But I am just an old drunken woman, too poor to keep a horse. Not that Billy would scorn me—he has never scorned anyone.
I mop out a saloon in Deadwood, about all it gets me is drinks and a little shack to bunk in. I’m afraid I will end my days a fallen woman—mopping up a saloon in Deadwood is about as far as you can fall.
Your mother,
Martha Jane
Darling Jane—
Your Daddy, Mr. Burke, was kind, Janey. If he is alive I send him my blessings. Wild Bill had married the Lake woman, I hated her, I was at my wit’s end. It ended when I met your Daddy. It was not love—not love as Blue and Dora knew it.
It was only kindness Janey—you should always respect your Daddy for that.
Your mother,
Martha Jane
Darling Jane—
I feel I will not be here long now Janey, I had better try and tell the truth. Sometimes when I’m drunk I lie, or when people scorn me I exaggerate—I put myself in adventures I didn’t have. The battle of the Rosebud, for example—I wasn’t there but sometimes I say I was—it is just storytelling Janey. People like to hear stories about the old times, Bill Cody made his fortune on such a fact. Bill Cody only killed one Indian, but look what it got him. If you put yourself in the stories people like them better.
It is not of that that I want to write about now, those tales can die with me, I don’t care.
You may hear people say your mother wasn’t even a woman, Janey, don’t believe it. In my youth when I was always traveling I dressed like a man, it’s easier.
Then later I disguised myself as a man to get work—in those days nobody would hire a woman mule skinner, even now they wouldn’t think of it, not unless they were desperate and there was not a man within a hundred miles.
I worked with men so much I guess I thought I was one at times—it was partly too that women had such hatred of me, all except Dora and a few others. They didn’t like it that I went my own way and cussed and smoked—I had to face off so many old biddies that I got tired of it, I gave up and went off with the men, at least I did when I could get work.
You can’t run off from what you are though—you have to make camp with what you are, every night, Janey. I’m glad I met your Daddy Burke, otherwise I might not have believed there was kindness among men, I had collected too much scorn and was about to give up and go off and die.
I was born odd though, Janey—not that I was an idiot or didn’t have enough toes or fingers—there are other ways of being odd. When I was young I looked more like a man than plenty of these little soft fellows—I think there are plenty of fellows who would have been happier being a woman—but of course they were not given the choice, no more was I. It’s sad to be odd, Janey—I used to envy Dora, to think what a comfort just to be a woman as she was, even though at the time she might be crying her heart out because of some trick of Blue’s. Dora wasn’t always happy but at least she was never odd—stuck in between, as I was.
I went to several Doctors Janey—even in London I snuck off and went to a Doc, no one knew it, they just thought I got drunk and got lost. It was a disappointment, the Docs didn’t really know what to make of me either, they used names that I won’t repeat—I can’t spell them anyway—to refer to my condition. The old Doc in London was the most interested, he wanted me to stay around so he could study me. You can believe I told him off fast, I was not such a freak as to want to stay around London and be studied. Doc Ramses wasn’t a real Doc, but he knew I was odd, he was always sniffing around—it was just business with Doc Ramses though, he wanted to put me in a medicine show. He didn’t quite have the nerve to mention it though, and a good thing too, I would have killed him.
Can’t write no more. Can’t write no more about this now, I remember those doctors’ offices and get too sad. It is a discouraging business sitting around those places waiting to be studied.
Your mother,
Martha Jane
Darling Jane—
This may be my last letter Janey, I have the shakes so from drinking I can hardly hold the pen.
I used to have guts, Janey—nobody denied me that. Now I had better muster what I have left of my guts and write the truth.
I remember that first night, when I sat in the evening dews upon the Yellowstone, looking at the tablet in the firelight. I only meant to keep a diary—it was at Buntline’s urging, when I first knew him he was always encouraging me to note down a few of my adventures—he planned to put them in a book and make me as famous as Billy. I thought I would just oblige him and keep a diary, plenty of cowboys keep them—even Blue has one. If he put his adventures in it and his little wife ever reads it Blue will have to light out for the hills, she will scald him for sure, though who knows if Blue is truthful, even in his diary.
I started to write “Dear Diary” and I wrote “Darling Jane” instead. I wanted you so much I made you up—it was not planned, I had no intent to deceive, the words just came. No sooner had I written them than I could see you, all pretty in your school dress—then I could not give up my own fancy. You are the child I would have chose, Janey, had I been normal—why can’t I at least have you in my head? In my hopes I am normal, so was your kind Daddy Burke, we would have had you if it had been possible. It was a disappointment to both of us that it wasn’t. I didn’t mean to invent you when I sat down with the tablet, I just meant to scribble a few memories to send to Buntline.
I guess you rose out of my hopes, Janey—I had thought I put them out of my heart long ago, when all the doctors told me I couldn’t bear a child. None of them were kind about it—I would have thought my hopes would have died then and there, in one of those old dingy offices.
But we don’t have the say about our hopes, Janey—truth, if that’s what it is, can’t stop us from hoping. Or didn’t stop me at least—why else did I scratch down your name on that tablet? It was the name your Daddy and I planned to give you before we became discouraged.
