WELCOME TO HARD TIMES


    E.L. DOCTOROW
FIRST LEDGER
                        1
The Man from Bodie drank down a half bottle of
the Silver Sun's best; that cleared the dust from his
throat and then when Florence, who was a red-
head, moved along the bar to him, he turned and
grinned down at her. I guess Florence had never
seen, a man so big. Before she could say a word,
he reached out and stuck his hand in the collar of
her dress and ripped it down to her waist so that
her breasts bounded out bare under the yellow
light. We all scraped our chairs and stood up—
none of us had looked at Florence that way be-
fore, for all she was. The saloon was full because
we watched the man coming for a long time before
he pulled in, but there was no sound now.
   This town was in the Dakota Territory, and on
three sides—east, south, west—there is nothing but
miles of flats. That's how we could see him com-
ing. Most times the dust on the horizon moved
east to west—wagon trains nicking the edge of
the flats with their wheels and leaving a long dust
turd lying on the rim of the earth. If a man rode
toward us he made a fan in the air that got wider
                           3
4                 E. L. Doctorow
and wider. To the north were hills of rock and
that was where the lodes were which gave an ex-
cuse for the town, although not a good one. Really
there was no excuse for it except that people
naturally come together.
   So by the time he walked into the Silver Sun a
bunch of us were waiting to see who he was. It
was foolish because in this country a man's pride
is not to pay attention, and after he did that to
the girl he turned around to grin at us and we
looked away or coughed or sat down. Flo mean-
while couldn't believe what happened, she stood
with her eyes wide and her mouth open. He took
his hand off the bar and suddenly grabbed her
wrist and twisted her arm around so that she
turned and doubled over with the pain. Then, as
if she was a pet bear, he walked her in front of
him over to the stairs and up to a room on the
second floor. After the door slammed we stood
looking up and finally we heard Florence scream-
ing and we wondered what kind of man it was who
could make her scream.                     .
   Jimmy Fee was the only child in town and
when Flo was stumbling over her dress up the
stairs, he ducked under the swinging doors and
ran down the porch past the man's horse and
across the street. Fee, his father, was a carpenter,
he had built up both sides of the street almost
without help. Fee was on a ladder fixing the eaves
over the town stable.
   "Pa," Jimmy called up to him! "the man's got
your Flo!"
   Jack Millay, the limping man with one arm, told
me later he followed the boy across the street to
fill Fee in on the details—little Jimmy might not
              Welcome to Hard Times

              5
have made it clear that the customer was a Bad
Man from Bodie. Fee came down the ladder, went
around in back of his place down the street, and
came out with a stout board. He was a short man,
bald, thick in the neck and in the shoulders, and
he was one of the few men I ever met who knew
what life was about. I was standing by the window
of the Silver Sun and when I saw Fee coming I got
out of those doors fast. So did everyone there,
even though the screaming had not stopped. By the
time Fee walked in with his plank at the ready,
the place was empty.
   We all stood scattered in the street waiting for
something to happen. Avery, the fat barkeep, had
brought a bottle with him and he tilted his head
back and drank, standing out in the dirt with his
white apron on and one hand on his hip. I had
never seen Avery in sunlight before. The sun was
on the western flats to about four o'clock. There
was no sound now from the saloon. The only horse
tied up in front was the stranger's: a big ugly roan
that didn't look like he expected water or a tub.
Behind him in the dirt was a pile of new manure.
   We waited and then there was a noise from in-
side—a clatter—and that was all. After a while
Fee came out of the Silver Sun with his cudgel
and stood on the porch. He walked forward and
missed the steps. The Bad Man's horse skittered
aside and Fee tumbled down and landed on his
knees in the manure. He got up with dung clinging
to his britches and lurched on toward Ezra Maple,
the Express Man, who said: "He can't see." Ezra
stepped aside as Fee staggered by him. The back of
Fee's bald head was bashed and webbed with
blood and he was holding his ears. Little Jimmy
6                   E. L. Doctorow
stood next to me watching his father go up the
street. He ran after a few yards, then stopped,
then ran after again. When he caught up to Fee
he took his belt and together they walked into
Fee's door.
   Nobody went back into the saloon, we were all
reminded of business we had to do. When I got to
my office door I glanced back and the only one
still standing in the street was Avery, in his apron.
I knew he'd be the first over to see me and he was.
   "Blue, that gentleman's in my place, you got to
get him out of there."
   "I saw him pay you money Avery."
   "I got stock behind that bar, I got window glass
in my windows, I got my grain and still in back.
There's no telling what he'll do."
   "Maybe he'll leave soon enough."
   "He cracked Fee's skull!"
   "A fight's a fight, there's nothing I can do."
   "Goddamnit!"
    "Well now Avery I'm forty-nine years old."
   "Goddamnit!"
   I took my gun out of my drawer and shoved it
over the desk toward fat Avery but he didn't
take it. Instead he sat down on my cot and we
waited together. About dusk Jimmy Fee came in
and told me his father was bleeding at the mouth.
I went out and found John Bear; the deaf-and-dumb
Pawnee who served for our doctor, and we went
over to Fee's place but Fee was already dead. The
Indian shrugged and walked out and I was left
to comfort the boy all night.
   Once, around midnight, when it got too cold for
me, I walked back to my office to get a blanket.
And on the way I sneaked across the street—
              Welcome to Hard Times

              7
running where there was moonlight—to peek into
the window of the Silver Sun. The lights were still
burning. Behind the bar, Florence, with her red
hair unpinned to her shoulders, was crying and
pouring herself a stiff one. I tapped on the win-
dow, but she knew Fee was dead and she
wouldn't come out. I ran around back. The upstairs
was dark and I could hear the, Man from Bodie
snoring.

   When I came West with the wagon, I was a
young man with expectations of something, I
don't know what, I tar-painted my name on a big
rock by the Missouri trailside. But in tune my
expectations wore away with the weather, like
my name had from that rock, and I learned it
was enough to stay alive. Bad Men from Bodie
weren't ordinary scoundrels, they came with the
land, and you could no more cope with them than
you could with dust or hailstones.
   I found twelve dollars in Fee's bureau when the
sun came up and I gave them to Hausenfield, the
German. Hausenfield owned a bathtub, he had
brought it in his wagon all the way from St. Louis.
At the beginning of each month Hausenfield would
fill that tub with water from his well and sit right
down in back of his house and wash. He also
owned the stable.
   After I gave him the money he went into his
stable and pushed out his wagon by the tongue and
hitched up his mule and his grey. The wagon was
an old stage with the windows boarded and the
seats torn out. It was black, the one painted thing
in town. He drove it over to Fee's door.
  "Put him in dere please."
8                 E. L. Doctorow
  Jack Millay, who was standing by with his one
arm, helped me take Fee out and put him in the
wagon.
  "Don't you have a casket Hausenfield?"
   "He never build me vun. He said he would bufld
ten for me, but he never build even vun."
   I closed the door on Fee and the wagon creaked
down the street and into the flats. It was cold and
early but nearly everyone was out watching it go.
A pickaxe clanked on top of the stage, one of the
wheels squeaked each time around, and the clank-
ing and squeaking was Fee's funeral music.
Hausenfield's grey pulled harder than his mule and
so the wagon turned eastward slowly in an arc.
About a mile out in the flats it stopped. Behind
the wagon, from the southeast, rain clouds were
coming up under the sky. I didn't know where
Florence was but Jimmy Fee began .to walk out
after, now, with his hands in his pockets. ^
   "Look there Blue!"
   Across the street, in front of the saloon, the
Bad Man's roan stood shivering where he'd been
tied since yesterday.
  "Cold got that man's horse," Jack Millay said,
"he never did see to it." Even as Jack spoke the
horse went down on its knees. That was all we
needed—I wanted the man to go away with no
difficulty, no trouble to himself. I walked into
my office to think, and a few minutes later some
fool who couldn't bear to see animals suffer but
who didn't care if people did, stood a good safe
way from the Silver Sun, probably behind some
porch, and shot his carbine at the roan.
  When I ran out the roan was twitching on his
side and the street was empty.
              Welcome to Hard Times

              9
   "Who in hell did that!" I shouted.
   Then, in a minute the Bad Man from Bodie came
out of the saloon buckling his gun belt. I didn't
move a muscle. He looked down at his horse and
scratched his head and that was when I stepped
slowly back inside my door and closed it. On the
back wall of my office, behind my cot, there was
another door and I went out that way.
   I found Avery standing near my outhouse talking
to his other girl, Molly Riordan. Along with the rest
of us Molly scooted out of the Silver Sun when the
man had taken Flo. She sheltered for the night with
Major Munn, the old veteran who liked to call her
his daughter; and now Avery had her back and
they were arguing.
   "You're a son of a bitch, Avery," she said to
him. Molly was never to my taste, pale and pocked,
with a thin mouth and a sharp chin, but I liked the
way she stood up to Avery.
   "Blue, this son of a bitch wants me to go across
there and get ripped open by that big bastard."
   "Not so loud Molly, for God's sake!" Avery said.
   "How do you like this fat-assed son of a bitch?
He's some man, isn't he Blue?"
   "Molly I got stock behind that bar; I got all my
money under the counter. I'm telling you every-
thing I got is in there." To make his point Avery
slapped Molly hard across the face and when she
put her hand to her cheek and began weeping, he
pulled a stiletto from under his apron and held it
out until she took it.
   "You go on over there and when he holds you
around, bring the knife out of your sleeve and put
it in his neck. I can't have that gentleman in my
place, I want him out of there."
10                E. L. Doctorow
   Just then a hoot and a holler came from the
street. I looked down the alley in time to see the
Bad Man prancing by sideways on a big bay. He
was on Hausenfield's good horse.
   "He's not in your place now, Avery," I said.

   The Bad Man was celebrating the new day rid-
ing bareback back and forth from one end of the
street to the other. Jack Millay met me in 'the
alley: "Hausenfield left his barn door open."
   "Too bad for Hausenfield."
   "That man just walked over and took the bay
for his own."
   We watched from the shade: he kicked the horse
this way and that, yelling and whooping through
the street. When the horse got accustomed, he
spurred him up the steps of the Silver Sun and
then rode along the porch, ducking low for the
beams. The horse kicked over the sack of dried
beans in front of Ezra Maple's store and then
jumped back into the street, and the Bad Man
laughed and yelped some more. I was hoping he'd
stop soon, saddle up, and then go riding toward
the lodes. The clouds were moving from the south
and if it rained he couldn't poke a horse up on wet
rocks, even if he had a horse. But when he stopped
it was at the north end of the street where John
Bear had his shack.
   John Bear did his cooking on the outside over a
stone fire. Next to his shack he had a small plot
he had worked on so that it gave up a few tubers
and onions. John was squatting by his fire, cooking
up some meal, when the man walked into his
patch, stepping all over the plants. If John was
deaf and dumb what he saw was enough. The
             Welcome to Hard Times          11
man pulled up half a dozen plants before he
found an onion that suited him. He wrung it free
of its green and wiped it and peeled it and then
bit in.
   "Breakfast," I said to Jack Millay.
  The man ignored John Bear as if he wasn't there.
He stepped over to the Indian's fire and lifted up
the skillet and walked away with it to sit down
with his back against the shack. The Indian didn't
move but just looked into his fire.
   Avery and Molly Riordan were standing behind
me, watching.
   "Here's your chance to get back to your place,
Avery."
   "I don't know, Blue."
   "Why don't you just walk across and go on in?"
   "He'll see me."
   Jack said: "Shit, Avery."
   "Don't run and you'll be alright. Molly you get
inside somewhere. I think you better not be seen."
   Avery walked across stiff-legged, trying not to
run, and I saw the Bad Man glance up for a moment
from his eating. When Avery got inside the Silver
Sun he closed the full doors in back of the swing-
ing ones and pulled shades down over the win-
dows.
   "Now what's that man gonna do when he finds
Avery's bolted the door?" Jack said.
   I took a deep breath and walked out into the
sun myself. I headed across the street, stepping
around the man's dead roan, and when I got to
the porch I coughed and went into Ezra Maple's
store.
   Ezra was standing by his window looking at the
spilled sack of beans.
12                    E. L. Doctorow
     "He still sitting there?"
     "Yep."
     "I'll take some plug, Ezra."
     "Help y'self."
  I went behind the counter: "Ezra I want to ask
you when the stage is due."
     "A week. Maybe two."
   "Well now what day is this? We get a fair crowd
from the mines Saturday night."
   "That's true..."
     "Well what day is this?"
     "Thursday."
  I walked over to the window and looked with
Ezra at the spillings on his porch: the beans could
have been flocks of birds flying high, southerly.
     "Not much country, Blue."
   "I took some cartridges with the plug."
  In a while we saw Hausenfield driving his hearse
hard into town, pulling on the grey's traces and
whipping his mule. He stopped in front of the store
and came in, tripping and cursing.
   "Are you here, Blue? You have to do some-
thing!"
     "Tell me what, Hausenfield."
     "Dat is my horse he has."
     "I saw."
     "Are you not the mayor!"
  "Only to those who voted for me." Ezra smiled
when I said that: I had not been elected mayor, I
had taken it upon myself to keep records, in case
the town ever got large enough to be listed, or in
case statehood ever came about. I kept the books
and they called me mayor.
  Hausenfield looked at Ezra and smiled back:
"Dat is alright," he said, "I have my veapon."
              Welcome to Hard Times             33
   He stalked out and got his gun from his wagon.
To this day I don't know whether Hausenfield
meant to shoot the Bad Man or not. Probably, he
didn't know himself. His horse was standing in
John Bear's patch eating off the tops of the plants.
Hausenfleld marched down there and grabbed a
fistful of mane and began leading the horse back
to his stable. When he'd gone a few yards, he
turned almost as an afterthought and shot twice at
the Bad Man who sat watching him—once into the
dirt in front of the man, once into the wood above
him. The horse reared then and pulled away.
Hausenfield fell down in the dust and I thought he
would fire again from the ground; but I saw him
crawling and trying to get up at the same time,
waving his pistol at the horse and shouting in
German. This put his back to the stranger who was
up and running low, squeezing off rounds into his
legs.
   Faster than a cat the man was on top of Hausen-
field, straddling him with his gun bolstered now
and swinging at his face with the flat of the skillet.
  "He never let go of that pan," Ezra whispered.
   Hausenfield had begun to scream when the bul-
lets hit him but the man swung at his face until
he could only moan. After a while the man threw
the skillet away and looked up: the bay horse had
cantered over to his stablemates in front of the
black wagon and that must have given the man his
idea. Laughing, he dragged Hausenfield by the
collar over to the wagon and threw him in. This
happened right in front of Ezra's window so we
had to step back in the shadows. The man closed
the door, found Hausenfield's pickaxe, still caked
with the dirt of Fee's grave, and used it to bolt the
14                E. L. Doctorow
door tight. Inside the hearse, Hausenfield was
screaming again, pounding on the floorboard. The
man jumped up on the driver's box, brought the
grey and the mule around, and began to rein-whip
them down the street. Hooting loud, he rode them
close to the porch on the other side, and at the
last porch beam at the end of the street, he hooked
his arm around and stood easily on the rail while
the wagon kept on going into the flats. To make
sure that the team kept its pace he fired a few
shots after it and even the mule ran with his ears
back.
   Walking to the bay in front of Ezra's store, the
man was laughing to himself and smacking his
hands together. Every few steps he would turn
around to look at the wagon rumbling away south
and each time he looked he laughed harder. He
took the bay over to the Silver Sun and saddled
it with the gear from his dead roan. Then he tied
his new horse to the rail, mopped his forehead
with a red handkerchief and stepped up to the
saloon doors, which he found locked. He kicked
them open and from where I was I heard Avery's
voice say heartily: "Come in, come in!"

