Return of Little Big Man

by Thomas Berger

  There was a place at the Columbian Exposition that did hold special interest for Amanda, and that was the Woman’s Building, commemorating the contributions of the fair sex to civilization and largely the creation of the leading lady in Chicago at that time, Mrs. Potter Palmer, wife of the fellow who owned the Palmer House hotel, who she got to pay for a good deal of the costs of putting it up according to the plans of a female architect, and maybe it was for that reason Amanda liked the design better than most of the other buildings, being what she called Italian rather than neoclassical, which I gather meant not as cold as the designs of men, or anyhow that’s my interpretation.

  I want to make it clear that Amanda, though real biased on the women’s question to the point where I might call her slanted, still liked men well enough personally. This might be hard to understand, for it sure was for me in those days, and that probably was why Mrs. Palmer who was real forceful on the matter of female rights in general and was an ally of Jane Addams in helping working-class women, found it needful from time to time to announce she still thought that “in presiding over a happy home, a woman is fulfilling her highest function,” and she always made it clear she wasn’t no anarchist, in case it wasn’t already apparent in somebody whose husband not only owned the fancy hotel but also their home on Lake Shore Drive, which was so enormous and luxurious it was called the Palmer Palace. When entertaining, Mrs. P. was said to wear a collar sporting seven diamonds and two thousand pearls.

  Now to show you the difference between me and Amanda in our reactions, she condemned Mrs. Palmer for doing so little for others, whereas to my mind it was remarkable, being so rich and powerful, that Palmer’s wife done anything at all.

  Not that me and Amanda got into quarrels on these matters: we just each expressed our opinion, then listened to the other’s, me because I was crazy about her, her at first probably on account of she believed I had saved her life, but then she gradually developed something more, though for a long time I couldn’t believe it possible she could ever care for me except as the acquaintance I had always been.

  Well, just one more incident occurring at the Fair.

  The different states of the U.S.A. had each its own building boasting of its achievements and products, with the host, Illinois, naturally having the largest, though California weren’t far behind, while Texas was a surprise at being only of average size. The states’ area was behind the Fine Arts Palace at the north end of the exposition grounds, and the day me and Amanda had been looking at them paintings that I thought was swell and she didn’t, we took a back exit and come out on 57th Street, right across which was the buildings of several states and beyond them a big comfort station, for which I was in need, having swallowed too much of Dr. Welch’s grape juice, which I was possibly overdoing due to having gone teetotal as to stronger drink now I had the Hull House connection, where I didn’t want to smell of it, as it was frowned on.

  However, I considered it impolite to let on to Amanda that I had to take a leak, figuring the most graceful way was to stroll near the facility, and then take notice of it as if by chance. So we headed in that direction.

  Now as it happened the Kansas Building was right where you turned to go along the walk to the comfort station, and I was just fixing to ask Amanda if she wanted to visit the display celebrating her native state, hoping she would decline at least at this moment, hearing the call of nature as I did, when I seen somebody I recognized just going in the Kansas door, or rather holding it for the lady with him to use first.

  I tell you I forgot my need.

  Amanda now and again held my arm when we walked nowadays, and this seemed to indicate warm feelings towards me, for she sure wouldn’t of done it to be conventional. She was doing so right now.

  “Say,” I says, “will you look there at Kansas? We got to look in there. Suppose they have something about Dodge?”

  Now, though I was distracted at this moment, I still remember what Amanda said. “I’ll meet you inside.” She dropped my arm and pointed up the path to the comfort station. “I have to take a pee first.”

  I had never even heard a sporting woman refer in such a literal fashion to a bodily function. But my shock wasn’t as important as my realization of how close we had become if she could speak so freely.

  However, I was not diverted long from the purpose at hand. I just had to see if it was who I thought it was, even before relieving myself, even before thinking further on the intimacy between me and Amanda, so I says okay and she went off and I entered the building.

