Authors: Pete Dexter
The whore man didn't answer, and Charley let him go.
He walked out of the Gem and went to his camp. Nothing had been touched; the boy hadn't been back. He did not dwell on the boy or family entanglements. He picked up his toilet and a clean shirt and walked toward the bathhouse, thinking of Mrs. Langrishe.
In the aftermath of serious drinking, his peeder defied common sense and decency.
The bottle fiend took a dollar from Charley and watched him undress. He was transfixed by the bruises. He stood still, holding two buckets of hot water, and stared at Charley's chest and legs. "What kind of injuries is those?" he said after a while.
Charley sat down in the tub and waited for water. "Bites," he said. "Now start this bath and I'll find you a bottle later on."
"What bit you?"
"Teeth," Charley said. The Bottle Fiend put one of the buckets down and poured the other one into the tub. It was hot water, and Charley began to sweat.-
"Heat's the best thing for drunks," the soft-brain said. "Hot water takes the poison out the skin. I don't know about bites . . ."
He poured the other bucket in the tub, and the hot water took what strength Charley had, all except his peeder. He dropped his chin into his chest and closed his eyes and thought of being bitten by Mrs. Langrishe. He wondered what sort of left turn his brain had taken.
"What bit you?" the Bottle Fiend said again. He brought two more buckets of water and poured them over Charley's shoulders.
Charley shook his head. "I bit myself," he said, and then he opened his eyes and saw the Bottle Fiend's mind at work. "Don't think it," Charley said. "You understand? Just don't think it. . ."
"I can't help what I think," the Bottle Fiend said.
Charley said, "There isn't a soul that drew breath on this planet so far committed suicide biting himself to death."
"You bit yourself," the Bottle Fiend said.
"It wasn't a suicide," Charley said. "It was something different."
The Bottle Fiend was standing over him, and the sweat ran into Charley's eyes and stung them when he blinked. "How is it different?" the Bottle Fiend said.
"It was different," he said. "God as my witness." He got a picture then of the Bottle Fiend sitting in his chair by the door, bleeding, holding a piece of his own shoulder in his mouth. Then he got a picture of Mrs. Langrishe sitting over him in the same attitude as Lurline last night.
The Bottle Fiend went for the last two buckets of hot water. "When you tell me something," he said when he came back, "is it true?"
"As much as you're ready for," Charley said.
The Bottle Fiend reflected on that. "That's what Doc Sick said."
"He looks out for your interests," Charley said.
"Sometimes," the Bottle Fiend said a few minutes later, "I wisht I didn't have nobody looking over me. Sometimes I want to know everything the way it is."
Something in that bothered Charley. "Don't ever wish for something you don't know what it is," he said. "You might get it." Then he handed the soft-brain five dollars and sent him out for a bottle of whiskey. "Nothing pink or clear," he said. "I want brown American whiskey. And when I'm done, you can have the bottle."
Seth Bullock had a nose for trouble, and this was it.
Overnight, Solomon Star had lost his interest in business. Bullock had been business partners with him nine years, before Deadwood in Bismarck, and he noticed the difference from the morning Solomon quit complaining over the books. Two different days in the last week, he hadn't as much as sharpened a pencil.
On Monday, as a test, Bullock said, "You think we need a new porch on the place?"
Solomon Star shrugged. He never even asked how much porches cost. He was sitting at his desk, open-collared, looking at the ceiling. In nine years, Bullock had never seen Solomon at work without a tie. He couldn't remember seeing him star-gazing indoors either.
Before, his nose was always in the balance books. He knew where the money went and where it came from. He kept track of interest rates, and borrowed sometimes even when they didn't need capital. He argued with Bullock over orders and supplies, he argued over the money Bullock gave to widows and orphans and other public causes. He argued, but he gave in. Bullock had a long-range plan he never saw, and in the end he trusted that it was there.
And in that way Seth Bullock and Solomon Star depended on each other, and understood each other the way different people sometimes do—each of them thinking he saw the other better than the other saw him.