  After the man had been a while in the Silver
Sun, everyone began to come out of doors, stand-
ing in ones and twos on the porch or in the street,
watching that wagon going away smaller and
smaller ahead of its dust cone. Jack Millay saw
me and limped over swinging his one arm: "Did
you ever see such work, Blue?" Jack's face was
pinked with excitement, he took his joys how he
could. In the alleys some of the people were bring-
ing their buckboards to their side doors and at the
              Welcome to Hard Times             15
rock end of the street John Bear had his travois
lying in front of his shack.
   I watched the Indian now. When Hausenfield
had taken his pot shots Bear had jumped for cover
fast enough although his back was turned to the
noise. If he was deaf he had another sense to make
up for it, if he was dumb he wasn't too dumb. He
came out of his shack and lashed his things to
the travois. Then he picked up the poles and
pulled. When he reached his skillet lying in the
middle of the street he walked right over it and
he went right down the street and past the last
house. Later I saw him standing half a mile in the
flats. He laid his travois down and stood still fac-
ing the town.
   Behind him and east, tiny Jimmy Fee who had
never come back in was sitting by his father's
grave. Clouds were over half the sky now, the sun
was covered and a little breeze was blowing.
    I went to my office and found Molly Riordan
looking in my desk.
    "Haven't you any whiskey, Blue?"
   "Whiskey's across the street," I said and just then
we heard Avery yelling with a laugh in his voice:
"Molly! MoU-y-y!"
   Molly ducked behind the desk, and through a
hole in my oilpaper window I saw Avery holding
his swinging doors open, bellowing with good
nature: "Molly where are you, gentleman here
wants to see you!" Even across the street I could
hear the bottle crashing somewhere behind him.
He laughed as if he was enjoying it, called Molly
again and went back in.
    "Christ!" said Molly. "Isn't anybody going to
do anything?"
16                E. L. Doctorow
  "Why don't you go on over?"
  "What?" She stood up then, watching me fill the
cylinders of my gun.
   I said: "That knife Avery gave you. Do as he
said, hold it tight against your wrist and if your
moment comes slip it out and use it. But I don't
think you'll have to."
   "Oh sure, sure! Christ that Bad Man's the only
man in town! I can't believe it, you're no better
than that son of a bitch Avery, using a lady, for
Godsake, marching brave behind a lady's skirts.
You're some comfort Mayor, go to hell!"
   I tucked the gun in my belt and opened the door.
People were waiting in the street.
   "Oh God," Molly said, "so this is what it's come
to, how did I ever end up in this forsaken town, oh
Christ this is the end. I'll tell you something you
didn't know, Blue, I left New York ten years ago
because I couldn't bear bein' a maid, I was too
proud to say 'Yes Mum.' Doesn't that tickle you?"
   "We do what we can, Molly."
  Her face was twisted up and tears were stream-
ing down her cheeks as she walked by me saying:
"I hope he gets you Mayor, I swear I do, you and
the rest of the crawling bastards in this miserable
town."
  I followed behind her as we walked across—
everyone stepping out of our way—and went up on
the steps to the Silver Sun. She turned to look at
me once more.
   "You're alright, Molly," I said.
   But when she walked up to the doors the stiletto
slipped out of her sleeve and clattered on the
porch. I kicked it aside before the Bad Man might
see it and I pushed Molly through the doors and
             Welcome to Hard Times            17
stepped in behind. Then I saw what made her drop
the knife, Florence bent over the upstairs railing,
bare, with her arms dangling and her red hair fall-
ing down between them.
   Now Avery must have seen the woman dead
that way when he came back to close his doors
and pull his shades down. But he wasn't too con-
cerned when we came in, he greeted us laughing
and jovial.
   "Here's Molly, hello Blue! Come on, come in,
drinks on the gentleman!"
   Behind the bar the Bad Man from Bodie was
grinning and setting up two more glasses. Avery
went to the doors and opened them, calling into
the street: "Everybody! Drinks for the whole town
on the gentleman here!" The Bad Man laughed but
outside everyone began to run, I could see under
the doors the feet running in the dirt The only
one Avery got was Jack Millay, who had followed
us onto the porch and was peeking over the doors
when Avery shouted out his invitation. Avery
pulled Jack in and I know that in a few minutes
the town was empty but for those of us in the
saloon.
   It was a celebration. Avery, Jack Millay and I
stood at the bar while the man poured for us.
Molly sat at one of the tables staring up at Flo
with her knuckles in her mouth. The man came
around the bar and served her a drink from a tray,
making a mock bow like a fancy Eastern waiter.
She sat looking away from him and didn't even
stir when he took the bottom of her skirt between
two fingers and threw it back over her knees.
Avery laughed at that and Jack laughed too and
the man backed away from Molly, looking at her
18                E. L. Doctorow
and chuckling. He went behind the bar again and
lifted his glass to her.
   The Bad Man drank Avery's liquor like water
and every time he poured for himself, he poured
for us too. The other two kept up with him but I
emptied my glass by throwing the stuff over my
shoulder. The man finally saw me do that and then
he broke the neck off a fresh bottle and filled my
glass slowly and then raised his and looked me
in the eyes. He was a younger man than I expected
but his skin was shot red under the stubble, there
was a blaze on one cheek and he had the eyes of a
crazy horse. Right then my hand began to move
and I meant for it to go for my gun. But it went
instead for the glass on the bar; I felt at that
moment that I wanted to please him, I was almost
glad to drink.
   After that the man began to break open a bottle
for each round. One time, as Avery had his drink
up to his mouth, the man stuck his arm out and
whacked Avery's glass with the heel of his hand.
Avery stumbled back, spitting out teeth and blood
and trying to laugh at the same time. A bit later,
the man fixed his attention on Jack Millay's stump
and with an eyewide amazement he swung at it
with a full bottle of whiskey. Jack went grey and
sunk to the floor right where he was standing.
   I suppose it would have been my turn next but
that his eye caught Molly again, sitting just as he'd
left her. He gave the rebel yell and jumped over
the bar.
   "Blue!" Molly screamed. She was trying to put
tables and chairs between them and the Bad Man
was laughing and tossing the furniture aside; Jack
Millay was out on the footrail and Avery was
              Welcome to Hard Times           19
slumped at the bottom of the stairs, crying and
wiping at the blood on his apron. I drew my gun at
that moment but it was too late. The man caught
Molly by the wrist and almost at the same time I
sent my shot, wild; across the room, he was
crouched in front of her and shooting back. Molly
was struggling and pulling or I'm sure he would
have killed me; as it was his shots drove me
through the doors, I fell back onto the porch and
rolled off into the dirt. I heard him coming to the
doors, laughing, and I picked up my hat and began
running, stumbling, down the street, staying close
to the porch and keeping low. He was at the doors
now, sending shots into the dirt at my heels, into
the porch alongside me, and what I thought then
was that I wanted those records in my desk, I
wanted to go across to my room and get those
ledgers to safekeeping. But it was almost as if he
knew, his bullets tore up the ground on my right
and kept me going straight, I was limping from the
pain of my fall, tripping in the dirt, my heart like
a hand clenching my insides, and I didn't stop until
I was out in the flats with everyone else.

  So we all stood scattered on the flats looking
back at the town—the boy Jimmy Fee, John Bear,
Ezra, and the rest—some with gear, some by a
horse or a buckboard, some with bundles and
some, like me, with nothing. Overhead the sky was
heavy with clouds, a wind was blowing, and al-
though it couldn't have been much past noon, the
day was black. We watched for a long time. Every
once in a while we could hear a scream or some-
thing crashing, small sounds now in the flats. And
then, after a long silence, flames began to lick out
20                E. L. Doctorow
of the saloon. Hausenfield's horse in front whin-
nied and pulled back on his ties and then the
Bad Man came carrying a chair on fire. He
whooped and threw the chair across and it landed
on the porch in front of my office. Then he saw
something and ran across the street. What he saw
was Fee's ladder still leaning where it was left
against the stable. He picked up that ladder and
went around poking out windows with it and when
the wind had caught the flames and both sides of
the street were framed in fire, he used the ladder
to knock down the porch beams, jumping aside and
hollering when the hot wood fell into the street.
  But then the bay was going mad so he untied him
and got on his back and held him to a walk toward
the rocks. We couldn't see the man for a long
while after that, but finally Ezra Maple pointed to
the hills: He was well up on the trail toward the
lodes, lighted for a moment by the fire down below
him, picking his way through the stone and not
even looking back. He disappeared again and that
was all we saw of the Bad Man from Bodie, though
we waited to make sure. The rain finally began to
come down hard and we stood watching it fall into
the fire and watching the fire lick up at the rain.
                        2

The Silver Sun made the brightest flame and the
cleanest smoke. Once or twice part of the roof
blew into the air above the fire—and that would
be Avery's kegs of alcohol. By and by the rain
began to let up. The wind came back and whiffs
of the smoke blew out on the flats. Off to the left
of me Major Munn, the veteran who liked to call
Molly Riordan daughter, was standing up on his
buckboard with his arm raised. He was a bent old
man with long white mustaches, and he was yelling
into the smoke and roar which came out to us on
the wind: "If I'd had you before me at Richmond,
I'd have put the ball in yer eye, God help you, I
killed twenty like you when I was younger," his
voice piped over the flats. "Let the sun drop you in
the badlands and let you not die before the shit
of prairie dogs is in yer mouth and the buzzard's
claw is on yer belly. May yer pizzle fry in Hell and
your eggs wither to peas, may the marrow boil in
yer bones and yer eyes melt in their holes for
what you done here, God damn you, God damn
you ..." He was shaking his fist toward the town
                         21
22                E. L. Doctorow
but for a moment I had the feeling it was me he
was cursing.
   Then the fire's roar smothered his words, and a
gust of smoke hid him from my sight. When it
cleared again I saw that Major was not up behind
his horse, but down on the ground under him. I
ran over: he had toppled with a stroke, his fist was
still rigid, there was froth on his lips and a rattle
in his throat. I put my hand on him and his eyes
opened and he stared at me and died.
   Someone leaning over my back said: "Well I
have seen the elephant." Others came to look at
the Major and it was enough to break the spell of
the fire. People began tying down their gear, pull-
ing cinches tight. In a few minutes half the town
was strung out across the flats, only the women
in the wagons looking back.

  The rain didn't hurt what fire there was but it
cut the wind down and that saved two structures:
in the back of what had been Hausenfield's place
the gawky windmill over his well was still stand-
ing; and at the far end of the town, near the rocks,
the Indian's shanty was untouched. By the time the
sun came out again everything else was gone, only
some quarter posts still stood, charred and half
eaten, and also one or two half-burned house
sides where Fee had used green lumber.
  When I walked back a few little fires were still
working along the ground and smoke from the
ruins was rising straight up into the sky. The street
was covered with ashes and everywhere you
looked there were mice running in circles, dozens
of squeaking little miseries twisting around in the
dirt, flopping from their bellies to their backs. A
              Welcome to Horcf Times             23
jackrabbit was jumping into the air, trying to get
off a jumble of glowing timbers, but he couldn't
jump clear. I almost expected one-armed Jack to
come tugging at my sleeve to tell me what a fine
sight that was.
   Stepping high over the rubble I found my desk
upended and smoking. The drawers were burnt
out and I found just the covers left of my ledgers.
My mattress was gone too, it was a corn-husk
mattress, the best I ever slept on. The only other
thing of mine I could identify was a patch of brown
blanket. The desk and the blanket and the ledgers
I had bought from a lawyer who had passed
through a year before, dumping everything he
owned so as to march on unencumbered up to the
mining camp in the lodes.
   I kicked around in the debris and finally saw
something else: it was my habit to keep my fortune
of two pouches of gold dust under the floor of my
office, but the pouches were gone and my dust
stood in two solid cakes. Those nuggets sat there
like somebody's eggs. There were other people
poking around in the rubble up and down the street
and I wondered what any of them would say if
they found a pair of balls lying independent like
that. I tried to pick up the gold but it crumbled
and spilled and I only got a few pinches into my
pockets. I didn't try to reclaim the rest, after just a
few minutes in this smoke and heat my face was
grimy, my eyes were watering and my clothes were
about dry although the rain had left me drenched.
There was a terrible stench over everything that
made me remember the people lying under the
Silver Sun.
   All that was left of the saloon were the three
24                  E. L. Doctorow
steps leading up to the porch, and there was a
small fire under them. Just beyond, up where his
store had been, Ezra Maple was taking inventory,
pushing boards aside, kicking his ruined goods. He
was the one who saw Molly lying on the ground
in back of the saloon rubble.
   "Blue! Look here!"
   She was lying face down, the whole back of her
dress was burned away. I kneeled down by her side
and after looking hard I was sure she was breath-
ing.
   "She's alive," I said to Ezra.
     "Well what do you mean to do?"
   "We can't leave her here this way."
   I straightened up and saw John Bear pulling his
travois back down the street toward his shack. I
yelled at him but he didn't turn around so I had
to run and get him. The three of us picked Molly
up by the hands and feet and carried her over to
the Indian's hut. The front of her dress hung down
like a flag.
   "Wait a minute," Ezra said, wanting to stop, "it's
not decent."
   "You can't cover her up," I said, "her whole back
is burned." From her shoulder blades to her ankles,
Molly was covered with blisters. We laid her down
on the hard earth inside Bear's place and then the
Indian went out and drew some water from
Hausenfield's tank. When he came back he scraped
a pile of earth from his floor and poured the water
on it till it was a mush; then he took a tin from his
pack and sprinkled whatever was in that tin—
saleratus maybe—on the mud^ then he spread the
mixture along Molly's back and haunches and legs
and covered it up with some kind of flat weed he
              Welcome to Hard Times           25
had. John Bear was a true doctor, there was no
hesitation in his moves. By the time he was
finished Molly was moaning, a good sound al-
though I didn't like to hear it. I stepped outside
and a shadow passed over my eyes.
   I don't know where the buzzards come from but
they're never late. Three or four were making
slow circles above the town, another few over the
flats. I had left the Major's body out there, lodged
against a back wheel so his pony couldn't run.
But one of the carrion birds glided down, spread
his big wings and perched on the buckboard and I
saw the pony shy. A second later I heard his
whinny and then he was rearing; the wheel rolled
over the Major, and the pony was trotting free
toward the town, pulling the rig with him, leaving
the old man's body exposed to the birds.
   A few hundred yards to the east the little boy,
Jimmy Fee, was running around his father's grave,
waving his arms as if the shadows of the buzzards
were cobwebs in his hair.
   I ran to the end of the street and caught the
horse, turned him around and rode him back out.
The birds on Major Munn spraddled their wings
and flapped into the air. They had already blooded
his neck. I lifted the old man on the buckboard,
sitting him down among his possessions. There
was a blanket and I threw it over him. Then I
rode the wagon to Jimmy Fee. A few more buz-
zards had come up over the flats and now they
circled Fee's grave in a procession. Hausenfield
had not dug very deep. The boy was huddled on
top of the mound with his hands over his head, he
was crying and screaming although he had hardly
whimpered when Fee died.
26                 E. L. Doctorow
   "Come on up here, boy," I said still holding the
reins. "Come on up beside me." But he only cried
the more. I had to step down and carry him in my
arms and hold him in my lap all the way back to
town. He kept crying: "They're gonna get my Pa,
the birds are gonna get my Pa ..." And I knew that
before anything else we had better hurry up and
bury the dead. Someone in the street was shooting
and cursing and a coyote was running fast back to
the rocks.

   Ezra found one shovel from his store that was
only charred along the haft, and I found a rusty
pick that was lying at the foot of Hausenfield's
windmill. To give Jimmy Fee something to do I
sent him looking for his own digging tool and he
came on the skillet lying in the dirt where the
Bad Man had flung it. Even if we had ten new
shovels it would have done no good, only two of
the men besides Ezra and me were willing to help
dig. The rest of those who had come back to the
town were packing their saddles or loading their
rigs with what was left to them and riding out in
ones and twos.
   I chose to dig in the flats, making the holes in a
line beginning with Fee's. There is no work harder
than cutting a grave. Though the rain had softened
the ground, it was a few hot hours of taking
turns at the pick and shovel before we had the
five holes dug. The bodies we had gathered were
lying under blankets. When it came time to put
them down and to rebury Fee I didn't want the boy
there, I shooed him away. We stood waiting while
he walked back, turning every few yards to look at
               Welcome to Hard Times              27
us. He finally squatted down at the edge of the
flats, not going as far as the town, I suppose,
because the buzzards were all down in the street
now eating from that dead roan.
   We did what we had to and the two men besides
Ezra and me got on one horse and rode off south.
Everyone else had already left. I wiped my fore-
head with my sleeve, the sun was low in the west
but I was warm. My foot ached and flies were buz-
zing around my head.
   "Shall we say a word, Ezra?"
   "Expect so."
   "Well what should it be?"
- He took his hat off and I took off mine and we
stood looking down at the fresh earth: There is
great human shame when people die before they
are ready. It's as if their living didn't matter at all.
I thought of Fee putting his trust in wood, and fat
Avery worrying for his establishment, and crippled
Jack with a one-armed interest in things; I thought
of the old Major who always wore his dress blues
on Sunday; and I thought of the way redheaded
Flo, who had plump knees, could sometimes get
interested. I had been in the town a year and I
knew them all. Behind me the town was now a
ruin, and who would remember in another year
that it was ever there or that they had ever lived?
   The Bad Man's grinning face came back to me
and I felt my shy hand choosing the glass he
offered. Twenty years before I had put my young
wife into the ground after the cholera took her
and the same rage rose in my throat for something
that was too strong for me, something I could not
cope with.
28                E. L. Doctorow
  Kicking a clod with his toe Ezra said: "Well the
Lord says blessed are the meek for they shall in-
herit the earth."

   We rode back in to Hausenfield's well to wash
the grave dirt off. Jimmy Fee followed us and
squatted with his back against the bottom of the
windmill, but he wouldn't wash and he wouldn't
look at us.
   I saw from where I stood that it would not do
to leave that dead roan lying in the middle of the
street. He was covered with the birds and I knew
if the birds flew off he would be covered with blue-
bottle flies. When I finished washing I said to
Ezra: "Between your mule and the Major's pony
I think they could just about pull that carcass out
of here."
     "Whereto?"
   "Down along the rocks about a mile."
   "No sense to that," Ezra said, "unless you're
flxin' to stay."
   "I am." I had hoped he was too.
  He looked at me: "Town's gone, Blue."
   "Now I don't know," I said. "We got a cemetery.
That's the beginnings of a town anyway."
   Ezra poured half a bucket of water over his
head. Then he wiped his face and neck with a rag,
and then his arms and hands.
   "Blue, I came West from Vermont. They have
trees in that country."
   "Is that right?"
   "Water flows from the rocks, game will nibble at
your back door, and if you're half a man you can
make your life without too much trouble."
   "That's what I once heard about this country."
             Welcome to Hard Times            29
   "That's what I heard too. Back in Vermont."
   Ezra was a long-faced man, taller than I was,
with a stoop in his shoulders and eyes like a
beagle hound. He put on a coat and turned to look
at the black smoking street and the scrubby
stretches beyond:
   "Truth is, if the drought don't get you and the
blizzards don't get you, that's when some devil
with liquor in his soul and a gun in his claw will
ride you down and clean you out."
   He walked over to his mule, fixed his saddle and
climbed on. With his hunched shoulders and his
long coat and sad eyes Ezra was not much of a
sight on muleback.
   "There are other towns westerly," he said. "A
man's a fool if he don't know when to move on."
   And I said: "Ezra, all my life I have been moving
along. I have trailed cattle from Texas to Kansas,
I have whacked bulls for Russell and Waddell, I
have placer mined for myself through the Black
Hills, I have seen minstrel shows in Cheyenne and
played poker in Deadwood and Leadville and
Dodge, I have moved from one side of the West
to the other, like a pebble rolling in the pan, and
if you think this place here is not much country I
can tell you none of it is."
   He was looking down at Jimmy Fee: "Come with
me if you like, sonny. I'll teach you to storekeep."
   Jimmy sat there on his haunches, poking a twig
in the dirt.
   "So be it," Ezra said. He kicked his mule and
rode off.
   Well I couldn't waste time watching Ezra go, I
had only an hour's light to do something about
that stinking horse. I couldn't move him with just
30               E. L. Doctorow
the little rig pony, it seemed the only thing to do
was throw dirt on and make him a hill. So I did,
piling ashes and dirt alongside his back and build-
ing up from there. Overhead the buzzards were
turning, not too happy, and each time I threw a
spadeful on the carrion, a horde of flies buzzed
up around me.
   I finished by sundown and my back was sore. I
rubbed it some and that's when I realized the gun
in my belt was gone. At first I thought I had
dropped it but then I noticed little Jimmy was no-
where about. I walked over to the Indian's shack.
   John Bear was on his knees making some more
medicine pack, and Molly was crying on the
buffalo rug. An oil lamp was in the corner but the
boy was not there. I went outside and looked up
to the rocks. Sure enough, there he was scrabbling
along, waving the gun in his hand, he was going
after the Bad Man from Bodie.
   It was something to bring him back, I had to do
it so he wouldn't shoot himself or me trying to get
along that trail. I caught up with him and grabbed
him from behind and carried him back down while
he kicked and clawed. He was light but he fought
hard, and he didn't begin to whimper until I threw
him down in a corner of Bear's shack.
   I sat down myself to draw a breath. But Bear
built up a small pit fire and by its light, Molly—
turning her head in pain—strangled a wail in her
throat and locked my eyes in a terrible green gaze.
A moment later she was crying again and the boy
was crying too and the night breeze started to
moan through the shanty boards like an awful
chorus of ghosts, and with all that misery in such
small space I thought for one second to get up and
             Welcome to Hard Times           31
get out of there and ride away fast. But I could
no more do that than Fee and Flo and the others
could get up from their graves—the Bad Man
had fixed us all in the spot and he had fixed me
by leaving me alive. Before long I could hear the
coyotes jumping down from the rocks and panting
past the shack over to the dead horse. They snarled
and scratched and when I looked out the door I
could see their shadows throwing up dirt all over
the hill. Smoke still rose, blue now in the moon-
light, and embers were glowing on the ground
like peepholes to Hell.
                        3