  Kansas did have displays based on the history of cattle camps like Dodge, Abilene, Wichita, and the rest, and its agricultural accomplishments with wheat and all, in celebration of which there was a big life-sized replica of the Liberty Bell made of stalks of grain all glued together, the kind of thing I thought real cunning but I doubted Amanda would.

  I mention the bell because the man I was looking for had stopped in front of it with his lady. He was a tall, lean, mustachioed fellow in his mid-forties who hadn’t changed much during the dozen years since I last seen him though he wasn’t dressed in that dead black coat of the old days but a gray suit and a softer hat.

  I got close enough to see him plain without him noticing me in particular. It was Wyatt Earp, sure enough, and while I had actually seen her only a few times in Tombstone and usually at a distance, the woman with him was likely Josie Marcus, who Allie always referred to as Sadie, still, though no Amanda, quite a looker, with her dark hair and eyes and, having put on a pound or two over the years, an even more curvaceous figure of the kind set off by the wasp-waist style of them days.

  I’ll admit I was amazed to see them still together, and not only because of the way Wyatt had treated his women in the past, but Josie herself supposedly come from a well-to-do family to have a career on the stage performing in places like Tombstone, which was only slightly above a harlot’s level in society, and she had been Johnny Behan’s kept woman before Wyatt took her off him. So when she was young she had been sowing her wild oats, but why had she stayed with Wyatt, who if I knowed him hadn’t never, like most of his breed, made a killing except literally? Of all the celebrity Westerners I was ever acquainted with, only Buffalo Bill Cody made a success at business, but he hadn’t ever been a gunfighter. Maybe young Henry Ford might of had some theory regarding Jewish women, of which Josie was supposed to be one, but I didn’t have none for her and Wyatt as a pair except that they was in love.

  That a woman could know Wyatt Earp for a dozen years and still put up with him give me hope for myself, because I was a much nicer fellow.

  But now I was certain of his identity, I was in a quandary. Should I speak to him or not? And if I wasn’t going to do so, why had I followed him in here, despite that pressing need to relieve myself? Some kind of instinct had took over. Pard would get a scent in the wind and stiffen his tail, a raised black stripe appearing along his spine, meaning, I figured, something like I SMELL A RAT.

  I expect there might of been something of that in my reaction to Wyatt, but if so, why then stalk him unless I wanted to chew the fat about the good old days? The trouble was, I never considered them good at the time, insofar as they concerned him. Except for buffaloing me not once but twice—and being hit over the head with a .45 barrel you feel it for a week after—he barely spoke to me. I mean, I was on close terms with Wild Bill, Bat, Cody, the Prince of Wales, to name a few distinguished people who did not consider my friendship beneath them, but unless he was cracking my skull Wyatt Earp had always looked right through me.

  Why, if I stepped up to him now, he likely not only wouldn’t recall me by sight, he wouldn’t even recognize the name. For ten years I had been associated with the premier attraction on earth, meeting the leaders of the world, and now was a respected member of the staff of Hull House, but more important than any of these was my friendship with a lady I esteemed above all others. Yet that bastard wouldn’t even be civil to me!

  I’m making fun of myself h
ere. It was so long ago, I can look back with a certain evenhandedness, seeing at least some of my own failings. Wyatt had had reason both times he buffaloed me. I mean, he never just up and done it without no cause, and as for the rest I personally had against him, well, a man has a right to make such friends as he wishes—and Doc Holliday was supposed to of saved his life, which was more than I’d probably of done, because I always thought him a son of a bitch and still did.

  Frankly, I never give him the chance to greet or snub me. Instead I did a rotten, sneaky thing. I had a mean streak in me at that time, which I hope I’ve outlived but probably haven’t if riled.