"We could ship some hardwood up from Colorado," Bullock said, worried now. Something depended on the balance between them, and he saw it had changed.
Solomon Star kept his eyes on the ceiling. "Whatever you think, Mr. Bullock," he said.
"Tropical flowers," Bullock said. "We could plant orchids and sell them May Day . . . Solomon?"
"I've been thinking," he said. "I might like to read a novel."
Seth Bullock did not own a nervous-type stomach, but that declaration sent it right to the edge of the cliff. "You haven't been yourself," he said.
"That's what I've been thinking too," Solomon said. "Exactly."
Bullock stared at his partner, trying to see what it was. "Are you sick with something?" he said. He was hoping he was sick.
Solomon stood up and went to the front of the store. He looked out the window. Solomon hadn't spent five minutes in his life looking out windows. Bullock followed him over. "You know what, Mr. Bullock?" Solomon said after a while. "Those hills are pretty. It's like I never saw them before, like this is the first day."
"Is it bad news from home?" Bullock said. "Did the mail come today?"
Solomon shook his head, still looking out the window. He took a deep breath and stood taller than usual. "I wonder what the sights are like from that hill," he said, pointing at one that formed the southeast boundary of town.
"You've been on top of hills plenty of times."
Seth Bullock moved closer, wanting a better look at Solomon's eyes. "We got two kilns somewhere between here and Sioux City," he said. "Twenty thousand dollars each. Another one north of town, exposed to the elements. We got a drawer full of contracts for bricks everyplace in the Hills. We got orders and shipments coming in from anyplace that ships out. We got men to hire and goods to move. There isn't any turning back . . ."
Solomon smiled at him. He never smiled over business, not in his life. He looked back out the window. "I think I might climb that hill," he said. And that fast, he walked out of the office, crossed the street, and started toward the south end of town. He didn't even close the door.
Bullock sat down at Solomon's desk. He looked through the papers there, seeing they were in some kind of order he didn't understand. He didn't understand how Solomon worked, he didn't know what he did.
He did understand it was Solomon that made it work.
Seth Bullock had been a successful businessman nine years without knowing how to balance accounts or keep books. He had never written an order form or argued price.
He put Solomon's papers back where he had found them and moved over to his own desk, where things were familiar. There were letters there from politicians, marshals, and widows with hopeless cases. Presidents of mining companies in California and Colorado. There was a stack of wanted posters, upside down, which he consulted when there was highwayman activity in the immediate area. Seth Bullock had been sheriff a little over half a year in Dead wood, and a deputy marshal in Bismarck for three years before that, and, reputation to the contrary, he was not anxious to clean up the Dakota Territory, or anything else. He did know where to go to get it done, though, when he had to.
He sat at his desk most of the afternoon, thinking about Solomon Star. He thought of all the things that caused sudden changes in men, which came down to losing their children or falling on their heads.
Or women.
No. Solomon Star was married the way one-legged people were crippled. Forever. He thought of Solomon's wife—she had expressions like a sullen child, and a hard edge to everything she said. He decided to write her if Solomon didn't improve. She hadn't wanted Solomon coming to the Hills alone in the first place, and was anxious to join him. He knew that from her letters, which Solomon left unlocked in the top left drawer of his desk. To Bullock's memory, his partner had never brought her name into a conversation. He was afraid of her in a way that distance didn't change.
Thinking of that, Bullock hoped he did not have to write the letter. He did not like to do that to a partner.
After he had sold her to the white man, Tan You-chau had forbidden Ci-an to leave the house, even in the morning. "Whatever you desire, you will have it here," he said.
She did not know how much Tan had taken from the white man, but Tan himself had not come near her since the bargain had been struck. She thought Bismarck must be very wealthy. "What if 1 desire to walk outside?" she said.
Tan had smiled at her. "I will give you another servant," he said. "And she will walk for you, and then return to your room and tell you what she has seen."
Tan had not struck her since the white man had come to her room. He had given her new gowns and combs. The combs she had seen before, in the hair of his wife.