Now the saying is common that Sam Colt made
men equal. But if it is true then our town wouldn't
have burned up in the rain; instead that Bad Man
would have been buried with due honors and a
proper notice sent to the Territory Office. He
would have had a hole in his chest, or his back,
and the one who shot him would have Avery
standing him a drink and maybe redheaded Flo
and Molly smiling his way. Colt gave every man
a gun, but you have to squeeze the trigger for
yourself.
   A few times during that long cold night I thought
the Bad Man was coming back. The Major's pony,
tethered outside, would whinny or snort, or some
pebbles would roll down from the rocks, or Molly
would cry out as if he was walking through the
door. But really there was nothing he would
come back for: In the morning I went out to stomp
the numbness from my feet, and my eyes felt the
shock of seeing air where the town had been. The
chilly dawn rested right on the charred ground, the
                          32
              Welcome to Hard Times            33
flats began at the horizon and came up to where I
stood. I could not see a soul.
   I was stiff and sore and bleary from no sleep and
my first breath of the frosty morning sent a pain
into my stomach. I went over to the ruins of Ezra
Maple's store and started to poke around. Jimmy
Fee woke up and came out of the shack and stood
watching me while he made water, in the middle
of the street. He had his father's wide-set eyes, the
Fee look on his face that took you in but didn't
ask any questions, and his hair needed to be cut so
bad that his head looked too large for his body. I
had never seen such a skinny boy.
   "Are you hungry?" I called, but he didn't answer.
   Two fallen planks lay like hands with their
fingers touching and under them I found some
dried apples and peas in the ashes. The peas were
well roasted.
   "Jimmy, look around for a coffeepot, find us a
pot, boy."
   That was the way to talk to him, he went right
to it. I had not picked a handful of peas out of the
ashes before he was running up with a good pot.
We drew some water and washed the soot off and
I built a fire out of China matches from my pocket
and we brewed up some pea coffee. With the
apples it helped the hunger, but it tasted bad
enough to make me remember all the good coffee
I had drunk in my life and the beef and bacon
and bread I had eaten.
   I took some of the breakfast into the shack but
Molly was asleep. She had cried almost until
dawn. She lay with her arms out in front of her,
thin and white, and her matted hair was caked
34                E. L. Doctoiow
at the tips with Bear's mud medicine. The Indian
was sitting by her side, chewing on some dried
corn. I put down the pot and the apples and went
back outside to scavenge with the boy.
   We recovered two charred tins of milk from
Ezra's store, a tomato can, a box of .45 shells, the
head of a hammer, a handful of horseshoe nails
and a hunk of lye soap. From the remains of the
Silver Sun we picked out a length of balustrade,
three oil lamps—one with the glass unbroken—
and lots of black bottles and chipped glasses.
Elsewhere we found a charred saddle and a round
stove, intact, and Jimmy even came up with an
almanac that was only burnt around the edges. As
we hunted the sun rose warm and took the chill
out of my back, and by noon we had a pile of goods
sitting in,front of Bear's shanty.
   But I didn't want to spend another night there.
   I stepped inside to see if Molly was awake. Slits
and speckles of light lay across the floor and one
strip of light fell on her open eyes. She looked
bad. Her face was so thin I could see how the
bones and blue veins went under her skin. The
food beside her was untouched. I didn't know what
to say to her, I didn't know what she would say
to me, but I said:
   "Molly I'm going to build a dugout over by the
well. Earth is the one thing we've got in supply and
a good sod wall will do better against the weather
than these boards will."
   For a second I though she was dead, she was so
still. Then she was whispering something and I
bent down to hear:
   "A man gave me a little trinket once. On a
chain. I left it with the Major to hold."
             Welcome to Hard Times            35
   I lowered my own voice: "Molly, I must tell you
the old man is dead."
   "Ah," her eyes closed, "I knew ..."
   "He died of a fit, he was cursing the Bad Man.
Wait—"
   The pony was in the flats grazing on what he
could, I had sent Jimmy out on his back after our
salvage; but the Major's rig was outside the door
and under the seat I found a carved box of private
things—pearl buttons, a tin of mustache wax, a
collar, a Union medal and a small cross on a chain.
   I brought the cross in to Molly. I held it out to
her and she reached up and gently took it from
me with her long fingers and clutched it tight as
she laid her head back down on her hands. Then
she smiled. My heart jumped with that smile and I
asked her would she eat something.
   "Take care of me Blue?" she said softly.
   "Yes Molly, if you allow."
   Still smiling she,said "Mayor"—whispering so
that I bent down and put my ear almost to her
lips—"if I had that knife now I wouldn't drop it.
I would stick it in you and watch the yellow flow."
   For a moment I didn't understand, I could not
reconcile the words with the smile on her face. But
I looked at her and saw what a sweet smile it was,
full of hate, and I felt as if I had been swiped to
the ground by the paw of a big cat.
   John Bear was turning over his garden patch
with a piece of rock and he came around to the
door just as I stepped out. I pushed by him without
a word. The shovel was where I had left it, over
by the offal. The coyotes had scalloped out one
side of the dirt mound and eaten clear down to the
bone. I knew they would be back at night for the
36               E. L. Doctorow
rest, but I had to throw new dirt on anyway. An
awful sense of hopelessness came over me. In
this ruin and desolation, the ache of all my years
rose in my hones and I was ready to sit down
where I was and give up the ghost. What was the
use? The woman in John Bear's shack was no
longer Molly, what had happened in Avery's saloon
could never be undone. The only hope we have
is that we can pay off on our failures, and Molly's
grin had burned the hope right out of me.
   My hands were sore gripping the shovel again,
they had swelled and blistered from all the grave-
digging yesterday, it was only their needling dis-
tress which made me hold on tight as I could
and march with that shovel over to the windmill.
For no other reason than the pain shooting up my
arms did I stick the blade into the ground and be-
gin laying out a dugout.
   This windmill was the one thing of value that
the Bad Man had left. Hausenfield had paid to have
the well drilled and then he had made back his
costs by charging everybody for the water. It was
either the German's good well water or the tepid
stored from a rain or a long climb to a trickle
spring up in the rocks. Most people paid. Fee had
met the charge by building Hausenfield's stable,
Avery had used his girls. Some others took what
they needed when Hausenfield wasn't looking. I cut
an eight-foot square near the windmill and wet
it down with pails of water. I dug blocks of sod
and piled them o*h the line. By digging four feet
down and piling the sod two feet high you were
sure of a ceiling you could stand under if you
didn't stretch. Jimmy Fee came riding in on the
             Welcome to Hard Times            37
pony's back and he gave the animal a drink. He
held the bridle and watched me dig.
  "You makin" another grave?" he said.
  Well I felt I was. But I said, "Hitch up that pony
and find us some lumber you can't break. I'm mak-
ing a place to live."

   By mid-afternoon there was a dead hot sun in
the sky. I took my shirt off and put a cloth around
my neck and as I worked I lifted my hat every
few minutes to let the air in. There was no wind
and the water in the tank went down and I had
to climb the scaffold to turn those stubby mill
blades. The digging and the climbing wore on me,
I had worked all my life but the year I had lived
in the town I had grown soft as I thought I had a
right to do in my old age. I felt that year now.
Luckily for me, Bear came out of his shack to take
a nap in its shade side, and afterwards he walked
over and without a word gave me a spell on the
shovel. I guess he didn't want me in his place any
more than I wanted to be there. The digging was
done by sundown.
  We found a fairly good shake in the rubble and
dragged it over for a ridgepole. When it was in
place I laid the odd bits of lumber Jimmy had col-
lected across from the shake to the sod walls. Then
I laid other wood over the cracks. Then we went
up to the rocks and brought back armfuls of scrub
and covered the boards and threw some dirt on
and there was a dugout, roof and all. Of course it
lacked a door for the hole on one side, but that
was a refinement which could wait. What I wanted
now was to set up the stove inside and eat some of
the apples and maybe open one tin of the milk.
  38                  E. L. Doctorow
     I said to Jimmy: "Get in there and jump a little,
  tamp that floor down." I had learned early in the
  morning that he was alright as long as you ordered
  him about. All day I had been telling him what to
  do and he had done it. This tune he just stood with
  a far-off look on his face. I thought the dusk was
  recalling his father to him, but he pointed out
  to the flats and said: "There's someone comin'."
     The clouds were red over the flats and darkness
  was moving in. About a mile to the south some-
  thing was making dust, and as we looked it showed
  itself to be a canvas-top wagon.
   "Jimmy get over by the Indian's next to those
things we gathered." This time he moved. "And
' put that box of shells inside your shirt!" I called
after him.
     John Bear went inside his hut and closed the
   door. I put on my shirt and stood in front of the
   dugout, and I loosened the Colt in my belt.
     We waited without moving for the wagon to
  arrive. It came on with a bump over the graves.
  When it reached the town's edge the team slowed
  to a walk, a six-horse team, and I wondered what
  kind of covered wagon needed six horses. They
  were well used. Slowly down the burnt-out street
  they came as if the driver was taking in the sight.
  Then they turned and pulled the creaking rig on
  toward me.
     "Hollo!" the driver called. He reined in just as I
  thought he was going to ride on past. He sat up
  there behind his steaming horses, a stout man,
  smiling widely under a bushy mustache, he might
  have been a smith except that he wore a striped
  shirt with sleeve garters. Turning in his seat he said
              Welcome to Hard Times              39
to someone inside the wagon: "See, was no prairie
fire, where is grass for prairie fire?"
   "Well you're a damn genius, Zar," a woman's
voice came from inside, "but I don't-see no Culver
City neither." I saw her come up behind his shoul-
der and the thing that struck me was she had no
bonnet on her head.
   They both looked down at me. ,
   "Fraud/1 the man said, "there is mine camp in
these hills, am I right?"
  "I've heard of one," I said.
   "Ah hah! I am right. And what has happened
here?"                 .
   I said, "Well a man come by preaching hellfire."
  He laughed and I could see the glint of a gold
tooth: "Frand, listen. Two days past I learnis a min-
ing camp westward, a place of business. But west-
ward is big, and yesterday I am lost. Is rain, is dark,
and only one strange light is in bottom of sky.
You see what I'm telling you? There is good in
everything, what for you was a town burning was
for me a lamp in the window." The man shook as
he laughed. His jowls shook, his stomach shook.
  The woman said: "Don't mind Zar, he's a Rus-
sky."
  "I am," the man agreed. He jumped down from
the seat and I was surprised how short he was.
"We make the night here, Adah, and tomorrow to
the gold."
  The woman disappeared in the wagon. The man
said to me: "Now frand I have thirsty horses. Is
that well yours?"
  "That's right."
   "I pay of course. You are a survivor, you will
need provisions."
40               E. L. Doctorow
   "Maybe."
   He looked at me then as if he was hiding some
joke. "You like beef? I carry beef."
   As he spoke something fell off the back of the
wagon and then someone jumped off and although
my view was obstructed I thought it was a boy.
I heard some high voices. At the same time the
woman appeared at the front of the wagon and
climbed down easily despite a mess of skirts.
   "Adah, horses to water," the Russian said.
"Others make tent in back of dugout. Like in
homeland—two houses make willage."
   Without unhitching the team, the woman Adah
pulled them away to the water barrel. When the
wagon moved off I saw three figures, standing
around a square bundle of canvas. This was dusk
and it took me a moment to understand that they
were all women. One, in pants, whom I had taken
for a boy, I saw now to be a Chinese.
    "You see my prize herd, frand?" the Russky
poked me in the ribs and chuckled. "Water for
beef, is fair?"
   "Hey Zar," one women called, "can't you wait
till we've been in a place five minutes? I swear
you'd trade with a cactus if you met up with one."
   "Hey Zar," another called, "that little old boy
yonder looks more able than the feller you talkin'
to."
   The Chinawoman giggled and Zar raised his fist
and shouted: "Shod up!"
   But I almost laughed myself. Here I was with
nothing between me and the Fates but the clothes
on my back, I was hard put just to stay alive, and
this fellow had come in off the flats to offer me
              Welcome to Hard Times             41
luxuries. I shook my head. I told him I would
rather take vittles and maybe some of his alcohol
when his camp was made.
    "As you weesh," he shrugged. He was disap-
pointed, the ladies were his stock in trade. He
walked over to them, did some shouting, cuffed
the Chinese girl on the ear, and before long the
women were putting up their tent nearby.
   Well I went about my business. Together with
Jimmy I toted our property inside the dugout. I
got one lamp going, I put up the stove and built
a fire. We tamped the floor and spread the two
blankets which belonged to the Major. All the
while I was thinking of the provender to be had
from this Russian. I hadn't figured past the few
peas and dried apples and tins of milk we'd sal-
vaged; and I didn't relish the idea of hunting
prairie dogs. These traveling people—the more I
thought about them the better I liked them.
   There was a commotion just as we had things
about settled. Jimmy stuck his head out of the
door: "It's over by the Indian's!" he called.
   I looked out. It was already dark. There were
lights in front of Bear's shack, and a lot of yelling.
"Stay here Jimmy," I said and I ran over. The Rus-
sian's women were standing in the door waving
their lamps and jabbering away. Inside, John Bear
was lying face down on the ground. This Zar was
trying to lift Molly under the arms and she was
screaming and tearing at his face with her fingers.
   "Here, let her be, mister!" I said. I pulled my gun
out and trained it on him. He put Molly down
readily enough and turned to me, but he didn't
seem to notice I was covering him.
42                 E. L. Doctorow
     "Ah frand," he said, "you tell me what this is?
 My girls come to say hollo and what do they find
 but this savage?"
     "That's right," the woman Adah said. "Sittin' on
 his haunches starin' at her behind. I never seen,
 the likes!"
     "Oh you sons of bitches," Molly moaned.
    "That don't go where I come from," one of the
women said. "No damn Indian—"
    "This lady is burned," I said.
    "Well alright if that's so, we can fix her up fine
in the tent, we can take care of her."
    "Don't you touch me!" Molly screamed.
"Whores! Keep away from me!"
    "Well I like that for being grateful," Adah said.
    I said: "The Indian's a good doctor."
    The Russian raised his bushy eyebrows: "He
doctors?"
    "He's been taking care of Molly."
    "Wal I have killed him with my fist. On his neck
I hit him."
    I kneeled down for a look at Bear. He wasn't
dead, he was stunned. I helped him sit up in a
corner.
    Molly was saying, "Blue get these whores away
from me, oh Christ get them away from me!"
    "Honey," one of the women said to her, "look at
you all covered with dirty redskin medicine, no
wonder you're complainin'. Now you come on with
us and Adah'11 fix you up proper."
    I thought Molly would have a fit. She was crying
and beating her fists on the ground: "For Godsake
I'll die if they touch me, oh God, keep them
away . . ." But what was worse, she suddenly left
off and crawled around in the dirt until she found
             Welcome to Hard Times            43
her little cross. She clutched it in her hands and
began to mumble to herself, her lips moved fast
and her eyes began to roll upwards.
   "Ay, poor woman," Zar said fingering the
scratches on his face, "she has sharp nails for a
believer."
   "It's a cryin* shame," said Adah, "lyin" in the
mud that way."
- I looked at John Bear, still sitting groggy in the
corner. And I looked at these righteous people
crowding the shack. "Molly you'll come with me,"
I said.
   Bending down, I lifted her arms and put her over
my shoulder. I expected her to struggle but she
made no move to stop me, she weighed like a baby.
The air was ehill so I told the Russian to put the
buffalo robe over her. The minute the robe touched
her, Molly gasped and dug her nails in my neck.
I carried her out of the shack and toward the dug-
out, the ladies of the brush following me with their
oil lamps throwing a jumpy glow on the ground.
   When I got to the dugout I stepped past Jimmy
and laid Molly down on a blanket. Then I hung
up the other blanket for the door and poked my
head out and said to these still-chattering women:
"Alright, I'll take care of her, she'll be alright."
   But when I turned back inside, Molly was look-
ing at her palm—she couldn't find her cross. "They
took it from me, they stole it!" she cried out. And
then she began to wail again and to curse. She
cursed her father and her mother, she cursed the
day she was born, she cursed herself for coming
West, she cursed me. And while she ranted and
carried on, Jimmy slipped out and found the cross
lying on the ground halfway to the Indian's shack
44                E. L. Doctorow
where she had dropped it. He came back in and
went to his knees by her side and held it out with
that solemn Fee look on his face.
  Molly, all streaked with tears and dirt, looked
up at Jimmy as if seeing him for the first time.
  I was wishing she could look at me that way. I
said: "Molly, you remember Fee's boy ..."

  A few minutes later they were both sleeping
sound. It was warm in the dugout, we were like
three creatures in a hole, and I sat down to rest
a bit before I followed the Russian and his ladies
to their tent. I stretched my legs and closed my
eyes and I fell asleep. Now I'm trying to write
what happened and I wonder, does a dream come
under that? I dreamed the Man from Bodie was
driving a herd across some badland; and riding
each head was a wolf or some buzzard with its
claws planted. I was in the middle, running with
the rest, and I couldn't shake free of those claws.
They drove me to my knees and I tumbled and was
stomped into the earth by those behind me, dirt
was filling my mouth. It was the taste of dirt
woke me. Pieces of dried-out sod were falling
from the wall, on my face. I got a shock because
through the edge of the blanket hanging for a
door I saw it was broad daylight outside. I had
slept right through. Molly and Jimmy were still
asleep as I crawled out and stood up stiffly, blink-
ing in the sun.
   It was well along in the afternoon and I was sure
those traveling people were gone. But I turned
and ten yards in back of the dugout there they
were striking their tent. It was a big army tent
and they were having trouble, they were too busy
               Welcome to Hard Times              45
to do the striking—they were arguing. When one
made to pull up a stake another shouted some-
thing, and then they all had to shout something.
In the light I could see the women better than I had
the night before: the one called Adah seemed to
be older than the rest, the Chinese and the other
two—one tall, one kind of dumpity—were not
much more than girls.
   I was happy to see them.
   But this Zar caught sight of me in the middle of
a long harangue and he tacked me on to the end
of it: "And you, frand, are no frand of mine!" he
shouted.
   I didn't know what to say to that, I walked over
to the well to wash off. He came up to me, talking
every step of the way: "So what shall I do now?
All morning I search for trail to mining camp! You
did not tell me there was none, you said nothing.
And now I have women who should be on their
back and they are on my neck. Four days have I
lost!"
   My head was still filled with sleep. "Trail up
through those rocks plain as day," I said.
    "You call that trail? It is for ants. How can I get
my wagon on that trail?"
   He was right there, I hadn't understood he
wanted to wagon straight up to the lodes—I should
have, there was nothing else he would want to do.
   "Well mister, that's just a back trail. The town
 you wanted is on the trade roads another two
 days travel from here. I guess you followed the
 wrong light after all."
    He was mad. The veins in his neck stood out.
 He let go in Russian and in English and the words
 flew. When I bent down to pour some water over
48                 E. L. Doctorow
my neck he bent down too, and when I threw my
head back to drink he addressed my Adam's
apple. When he ran out of names to call me, he
pointed to the scratches on his face and went on
to Molly—a "cat woman" he called her—and when
he finished with that subject he turned and stalked
back to his girls.
   Well I thought for sure I had lost the trade on
the well water. This Russian wouldn't hand me a
bean now. And if he had ridden up two days be-
fore he did or two days after, that would have been
the end of it.
   But my head cleared and I remembered some-
thing.
   I ran after him: "Look here," I said, "if you can't
get to the gold maybe the gold will come to you."
   "What's this?"
   "Come on Zar," the dumpity girl said, "we're
wastin' time, this places gives me the chills."
   "What gold?" he said, ignoring her.
   I talked for all I was worth. I told him—exagger-
ating a little—what a thriving town this had been
until two days ago. I told him how the miners came
every Saturday night, a regular crowd of them, to
spend money and blow off steam. I told him there
was no reason they wouldn't show up just like they
always did—for as I'd remembered, this was Satur-
day.
   For a few seconds I had him. He pulled on his
mustache and frowned and worried the idea some.
But then he made up his mind: "No. We go." What
saved me was that he and the ladies weren't in
agreement which way to go. He was for striking
west to the big roads, they wanted to turn back.
The bunch of them bickered and sulked, shouted
              Welcome to Hard Times           47
and threatened each other while I kept glancing
up to the rocks and hoping the time would be with
me. Whenever it seemed as if an accord was about
to be made, I put in a word that would start the
arguing up all over again. Only the Chinagirl had
nothing to say, she stared from one to the other,
wondering how things would turn out. She was
the one who first spotted the three figures on mule-
back looking on from high in the rocks.
   "Wave, girls, wave!" Zar shouted.
   And they did, jumping and waving their ker-
chiefs, calling "Hey! Hey!" until the miners began
to ride down.
   The sun was just setting. Zar snapped out orders
to the girls and while they got busy preparing he
took me over to his wagon and gave me a bag of
flour, some strips of dried beef and a can of lard.
He was smiling, I was his frand again.
   But I wasted no time tucking that barter in the
dugout
                       4