  The Fair had its own police force called the Columbian Guard, officers of which was all over the place in their smart gray uniforms and capes with a yellow lining, for in addition to the pocket-picking and purse-snatching such as happened to Jane Addams, the authorities was on the alert against any sign the visitors to the Exposition might form an uprising and overthrow the very civilization celebrated by the Fair, led by labor-union rabble-rousers or even foreign-born bomb-throwers, like them at the Haymarket Square seven years earlier, who really had killed a lot of people.

  What I done now, and I ain’t altogether proud of it, was take quick leave of the Kansas Building and find, not far outside, for there was thousands patrolling the grounds, a pair of them caped Columbian Guards.

  I steps up, and mind you I was dressed respectable, so they was obliged to believe me, and I says, confidential-like so as not to alarm the passersby, “You fellows better get some reinforcements before you tackle this job, but you oughta know there’s a dangerous anarchist inside Kansas at this minute. He’s carrying a concealed firearm.” This was likely to be the actual case: in later years I heard that Wyatt, then working as a boxing referee, got arrested for wearing a pistol in the ring, his excuse being he had enemies everywhere. “I think,” I went on, “he’s got a bomb as well. I heard him tell the woman with him he wants to blow up that Liberty Bell made of grain.”

  I gave Wyatt’s description and that of Josie, who I said looked like Little Egypt from the “Street in Cairo,” and them guards begun to blow their whistles to summon help.

  I didn’t wait there but went up the walk towards the comfort stations, meeting Amanda en route.

  “The Kansas Building’s just got a lot of stuff about the cattle business,” I told her. “I doubt you’d be interested.”

  “Someone told me the horse that survived the Little Bighorn is displayed there in a stuffed form,” Amanda says, wrinkling her newly powdered nose in disapproval.

  Due to my spite against Wyatt Earp, I had forgot entirely about old Comanche. Well, neither him nor me could do each other any good by now.

  “Yeah,” I says, “who wants to see that?” Then I excused myself and finally went where I probably should of gone in the first place, and afterwards we left the Fair by the nearby exit. I never heard what happened with Wyatt at that time, and I expect I ought to be ashamed of what I done, but for some reason, though I know it was wrong, and reflects badly on my character, I ain’t.

  23. Doing Well

  IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING that sighting of Wyatt Earp, I brooded a good deal on the situation which I was apparently stuck with lifelong, namely, being naturally attracted to a lady superior to me in most every department.

  But you might well ask why I never done more to improve myself, beginning with trying to use better English. Well, to be fair to me, I did and though I would talk better for a while, it didn’t stick for long at a time. I remember that German friend of mine back at the Major’s school, Klaus Kappelhaus, told me he knowed how to talk better in his adopted language than you would think if you heard him only late in the day when he was tired.... Which reminds me of how tired I am at this minute, after talking so long into this machine since my last rest, way back when telling of our second trip to Europe, but I got so much to relate and so little time.

  So I did improve my speech by picking up words and grammar from Amanda, along with the other ladies on the staff at Hull House, and I even tried some of Buffalo Bill’s rhetorical flourishes, which I admit impressed me all the more for him having no more education than me, but Amanda generally caught these right away and warned me against them.

  I already mentioned acquiring an up-to-date city wardrobe and learning how to act like I belonged there when in respectable restaurants, tearooms, and the like. Books still scared me, for even in the smallest of them there was so much printed all at once, so I was working my way up to them by starting with newspapers, which I had seldom read previously, and I didn’t take to them much now so far as content went, but I realized certain sacrifices was necessary if I was ever to be worthy of Amanda’s friendship.

  However, I was also convinced I’d basically stay a sow’s ear no matter how much effort was expended towards achieving another result, and that accounted for what looked like a permanent despair on my part. It seemed pretty clear that my use to Amanda would be at an end once she had exhausted what I had to offer for that book she was writing. Which by the way, if you think by now she wasn’t ever going to, for I believe that is the case with many who prepare for such a job for a long time, you are wrong.

