Reed. “Likely better for the both of us.”
Reed of Maine arose and bowed and wished us all good things.
“If you ever have pity for a poor, spavined, bored witless lawyer do call on him. For whatever.” And he touched his cane to his homburg and walked away.
“I’d be very content if he were President instead,” said Lucretia. I nodded.
“Then you never really know,” I went on. “Nations have interests. They seek them fulfilled. They must be absolutely amoral to do it.”
“Luther,” said Lucretia, “I like you better when you’re not so sad and hifalutin’.”
I wanted to go for a long walk, now that the war with the Wild West Show was over.
We went slowly all around the town, which was somber for the
death of one President and a little giddy over the new President, who would provide excitement, sure enough.
“I think we could safely go to California,” I said. “It’ll be a few weeks before Teethadore remembers he was sent by God to make my life miserable.”
Even though it was September it was hot and wet in Washington. It would be hot in Chico, too, but dry and the fall rains would be along soon.
Lucretia said her annulment would be along no matter where she was.
So we walked back to the hotel and tossed things in trunks and had the hotel carriage take us to the station and by God there was a late train leaving in an hour. We had time to go to the oyster bar and eat a quart or two apiece, washing it down with French champagne. We were feeling no aches or regrets when the engine leaned into the weight and we began to roll.
I’d got us a suite with a sitting room and bedroom and bath—the tub had a furl on the rim just like a whaleboat has, only it was inside.
Going up the Piedmont we went into a thunderstorm, a hot one sending down huge bolts that would light up the land to the horizon and once I saw a flock of geese frozen in flight by the flash. The thunder was deep, sounding like it was under the earth, too. We opened the windows and leaned out and caught fresh rain with our faces.
When we got to Chicago the following evening we had to change trains and there was a couple of hours delay. As we wandered in the station we come on a whole mess of Swedes taking trains to the Dakotas. They were poor people, eating sausage and bread they had brought rather than pay vendors. They were talking with real wonder in their voices—I speak some of their lingo—of how big their holdings were going to be. Bigger than the local baron back home.
I hadn’t heart to tell them that the local baron could likely raise on one acre all that they’d coax from a six-forty.
I told Lucretia and shook my head, I’d been seeing hopeful people headed west for coming on forty years. It was a good, raw land, but hard to tame, and harder on the women than the men.
We thought we’d walk outside but the rain of soot and ash was like to turn white cloth black in five minutes. We could smell the steel mills and stockyards. Chicago was booming and dirty and loud.
That night we rocked across Iowa and Nebraska part way, on to a spur to Denver—I never have been able to figure why that city got built where it is—and we stretched our legs on the platform a bit and went on in an hour toward Salt Lake City.
Making love while the train went round the mountain curves was a delight.
“A certain ... unexpected quality ...” said Lucretia.
We proudly fucked all through the stop at the City of the Saints. I pulled the blinds down even in the sitting room and did not let them up until we had crossed the Great Salt Lake.
At Sacramento we got on a riverboat that chuffed on up the big brown river, and when we docked I hired a drayman to take us to my little place.
I had a small three bedroom house with a big front room and setting porch, about fine for a retired bachelor scoundrel but I thought it scanty for a lady of Lucretia’s tastes and breeding.
“Wonderful,” she said. “No place to put all that crap in.”
Georgia, my housekeeper, dropped crockery in the kitchen. She was a wonderful lady and I went to see if she was upset, and as I helped her brush all the shards into a dustpan I made some mealymouthed attempt to soothe her.
“Luther,” she said, “I dropped the pot in surprise. What does a pretty woman with that much horse sense see in you?”
“Georgia, the same has occurred to ...”
“Some of them women you brought up here, Luther, they ...”
We both looked over at Lucretia standing in the doorway, arms folded.
“Georgia,” I said, “why don’t I ...”
“Luther,” said Lucretia, “why don’t you take a long ride, and when the horse drops of exhaustion walk on from there ...”
“I was just ...”
“Skating on thin ice. It cracked. Georgia and I must have tea and chat.”
Holy flat flaming Jaysus Kayrist, I couldn’t have been happier if Teethadore had been pounding on a pan in the corner.
I saddled a horse and rode off down toward the river. Chico was a hard place to get a drink in because the Widow Bidwell was a force in the Temperance movement and she owned damn near everything.
So I found a little landing with a couple skiffs tied to it and I went in the cantina and ordered a drink or eleven. I tried to recall all them women Georgia had been so scandalized by. The snake charmer from the medicine show had been unusual. The aerialist from Bailey’s circus and her pet Giant Anteater had galled Georgia. Every time I thought I had remembered them all something would jog my memory. After a couple hours of Georgia’s recitations (the ungrateful bitch) Lucretia would sigh and shake her head and track me down and kill me and go back to Bawlemohr with my parts in a jar of gin.