A few hours later there were a good dozen mules
and horses roped out by the tent. Singing was corn-
ing from inside and it was a strange sound in the
night air. Those miners hadn't taken hut a few
minutes to get over the wonder of the town ruins;
one or two had put off their interest in the new
whores for a few moments while they rode out to
the graves to take off their hats.
  But I talked with one man I knew, Angus Mcell-
henny, a short old digger who kept a pipe in his
teeth and had likely shot a hundred grubstakes be-
fore he gave in to work company lodes. Angus
couldn't believe what had happened.
   "Just one of them Blue?" he kept saying.
   "Just one Angus."
   "They roam in packs mostly, they like to put on
fer each other."
   "Well he was alone."
   "My God. The doorty bastard. Say him once
more."
   "Well he was a big man, a head taller than me,
and he had this blaze over one side of his face.
                             4
                             6
             Welcome to Hard Times            49
But what you'd remember are his eyes. He had
eyes like a spooked horse."
   "Sure. I know the mon. It would be Clay Tur-
ner."
   "He was headed your way."
   "My God, likely he rode right by the camp."
   "You know him?"
   "I know of him. Why he should be dead, he went
bad years ago." Angus took his pipe out of his
mouth and spit: "I wish him in Hell, he's been
ridin' too long."
   There was a big laugh from the tent and the tall
girl came out leading a man by his ear. He was
guffawing, he was well along. Angus and I stepped
out of the way as she led him around to the side
of the tent and pushed him up in the covered
wagon and climbed in after him.
   "Blue," said Angus, "come have one with me and
we'll drink to old Flo, God keep her."
   It was hot enough for midnight in that tent.
Kerosene lanterns were hooked to the tentpoles
and they threw a yellow cast over all the smiling
faces. Over on one side the Russian had a bar set
up, a plank laid across two sawhorses. His sleeves
were rolled and a big apron was tied around his
stomach and he was drawing whiskey from a cask
to fill the orders of the girls. Zar was in a sweat,
his face was red, his eyes bright. On the plank
right by his hand was a shotgun. And on the ground
by his feet was a sack into which he dropped the
silver the girls brought him, or the pouches of
dust.
   "On house frand," he shouted, and poured two
drinks in tin cups. Angus Mcellhenny and I drank
to the memory of redheaded Florence.
50                 E. L. Doctorow
   Some of the customers were sprawled on camp
meeting chairs, some on the ground; there were
those who made a point of pinching the dumpity
girl or the Chinese as they went hy, there were a
few gathered around Adah, who was leading the
singing and playing on an old melodeon.

         All I need in this lifetime
         Fretty girl and a silver mine . ..

is what they sang but the song broke up when one
man in back of Adah leaned over, put his hands
in her dress and gave her a good shake. Adah
shrieked, stood up and slapped him smart, and
that made everyone laugh including her.
    Adah called to the dumpity girl: "Do your dance
 Mae!"
   And then all attention was fixed on Mae as she
lifted her arms above her head and began turning
around and around. The miners started to clap time
and she spun faster and faster until her skirts rose
and showed her legs above the shoes. At the height
of the dance she stopped suddenly and yanked a
man to his feet and led him right out of the tent
while everyone laughed and yelled after him. The
tall girl—Jessie, they greeted h«r—brushed back
in a minute later and she went directly to sit on the
lap of a glaze-eyed boy who still had his pimples.
I saw the Chinagirl, dressed in a red satin shirt and
bloomers with a yellow sash around her waist, she
was on her knees offering a drink to one grey old
fellow who stared at her while he pulled on his
beard. He reached for her instead of the whiskey
but she held up her hand and smiled, I suppose she
had to wait her turn for the wagon.
              Welcome to Hard Times            51
  These girls knew how to work, they didn't pick
but the drunkest of the lot, or the least able. It
looked to me like Zar the Russian had an establish-
ment that put old Avery's to shame.
  Angus Mcellhenny still wanted to buy me a drink
and I let him. But when he turned away and got
caught up in the revelry I took the cup and left.
The song began again and I could hear it as I
walked through the cold air to the dugout:

  !AII I want before I'm old
  Big fat woman and a mountain of gold . . .

   In the dugout Molly and Jimmy were chewing on
strips of the dried beef like a pair of dogs, lying
there with only the light of the glowing stove,
listening to the sound of the frolic outside. It was
a mournful sight. I poked up the fire,and with
our skillet and some lard I made up a batter of
flour-and-water cakes. I gave two of the cakes to
Jimmy and put two down in front of Molly. She
turned her head away.
   "Molly," I said, "I have some liquor here and if
you eat those cakes you can wash them down with
the liquor."
   She said nothing. But at that moment I heard a
woman's voice just outside: "Not that way you
old ass!" At the same time someone stumbled
against the dugout and one of the roofboards fell
inside, hitting Molly on the back. Molly set up a
yell and I picked up the board and ran out. That
dumpity girl, Mae, was pulling her customer back
to the tent while he laughed and coughed and
stumbled along.
   Well I put the board back in place and I sat
 52                 E. L> Doctorow
 down against the sod wall so I could watch and
 keep the drunks away. I sat there sipping the
 whiskey Molly didn't want; it was good whiskey
 and it warmed my gullet, but the rest of me grew
 cold in that chilly air. The windmill creaked in the
 darkness and one of the horses would nicker now
 and then and I must have heard twenty verses of
 that song rising out of the tent. But what I listened
 to was the talk coming through the sod wall at my
 back.
    "Go ahead," it was Molly's voice, "take a look.
 Go on now, is it bleeding back there?"
    "No."
    "Alright, you're a good boy ... I knew your Pa."
    "Yes."
    "He liked Flo—"
    "Yes."
    "He's dead now, for all the good it did him."
    There was no answer, but a burst of shouts and
 laughing came over from the tent.
    "Why d'you cry!"
   "I—I ain't."
   "So he's dead. There's worse than that, look at
me. You don't have to cry for Fee. How old are
you?"
   "He said twelve."
   "When?"
   "I don't—I don't remember."
   "Twelve. Well you're small for your age. Go on
and eat up that prairie cake, you want to grow
into a man don't you? Oh God my back is on
fire, oh Christ! . . . Go on and eat, little boy, I can
tell you a man is hard enough to be even with
proper eatin'!"
   Later I fell asleep sitting there and through the
              Welcome to Hard Times            53
night I kept waking to the shrieks of the women or
the roar of the men. The light streaming from the
tent fixed in a yellow square on my mind and from
time to time I saw figures buck through it and
disappear like phantoms beyond its edge. Toward
the dawn I was aware of some mules trotting off
and when the night lifted and I woke, stiff in the
grey light, I could see miners sleeping all around
like stones.
   I got up and walked about and came on Angus
 Mcellhenny: he was slumped and snoring in
 Hausenfield's old bathtub which sat out in back
 of the ruins like some stranded schooner. The sight
 of Angus that way did not cheer me up, I felt a
 great melancholy looking on him in the gloom
 of the grey morning. What good anyone could
 come to on this ashen townsite I could not see.

  As the day came up I found enough to do: I
mixed up more batter for our breakfast, I looked
for a pot for Molly's use, I knocked a frame to-
gether for the door of the dugout, I gathered chips
for fire from under the feet of the animals still
tethered near the tent, I took the Major's pony
out where there was some brush he could work on.
As the sun got higher the miners began to stir, and
one by one they got up cussing or groaning, and
they left. I heard one man say to his mule: "Now
Blossom you walk nice and easy so as old Jake's
head don't topple." And another, that pimply boy,
who looked sick and miserable in the daylight,
came over with a crumpled letter in his hand.
   "I always post my letters with Mr. Maple," he
 said to me.
    "Well Ezra's gone,"I said.
54                E. L. Doctorow
   "Alright, you can hold my letter for the stage."
He brought two cartwheels out of his pocket and
put them in my hand. "It's two dollars the ounce
and I never say more than an ounce's worth."
   He was off before I could say yes or no, and I
think it was this as much as anything which caused
things to go as they did. Zar the Russian was climb-
ing down from his wagon with a whistle on his
lips when he saw the boy give me the letter and
ride off. He buttoned his shirt and called to me.
Together we built up a fire and he brewed some real
coffee and gave me a mug. Then, sitting on the
ground, he asked me to tell him what, truly, had
happened to the town. I told him.
   "So," he said, "was a sudden man."
   "That's right."
   He pointed to the boy's letter which I had put
 in my shirt pocket: "And town is gone but use for
 town may not be gone. Am I right?"
   "You're right."
   "And will stage come again?"
   "I reckon. If it pays."
   "Will come stage again. Will come miners again!"
He couldn't contain himself at the idea, he jumped
up and began pacing and pulling his beard, a round
barrel of a man muttering to himself in Russian. I
drank the hot coffee and watched him. He stopped
to look around: he looked at the windmill, he
looked at the rock hills, he turned a full circle,
looking east over the rubble of the burnt-out street
and looking south over the flats to the horizon. The
sun was at noon and it bleached the flats almost
white with shimmers of yellow or pale green where
the ground dipped or lay in the shadow of a. cloud.
   "Frand," he said taking a deep breath, "what do
              Welcome to Hard Times              55
you smell?" He looked at me: "You smell the
coffee? You smell the horse? You smell the bum
in the air?"
   I nodded. "Ah, you have not the merchant's
nose. You know what I smell? The money!" He
looked at me and that gold tooth showed out
through his beard and he was laughing hard, hold-
ing his hands on his sides and shaking fit to bust.
He laughed so loud that Jimmy came out of the
dugout to see.
   "You unnerstand what I'm telling you, frand,"
Zar said. "We shall be neighbors here!" He leaned
over and slapped me on the shoulder. Still laugh-
ing he walked quickly over to the tent and went
inside.
   Well his coffeepot was still on the fire so I filled
my cup again and motioned for Jimmy to come
over.
   "Drink this up Jimmy," I said. He took the coffee
without a word. I noticed he looked better with a
good night's sleep in back of him, those Fee eyes
were not so deep in his head.
   "Is Molly still asleep?"
   "No. She's saying words."
   "What?"
   "She's saying words to herself. With that cross."
   "Is she praying?"
   "Yes, she's praying."
   When he finished I filled the cup again. "Take
this to her," I said, "she'll take it from you. Maybe
a cup of coffee is what she's praying for."
   Walking carefully Jimmy went toward the dug-
out. But then some loud protest caterwauled from
the tent and he stopped for a moment and looked
back at me.
56                 E. L. Doctorow
   "Go ahead," I called, "that's just those people."
   I put more water in the Russian's coffeepot and
set it back on the fire. Then I stood listening to the
awful sounds from the tent. The ladies were sleep-
ing in there and Zar had gone in to tell them they
were going to be founders of a new town. It was a
furious racket. I could hear him shout and I could
hear them shout back. I figured the only one not
putting up a squawk was the Chinese, and I was
right. In a few minutes she pushed the flap aside
and came out limping a little, to stare at the rocks
and the flats and the ruins.
   I had an idea at that moment. I went over to the
bathtub and rolled Angus out on the ground. He
didn't even miss a snore. I dragged the tub back
to the well, washed it out as best I could, and filled
it with pails of water. I could see the sun shaking
in that water and it showed back the blue sky.
Given time to warm in the day's heat it would be
an inviting thing; I have my share of cunning.
   As I waited the argument inside the tent fell off
until I could hear only one of the women standing
up to Zar's tirades. She appeared outside and it
was the plump one, Mae. Mae stalked over to the
wagon and climbed in and started to throw things
over the side. A pot, a blanket, a carpetbag. "I ain't
goin' to, no sir," she was yelling, "y'all can fry here
in this hole for all I care!"
   Zar had followed her and he was standing by
waving his fist: "You think you are too good for
this place! You think you know better than Zar
what to do! I will kill you with my hands, Maech-
ka!"
   For answer she threw out an oval looking glass
              Welcome to Hard Times            57
 and it caught him square on the side of the head. I
 could have laughed but the Russian roared with
 rage. Jumping up on the wagon he stuck his arm in-
 side and pulled the woman out and threw her to
 the ground.
    "Hey Zar!" the tall one, Jessie, called. "None of
 that!" She and Adah were standing in front of the
 tent, red-eyed, watching the battle. In the bright
 daylight and rumpled with sleep, none of the
 women looked too good. Their face paint was
 rubbed off and their hair was hanging and they all
 looked the worse for wear.
    "I say what we do, no one else!" Zar was shout-
 ing. And to make his point he was kicking Mae as
 she tried to get up. When she got to her feet and
 tried to run he knocked her down and kicked her
 again. She was screaming and he was saying. "You
 will shod up, shod up!"
    I ran over and pulled him away from the girl,
 she had given up trying to get away and was just
 lying there curled up and crying with her head be-
 tween her arms. Zar let me lead him away but he
 turned every few steps to curse her in Russian.
   The Chinagirl had run inside the tent when Zar
.came out but Jessie and Adah went over to Mae
and helped her up. Adah put her arm around the
bruised girl and mothered her. Witnessing this I
was ashamed of myself. But I left Zar sitting cross-
legged and surly by his cooking fire and I went
over to the unhappy women and allowed they
could use the bathtub by the well if they liked.
    They must not have seen a tub in months. Mae
 forgot her peeve in a moment and she and Jessie
 stripped themselves clear down to their hides and
58                E. L. DoctoroW
took turns sitting in the tub, splashing and laugh-
ing like children. They rubbed themselves with a
piece of scented soap which Adah brought out to
them. "It's genuine Parisiunl" Adah called to me.
"Got it from some son of a bitch what stole it
from a Colonel's lady!"
   The Chinese stood off a ways just looking on,
and she was smiling with delight. Those two jump-
ing in and out of the tub, red down to their necks
and up to their wrists but white everywhere else,
were as mindful of anyone watching as if they
had been whole dressed. One watcher was Jimmy,
standing against the dugout, and. I couldn't tell him
not to, I was another.
  That evening I sat at the Russian's fire and I
told him it would be a good idea to put up some
tolerable buildings before the stage came. I re-
membered that Fee bought some of his wood from
the mines but that most of it he garnered from
dead towns in the territory.
   "So let us find such a town," Zar said.
   "Well there's one I know of," I said, "name of
Fountain Creek."
   "Good. We go now." He stood up. This fellow
had a better mind than Avery ever had but it would
outrun you with your own intentions. I used to
own a horse like that, you spurred him once
and you couldn't hold him.
  "Wait on," I said, "it's a half day's travel. You
don't gain anything losing a night's sleep. We'll
head out at sunup."
  But once it was decided I began to worry the
whole idea. It was all too quick for me; glad as I
              Welcome to Hard Times             59
was to be staking out in earnest I couldn't believe
in it altogether, almost against my will I found my-
self glancing up at the shadows of the rocks. I didn't
like leaving Molly and the boy untended for a day
and maybe a night too.
   Well I was up and waiting for the dawn. When
the first light ran through the sky I went over to
the Indian's shanty. As I feared, John Bear was in
no humor to keep a watch out for anyone, he had
not come out of his shack since Zar had knocked
him down; and I saw him through the door sitting
hunched up in front of a dead fire, he was deep
in a brood. There isn't much worse you can do to
an Indian than touch him. Bear wore a shirt and
britches and he was living in this shack where ten
years before he wouldn't have sat down under a
roof—but for all he felt now he might just as well
have stayed a blanket Indian.
   In the chilly early morning Zar had unloaded his
 wagon and now he was stripping it down, pulling
 off the canvas and lifting the struts away. On the
 ground were trunks, sacks of grain, boxes, a barrel,
 bedding—he packed a lot in that wagon. The
 women were up and about, laboring to get it all
 inside the tent.
    "I am soon ready, frand," he called. I went over
 to him and told him Bear was in the dumps. He
 wasn't too concerned, he said: "The savage will
 get over it." I remember those words.
    "Well that may be," I said, "but meanwhile
 there's no one here to keep an eye out while we're
 gone."
    "So?" He shrugged. I didn't know what to do, I
 didn't want to leave—especially with Molly in the
60                E. L. Doctorow
dugout the way she was. But there seemed to be
no way out of it. I finally asked around till the tall
girl, Jessie, said she had an old dress she might be
willing to sell. I offered her the two dollars that
pimply boy had given me to post his letter.
   "No," she said, changing her mind, "it's too good
for Madam Bitch in there."
   "Give it him," Zar said, scowling.
   So the exchange was made and I took the frock
in to Molly. She was sitting up facing the doorway
and she was holding the buffalo robe to her
shoulders. Those green eyes in that peaked face
made me feel again the queerness, the dismal
shame of trying to speak to her. I had to clear
my throat.
   "Molly, things are going good, these people want
to stake out here. I'm going off with the Russian
to find a load of wood for building."
   She nodded, she didn't seem to care.
   "Jimmy'11 stay behind," I said. "And this is a
dress."
   It was to plague me for a long time, like this,
that I couldn't tell what she would answer or if I
might find a moment's favor in her eyes. She didn't
say anything till I began to wonder if she'd heard
me; and then I saw she was crying, not making a
sound, just looking at the ground as if her whole
life was laid out in front of her, while the tears ran
down her face.
   "Molly, it's a proper dress," I said. But she
wouldn't take it. "Wear it yourself, Mayor." She sat
there biting her lips and running her hand through
her hair. I didn't know what to answer, so I went
back outside with the dress.
              Welcome to Hard Times            61
   Jessie saw me and by the time I reached the
tent she and Adah and Mae had stopped what they
were doing to gather around me.
   "I knew it," Jessie said, "why she suckles bob-
cats, she'd do it with a horse, that bitch, the dress
is too good for her."
   "I'll be damned," Adah said.
   "How do you like that Lady 'Bacon Ass," Jessie
said to Mae, "that's somethin' ain't it?"
   "Trouble with that ol' girl," Mae said slowly,
"she were burned not hardly enough."
   I was scratching the stubble on my chin; and
listening to these women made me say something
I don't understand to this day. Maybe I wanted to
keep Molly from their scorn; maybe it was just
some mournful deviltry in me.
   "Molly's my wife," I said. I think I was just say-
ing what I knew, that we had been wedded by the
Bad Man from Bodie.
   Well they looked at me as like struck dumb. I
saw a doubt in Jessie's eye—she may have won-
dered why I'd left my wife to lie in an Indian's
shack where they found her—but it was gone in
a second. I suppose there is nothing that a whore
will respect more than a married woman. Those
ladies stammered and blushed like virgins, and the
next thing I knew Adah had taken me inside the
tent, opened her trunk and dug something up from
the bottom of it.
   "This here's my wedding dress," she said to me,
"I wore it once only, on my marriage day. Twenty
years ago. My husband was a minister. This was
his tent, those were his meetin' chairs, that was his
melodeon and I played the hymns for him. I don't
62                E. L. Doctorow
have a ring on m'finger 'cause I'm ashamed to wear
it, but you ckn tell her this dress is clean,"
    "Well now Miss Adah—"
    "Go on, you take it." She folded this white dress
over my arm. "It's simple, it will do her fine, poor
woman, gettin' burned that way it's no wonder she
ain't herself."
    "That's right," said Jessie.
    "And give him his two dollars Jessie," Mae said.
    "That's right," Jessie said and she put the money
back into my hand. "Gimme that old dress, it ain't
fit, I ought to bury it."
    "Ladies," I said, "you are awful kind." I was
doing alright for a liar, but I meant what I said;
it should have saddened me how kind they sudden-
ly were except I knew what they might have done
to Molly if they'd found she was one of their kind.
    When I stepped out of the tent Zar was up on
his wagon and his team was in place: "Wal frand,"
he called,"'I wait."
   "Hold on a minute," I said. I found Jimmy around
at the front of the dugout. He had been up and
about for just a few minutes and the sleep was
still in his eyes. He was using his fingers to comb
the tail of the Major's pony.
   "Jimmy," I said, "listen to me careful. I'm rid-
ing out now to scare up some wood. I want you to
give this dress to Molly after I leave. She needs
some covering and she'll take it if you give it to
her. While I'm gone I want you to keep the pony
hitched to the rig and right by here. If you see
any sign of that Bad Man take Molly and light out
south to the wagon trails. Do you understand me?"
    "Yes."
    "You shouldn't have any trouble. Just don't
              Welcome to Hard Times              63
stray, stay close by. Don't bother the Indian, he's
in the dumps, he might be mean. Eat up those
prairie cakes I made. Probably those ladies'U give
you some hardtack if you ask them. Alright?"
   "Yes."
   "I'll be back." I started off and then I turned
back: "If someone asks you how your Ma is feel-
ing, they'll mean Molly."
   A minute later I was up on the box beside the
Russian; he snapped his whip and we skidded off
with a clatter. I turned in my seat to look back:
no one watched us go but Jimmy; he stood by the
dugout staring after us, and as we drew further
away and I looked back again he still stood there
without moving. I wished I had said something
to make him feel better, or maybe tousled his
head.
  The Russian drove his horses as if he was racing
a train, I had to grab the box while the empty
wagon swung out one way and then another be-
hind the team. I pointed south and west across
the flats and that's the way we went, rumbling,
bumping through the stumped-up dust. It was no
situation for any kind of talk but the Russian
didn't know it. He was one of those people proud
of himself and his station in life and he shouted
out his story as we rolled on under the sun, and
he kept up even after the flats gave way to fixed
swells of sand, sparsely weeded, that stretched on
ahead of the eye like a solid sea. I only half lis-
tened, I was thinking of Molly and would she wear
that dress. "Frand . . . I come West to farm . . .
but soon I learn, I see . . . farmers starve . . . only
people who sell farmers their land, their fence,
their seed, their tools ... only these people are rich.
64                 E. L. Doctorow
And is that way with everything . . . not miners
have gold but salesmen of burros and picks and
pans . . . not cowboys have money but saloons
who sell to them their drinks, gamblers who play
with them faro ... not those Who look for money
but those who supply those to look. These make
the money ... So I sell my farm ,. . and I think . ..
what need is there I shall fill it... and I think more
than picks and pans, more than seed, more even
than whiskey or cards is need for Women. And
then I meet widow Adah, owner of tent. . . And I
am in business."