Her meals were brought to her room by the old woman, who went with her to Tan's own privy in back, where she was allowed to attend to her personal needs. There was another privy, larger and farther from the house, where the others stood in line after their meals; At appointed times, the servants used the same building, and at other appointed times, Tan's own wife and relations. The old woman questioned his orders—believing she had misunderstood—and he told her he did not want his China Doll so far from his house again.
The old woman told this to Ci-an. Ci-an said, "This Bismarck is perhaps the richest man in the world."
After her morning toilet, Ci-an shooed the old woman away and stayed alone in her room, arranging and then sketching her artificial flowers. And so she was alone on the morning when she finally saw Wild Bill's friend in the street. At first, because of his pain, she had not recognized him. His clothes were wrinkled and out of place, and he walked without attention to the mud, or other men. Pain was the surest disguise.
But she was not mistaken. He had picked up one side of the metal that held Song's body, Wild Bill had picked up the other, and together—equally to blame—they had put Song into the oven.
In the afternoon, she spoke to the old woman. "There is a man," she said.
"There are many men," the old woman said, "none of them any good."
"Hush yourself," she said. "There is a man I wish to see." The old woman shook her head.
"Tan has forbidden," she said.
"I will see this man," she said. She reached out and took both of the old woman's hands in hers, an uncommon gesture toward a servant. "This man knows of my brother Song."
The old woman pulled her hands away and covered her ears. "There is no such person," she said. "He does not exist. You invite the same for us both. What would my children become if their mother had never existed?"
"Tan cannot decide who has existed," Ci-an said.
The old woman moved to leave the room. She was afraid and beginning to weep. Ci-an stopped her. "Please," the old woman said, "I am afraid."
"There is a man I wish to see," Ci-an said. The old woman was not listening now. Her eyes went from the window to the door to the ceiling, lighting like a bird, searching for a way out. She smiled and nodded, and could not stop her tears.
"Hush yourself now," Ci-an said kindly. "Soon I will ask you for something, and when you have done that thing, your obligations to me are over."
She watched the street all afternoon, but did not see Wild Bill's friend again. She closed her eyes and willed him to her room. She became his other person, and cried for him to find her, so they might be whole again. She did not know how long it would take, but this would happen.
She had senses that other women only pretended to possess.
In the evening Tan came to her room to take her downstairs. He knocked at her door before he entered. He did not insult her or try to touch her. He addressed her as Ci-an, not as China Doll, although that was still his name for her among his servants and family. The old woman had told her that.
"You are a very lucky girl," he said. She did not ask him why. "You have a benefactor of great wealth. You must continue to please him as you have . . ."
"I do not please him," she said. "He pleases himself." Tan winked at her, and watched while she perfumed the palms of her hands.
"There are some men who do not wish to be pleased by a woman," he said, as if this were the profound thought of an intelligent man. "Some wish only to give a woman pleasure. I think your white man is like that."
"He is not my white man," she said.
"You should be kinder toward the whites," he said. "They have many kind inclinations. They are very generous."
She said, "Perhaps when you have enough money, you will become one yourself." She thought Tan would strike her, but he only smiled. "Perhaps they will give you their smell as well as their money."
And still he only smiled.
He accompanied her downstairs, smiling at the voices, nodding at things the white men said. She watched the stairs, and then the floor. She did not acknowledge the men who had come to see her. She kept herself apart.
She sang happier songs that night, although there was no happiness in her. When she had finished, the white men howled and shot their guns into the ceiling and floor. Some of the real people howled too—she could hear single voices in the shouting, and knew which were Chinese.
She was beginning to know all things now.
The white man came that night with a gift. A gold ring. She accepted it, trying it on one finger after another until it fit, finally, on the thumb of her left hand. It seemed to please him that it fit, and he sat on her bed and smiled. She took off her clothes and lay next to him.
He talked for a long time, showing the mountains with his hands. He had bathed that day, she could smell the soap. His voice was excited, and then it calmed, and when he stopped speaking there were tears in his eyes.