  She had already wrote several chapters by this point and read them aloud to me from her manuscript while we sat side by side on a park bench, and it was the truest commentary I ever heard from a white person on Indians, and not only because of all the information I had furnished her with but what she added by way of interpretation, not to mention how it was wrote, which even exceeded my high expectations. Every once in a while I would ask her to repeat a certain passage just for the grace and authority of her language. She wasn’t given to writing pretty but rather true, and there was a beauty in that.

  Unfortunately, the finer I considered her achievement, the more discouraged I was about myself, for apart from the Indian lore I could impart, what else was left?

  Well, maybe a sense of fun, which apparently had been missing hitherto in Amanda’s life. I actually got her to go with me to the building at the Fair called Manufactures and Liberal Arts, a name itself which made her snicker for some reason, and look at a knight on horseback modeled in California prunes, a chocolate statue of Venus de Milo, and a recognizable map of the U.S.A. at a distance, which when you got close turned out to be an arrangement of pickles. The last-named made Amanda laugh out loud, something she was lately doing more and more, I guess as a result of knowing me better. I had had this effect on many people, always with the exception of Wyatt Earp.

  “Amanda,” I said at this point, “you want to go down to the Casino and ride the moving sidewalk?” The former was the building where you would wait for the excursion boats on Lake Michigan, and then go out on the pier to board them by means of the latter, which according to the Wild West cowboys lived up to its name, a sidewalk that was one big conveyor belt, operated by electricity.

  “And take a cruise?” she asked with a little knowing grin, being aware of my feeling about boats larger than a gondola on an enclosed waterway without waves.

  “Why, sure,” I says. “If you really want to, I’m game. Or we could just go on board the Santa Maria. I know you don’t think much of Columbus, but if you see that dinky little ship of his, you’ll have to admit he done a remarkable job in getting here at all.”

  As I say, we didn’t ever argue with bad personal feeling, like the other person was a fool or scoundrel, but nevertheless always held to our own positions, hers being that the mischief resulting from Columbus coming to the New World probably outweighed the good, whereas mine held that somebody was sure to of done it sooner or later with the same results, for such was the natural itch of mankind to go to wild places and tame them, and of all the examples of such throughout the world, America was by far the best result even if not yet perfect.

  But Amanda was in a funny mood today, and I couldn’t get her going. “I expect you’re right, Jack,” says she, winking her blue eye, “ole Chris was better tha
n most.”

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “Of course,” she says, bumping me with her hip real saucily, which some old biddy seen and scowled at as we strolled out of Manufactures and Liberal Arts onto the lakeshore walk.

  “You’re getting mighty fresh, as well,” I noted.

  “Someone has to,” said she.

  Lake Michigan, as I have pointed out, might as well of been an ocean when you looked at it from the shore. You couldn’t see across it in any direction, and it got real rough in a wind, of which Chicago was seldom without. I looked at today’s whitecaps and said, “I guess when he closes here Cody will want to go back to Europe.” I didn’t know any such fact, as I hadn’t talked to him on the subject, but was saying so now for effect.

  “And you’ll be going along,” Amanda said rather than asked.

  I scraped my foot a little. “I don’t know about that.”

  “Jack,” said she, “I’ve seen you at moments when you could have been killed, and you had more confidence than you’ve ever shown with me.”

  “You’re right about that, Amanda.” I was amazed she understood. “It’s probably because I seen a lot of dying and know what to expect. I ain’t, uh, haven’t ever been able to figure you out.”

  “You don’t know whether I like you or not,” said she.

  “By golly, you’re right again!” I says loud enough so we was stared at again by passersby.

  “Well, I do,” said Amanda. “I like you, Jack. I like you a whole lot. I should have told you that before.”

  I had quite an elated feeling. “Oh, that’s all right, Amanda, I realize a lady ain’t supposed to speak first—” I stopped, on account of she just had. “That is, I mean—”

  “You ought to know by now that I care little about what others, usually men, present company excepted, ordain that women should do. At quite a young age I was married for a short time to that sort of person.”