   We reached Fountain Creek at noon. It stood in
some tall yellciw grass by the banks of a dried-out
arroyo, a deserted street of shackly buildings, cor-
rals rotted by the weather, porches grown over
with weeds. Before we got to work we took some
pulls on the Russian's water bottle and ate some
tack he had brought. Rusted tin cans were lying all
over, half buried in sand, the hot pebbly wind was
swinging the door of a roofless hut at the far end
of the street. I spotted a mangy slant-eyed wolf
crouched under a porch not fifty feet from where
we were. He was watching us close.
   "He's a hungry one," I said to Zar, "he'll go for
these horses if we let him."
   "So, we won't let him." Still chewing a mouth-
ful, Zar reached for his shotgun and slowly brought
it around and shot off both barrels at the wolf. The
animal was out of there fairly, along with his mate
that we hadn't seen, and the two of them tounded
away along the arroyo.
   "Their courage'll be back by and by," I said,
"let's get to work."
             Welcome to Hard Times            65
   We went for the corrals first, untying what raw-
hide lashes we could, cutting the rest, laying the
poles down lengthwise on the wagon bed. Then we
began collecting lumber from the frame houses and
barns, staying away from places where the white
ants were too thick, prying off boards, knocking
away doors, pulling up porch planks, shakes,
beams, shingles. There was so much rot in every-
thing it was a wonder the buildings were upright at
all. We worked all through the afternoon hardly
stopping for a drink, coughing with the dust that
rose, the sand blown by the wind. Our friends the
wolves had cut down the mice and burrowing owls
to be found but bugs and spiders scuttled away
from our axe and pick. We worked till we judged
the wagon could hold no more,. the wood was
stacked a tall man's height above the driver's
box. Then we went around picking up every nail in
sight. And we came on a set of bright white human
bones sitting in the arroyo. We stood looking at
that skeleton. It was clean. I had to think what an
indecency it is that leaves only the bones to tell
what a man has been.
    "Fountain Creek," Zar said. He was mopping his
 neck with his handkerchief. "Frand, you see the
 peril. Always the ghost city is one with name full
 of promise. It that not so? We must have care in
 our naming not to make this mistake ..."
    It was dark when we were ready to leave. I took
 the reins and the Russian sat atop the lumber to
 weight it. The horses strained to get the wheels
 turning and we moved off at a walk. I'll tell you I
 was weary on that trip: the night was black with
 stars and the wagon creaked and swayed and I
 slipped in and out of dreaming. I couldn't believe
66                 E. L. Doctorow
the horses had a destination, I kept thinking I was
traveling to no purpose. What good was this to that
woman and that boy? What could I hope to do for
them? Only a fool would call anywhere in this land
a place and everywhere else a journey to it.
   I must have fallen asleep and the horses must
have stopped—because I awoke to the boom of the
Russian's shotgun and the wagon lurched forward
and the reins went taut in my hands. There was a
light in the sky ahead of us.
   "Those damn wolves have been following," Zar
called down, "but they are running now!"
   Later we rode up to the town and Jimmy came
running out to meet us. "A man's here with that
same wagon," he said, "the one they put my Pa
in—"
   He was about to cry. I got down, stiff, and took
his hand: "Say what Jimmy? What, boy?"
   "Over there." Standing by the well was Hausen-
field's hearse. I didn't trust my eyes, I went over for
a close look. There was the mule and the grey; the
pick was still wedged across the black door. And a
skinny, chinless fellow with a leather vest was
leaning against a wheel, looking at me sly.
    "Howdo."
    "Where did you find this wagon?" I said.
    "Hit waer jes setting out thaer. I tuk it up."
    "And you've not looked in the door?"
    "Didn't think to—"
    "Well that's alright," I said, "this is a burying
 wagon, you ever do any burying?"
    "Never have."
    "Well you'll find your first customer inside."
    Then I turned and saw Molly holding herself
 up at the side of the dugout. She had on that white
             Welcome to Hard Times           67
dress and she was smiling at me, a queer bitter
smile. I rubbed my hand across my eyes and I
thought why I have a safe name for this town, we'll
call it Hard Times. Same as we always called it.
SECOND LEDGER
                         5

. That was the way it ended and began again. From
  the day I returned Molly wore the wedding dress
  like she was born to it, she walked stiffly with her
  shoulders thrown back and her mouth grim against
  the pain. And when the pain was gone the set of
  it remained, the healed burns pulled her up tight,
  her chin was always in the air and the chain and
  cross was always plain to see around her neck. So
  that whenever I looked at her I was looking at re-
  buke.
     The day Zar and I started to put up our build-
  ings Molly took John Bear's buffalo robe out of the
  dugout and went to return it to the Indian. Over to
  his shack she marched, stirred him out of the
  dumps and gave him back the lice-ridden fur with
  what must have been proud apology. I could see
  by her manner when she came back, it was as if
  the Indian's property had been stolen by some no-
  account thief and she had squared the scales by
  returning it.
     Molly was plentiful in her moods, unspeaking
  for days at a time, smiling with plans maybe or
                          71
72                 E. L. Doctorow
weeping for no clear reason but her memories. But
when she had a mind to she could make anything
in the world seem a taint on me. One morning Jim-
my was helping me mix up some sod for chinking.
Mae, the dumpity girl, came by with nothing much,
on her mind and started to talk to the boy and
tease him a bit. Jimmy always watched Zar'a
women with great attention and that gave them
pleasure.
   "Y'all sweet on me, li'l ol' Jimmy?" the girl asked.
   He blushed.
   "Y'all take a fancy to Mae, don't yuh?"
   "No ma'am."
   "Here put yo' hand here, now ain't that soft as
 soft?"
   She was holding Jimmy's hand on her bosom
and that's when Molly showed up to give her a
cuff on the ear. Mae was so shocked she had no
anger but just bit her lip and ran off; Jimmy was
suddenly back to the sod; and Molly stood regard-
ing me as she would a lizard.
   It was no pain I felt but a steady ache, like some
hand was gently squeezing my heart. It never left
me. I would look out to the graves in the flats or
look up to the rocks or over at the scar of the old
street and always I saw the face of the Man from
Bodie. That was the trouble, I know now, that was
my failing, that I couldn't see past my own feel-
ings, I had no thoughts beyond myself. The day
came when I had a sturdy clapboard cabin affixed
to the dugout so that altogether we had two rooms
to live in. I knocked together a table using pieces
of the balustrade from the old Silver Sun, and some
boards, and Jimmy and I fell into the habit of sav-»
              Welcome to Hard Times           73
ing whatever foqd we had for that table each eve-
ning. Molly would serve it up and then take her
portion and step down into the dugout to eat alone,
leaving the boy and me to taste what sweetness we
could while not looking into each other's eyes.
   There was the business with Jenks. It was Jenks
who brought Hausenfield's wagon in off the plains,
so pleased with his booty that he hadn't smelled
Hausenfleld inside. His head was not much thicker
than a broom handle and he had no chin to speak
of; the way his sly yellowed eyes looked at you
made you think of a wolf's cunning, but really he
he was a stupid man. Before he managed to bury
the German I had to show him where to do it and
to point out how he could turn up the ground with
the pickaxe lying across the door, and I had to tell
him how deep he'd best dig and finally I ended up
doing as much as he did. Then, with Hausenfield
laid away this Jenks didn't do another thing for a
week but just sat around in the shade of his new
wagon, eyeing the ladies or oiling his gun and his
gunbelt.
   Well he looked so deliberate toying with those
arms day after day it took me some time to under-
stand he was trying all the while to make up his
mind for staying or moving on. He was just a poky,
traveling where the trail took him, he had himself
a black coach and he didn't know how best to gain
from it. Zar was angry because I let the fellow
draw free water for the mule and grey and for his
own horse, a patch-bald sorrel, while he did noth-
ing in exchange. And I began to be tried too. We
neither of us figured there was much good in Leo
Jenks.
74                 E. t. Doctorow
    But one morning Molly approached him and witK
 a loud, throaty voice, said to him: "Mr. Jenks, you
 find any use for that gun except in oiling it?"
    He was sitting with his back to a wheel and he
 sprang up fast when she spoke and took his hat off,
    "Well yes'm, ah kin shoot whur yew kin see."
    "Is that right?"
    "It is, yes'm."
   "Well I see a windmill over there, and on top'
•of that windmill is eight stubby blades and I'm
looking at the one wavin' straight up at heaven."
    Jenks put on his hat and cocked his pistol, aimed,
 and sent off a shot which splintered the topmost
 blade. The horses shied. Over by his shack John
 Bear stopped hoeing his rows and stood up to
 watch.
    "I see the neck of a bottle," cried Molly, "stick-
 ing up out of that rubble there."
   Jenks turned, took aim where she pointed, and
 the piece of glass sprayed into the air. Three
 more times Molly fixed her eye on things—a stone,
 a hump of dirt, a stick of wood—and each time this
 Jenks placed his round where she called it. The
 shots echoed off the rock hills and came back to us.
 Everyone was watching now, the women over by
 their tent, Zar from a corner of his new corral,
 and Jimmy squatting on the back of the Major's
 buckboard. I was close enough to Jenks to see that
 when he took his aim those shifty wolf eyes of his
 squinted with some true knowledge.
    He finally bolstered his pistol and took his hat
 off again.
    "I thank you, Mr. Jenks," Molly said looking my
 way, "it's good to find a man in these parts. I wish
              Welcome to Hard Times             75
the Lord my husband knew the gun the way you
do!"
  After that Jenks had no trouble deciding what
was his aim in life. He rode the wagon off east
one dawn and at night came back with a half a
dozen prairie dogs slung from the box. You have
to be quick to hit a prairie dog while he's diving
for his hole—I learned later Jenks parked the stage
in the middle of a dog town and lay atop of it for
hours till the animals forgot he was there and
came up out of their burrows.
  Jenks turned out to be a good hunter and he
bartered his kills for my water or for Zar's liquor
or for one of the girls. Fresh meat is a luxury
and there is nothing will go down easier than a
well-roasted haunch of dog or a good rabbit stew.
But when Molly cooked up some of Jenk's meat she
always spiced it with her scorn, which made it
hard to swallow.