One other feller with a hunted look and clothes too good to be drinking in a place like this come in and sat far down at the end of the bar, drawing his lists in the air while I drawed mine. We never traded a word but was so blood close we’d have swore the other was not here if we was being prodded with shotguns.
I had a good skinful coming on dusk and rode back to the house, and I circled it a couple times. Lucretia and Georgia were laughing, and there was a sound of glass breaking every third breath or so.
I’d forgot the chest with the framed pictures of women who came here time to time, as a courtesy I would have their portrait on the bedside table.
I got off the horse and considered my options. I could hightail it to South America and join up with Butch and Sundance. I could plead with Teethadore to send me to Antarctica. I could change my name and live in a cave in the desert. I could go to Alaska and be a squawman and live on fish and memories. I could take this handy rope and find a bridge somewheres.
Thoughts of suicide emboldened me to where I went in my own house and asked if it was all right for me to be there.
“No more of this,” says Lucretia, pointing at the barrel of busted photographs.
Georgia nodded, for moral support—and not for me—behind Lucretia.
“How would you explain this?” Lucretia asked.
“Book learning,” I said.
“How so?”
“Poor Richard’s Almanac,” I says.
“Huh?”
“Waste not, want not.”
Lucretia let out a beller of pure rage and come at me with an arm cocked and I was so bumfoozled by it she did hit me with her right cross and stars hung ’fore my eyes and I fell to the floor with a thunk.
Lucretia was on her knees beside me in a flash, and she held my head in her hands and asked me if it was all right.
“Of course,” I said.
“Good,” says she, standing up and kicking me in the ribs hard enough to make one pop, “ ’cause I don’t want you to forget how your life is different now that I am here. I will not have you pawing down memory lane. Your formerly eclectic tastes ...”
“Yah,” said Georgia, “one them come and stayed a week once. Brought an electric mattress ...”
I hauled myself up by a post, hand over hand. My rib hurt like hell.
“Yes,” I said, “I understand. I have got it in my mind. A thousand apologies for not telegraphing ahead and having the photographs thrown out.”
“You did,” said Georgia, waving the yellow telegram. “But I was curious ’bout what you were bringing home this time ... and ’sides, if it hadn’t worked out you’d a been complaining about the pictures being gone.”
“Is this all of them?” Lucretia asked, pointing to the barrel like it smelled bad, too.
“I think Georgia would be better at answering that. I don’t know where all exactly you extracted those pictures from.”
“We got all of them ’cept the ones in the bedside table drawer,” said Georgia.
“Jesus,” roared my darling, stalking off. She came back with the dra
wer and one by one she examined the photos and then took a ball-peen hammer to them.
She tapped my chest with the ball-peen and looked at me real unblinking.
“I would not have been surprised to find a portrait of my mother in that lot. Now are we done? No choice high-graded collections of your goddamned whores enjoying Shetland ponies?”
“If they like Shetland ponies what do they need with me?” I said.
“Good thought,” said Lucretia. “I’ll remember that.”
“I’m going to bed,” said Georgia.
“Goodnight, Georgia,” Lucretia and me chorused.
“I did telegraph ahead to have ’em thrown out,” I whined.
“Georgia was right. It’s all past. How’s your rib?”
“I’ll live,” I said.
“I’ll let you.”
In the morning I had a black-and-blue mark exactly the size of the toe of her boot up high on the right side of my rib cage, and it stitched when I breathed or walked.
Lucretia and I had a late breakfast, and no discussion of the various outrages of the night before.
The valley was cooling and soon it would rain, them big Pacific rain clouds would come over the Coast Range and dump torrents of water on the parched grass and live oaks. I saddled horses for us—and she looked thoughtfully at the well-worn sidesaddle and then at me.
“I bought it like that,” I says. “Jesus H. Kayrist, woman, I surrender, I give up, I’ll burn the damn saddle.”
“My mother told me men forget,” she said. “And I always do listen to my mother.”
“Does your mother know about us?”
“Ummhummmm.”
“Well?”
“Ummmhummm.”
That was the answer I would have to make do with.
We rode down to the Sacramento River to the west. There’s miles of marshes and tule reeds, all full of every kind of duck in the thousands. They would be here all winter, and we could eat wild duck whenever we’d a mind. Geese, too.
There was an old coot living out in the tule reeds on a hummock island. He was a strange old man, and claimed he’d come with the Forty-Niners and he damn well might have.