Authors: Pete Dexter
"What the hell am I going to say to Frank?" Boone said. "I shot him. Besides, I seen that French girl, and Frank's got too much pride to talk to somebody looks like that."
"You could tell him it was just business, nothin' personal between the two of you," the bartender said.
Boone May looked at the head. "No," he said, "he took it personal." The barkeep shrugged and returned to his duties. Boone May seemed to have forgotten Charley was there, and Bill went back to his cards, holding them up where the bulldog could read them too. Once in a while Boone would steal a look in that direction, but something told Bill when he was being watched, and he caught him every time.
When he thought it over later, Boone decided it was the dog giving him signals.
Charley woke up Sunday morning listening to a methodist. he was brought up in the faith and recognized the sound before he could pick up the words.
He'd kept his sleeping quarters in the back of the wagon. Clean sheets, blankets, a pillow. He took his clothes off at night, even on the coldest nights, to keep the bed clean. Charley had spent as many nights on the ground as anybody, but when he got into a bed he didn't like to smell a previous sleeper, even himself.
He sat up and looked out the back of the wagon. The preacher was standing on a wood box in the middle of the street, not fifty yards from the wagon. His suit must have been a hundred years old. "Jesus loves you, every one," he said.
There was a small group of men collected in front of him, most of them holding their hats in their hands, and staring at the mud they were standing in. There was a way clothes hung when you left them on a year that looked like old people's skin.
Charley rubbed his face and leaned his head out of the wagon. Bill was asleep on the ground, next to him was the dog, and next to him was the boy. "Dear Lord," the preacher said, "deliver us from evil, find us with Your love in this place and protect us . . ." From time to time, a dollar would drop into the hat that he'd put on the box next to him.
If the preacher saw the donations, he did not acknowledge it. "Keep these miners in Your thoughts, Lord, just as they keep You in theirs . . ." Charley got into his pants and climbed slowly out of the wagon, easing himself to the ground so not to jolt his legs. Morning after was always a bad time for his joints.
He got his toilet kit from the front of the wagon—soap and razor, bicarbonate of soda, and a mirror—and walked up the street to the bathhouse. The place was built of wood and leaned downhill, to the north, at a subtle angle that would make you look twice to see if the roof was tilted or you were. A man in rags and a black Eastern hat was sitting on a stool outside, beside a burlap bag he had gathered and tied at the top. There was something wrong with his neck, the way he held his head. "Clean water is fifteen cents," he said. "Hot water is another dime, but there ain't none today."
Charley saw he was soft-brained right away. "It's a nice business you got here," Charley said, looking around.
The man shrugged. "The man that built it is a doctor," he said. "Dr. O. E. Sick. He give it to me on the promise I'd quit my suicides."
Charley nodded politely, as if that was the way they did business everywhere. "That was a smart thing, to take it," he said.
The man shrugged. "Ain't nobody uses it but whores," he said.
"Dr. Sick said he didn't have time to be overlooking the bathing habits of upstairs girls, he was too busy cleaning up their mischief. It didn't make him no money anyway. Did you say clean water?"
The building was about twenty feet square, with a bathtub in each corner. There was a stove in the middle. Two of the tubs were half full. The water was dark, the surfaces speckled with insects. Some were swimmers and some were floaters. "Clean water," Charley said.
"Hot's an extra dime," the man said, "but there ain't any." He took two buckets out the back door and filled them in the White-wood Creek, then emptied them into the tub nearest the front door. He repeated that until the water was a foot from the lip of the tub. Charley got out of his pants and slipped in. It took his breath. The man stood at the door, smiling. "Water this cold is supposed to be ice," Charley said.
The man went out the door and came back in with his sack. He stayed in one spot and watched while Charley scrubbed himself with soap. The soap was hard and grainy; it felt like sand against his skin. Charley foresaw the invention of a more agreeable soap, and there wouldn't be room in the bathhouses for all the customers. "What you got in your sack?" he said.