   By the time the stage came we were seeing the
last of summer. The sun was getting white and it
was setting earlier. The winds were lasting and
they put out more of a bite. Each day they blew
off more of the old town dust and ate away the char
of the old street. Zar had his place built, a long low
public house of clapboard and sod, it stood where
his tent had stood—on the north side of the wind-
mill—and its door, like the door of my new shack,
faced to the southeast. When the stage drove in it
was in front of Zar's that the driver reined his
horses.
   We were all there to meet it, even John Bear. The
stage was run by the Territory Express Company
76                E. L. Doctorow
and the name was painted in red letters along the
side. The letters were well covered with dust and
grime, the tails of the horses were caked with mud-
balls. Our town was a good trip from the last stop.
   The driver was Alf Moffet; I knew him. He sat
up on his box leaning forward with his arms on
his knees and the reins loose in his hand. He was
looking for a face he knew and the first one he saw
was Molly.
   "Why Miss Molly," he said, "I heard you and
Flo was dead."
   Molly frowned but she said nothing. The Rus-
sian and his ladies were right there and I feared
Alf would say too much. I had not had trouble
with any of the miners that way. Molly was hid
the first few Saturdays they came and after that
they did not think to question her. But I knew Alf
for a fun-loving man, he had a voice full of gravel
and he liked to talk.
   "Well Alf," I said stepping up and clearing my
throat, "we had a fire here as you can see but we're
not all dead. These here are some of our new
citizens"—I pointed to Mae and Jessie and Adah—
"and if you'll step down and come into the new
saloon I'll buy you a drink and maybe introduce
you to them."
   "I can't be stopping long, Blue," Alf said, but he
allowed me to take his arm while he jumped down.
He grabbed his mail pouch and told the other man
on the box, an old man I did not know, to unload.
There were two barrels lashed to the back of the
stage and a pile of boxes on the roof as well as
what was inside. The Express took on freight if
there was any room left after passengers. We al-
               Welcome to Hard Times               77
ways got supplies in plenty when it came and I
had been counting on that since the day of the
fire.
   Inside Zar's place there were lamps burning.
It was afternoon but the Russian had not built any
windows. I sat Alf down on a camp chair at a
wooden table and after our eyes were accustomed
to the shadow I motioned to Zar and he smilingly
brought over a full bottle of whiskey and two
glasses—just the way I had told him to do it. The
glassware was Avery's old stock Jimmy and I had
recovered the day after the fire. I wanted to be
careful with Alf.
   He was a big square-faced man, grey underneath
his hat. He tossed off three drinks neat and when
the dust was washed from his throat we began
talking.
    "We got some orders to put in with you Alf," I
 said.
    "Well Blue I don't know. Company wants me to
tell 'em when I get back if'n Hard Times is worth
the trip any more."
    "Miners are showing up more than ever, Alf.
The Russian here is doing a good trade. People
comin' every day. This Mr. Jenks—I don't know
whether you saw him out there—he's all the way
from Kentucky."
    Alf tilted his head to one side and smiled at me.
    "That was just a little accident, that fire," I said.
"The town will be up like a weed before you know
it Alf."
    "Well now Blue I always liked you, yessir. If
 you was hanging by your fingers from a cliff you'd
 call it climbin' a mountain."
78                 E. L. Doctorow
   Alf had heard about the fire from one of the peo-
ple from the town—-he didn't say who. I couldn't
tell him any lies. "Same thing happened just a few
years back to the town of Kingsville, Kingsville,
Kansas. Did you know it?"
   "Never heard of it."
   Alf poured another drink: "Well sir it was a good
town, a railroad head. They had two, three livery
stables, couple of stores, lots of nice frame houses,
a jail made of brick, some dandy saloons and a
two-story hotel. Bunch of these Bad Men come
along one spring, stayed three days. Killed twenty
people. Broke up the hotel, wrecked the stores.
Bricked up the doors and windows of the jailhouse,
made of it an oven and roasted the Sheriff alive.
Town never came back."
   "What about the railroad?"
   "Catcher come along the following summer and
they laid track right on through for another thirty
miles. Pass by today you can wave at the prairie
grass.
   "Them Bad Men are sure a plague, Alf. It's
no use denying. Let's have another drink."
   When his head went back to receive the liquor I
motioned to Zar who had been standing by the
door. A moment later Mae and Jessie came in and
sat down at the table. After I made the introduc-
tion I went out into the light.
   Bear was helping the old man unload the back
of the wagon. Jimmy was on top of the stage unty-
ing the lashings. Jenks was fingering the rifle stick-
ing out of the boot by the driver's seat. But what
made me really stand up was the sight of Ezra
Maple. I hadn't stopped to look for passengers, I
couldn't believe my eyes. He was standing there
 •1
              Welcome to Hard Times            79
in an Eastern suit, a carpetbag was on the ground
beside him. Lord if it wasn't himl
   "Ezra!" I called.
   But Molly was talking to him and as I walked
up she said: "Mister I told you he ain't here, he
couldn't take the climate. Blue," Molly said to me,
"this is Ezra Maple's brother Isaac. He's a doubtin'
man, he's looking all around for the .General Store."
  Of course, looking closer I saw it couldn't have
been Ezra: this fellow wasn't as tall, nor did he
have as much of a stoop in his shoulders. He was
younger, fairer-skinned. But he had that same sad-
eyed long beagle's face. "Well you sure fooled me,"
I said. Molly went off with a short laugh and I took
the man for a walk over to the spot where Ezra's
store had been. I told him what had happened.
   He shook his head and looked at the ground:
"He shouldn't a run off knowin' I was comin*—it
ain't like Ezra. Wrote a letter to him six months
ago. Wrote it down plain as day!"
   "Well now, Mr. Maple once a letter is west of
the States it might light down anywhere. I never
saw Ezra get a letter, likely it never even reached
him."
   He took a big curved pipe from his pocket, filled
it and lighted it with a box match. He puffed and
frowned and stared at the dusty rubble and shook
his head: "It don't seem right at all."
   I could understand his feelings. A man doesn't
go West for nothing. He'd been traveling four or
five weeks, by train, by steamer, by stage, think-
ing all the while to find his brother when he got
here. And probably to make a life.
   " 'Come along when ye can.' Those were his
words to me when he left."
80                 E. L. Doctorow
   "That so?"
   " 'Come along when ye can, there's room out
 there fer two.' "
   "That's true enough."
   "I wrote out a letter when Ma died sayin' I had
only to sell the store and then I'd come. Jes the pair
of us, seemed like we ought to try our fortune to-
gether. And now here I be"—he took a good look
around—"and Ezra ain't, and it's a bad bargain I
made."
   "Well now, Mr. Maple I don't know. The water
don't flow from the rocks and the game don't nib-
ble at your back door. But the place has what they
call possibilities."
   He gave me a sharp, trader's look. "Well I
haven't seen a tree in seven days."
   "That's what they mean: look at all the possible
trees could grow if they'd a mind to."
   He didn't laugh but I had his attention away
from Ezra for the moment. I walked him back to
the well.
   "I'd like you to taste this water," I said. "It's as
good as any and better than most. Dip into that
pail and refresh yourself. Help you to think clear
on what to do."
   At that moment I had no plan in my mind. But
when I walked over to the stage and looked at the
freight standing on the ground I had some forward-
thinking thoughts. These were the store supplies
Ezra Maple had ordered. There was a barrel of
flour, a barrel of beef in brine, sacks of coffee,
cartons of tinned sardines, crackers—a whole lot
of stuff.
   Molly came up at my back: "Mayor," she said
softly, "I know what you're fixing to do, but I'll
              Welcome to Hard Times              81
tell you we don't need another Ezra Maple here.
Let this man go look for his brother and may he
find him in Hell."
    I said nothing but went back to Zar's. Alf's hat
was on the table. Mae was sitting on his lap and
Jessie was standing in back of him holding hia
ears, and they all three were laughing.
    "Blue!" Alf called throwing his head back. "I be-
gin to see your way of thinkin', there sure is a
spirit of life hereabouts, yes sir, a spirit of life!"
    "Alright then Alf supposing we talk business."
    Zar brought over a lamp and put it on the table.
Alf excused himself to the ladies and while they
stood watching he took some bills out of his pouch
and spread them on the table. They were bills of
transit for the goods outside and they were all
marked paid.
    "It adds to forty dollars Blue."
    "Bot the stamp is there," Zar said examining the
bills, "these goods are already paid. He wants us
to pay again!"
    "Tha's right," said Alf. "This provender was for
Ezra Maple and Ezra ain't here. Course if you like
I'll load it back on and be on my way."
    "Zar," I said, "it's a fair price for the goods re-
ceived. Alf here drives the best stage this side of
the Platte, he's thought of highly by the Territory
Express. They listen to what he says." In my own
mind I had expected Alf to ask for more than forty
dollars; and that he put his demands in the form
he did I found to be a mark of manners. He could
always have charged separate for the supplies.
    "I'll give you my hand on it, Alf," I said, and we
shook across the table.
    Then we exchanged letters: I gave him two—the
82                E. L. Doctorow
pimply boy's and another I had taken since—along
with four dollars. Alf gave me one letter. "It's
meant for Ezra," he said, "nail it up somewhere if
he ever comes back."
   Then Alf had the idea that I would like to handle
the Express business for the town. I allowed I
would. He gave me a printed pad for writing all
orders and tickets and the terms were three per-
centages on all monies I garnered excepting mail.
We shook on that, too, and then I left Alf to enjoy
the women while I went back outside to find forty
dollars.
   Zar followed me: "What kind of business is that?
Women we give him and whiskey and we must
pay for goods already paid!"
   I said: "You want him to come back don't you?
We got to stay on the Company's route or all the
miners on the mountain won't do us any good."
   "Forty dollars!"
   In the daylight I was looking at the letter Alf
had given me for Ezra Maple—and it was the one
Isaac himself had written from Vermont.
   "Maybe it won't be your forty dollars," I said to
Zar.
   I walked over to the well and held out the letter
to Maple, saying: "It was right along with you on
the stage."
   I remember he stared at that letter for a long
time. He bit down on his pipe and his face got
redder and redder. He was angry but there was
a confusion of feeling in his face, I could tell he
was glad because his brother had not run off know-
ing he was coming.
   "What are you going to do now?" I said to him.
              Welcome to Hard Times           83
   "Don't know. Look for Ezra. I s'pose. Hunt him
up."
   I did some powerful talking then. I told Isaac
Maple he could go looking for his brother on a
thousand different trails and he still might miss
him. I told him there were mountains one way and
deserts another, high enough and wide enough for
armies to lose themselves in. I told him a man
could use up all his money and most of his life
looking for something in the West. But, I said, if
he were to stake out in one place, make his name in
the country, the word would travel surer than any
letter that Isaac Maple was keeping a store in
Hard Times. And one day the word would reach
Ezra and he'd know where to come.
   "Mr. Maple," I said taking him by the arm,
"those goods standing on the ground over there
were meant for Ezra's store. You can buy them
from Alf Moffet for forty dollars. And you can sell
them to the rest of us for twice that amount in
water and shelter and cash together. We've a need
for a store and no doubt the need will grow as
more people settle here."
   I talked to the man for the best part of an hour;
and at the end of that time, with all of us in a
circle around him, he reached in his money belt
and counted out forty dollars in greenbacks, lick-
ing his thumb and feeling the texture of each bill
before he gave it into my hand.
   Well the minute he did that I had Zar step up
and meet him, and Miss Adah, who shook his
hand and made him blush, and Jenks, who nodded
and blinked his wolfy eyes, and the Chinese girl
and Jimmy. Bear had gone back to his shack and
84                 E. L. Doctorow
Molly stood straight by the door of the cabin and
would not come over. But it was a proper welcome
Isaac Maple got even so.
   A few minutes later the tall girl, Jessie, came
out of Zar's place smoothing down her hair. Then
Mae followed supporting Alf who was laughing
and blinking in the light. Alf had consumed a good
amount of whiskey, he looked us all over standing
around the stage and said: "Yessir, the spirit o'
life, spirit o' life, yessir."
   The old man on the box moved over to the
driver's side and took up the reins and we helped
Alf to sit up next to him. I gave Alf the forty
dollars and the ordering list I had worked up for
Zar and Isaac which he stuck in his vest.
   "See you again Alf?"
   "Tha's right Blue, tha's right!" He lifted his hat
and his head went back as the old man flung his
whip out and the wheels spun up dirt.
   I felt pretty fair watching that wagon line out its
dust over the flats—like I had done a good day's
work. But in the evening, over our supper of salted
beef newly bought from Isaac Maple's barrel,
Molly couldn't see I had done anything to be
satisfied of.
   "We'll have to pay for this meat ten tunes what
we could have by buying it ourselves," she said.
   "Well Molly I don't favor keeping a store. Set-
tling Ezra's brother here puts money in the town."
   She looked at me. "The townl Oh Mayor you
don't fool me one bit—"
   "What?"
   "You'll rope in every damn fool you can just
to make up a herd. There's surety in numbers, ain't
that what you think?"
             Welcome to Hard Times           85
   "I don't think that.'
   "I know you Blue," she giggled, and Jimmy
watching her laughed too. But then Molly's face
went cold and she gazed at me: "Mayor, all the soft
yellow spines in the world stack up to nothing
when the Bad Man comes. I'll tell you that, I know
it."

  After that it was a race against the weather.
Jenks began to build something with what lumber
he could reclaim from the old street and it was
clear to me whatever it was he was having a bad
time. He finally admitted he wanted to raise a barn
for his wagon and three animals. When Zar and
I heard that we told him we would fetch wood from
Fountain Creek and help him build a good enough
stable if he would put up our horses without
charge. He agreed, and we made two trips with both
wagons—Zar's and the black stage—and we
weren't choosy about the wood. I thought we could
use every hand we had to advantage, it was a lot
of work what with stalls and all; but Isaac Maple,
who had rented Zar's big tent for his own shelter,
had no horse of his own and he saw no reason to
join in; and Bear the Indian would have nothing t0
do with any of us while Zar was in our company—
he spent most of his time away in the rocks, pre-
paring traps I suppose and bringing down all the
brush he could find.
   All during these days Jimmy worked close by me
in everything. He took care of the ipony, he cut
roots and gathered manure for fire, he cleaned the
stove and helped with the chinking of the barn
walls. He was always at my side and heeding what-
ever I told him to do. But I remember the way
86               E. L. Doctorow
he watched her when Molly one morning went over
to the old street and poked around in the rubble
till she found the stiletto she had dropped the day
of the fire and came back to nail it, teary-eyed,
above our door.
   And each morning the sun came up weaker and
whiter, like an old man rising from his bed, and
each morning's chill was slower giving up the
ground. Till finally I stood one day with the sun
at its height and there was no warmth at all, but
a shuddering breeze running down the neck and up
the legs and lifting the clothes from the body. The
winds were light but they brazed 'the flats with
their cool blow and we hadn't much time till
winter.
                       6

The stable was not roofed before the true cold
came, we drove the horses into the enclosure of
the four high walls and while they snorted so you
could see their breath and turned from one corner
to another we took the corral apart and got some
of the shaven logs up for joists. There was no good
way of keeping warm except by moving. When the
roof was up tolerably we made a railing of the
remaining corral poles to go along in front of all
the buildings—from the doors of the stable past
Isaac Maple's tent and past Zar's place and the
windmill to the door of the cabin I had built for
Molly and Jimmy and me. A Dakota blizzard will
freeze your eyes shut and drive you from your
direction faster than your senses realize. I have
known men to die in a drift a few feet from their
doors because they had no rail to go by.
   All during this hurried-up preparation against
the winter I kept thinking how much we could
use a good carpenter like Fee. A skilled man like
that and it would not matter so much that the
nails we had were soft and the lumber rotten. I
                        87.
88   .            E. L. Doctorow
worried what a blizzard might do to the stable roof.
I took down the blades of the windmill to keep the
water in the ground. Winter is a worrying time, you
have to tuck your chin in and burrow down some-
where and hope there will still be something when
the spring comes.
   I had no clothes but the ones I wore, Molly had
only her white dress and Jimmy had not even a
hat. His pants didn't cover his ankles and I had
to tie a bit of rawhide around one of his shoes to
keep the sole from flapping. We were not fit to
meet the winter out of doors, and I knew when it
set in in earnest we would have just our roof and
each other to keep us from freezing. And that
would be no comfort in a real blow.
   For one week running the sun didn't show
through at all, the skies filled up grey and then
snow began to sweep in on the wind. If you stood
the bite long enough to take a look there was no
more line between earth and sky. The flats were
grey, the rock hills were grey and the wind, thick
with snow, flew around your face in gusts so that
you could even doubt your own balance, you could
not be sure you were standing on ground or rising,
without breath, in the sky.
   The cabin I had built onto the dugout was not
good against such weather. The door shook against
its latch and snow came through the wall and
settled in the corners. I moved the stove back to
the dugout and we retreated there to sit with
blankets around our shoulders and watch the glow
of the fire in each other's faces.
    These were strange quiet moments. We didn't
 have much to be proud of but I had to allow we
 were better off than we might have been. I could
              Welcome to Hard Times             89
take satisfaction from the thought that bitter as
she was, Molly had never made to leave the place
I offered her; and that Jimmy might have done
otherwise than jump to work at my side and heed
every word I told him. A person cannot live with-
out looking for good signs, you just cannot do it,
and I thought these signs were good.
   But I looked at Molly sitting near the stove, her
head was turned to the side and her hands were
folded in her lap and she was gazing at nothing and
her eyes were lost listening to the wind and snow
outside—and in that quiet moment it was plain to
me if she didn't up and leave the first chance she
had it was because no other place could she so
savor the discouragement of her life. And Jimmy,
who worked so willingly, the first day I came to
the old town I saw Fee planing a board and his
son holding one end for him. I had never once seen
the boy linger at something useless the way most
children will. He had watched his Pa stumble out
of the Silver Sun and he had taken him by the belt—
and that was work too. Jimmy was a child fitted to
the land, using all his senses to live with what it
gave him, and if he did his share and did as I told
him why it was because he knew no other way.
   Therefore where were my good signs? This
 green-eyed woman and brown-eyed boy sitting
 here had never done but the only thing they could
 do. And if I felt like believing we were growing into
 a true family that was alright: if a good sign is so
 important you can just as soon make one up and
 fool yourself that way.

  I remembered that half-burnt old almanac we
had and I thought it might be the right weather for
90                E. L. Doctorow
teaching the boy to read. I could put a point on a
stick and show the letters by scratching them in the
floor. So we began to do that, working at it a little
each day, I would have him study a letter as it was
printed and then say its name and then'watch me
write it with the stick. Sometimes Molly watched,
no expression on her face, maybe she was learning
something too.
   But the weather was ornery. A storm would
blow up for a few days until the snow was banked
high enough to keep the inside of the cabin warm.
Then the sun would break through for a morning,
warm winds would come down from the rocks, and
soon everything was melting like a sound of
crickets and water was running off everywhere. At
night the ground iced up, every roof was hung with
ice and the cabin walls were exposed again to the
cold winds. It went on like that, every snow bring-
ing its chinook to devil the skin, one day you
stepped in snow, the next in mud, water soaked
in your boots and froze them at night, it was the
next worst thing to pure blizzardry, it was weather
that wouldn't let you settle.
   Molly said one evening: "Here you're going on
and on with those damn letters and you don't even
see the boy is sick,"
   Jimmy had coughed once or twice that I'd heard,
but I hadn't thought about it. I said: "You're al-
right aren't you Jimmy?"
   "I'm alright."
   But the next day he was coughing a lot. Even
in the dugout the ground was damp, at night I
folded my blanket and put it under him and then
sat up listening to him cough and shiver in his
sleep. Molly lay on her side on the other side of
               Welcome to Hard Times               91
the stove, I could tell by her back she was wide
awake and listening each time the boy coughed.
   The next morning Jimmy couldn't get up. He was
shuddering under the blanket, his teeth chattered
and there was a wheeze to his breath. His face was
flushed and his eyes glittery. Molly looked at me
like it was my fault he had come up sick.
   Straightaway I went to the Russian's. It was a
grey cold morning and there was ice all along the
railing and a muddy crust of snow on the ground.
Inside his place Zar was pacing up and down and
Adah and the three girls were sitting on the meet-
ing chairs and making a breakfast of flour-cakes
and sardines. It was cold in there but they all had
coats.
   "Zar," I said, "I'll trouble you for some whiskey,
the boy has caught something on his chest."
   "So?" He waved his hand as he paced. "Take,
take, there will be no miners again this week, what
for do I need whiskey?"
   Adah wanted to know what Jimmy's symptoms
were like. I told her he had a powerful cough and
the chills and fever.
   "Well it's the weather for it," the tall girl, Jessie,
said, "I'm feeling poorly myself."
   "Ain't the weather's your trouble, honey," Mae
said to her, "jes the moon."
   Adah told me to wait a bit and she went into
another room. Zar had built this place not much
wider than a railroad car, and there were two rooms
at the end of the public room, one in back of the
other.
   "No customers, only that deadhead Jenks," Zar
was saying. He was vexed the way the weather
closed off the trail to the mining camp.
92                E. L. Doctorow
   "Hey Blue," Mae got up from the table, "that's
a mighty fine beard y'workin' up there, you come
over of an evenin' and we'll comb it for yuh."
   The Chinese had her mouth full and she had to
put her hand up while she giggled.
   "God's truth," Mae said, "all we ever see now is
that Jenks and he ain't good for much more'n
polishin' his damn guns. Beard like that'd keep a
girl warm these nights."
   "And that New Englander Maple," Zar said, "he
does not drink, he does not use the woman, he
stays there in my tent. I buy from him I must pay
money, a fine way to trade."
   Adah came out carrying two bottles. She told
me there was turpentine in the little one for rub-
bing on the boy's legs. In the big bottle was rum,
which was better than whiskey, I was to mix it
with some hot water and make him swallow as
much as he could take. "Nothing like rum for the
chest," she told me.
   Well I thanked her and went back and did as
she said. And for a while it seemed to help. But
in the afternoon Jimmy began to shiver again and
he wouldn't take any more rum. Each time he
coughed his whole body shuddered. Molly fixed up
some flour soup with bits of salt beef for supper
but he wouldn't eat it.
   It began to frighten me hearing that boy cough
away like a man, the sound came up from his
bowels and pushed his tongue and eyes out and
turned his face crimson. We had him wrapped in.
all the blankets and the fire built up high but he
couldn't stop his shivering. I began to feel the
awful helpless rage. We fussed with him hour after
hour—sitting him up to ease his breathing, laying
              Welcome to Hard Times            93
him down again—but nothing comforted him and
he couldn't get to sleep.
   It must have been close on midnight and Jimmy
began to whimper and look up from one of us to
the other. But we didn't know what else to do.
There was an unnatural burning in his eyes and
his cheeks drew in with each wheezing breath.
Molly couldn't look at him any more, she walked
back and forth fingering the cross at her throat.
When the boy was taken with a heavy fit of cough-
ing she stepped up into the cabin and walked away
in the dark.
   Then I felt a breeze at my feet and I went into
the cabin after her. She had the door partly open
and she was looking across the windy moonlit
reach to the Indian's shack. "Mayor," she said,
"what will you do if the boy dies, will you bury
him beside his Pa?"
   She didn't wait for any answer I might have had
but went out just in that dress and headed across
for John Bear's place, walking that stiff walk, of
hers, hugging herself against the bite. A great anger
rose in me as I closed the door, I could have struck
her right then, I was distressed for the boy's ill-
ness, I damned her for the grip she had on my
life, this unrelenting whore.
   A few minutes later the Indian was standing in
the dugout looking down at Jimmy. The boy stared
back in fear, Bear wore his buffalo robe over his
shirt and his black hair hung from under his hat
down to his shoulders. They regarded each other
and no word was spoken—and then the Indian
bent down and tore the top blanket off Jimmy with
such suddenness that he cried out and began to
cough.
94                E. L. Doctorow
   Bear went into his doctoring with a speed that
was like solace. He hung the blanket across the
doorway leading to the cabin. He put a pot of
water on the stove and poked up the fire. When the
water was boiling he threw in some herbs he had
and in a few minutes the air in the dugout was
sweet and steamy. We all watched his moves
transfixed: he drew a tin out of his pocket and
poured a handful of seed in his palm. Then he
kneeled down and looked around the dugout.
   "He wants a stone," Molly said to me.
   I ran outside and found a flat piece of rock and
brought it to him. He began to pound the seed into
a powder, when it was well ground it made the
sharp odor of mustard. He took some water from
our pail and spilled it over the powder till he had a
thick paste of earth and mustard. Then, cupping it
in one hand he went over to Jimmy and went down
on his knees, straddling the boy.
   Jimmy began to struggle then, kicking and throw-
ing his arms up, but the Indian just drew back and
looked at him until he quietened and turned his
face away. Holding the mustard paste in one hand,
Bear exposed the boy's chest. Seeing that small
white ribbed body made my heart hurt. Bear spread
the medicine across from under one arm to the
other, up to the throat, down as far as the stomach.
Then he pulled down Jimmy's shirt and bound the
blanket tight around him.
   I will say this, whatever else was to happen
John Bear was the best doctor I ever saw, white or
red; he had a true talent for healing and it must be
owned him.
   Before he left he stepped up to Molly and while
              Welcome to Hard Times             95
she stood startled, unwound the thin chain from
her throat and dropped the cross at Jimmy's head.
He was no Christian but a modest man; Molly
had clutched the cross during her healing and he
was no one to deny the power of a charm.