So I wrote those letters Janey—you could say they are letters to my heart. I could not resist imagining the sweet girl I would have had if I could.
In my mind I made you alive, Janey—that’s better than nothing ain’t it?
I understand now how Buntline and them other writers dash off their tales—once I began with the tablet, pictures just came to me. I saw a well brought up little girl living a nice life in Illinois, pretty dresses and school.
I made up the best life I could for you Janey, it is the opposite of the life I have lived out here in this mess they call the west. Though I love the west, for all its sadness.
I suppose Buntline hoped to be a hero, like Custer or Wild Bill—he wasn’t, so he flung all his hopes into stories about Billy Cody, who was only a half-hero himself. Though I will respect Bill Cody till I die, he treated me fair.
Once I started the scribbling I couldn’t behave—I guess I wanted to outdo Buntline or something, that’s why I wrote of my romance with Hickok.
I am ashamed of that one, Janey—couldn’t resist flattering myself, I guess. Wild Bill practically held his nose when I walked by, he would have as soon wallowed with a pig in the mud as to bed down with me—I only saw him three or four times anyway.
Yet I wrote in this great love that never happened. I don’t recall that Wild Bill even spoke to me—if he did it was just to borrow a match or something.
Once I wrote it I guess I convinced myself, I started blabbing about it, now everyone believes it, I’m sure they’ll bury me beside him when I die. That’s a joke not many will appreciate—certainly Wild Bill wouldn’t have appreciated it. Well, the man’s been dead twenty-seven years, what can he do about it now?
I even believed my own tale to the point of nearly attacking Blue, who spoke ill of Hickok once in Cheyenne. Of course Blue knew well what the man was, and so did I—I improved him in the letters, never expecting it to get stuck in my head the way it did.
I will close now Janey, I am just writing to myself anyway—why take the troubl
e?
Your mother,
Martha Jane
Darling Jane—
I meant to stop writing these letters—here I am doing it again. What does that say about human beings?
I will not destroy these letters Janey. To do so would be to destroy you—I feel you live now in some way, maybe you will always live—you were the finest of my hopes, may you always live.
I keep these letters in my saddlebags, I don’t have a horse now but I still have my saddlebags. If some stranger should find them before the rats chew them up I hope he will take them to Blue. But if a stranger should read them and find them demented let the stranger consider that I was very lonely.
Your mother,
Martha Jane
PART V
BARTLE BONE, POTATO CREEK JOHNNY, AND SEVERAL OTHER old-timers chipped in and hired a wagon to bring Calamity’s body back to Deadwood from Tinville, where she died. Bartle, whose troupe was not prospering, nonetheless bought her coffin himself.
She was buried on Mount Moriah, just above James Butler Hickok. A crowd in drunken spirits climbed up the hill and then stumbled down again to try and become more drunken still.
Bartle and Johnny filled in the grave themselves—it was a small measure of economy. Johnny meant to be off the next day, to try his luck in Idaho. Bartle had a show planned in Denver in three weeks—if the receipts were favorable he meant to retire to Sheridan, Wyoming, and open a saloon.
“I don’t care if I never see these goddamn dreary Black Hills again,” Bartle said. He and Johnny sat on a wheelbarrow by Calamity’s grave, having a smoke. It was Johnny’s new wheelbarrow—he was so proud of it he never went anywhere without it, not even to funerals or wakes.
“Why, you’ll be back,” Johnny said. “I will too, unless I fall off a hill.”
“If you could just learn to roll yourself in your new wheelbarrow your travels would be a lot easier,” Bartle said.
Johnny, no humorist, didn’t consider that funny. He smoked a cigar he had meant to give the preacher—but the preacher had found so little of a favorable nature to say about Calamity that Johnny didn’t consider he was really owed a cigar.
Bartle Bone felt sad. With Calamity dead, who was there left to see in the lands of the west? Billy Cody was always touring, T. Blue was always ranching—if you visited him you were far too likely to be put to work—and Potato Creek Johnny was too single-minded to be much fun.
Since he never expected to encounter Johnny again, Bartle thought he might just see what the man knew about something he had been curious about for a long time—namely, whether Calamity had been a woman or a man.
“I traveled many a mile with Martha Jane,” Bartle said. “She was with me in Chicago when Jim was kilt—the memory will sting ever time I think about it. You knew Martha nearly as long as I did. I’d like to ask you one question. Did you ever hear that Martha was a hermaphrodite?”
Doc Ramses had explained the meaning of the term to him.
Johnny twitched a little—big words often made him twitch. He tried to remember if he had ever heard that particular term applied to Calamity, and could not recall that he had.
“No, and you know what? I don’t care what religion she was,” Johnny said. “I just liked the old girl.”
MY COMPLIMENTS TO THE SHADES OF:
Martha Jane Canary
Dora DuFran
Teddy Blue Abbott
William F. Cody
Jack Omohundro
Sitting Bull
Annie Oakley
Daisy, Countess of Warwick
Russell of the Times
Potato Creek Johnny and a few others whose stories outgrew their lives
Buffalo Girls Page 32