"My bottles," the man said. "I got more at home. Eleven hundred and sixteen, and eight today."
"Well," Charley said, "you got a business and a hobby."
"Doc Howe wouldn't work on no suicides," the soft-brain said. "He says ain't nobody going to make deliberate work for him, so Dr. Sick always had to come . . ."
"I meant the bottles," Charley said. "Suicide's no hobby."
The man gave him a soft-brained grin and shrugged. "Whenever I thought of it, I did it," he said. "I don't know how many times." Charley settled into the tub. He liked a man that knew he had 1116 bottles at home, but didn't know how many times he'd attempted suicide. "Sometimes I et poison eggs," the soft-brain said, "sometimes I put morphine in me, once I tried to hang myself." He pulled the collar of his shirt away to show Charley the disfigurement.
"I already seen," he said. Charley did not like to look at scars or goiters or club feet. He thought of his wife's body then, white and slender, not a mark on it. She liked to touch the places on his legs where the bullets had gone in, he never understood that. His right leg, the wound was like half a star, the color of ketchup, about three inches below the hip. His brother Steve had shot him and took the ball out himself. He used Charley's hunting knife, and every time Charley had moved, Steve said he was sorry.
The other leg, the ball had gone in from behind, farther down than Steve's. It was a Ute Indian who did that while they were climbing a tree outside a bear den. It went in the back and came out the top, which did not leave as clear a reminder as Steve's surgery. It was just two dents, one black and one the same red color as the half star. He didn't hold it against the Utes, or even that Ute, but he never went up a tree ahead of an Indian again.
Matilda Nash was attracted to those spots from the time she was fourteen, when she first saw them. She would touch his scars, and his legs and his testicles, as if she knew what it felt like to be a man. At first when she touched him, it didn't seem possible that she was only fourteen years old.
On the other hand, sometimes she would take his peeder in her small, white hands and talk to it, and Charley would promise himself to marry her because if he didn't, he was a child molester. She would encircle the head with one hand and squeeze, and then, with her finger, work the opening in it up and down like a little mouth. She called it "Baby Chipper," and invented it stories.
She talked with Charley's peeder from the first time they undressed, through most of their wedding night, and all the nights after. Sometimes the stories were exciting to the imagination. She talked with his peeder right up until the time Bill came through Empire, a month late for the wedding, and walked into their bedroom drunk one night by accident.
He'd never said a word about what he saw or heard, but she never talked to Charley's peeder again. Charley thought she might pick the stories back up again after Bill was gone, but it never happened.
The world was not without make-believe long, however. A few months later, there was an eyewitness story in
Harper's Weekly
of how Bill had wiped out all ten of the M'Kandass Gang, and after that, everything he did got immortalized. If he ate pork, he shot the pig at high noon in the street. He had been famous before, but after
Harpers Weekly
the reporters came out from San Francisco and New York and Boston and Philadelphia. Bill saw where it was leading, and let it take him along.
He adjusted to being famous. He encouraged the stories; he helped make some of them up. It led to more reporters, and women, and now and then a fight, which was no great inconvenience. There was something in him that turned cold in a fight, and he would kill what was in front of him without a thought, and walk away from it afterwards like it wasn't his business. It was a kind of purity.
He was the best pistol shot Charley ever saw, and the only shootist there was who would fight with his hands. There was no question God had given him uncommon gifts, and he went where they took him.
Charley's gift was harder to put your finger on. When they were alone, it didn't seem like a hair's difference between them, but somehow in public Bill's cork floated one way and Charley's floated another. People told things to Charley. He thought it might have been because he was short. A man who doesn't mind being short is everybody's friend.
This soft-brain, for instance, standing in the door telling him about his suicides while Charley sat in ice water. "Poison eggs is tumble," he said. "It's better to hang than to eat poison eggs."
Charley ducked his head under the water and came up with his hair pressed all around his face. He worked the soap into his head, feeling for ticks and anything else that might of crawled in there since he'd been in Deadwood.