   Then came that long day and night with the wind
whipping snow down from the rocks, and inside
the dugout, droplets of water prickling the sod
walls as the steam rose from the pot on the stove.
I kept feeding the fire and filling the pot. Molly sat
with the boy propped against her, he was coughing
up matter and spitting it into a rag she held to his
face. His eyes were smarting from the mustard,
his chest ached with the coughing and burned
from the poultice, he was in thorough misery.
Whenever he made as if to tear the blanket away
she held his hands and whispered: "Let it burn, Jet
it burn deep!"
   Sometime during that siege Miss Adah came
pounding on the door wanting to know how the
boy was doing. She wouldn't come in so I had to
step outside and we shouted to each other a few
moments before she scurried back to the saloon.
   Jimmy didn't take anything for supper but dur-
ing the night, after the snow let up, I thought he
was breathing easier. Still he couldn't close his
eyes and Molly, laying his head against her breast,
put her arms around him. It was an effort for her,
she was blushing, she kept looking at me as if she
expected me to laugh at her.
   There was a panic in her eyes for a moment, she
wanted to talk to the boy, to soothe him, but
she had trouble with the words. She had to go back
a long way to find them:
96                E. L. Doctorow
    "I bet you never seen a big city. Molly used to
 live in New York, did you know that? Oh it's a
 grand place with stone houses all in rows, and
 cobbled streets and lamps oh each corner that the
 man comes to light each evening with a long taper.
 And the carriage buses you see, so shiny and
 clean, with horses pulling them that are braided
 in the mane, high stepping. Did you know
 that...?"
    I was sitting with my back to the wall and
 chewing on a prairie cake and as Molly went on
 talking I watched her close. The more she talked
 the easier the words came. The boy's eyes were
 open and listening and he was breathing heavily,
 and Molly sat with her own eyes closed as she
 summoned up her pictures.
   ". . . and each morning I would have a fresh
black frock to put on and a white linen apron and
a little starched cap to pin to my hair, as clean
and starched as a nun I was. And that house! Well
you've never seen the likes, a good fifteen rooms,
each room fitted out with its own set of furniture
and its polished floor of wood and its fancy rug.
Why you could disappear into one of those big
soft beds. And in the dining room, that was a room
just used for eating, can you see that? The table
would be covered with a fine cloth tasseled at the
edges, and maybe ten settings of pure silver forks
and knives and spoons, with three or four glasses
at each place for the different waters or wines. And
with the people all talking and laughing and the
room lit up with candles, in we would come from
the kitchen, three or four of us, carrying trays of
hot vegetables and buns and a hen, maybe, and
              Welcome to Hard Times             97
a roasted ham to serve to all the ladies and gentle-
men. All the ladies and gentlemen ..."
  I will never forget her words. Even after the
boy's eyes were closed she sat holding him around,
whispering these remembrances. It was the most
she ever said about herself, it was the most I ever
learned about her. She was speaking the brogue. I
had never heard her use it before, and I wouldn't
again.
   "All the lovely ladies, all the fine gentlemen ..."
   Then her eyes opened and she saw me looking
and "Turn away!" she said, her eyes filling with
tears. "Don't you dare look at me, turn away!"
Even without her telling me I would have had to,
such terrible pride was blinding.
  Later Molly slipped away from the boy and laid
him down in his sleep which was so long in com-
ing. And we each stretched out to get some sleep
too. .But all the blankets were on Jimmy and after
the fire went down it was cold lying there, there
was a chill in my bones that made them ache. I
couldn't sleep and neither could Molly. I heard
her shivering. I moved near her and touched her
shoulder and with a cry she rolled over and
bundled up to me. "Damn you Mayor," she whis-
pered in my ear, "I swear I can't bear the sight of
you!" And I held her as tight as I could, feeling her
breast on mine, feeling her breathing, and then the
warmth came and I didn't move until she was
asleep. I think I had wanted to hold her ever since
the fire. My hands were on her back and I could
feel the scars under her dress. She was small, so
much smaller than she looked. I held her around,
pressing her to me and I thought well we're both
98                 E. L. Doctorow
suffering our lives, only how we do it is different. If
it replenishes her to hate me then let her hate me.
At the worst her hate is something between her-
self and herself. And knowing it I was ashamed I
had ever felt poorly of her.
                       7

Jimmy was slow to get better, his cough lingered
for weeks. Molly tended to him each minute of the
time and didn't ask any help from me. She cooked
him soups, she kept him well wrapped; and on his
walking day she held him under the elbows while
he slowly stepped around the cabin. On occasion
she went to consult with John Bear, bringing the
Indian her portion of food. And if she returned
with some more treatment Jimmy might have
wanted to squawk but he submitted to it without a
word. There was something about Molly that com-
manded him: she went about her ministering
shortly, with never a smile, as if in one moment
of a too tried patience she would just give him up
and leave him to himself.
  She had already left me to myself. Our bundling
had warmed her only to the point where she hardly
acknowledged that I was there in the cabin. She
kept busy with the boy and with the steady cold
now I was fairly locked in; so that there was not
much I could do but take away the slops, or worry
would we have fire to last the winter. When Jimmy
                           99
100                E. L. Doctoiow
was on his feet I thought he might want to take up
our reading lessons once more. But he didn't seem
keen on it, his eyes always wandered to the
woman, and what use there^as to the almanac;
even that I had to myself.
   I spent a lot of time studying the almanac. It
kept me from brooding or wondering where the
Bad Man might be enjoying his winter. It had cen-
sus figures for the different states and their
counties, and the dates they were brought into the
Union. I have always been one for that kind of
reading. Before I got the fever to go West I was
bound out to a lawyer for some months, and it
pleasured me to feel the legal cap or read the briefs
all salted down with Latin. In all my traveling,
whenever I came across a Warrant or a Notice of
any kind I never failed to read it through. Some
people have a weakness for cards, or whittling, my
weakness has always been for documents and
deeds and such like.
  When I first came to Hard Times it was nothing
posted that stopped me, I had a small stake in my
money belt and I was riding up to the lodes to earn
some more. But there was Fee putting the finishing
boards on Avery's two-story saloon, and the sight
of him building this place right up off the flat
ground struck me somehow. I could think of bet-
ter places for a carpenter to make his living; not
the poorest townsite I'd seen it still didn't look
worth his labor, yet Fee was working with an
assurance that made me feel ashamed even to
question him. In my forty-eighth year, tired out
with looking, looking, moving always and wanting
I don't know what, I was ready to grant it wasn't
              Welcome to Hard Times              101
the site but the settling of it that mattered. I bought
a room off the porch from Hausenfield and I stayed.
Later, without much thinking about it, I got a
ledger from a traveling notions man; and after I
acquired that lawyer's desk and belongings who
was going up to work in the lodes, I put the ledger
on the desk and in my spare time I began to
put down everyone's name and the land they
claimed and what properties they owned. I never
enjoyed anything more. The town hadn't a pro-
moter, you see, and there were no records for
anything. If it ever got big enough to be listed or.
if the Territory ever needed names for a statehood
petition, why I had these documents. A few people-
like Avery laughed when it went about what I was
doing; later, Avery was one of the first to call me
Mayor—
  But just thinking about it just made the daya
longer.

  One cold afternoon there was a banging on our
door and it was Isaac Maple. He came in begging
our pardon, he said he'd tried to see Jenks and
Zar both, but Jenks was asleep in the stable and
Zar was in a mood and wouldn't speak to him.
  "See them about what, Isaac?" I said.
  He took something from his pocket which I saw
to be a small printed calendar. Standing there,
with water hanging from his nose, he said: "I mark
off the days with this, and s'far as I know it's
December the twenty-fifth, Christmas."
  Molly and I looked at him. He was waiting for
something by way of reply, but all I could think to
say was: "Well if that's so Isaac take off your
102                E. L. Doctorow
 coat and drink some coffee with us," At the same
 time Molly looked from him to me and walked
 away without a word.
   It was clear in his eyes we were as bad as Jenks
 or the Russian. His sad hound's face fell: "Thank
 ye, no," he said and turned and went out.
   That put him in my mind for the rest of the
 day. Isaac Maple stayed alone in his tent most of
 the time, thinking I suppose of his brother Ezra.
 He was a shy man and he was new to the West
 and it must have been a powerful need for com-
 fort which brough him to our door. I don't often
 honor holidays but I wanted to understand Isaac's
 feelings. In the evening I went over to Zar's place
 and demanded a drink on the house.
    Zar was leaning with his elbows on his sawhorse
 bar: "For what," he scowled at me.
    "It's Christmas, Zar," I said. "Didn't you know?"
    "Wal wal, I tell you—only the spring shall I
 celebrate."
   But Miss Adah was properly moved. She ran to
wake up the girls sleeping in the back rooms. I
thought she had just the spirit Isaac wanted and
when she came back I said, "Isaac Maple's the
one who told me."
   "I'll go get him," she said putting a shawl over
her. "Poor man's all alone."
   "Save yourself, Adah," Zar said, but she was
gone.
   Zar had no use for the man and couldn't see
going to any trouble over him; when Adah re-
turned, leading Isaac Maple, she had to set up the
drinks herself—the Russian had sat down, grum-
bling, on one of his camp chairs.
              Welcome to Hard Times           103
  Then Jenks wandered in, he was wearing a hat
he'd made out of prairie dog fur, it came down to
his eyes and went around his head to a point in
back. You could just about make out his wolfy
smile under that cap.
   "The customer," Zar said folding his arms.
  Well I saw it was going to be a true enough
gathering so I took myself back to the cabin to get
Molly and the boy. Molly wanted no part of it.
She said it wouldn't do for Jimmy to go out at
night with the wind so cold and snow blowing
along the ground. I said we could wrap a blanket
around him and I'd carry him over. That didn't
please either of them too much, but then we heard,
coming across the wind, the sounds of Miss Adah's
voice singing a hymn with her melodeon, and I
did as I wanted—wrapping the boy up—and we all
went over.
   When we came in Adah stopped her singing and
got up to greet Molly. Everyone was very polite—
Jenks pulled at his cap when he said hello and the
ladies gave Jimmy a greeting although, since he
stood by Molly's side, they stayed their distance.
There was only one lantern on the table and the
room was in shadows, but Zar got up to light
another and at Adah's signal he started to pour out
a drink for Molly. She held up her hand, very lady-
like, and smiled and sMook her head. She had
drunk her share in the old days and it wouldn't
have hurt her now, but it gave her more pleasure
to refuse, it set her apart from the ladies although
she knew them better than they thought she did.
   All at once, as we were standing around, nobody
had anything to say, we were all embarrassed we'd
104               E. L. Doctorow
made an occasion. I lifted my cup: "Well here's
to Christmas and better times for the world."
   "Amen," said Miss Adah. Then she sat down at
the melodeon and began her hymn again. Everyone
was quiet and drinking listening to her sing it
through. She had a deep voice but she meant what
she sang. When she finished she started another
and it was one Isaac recognized, he stepped up in
back of her and looking straight at the wall he
joined right in, tenor.
   Well the whiskey was warm going down and it
spread over me like sun. There was the churchly
music going; Molly, with Jimmy at her side, was
sitting on a chair listening; Zar was stepping
around offering the bottle; and I thought why this
is what Isaac Maple had in mind, just to celebrate
the fact that all of us are here. And I asked myself
whether these weren't already better times: here
was some people and we had a root on the land
where there was nothing but graves a few months
before.
   After a while the liquor began to have its effect
on everyone. Jessie and Mae, who had been cowed
by Molly's presence, made a show of forgetting she
was there and began to enjoy themselves. Jessie
went over to Jenks, sitting in a chair, and stuck
her thumb under his fur cap.
   "Is that you under there, Dead-Eye?" she said.
   Jenks slapped her hand away, stealing a glance
at Molly at the same time: "Get on!"
   "Why Jenksy!" said Mae plunking herself down
on his lap. "Ah've never seen you so outdone.
Didn't you get yore sleep t'day?"
   "If'n hew please, ladies," Jenks said pushing Mae
 off. Holding his drink high he walked away to the
              Welcome to Hard Times           105
 bar. Jessie and Mae giggled. Jenks was being un-
 common dignified but pieces of drying dung were
 stuck to the seat of his pants.
   When the hymn was ended Adah turned in her
seat and put her hand on Isaac's arm: "You sing
right nice, Mr. Maple," she said.
   "Thank ye, I like a good hymn," said Isaac.
   Zar was clapping his hands: "Holy, holy, holy!
That's vary good."
   "Ye have a true gift Miss Adah," Isaac said.
   "A gift?" said Zar. "Together you and she—two
coyotes howling at moon."
   Isaac turned to him: "Say what?"
   "Sure!" Zar began to laugh. "Such music I have
heard on the steppe at night. Just the same as that:
Howly, howly howly!" He doubled up with his
own joke. "Jassie, Mae, you hear?" And he re-
peated what he'd said.
   But the girls were busy working on Jenks, they
had followed him to the bar.
   "What's botherin" your friend tonight, Mae,"
said Jessie.
   "He's jes shy," Mae said digging Jenks in the
ribs.
   "I smelled o1 horseshit I'd be shy too," Jessie
said.
   "I'll tell you frand," Zar walked up to Isaac.
"Not only your singing is not human, but your way
of doing business. A man would trade for my
liquor. A man would have need for my girls."
   "Aint nobody can tell me how to run my busi-
ness," Isaac said turning red in the face.
   "Cash cash!" Zar threw his head back:
"Caaash!"
106                E. ,L. Doctorow
  "Nobody forcing ye to buy!" Isaac shouted over
the Russian's roar.
  Adah thought things weje getting out of hand,
she glanced once at Molly and turned around to
play another hymn. But it only added to the noise.
Zar walked away from Isaac with a gesture of dis-
gust and poured himself another drink from the
bottle on the table. The storekeep was following
him, well aroused.
   "Did I not pay ye cash for the use of yer tent?
I deal fair and square, always have, always will.
All's I look fer is an honest profit and that's
more'n some can say!"
   "Who needs you," said Zar.
   "God knows I didn't ask to stay here, I was
asked!"
   By this time the smiles were gone from Mae's
and Jessie's faces.
   "I b'lieve Mr. Jenks here has gone fancy on us
Mae."
  "Listen you no-chinned, gun polishing dead-
head," said Mae, "the next tune you come along
with yo' tongue hangin' out don't look for us.
Jes keep agoin' down to her place and see what
she'll give you."
   "You bucktooth son of a bitch," said Jessie push-
ing her face up to Jenks. For a second I thought
Molly had heard, but the melodeon was blowing
loud and Isaac Maple was shouting over it.
   "I was horse-traded! Yessir," he looked right at
me, "I'll say it. Horse-traded! Paid out good money
to settle in this Hell. 'Tweren't fit country fer Ezra
and 'tain't fit fer me!"
  "Didn't it never snow in Vermont, Isaac?"
  "It did, yes it did. But you could reckon it, you
             Welcome to Hard Times            107
didn't spend yer days and nights beatin" the sag
out of a tent to keep from bein* buried!"
  "Why this is a gentle winter, Isaac," I said.
   "That may be but it's m' first and last in this
hole, I'll tell ye."
  "Than go and farewell," Zar screamed.
   "I'll go, I will, don't ye fret. When that stage
comes I'll be on it when it goes—"
  At that moment Miss Adah stopped her song.
And in the sudden silence Isaac looked around and
cried: "But that stage'll never come. We'll all be
dead before that stage conies again!"
  Those were the lonesomest words I nearly ever
heard. Not a night had passed lately when I hadn't
thought the same thing; but I'd never said it out
loud and neither had anyone else. Isaac took the
fear in all our minds and put it in the air. A chill
ran through the room and in the quiet we heard
the wind outside blowing desolate across the
earth. I saw a wilderness of snow-crusted flats be-
tween us and the rest of the world, and not a track
on it.
  A moment later Isaac left. Then Molly got up
and went off quickly. Mae leaned against the
bar and fingering her hair said: "See you next
Christmas,, honey," softly, as to herself. Zar
slumped down at a table and put his head on his
hand. Our gathering didn't make any more sense,
each of us was alone as himself, I wrapped up the
boy and we left too.

