by David Khalaf
INTERLUDE II
CALAMITY JANE POURED a tumbler four fingers high of Gilbert & Parsons Hygienic Whiskey, and thrust it into Harry Houdini’s hand.
“I only drink whiskey,” she said. “Hard liquor for a hard life.”
Jane would bet a gold nugget that there was more alcohol in that one glass than the magician had consumed in his entire twenty-six years of life. Houdini brought the glass to his nose, gave it a whiff, and suppressed a gag.
“You better work on your tolerance, boy,” Jane said. “You may need it some day.”
“I can’t see what for,” Houdini said.
Jane poured herself a glass, downed it, then poured herself another.
“You drink too much,” Petey told her.
Jane ignored the voice in her head and set to loading the rifle on her cot. When she finished, she set it on her lap, pointed at the small wooden door at the front of the train car.
She shared a car with both the cook and the seamstress of Buffalo Bill's Wild West. It was cramped and cluttered, but the colorful blankets Jane had hung for privacy gave it the intimate feel of a child’s play fortress.
Houdini, who was sitting in the only chair, forced himself to take a sip of the whiskey. By his expression it looked as if he’d just swallowed gasoline, which wasn’t too far from the truth. Gilbert & Parsons was what you bought for quantity, not quality.
As the sun set south of Cheyenne, Jane adjusted the flame of the kerosene lamp with her arthritic fingers. She looked out across the flat plains on which she had grown up. This stretch of track was thirty miles from the closest town, and the isolation made her uneasy.
“Four years ago I asked you what your real talent was,” Jane said. “You remember?”
The two hadn’t seen each other since their short encounter in Minnesota. Houdini was still on the vaudeville circuit, but from what Jane heard he had dropped the cards from his act and was gaining a reputation for his dramatic escapes.
She had seen his name on the marquee across the street from the Wild West show. It was a small theater, but Houdini was the headlining act.
He nodded.
“I remember.”
“Well?” she asked. “Are you just a great magician, or is there something more?”
He stared into his glass. There was a thoughtfulness in his expression that had been absent a few years ago.
“I spend long hours thinking,” he said. “About magic, life, all sorts of things. The longer I sit the more aware I become of myself. My heartbeat, my breathing, the functions of my body. And then, it’s as if I can see myself from the outside.”
“It’s your Burden,” Jane said. “Your unique gift, and your unique challenge.”
“And you,” Houdini said, “you said you get hunches. About what?”
Jane looked out the window and took in the hard-packed land along the tracks. Her eyes weren’t good, but patches of grass along the tracks appeared to be flattened, as if horses had been there.
“All sorts of stuff,” she said. “Mostly danger.”
Houdini looked up at her, his eyes blazing.
“It’s been getting stronger.”
Jane nodded and twisted uncomfortably on the edge of her cot. Her sciatica was worse every day.
“Petey used to be an occasional whisper,” she said. “Now he damn near runs my life.”
“Petey?”
Jane pointed to her head. She didn’t try to explain Petey to anyone, but she didn’t bother to hide him anymore, either. Her intuition had become sharper as the years went on, which meant that Petey became more talkative. It had gotten to where he almost never shut up anymore.
“I listen to Petey whether I’m keen to or not,” she said. “I don’t have much choice.”
The train chugged along rhythmically, the slow heartbeat of a mighty beast. They’d reach Denver by noon the next day, perform two nights of shows plus a matinee at the local vaudeville theaters, then turn right back around for Wyoming, all in under seventy-two hours. It was a grueling schedule on Jane’s broken-down body.
Out the small window, she could see a knoll up ahead, the only change in landscape for miles around.
“Ask him my question,” Petey said.
Jane hocked a mouthful of mucus into a spittoon she kept by her cot.
“Of course I’ll ask him!” she said to the air. “Why do you think I brought him here? And before you lay into me, Imma drink as much as I want.”