"How come a good man like yourself would want to cash in ahead of schedule?" Charley said.
"When I thought of it, I never thought that far," he said. "Just to the doing part. A lot of others done it since I been here. A man hung himself and set a fire underneath, so there wouldn't be no remains for this world." The soft-brain looked at Charley. "I never did that," he said. "I wouldn't want to do nothing strange for people to talk about afterwards. I want them to talk about the Bottle Man right."
Charley made a note to keep Malcolm away from the bathhouse. He ducked his head under the water again, to rinse the soap out of his hair, and climbed out of the tub. The soft-brain handed him his pants. "I stopped," he said. "Dr. Sick give me this business to make me promise. That's how I got into this career."
Charley shaved in the tub water, brushed his hair, and scrubbed his teeth with bicarbonate of soda. He rubbed a little of that under his arms too, and then put on a clean shirt. He gave the soft-brain a dollar. "Hot water tomorrow," he said.
The Bottle Man's head went even farther off center, to see if he was teasing. "You comin' back tomorrow?"
"Every day," Charley said.
The soft-brain said, "That's good, I like you to come here." Which was the direction of Charley Utter's talent.
When Charley got back to camp, Bill was sitting bare-chested on a tree stump, writing a letter. The Methodist was still at it in the street, saying the same things to a different flock. Bill had put his saddle on the ground in front of him, and was using that to hold his stationery. His nose was about an inch over the pencil. Charley marveled at the angles his body went. The boy was still asleep, and now that Charley was clean he could smell the liquor on both of them.
Charley climbed into the wagon to straighten his bed, and when he came out Bill handed him the letter. Bill always liked to have Charley check his letters because he believed they would end up famous after he was dead. Bill never wanted to be embarrassed, especially after he was dead and couldn't right it. He had a beautiful penmanship, Charley thought, maybe what a doctor's hand would look like.
My own darling Wife Agnes
I have but a few moments left before this letter Starts
I never was as well in my life but you would laugh to see me now
Just got in from Prospecting will go a way again to morrow will
write In the morning but good newse
My friend will take this to Cheyenne if he lives I don't expect to
hear from you but it is all the same
I no my Agnes and only live to love bur never mind Pet we will
have a home yet then we will be so happy
I am all most shure I will do well hear
The man is buring me Good by Dear Wife love to Emma.
J.B.Hickok
"Wild Bill"
Bill watched Charley while he read it. "How does it sound?" he said.
"Prospecting?" Charley said.
Bill shrugged. "You got to put down something, that's what a letter is. I mean the tone. Is the tone true?"
Charley gave it back to him. "You know Agnes's dispositions," he said. "How do you talk to her?"
"What's that matter?"
"The way to write letters to somebody," Charley said, "is the way you talk."
Bill was embarrassed. "What kind of sweethearts do you send Matilda?" he said. "I'd like to see one of those letters."
"I don't put down anything personal," he said. "I write business letters. Everything I ever said to Matilda she took three different ways, and wondered what did I mean by each of them. I don't say anything I don't have to, and I sure as Jesus don't put it down on paper. There is such a thing as looking for trouble."
Bill looked at the paper in his hand. Charley said, "Of course, I've been married a long time."
Bill said, "Me and Agnes never started out from the same place. That makes it harder. I can't live like a paper-collar in St. Louis the rest of my life, and I can't bring her here. She isn't used to a place like this."
In the street, the Methodist was asking God for protection. Bill and Charley listened to him a few minutes. The letter to Agnes was still in Bill's hand, between them. "Did you know that preacher left his wife behind too?" Bill said. "Jack Crawford told me that. He came out here to find gold and left his wife and four babies back in the States. Sends them every cent he earns at the sawmill, and lives off what he makes standing on that packing crate."
"A minister that works?" Charley said. He looked at the Methodist closer and noticed he was preaching with his eyes shut now. And Charley loved God for many things, among them not calling him to the ministry.