Whiskey was the only thing that would shut Petey up. She knew it would kill her sooner rather than later, but it was worth the few minutes of silence.
Houdini sipped his drink in an effort to ignore whatever argument Jane appeared to be having with herself.
“Petey wanted me to ask you a question,” Jane said. “What’s on your gravestone?”
It was a nonsense inquiry, even to Jane herself. But when Petey was insistent about something, it was best to give him what he wanted.
“My gravestone?” Houdini asked. “I don’t know, and I hope not to for some time. Why do you, er, why does he ask?”
“I dunno,” Jane said. “Just a hunch, I s’pose.”
It sounded like a riddle, sleight-of-hand for the mind. Petey had become increasingly inscrutable, as if he didn’t even trust Jane.
“I imagine my gravestone will have my name,” Houdini said. “And below that, perhaps it will say ‘The Greatest Magician on Earth.’”
Jane shrugged.
“I reckon it might.”
She saw little brown specks appear on top of the knoll, like fleas on the back of a dog—except these fleas grew larger as they charged the train. Jane yawned.
“You don’t seem impressed,” Houdini said.
“I think there’s more to you than that,” Jane said. “I get a sense about you. Petey does too.”
Houdini was a showman, but Jane could tell he took little pleasure in the attention. He performed for the love of magic itself. There was something pure in his motivations, something virtuous about the man himself.
“Tell him what I told you about magic,” Petey said.
Jane grimaced and brushed him off. She became aware of hooting and hollering from somewhere nearby.
“Tell him.”
“Petey wants me to tell you that magic is important, but it isn’t the meaning you’re looking for. Magic is the means. Remember that. Magic isn’t the meaning, it’s the means.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Houdini said.
Petey started to explain but Jane downed the rest of her glass. It was enough to confuse him and shut him up.
“Think of it like this,” Jane said. “Magic is a train. It will get you places. But the destination is never the train itself.”
“Then what is my destination?” Houdini asked.
The car door burst open and a filthy man, eyes wild with fear and excitement, pointed his gun at the magician. Jane pulled the trigger on the rifle that was already aimed at his chest. The crack of her firearm bounced off the walls, drowning out the screams of the cook and seamstress in the back half of the car. The man staggered from the impact, hit the wall behind him, and died before his body hit the floor.
“You must protect your talent, and cultivate it,” she said, casually popping the bullet casing out of the rifle. “Use it, but don’t boast about it. Men would kill for talent like yours. Don’t you ever let them.”
Houdini had his hands over his head, cowering into his seat. Eventually the magician mustered the courage to look up. He took in the dead man, a six-shooter in one hand and a burlap sack in the other.
“Train robbers?”
Jane nodded. It was the reason she had invited Houdini for a drink when she heard he had hitched a ride on the train. A city slicker like him, clean cut in a nice suit, would get fleeced by a gang of outlaws, and probably killed. Jane had a hunch it was her duty to protect the young magician, even if she didn’t quite know why.
“Maybe you should give some more thought to that gravestone,�
�� Jane said. “You never know when you’re going to need it.”
Houdini couldn’t tear his eyes away from the robber.
“And you?” he asked, his voice still shaky. “What will yours say?”
“That’s easy,” she said. “It’ll say, ‘Here lies Calamity Jane. Most of her stories were hogwash, but the best ones were true.’”
She drank straight from the bottle.
“I reckon I’ve lived enough stories to make myself a legend,” she said. “I got a hunch you’ll have your share of stories too. Maybe next time we meet you’ll have some to tell me.”
“I’d like that,” Houdini said.
“You’ll never see him again,” Petey said. “You’ll be dead. I told you, you drink too much.”
Jane paused. A smile broke out across her face. She let out a long, rasping laugh before erupting into a painful fit of coughing.
“Are you all right?” Houdini asked.
Jane took another swig from her bottle and knocked hard on the side of her head, right on the spot where that incessant voice lived.
“I’ve never been better.”