  The forlorn feeling of that Christmas night grew
as time went on. There were days of such pure
cold that it was like swallowing frost to take a
breath out of doors. The weather had us holed up
108                E. L. Doctorow
good, almost in spite it seemed like, and if I
thought about the spring it was as a lost possibility.
How could you remember the warmth of the sun
when through one bleak day after another the
winter danced around you with every fancy step
it knew? We huddled in that cabin, bent grey sticks
with eyes in them, I couldn't even worry 4hat one
day we might not have what to eat or make a fire
with: it was a worse dread to feel so lost on the
earth, a live creature in a lifeless land.
   What I'm trying to do now is account for the
way things went, this winter had a lot to do with
it. Under such conditions even the plain doings
of a day had no reason. It was foolishness to eat
just to stay alive inside that room; it was foolish-
ness to lie down for the night since you would only
wake up to the same day again. Once Molly looked
at the door and said: "We're buried as sure as
those people frozen in the ground out there! Oh
Christ but we know it, that's all the difference."
And Jimmy, with that picture of his father, jumped
up hugging her and crying as if to make it not true.
   Sometimes we could hear through the wind the
awful rows Zar made with his ladies. It sounded
like murder. The Russian was drinking up his own
stock and it made him mean. He knocked a tooth
out of the tall girl Jessie's mouth and on one occa-
sion Miss Adah had to put him to sleep with a
stick, he was going at the Chinagirl so.
   Leo Jenks took to walking out in the storms and
firing his guns into the wind. Once he stayed out
too long, claiming he had seen a pronghorn; he
may have or he may not, but his fingers froze to
his rifle and when he stumbled into Zar's place they
pried it loose and the skin went with it.
              Welcome to Hard Times             109
  And Isaac Maple kept to himself in that tent,
marking off each day as a mistake on his pocket
calendar. He never talked when you went to buy
something from him, not trusting in any exchange
of words, but got you out again as quick as he
could. On an especially bitter day, when the wind
made your teeth ache and froze your lashes, he
went around to each of us in turn—Zar, Jenks,
me, and then over to the Indian—offering to sell
a partner's half of what he had on order with Alf
Moffet. Nobody would buy and this convinced him
that he was right, that he'd been horse-traded
and that Alf would not show up again. From then
on he charged us double his price for flour and
sardines—which is all he had left—and finally he
refused to sell altogether, claiming he needed the
food for himself.
  When this happened Zar came to see me with
his shotgun, saying: "Let's kill him." Zar meant
what he said, but I did some talking and instead we
trudged over to the stable, where Jenks was nurs-
ing his sore hands, and we took a look at the
horses. They all had loose hides and hanging
heads. What feed there was they had eaten up,
where there was bark on the stalls they had
chewed it off. The Major's pony seemed worse
than the rest, his eyes were dull, his bones stuck
out and he had ulcers all over his legs. I borrowed
Jenk's pistol and shot the pony behind the ear.
   Not one of the other animals stirred with the
sound. Zar took the gun and killed one of his team;
and we spent the afternoon dressing down the
carcasses. It was something we would have had to
do sooner or later, what Isaac did was just as well, -
another week and there wouldn't have been any
110               E. L. Doctorow
 meat to dress down. I got back to the cabin, my
 hands and feet were numb and my clothes were
 stiff with blood, but there was a cache in the snow
 outside the door that would keep us awhile.
    We used everything of that poor thin pony, a
 splinter from his ribs made a needle and his sinew
 made thread. There was no bark to tan with, but
 Molly fleshed the hide with the stiletto and for
 days she beat it with a stone, rubbed it with dirt.
 She finally got it soft, although she didn't think
 she would, and she sewed up a rough jacket for the
 boy. And I made us covers for our shoes. I will say
 here that all this—even the slaughtering—helped
 my spirits. It was doing something purposeful.
 Molly too worked with a will. But I suppose Jimmy
 had an attachment for that pony, and although
 he wore the jacket when it was done, and ate the
 soup Molly cooked from the bones, he didn't
 bother to look at me any more.
    Of all the miseries of that winter not the least
was waking up to Jimmy's dislike. I don't believe
in the human intelligence of animals, or that they
are to be used in any way but the most useful;
I didn't think when I shot that pony but that it was
something that had to be done. However the boy
made me regret it. You see once I saw how he felt
it made me realize that his feeling was nothing sud-
den, but like a divide that had risen between us as
time went on. I felt less close to him now than
the night I sat up with him when his Daddy died.
How many ponies had I killed besides this one?
   Molly had no such trouble with the boy's affec-
tions, many times she would say something to him
that I thought cruel, or she would look at him like
he was nothing but the orphan boy he was—but
              Welcome to Hard Times           111
her treatment only made him doggish. Since his
illness he had gotten this way, following her with
his eyes and waiting patiently for whatever morsel
of attention she might throw him. Now I could see
in Molly's face a shadow like she didn't want
him so. It unsettled her, it was nothing she asked
for. If I regretted some of the love he gave her
I'm sure she did too. I can't be top clear about
that, it makes me sad to remember. It wasn't until a
night about two weeks after the horse killings that
I felt properly frozen for the winter.
   In the dugout something brought us all awake.
It was an unearthly scratching sound. I turned up
the lamp and we followed it with our eyes,. There
was an animal on the roof, scratching at the
warmth. I grabbed my gun and just as I did a slat
was pushed away, and in a fine sift of snow a thick
tawny paw slipped in from the night and clawed
at the air above Molly's head. She screamed. I
shot once, twice, not at the paw but through the
wood where the heart would be. The paw was gone
before my second shot. I thought of the meat we
had left outside the door and ran to it, holding the
lamp, and from the open door I saw in the dim cast
of lamplight a shadow bounding off through the
snow. Well the crash was still in my ears and my
heart was banging hard when I went around to put
the board back in place; and I can't forget the
sight, looking down through there, Molly and
Jimmy were hugging each other for all their lives,
they were fastened in their terror. After that she
got to be as doggish to him as he was to her. She
was no longer put out by his regard, but took care
of him warmly, often giving him kisses. And I
don't think any of us but me kept remembering,
112                E. L. Doctorow
always with a banging heart, the sight of those
claws, sharp as scythes, swiping at us from the
night.

   There had to be an end to winter or an end to
us. By the time March came in I was ready, like
Isaac Maple, to bet with the winter. Hard dry
winds blew day after day, sweeping the snow,
skimming the top of the bared frozen ground and
blowing up circly storms of sand. But one after-
noon I thought I smelled rain. I went outside: John
Bear was standing over by his shack, he was fac-
ing west and looking into the dusty bleak sky—
he had smelled it too. The air was cold but the
wind was just a murmur of what it had been,
and if you stood very still you could feel now and
then a warmth in it, a dampness. I kept my hopes
to myself but that night I woke up and heard it, a
soft fall on the roof, not a shower but a small
steady rain. And at dawn the sun spread over the
flats with a rush.
   I stepped outside into that new morning and I
couldn't believe it. The sun filled my eyes with a
warmth of hazes, pink, pale green and yellow, and
all over the flats white mists were rising like winter
being steamed out of the ground. I swore I could
feel the earth turning. Everything was new in my
sight, I looked around at the short street of build-
ings—cabin, windmill, saloon, tent and stable—
and it seemed like a row of plants just sprung.
The Chinese girl peeked out of the saloon, holding
her hand up against the brilliance, and I waved to
her. A few minutes later everyone was out of
doors, blinking in the sunlight, standing silent in
the face of something that was hard to remember.
             Welcome to Hard Times           113
Then Jenks gave a hoot and threw his hat into the
air and all of a sudden everyone was stretching,
calling out, Zar went around hugging everybody,
Adah was shaking Isaac Maple's hand, the girls
were kissing each other, Jimmy was holding
Molly's arm and pulling her this way and that.
Jenks went into his stable and drove the horses
out, there was much mingling, we were all smiling
like fools, we were all pasty and thin in the fresh
light but alive even so.
                        8

Now I would write about that spring in its every
minute if I could, using up my strength and time
and going no further through the pain of seasons.
But it is no pleasure to me now; and it is all I can
do to remember it for my purposes which is to tell
the way things happened.
   This was the time when Swede settled and Bert
Albany came down, the hurts were healing in the
warm sun and the expectations were nourished
into life. A greenness of hopes grew up like the
scrub along the rocks coming up green.
   I remember another spring, much before, when
I repped with an outfit that ranged along the Big
Mo: how the river thawed with great groans and
cracks, and the ice broke and rose in the air to be
carried off in the surge, until the water had its full
bed and was running swiftly from one bank to
the other. It was a grand rout of winter. Well the
change was just as sudden here, a bit of sun drew
all the frost from our bones and the blood ran
swift in our veins. Alf Moffet pulled in with his
                         11
                         4
              Welcome to Hard Times             115
coach low on its springs for all the freight it
carried, and the miners began to ride down again.
They had been working most of the winter and
they all had a hankering to spend some of their
pay somewhere besides the company stores. In a
couple of Saturday nights Isaac Maple forgot he'd
been horse-traded, he and Zar, too, made enough
to start bringing Alf back regular every two weeks.
With my commission on their orders I made enough
to buy up a stock of tinned food, coffee, sugar,
flour, saleratus, beans and salt pork. And I'll tell
you we commenced to eat good.
   Each morning and night Molly would do up a
batch of pancakes and we dipped them in sugar
and ate them rolled. We had beans and pork and
maybe whole tomatoes from a can, and good black
coffee to wash it all down. We ate till we couldn't
remember the taste of that horse, and it wasn't
long before the flesh filled in between the bones
and we began to look human once more.
   We were still ragged as Indians but with the
sun rising higher each day the need for Hausen-
field's well rose too; and I fixed a price of a dollar
a day for every person who drew from it. I was
lucky with the windmill, I nailed the blades back
up and fixed some loose boards in the scaffold and
it worked fine, bringing the water up fresh and
cool, bringing up the dollars. I went into Isaac's
tent one day and I walked out with a miner's
jacket and small-sized boots for Jimmy, laced
shoes and calico for Molly, and a razor for my-
self.
          I remember that alright. Straightaway I went
  - over to the well, put those things down and found
      a rock to hone my new razor, and with the piece
116               E. L. Doctorow
of lye soap there I shaved off my beard right down
to the skin. I had not shaved since I lost my old
razor in the fire, and it was something I had been
itching to do ever since. Although like most I favor
mustaches, I am not given to beards, I don't like
their feel nor the way the lice will take to them.
When I was done—feeling slick as a calf—I took
those things into the cabin and you should have
seen the looks on their faces. Molly and the boy
went into a proper reverence, I don't know
whether it was the new things or me. "Well look
at that," said Molly, smiling, and I think she meant
me.
   Jimmy was all smiles too—until Molly made up
her mind he would have to wash himself before he
could put the jacket and boots on. So he had to go
outside and sit in the tub and while he did Molly
took his pants and shirt and scrubbed them down
in a pail of water. Later Miss Adah, always of a
generous turn of mind, came out of the saloon and
offered Molly a scissors. What surprised me was
Molly took it, what surprised Jimmy was that she
put it to his head. When he was all done, dressed
in new boots and a jacket, and a clean dry shirt
and pants, with some of his hair trimmed—well he
was angry but he looked fine. "A proper boy,"
Molly said, gazing at him.
   Molly was fair to look on as she said that. Just
the day before she had washed her hair and gone
to sit up in the rocks aways to let the breeze dry
it. She had handsome features for all the pockings,
the frown was gone from her forehead and there
was a softness in her face, a measure of joy in
her eyes. I couldn't grudge her hold on Jimmy,
they were doing each other good, maybe giving
             Welcome to Hard Times           117
each other a rest from the past, why should I have
felt anything but glad?
   All I am describing happened on an afternoon of
deep gold sunlight over everything, with air that
was sweet to breathe. Over by his shack John Bear
was fooling with his garden. Jessie was working
one top, she didn't know and I wasn't going to tell
her that only the Indian could raise anything out
of this ground. Smoke was coming up from Zar's
still behind his saloon. Away in the distance Zar
and Jenks were running out their horses in big
circles over the flats. There was a feeling of
celebration in everything that was going on.

  I went over to Jenk's stable and looked over his
horses one morning, it was not the boy's feelings I
had in mind, you just don't like to be without
something to ride. I liked the looks of the mule
best of all, his ribs showed through his hide but
he'd wintered better than the grey or the sorrel.
Knowing my man I went to Jenks and told him I
wanted to buy one of his horses. A sly look came
into eyes and he told me he'd deal only for the
mule. We settled on the sum of seventy-five dol-
lars, to be paid in water rights at a dollar a day
not including days of rain, if any. I took out the
mule and brought him around to the cabin and
hitched him to the buckboard. He stood there the
best part of a day until Jimmy wandered over like
he didn't care, and hefted the reins like it didn't
mean anything and finally stepped up on the seat
and give him a try in the flats.
   It gladdened me to see him romp off that way.
Pretty soon he came back in but it was just to pull
Molly, protesting, up on the seat; and then there
118                E. L. Doctorow
 they were spinning away, she laughing and holding
 on tight and Jimmy shouting in a cracked voice,
 standing up and flipping those reins and getting
 more and more run out of the mule. I went about
 my business and it seems now just a moment be-
 fore I turned around and they were hardly in
 view. They had made circles further and further
 out but all I saw was a funnel of dust going down
 in a straight line. Where were they going? For a
 moment my breath stopped, I thought well good-
 bye to them, it serves me right, they're gone and
 she's still laughing.
    But Jimmy had only seen something and gone to
 take a closer look. For a long time the rig was a
 black spot in my eye and finally it moved; and a
 while after they were back at the cabin.
    "What's out there Jimmy?" I said.
    He looked at Molly. She got down and went in-
 side and he followed her.
    I went after. "I said what's out there, boy,
 where's your voice?"
    "Wagon." Another look at Molly. Her mouth was
 set tight.
    "One wagon?"
   "Yes." And then with a rush: "It's busted in the
back and the man's settin' up there and she's
screamin' at him."
   "Who is?"
   "Why that woman, she's—"
   "Jimmy!" Molly said.
   "Who are they?" I turned to her.
   "How should I know who?"
   "Well didn't you speak to them?"
   "Oh sure! I'll go around greetin' every lowlife on
the prairiel"
              Welcome to Hard Times            119
    I went out and found Zar and told him what
 they'd seen. He was busy with his still but he said
 I could take his team and wagon. I hitched up four
 and Jenks reckoned he'd come along and we got
 up and started off. Why was I taking Zar's wagon
 and not the mule and rig? I guess Molly understood
 better than I: We passed the cabin and she came
 out of the door, Jenks tipped his hat to her but she
 cried: "I know what you're doing! Go get 'em
 Mayor, more fools for your town!"
   We found it due south, sitting on the trail that
edged the flats: it was just as Jimmy said, an old
Murphy wagon stuffed to its cover, a man was
sitting on the box and the back wheels of the
wagon were splayed out like a new colt's legs. The
man was yellow-haired and beardless, his hands
hung down between his knees and he watched us
with eyes as baleful as his oxen's. No woman was
screaming at him, but further off walking away
through the scrub with a shawl over her head she
was raising her arms and shouting at the sky.
   The man said: "Ay ben looking for Svedes."
   I said: "Well there's none hereabouts so far as I
know."
   He nodded as if he didn't expect otherwise.
Jenks and I climbed down to take a look at the
axle, and when we did the man stepped off his
box and he was the tallest fellow I ever saw, he
must have been six and a half feet. He walked
clumsy like a big man; he was fair-complected
with strawberry skin, on the side of his neck
there was a wen the size of a cannonball.
   The axletree was split clean through, each half
was poking into the ground. "You carrying another
one?" I said.
120                 E. L. Doctorow
     "No. No oder."
    Off aways the woman kept shouting, it was the
  only sound in our ears and the man got embar-
  rassed. "My vife," he said tapping his forehead
  and he smiled ruefully.
     "You a nester?" Jenks said looking up at him.
     "Ya.Ivas."
    Jenks nodded: "Prairie'11 do hit—"
    'Ya." We all looked at the axle. "She beg me
 for tree yar go wit oder Svedes. Cry each night
 . . . But I hope rain vill come. But no rain. Now I
 look for Svedes, maybe her mind comes back."
    Swede's voice was as deep as the lowing of a
 cow, but it was a gentle voice with no harshness
 to it. He didn't cry about his misfortune but told it
 straight. I liked him right off. I told him there
 wasn't much we could do about the axle but he
 could put up in the town awhile and maybe get
 hold of another by and by. He agreed to that so
 we started to unload his gear. We spent a good
 hour putting it on Zar's wagon, these people were
 carting everything they'd ever owned. There was a
 frame bed, a bureau with four drawers, an oak
 table, a commode, bedding, chairs, stools, a churn,
 a kettle, a washtub, some iron pots, a plow with a
 steel share, a sack of corn—it was no wonder their
 old wagon gave out.
    The woman had come back to peek at us while
we worked and it unsettled Jenks to catch her
staring around the side of the wagon. It didn't
bother me none. She was a stocky woman, when
her shawl slipped it showed her hair which was
light-colored and sparse, her face was honest
enough but there was nothing to hold on to in her
eyes.
              Welcome to Hard Times             121
   I'd worked up a good thirst by the time we were
through. There was about another hour of sun left
in the sky. I said: "Your wagon should pull now
with nothing on it. We'll tote your things in, you
follow us straight that way."
   "Good. Helga!" he called to the woman. He
went over to her and began to talk to her as to a
child, pointing to Jenks and me. Without any
warning she started screaming at him and then
hitting him. She barely came high as his chest but
she swung up and slapped his face again and again
and beat at his arms. He made no move to stop
her but just stood waiting for her to spend herself.
    "Godamighty," Jenks said.
    "Let's get up on the wagon," I said. It put our
 backs to the sight, I didn't like to see something
 like that.
    "Godamighty," Jenks swore as we sat waiting,
 "a jahnt lahk thet a sufferin' sich blows!"
    After a while we didn't hear anything and as I
 turned the man was lifting his wife to the back
 of our wagon, sitting her on a chair so that she
 faced rearwards. She made no protest and he said:
 "You vill see me, Helga, ya?" We started off, the
 horses pulling hard, and I didn't have to hold them,
 the weight did that. Behind us the man snapped his
 quirt over the oxen and they began to draw the
 covered wagon. It wobbled but it went, the axle
 scratching a furrow in the ground.
    When we were back at the town the man was
 still halfway across the flats. "Leave everything be
 until he gets here," I told Jenks. He went into Zar's
 place and in a moment Zar and his ladies came out
 to look, and Isaac Maple from his tent. Molly and
 Jimmy came over, everyone stared up at the woman
122               E. L. Doctorow
on the wagon. The ladies went around to the side
to look at all the furniture. Not one word was
spoken and the woman sat still up on the chair
keeping her gaze out to the flats where her hus-
band was coming. I went to the well for a drink
and when I looked back I saw the woman bend
over with her hands on her knees, and she spat at
Molly's feet.
   Well in a moment Molly was by me at the well.
I thought it was anger giving her tremors but she
was grey witk fear. "Now Molly," I said, and she
allowed me to hold her arm, "that's nothing but a
poor old nester's wife."
   And that was how Bergenstrohm came to settle.
But we never called him anything but Swede.

   It was Isaac.Maple who took the couple under
care. Everyone else was put off by the woman's
madness but Isaac said: "My mother had spells
from her change of life, my grandmother 'fore her,
I seen it since I was a boy it don't bother me." He
offered his tent for storing their furniture. He had
Swede pull his wagon alongside of the tent and
the two of them propped up the back with rocks.
They put the bed and bureau back in the wagon
and Isaac said, "Ye kin keep a nice house in there
fer the time bein'."
   He must have decided right off to give them
credit. He paid me a dollar a day for their water
although I told him there was no need. He thumbed
through one of his catalogues and found a steel
axle he could order that would fit the old Murphy
wagon. He was taking care of the Swede like he
was his own brother.
   "Wal," Zar said to me one day, "is no meestery.
              Welcome to Hard Times            123
The man has wagon." That was true as far as it
went, Isaac needed something to fetch lumber in
if he wanted to build himself a proper store; until
now Zar's wagon was the only one he might have
had, and he would sooner have given up his plans
than ask for it. But I have a feeling Isaac would
have welcomed these people had they only a hand-
cart. I think it was enough that they had come to
the town after him. Isaac was the kind of chary
person who's always looking for someone to trust.
He couldn't trust any of us who'd been there be-
fore him; but the Swede came off the flats as he
himself had the autumn before, and that was as
good as a ticket from Vermont.
   Whatever his feelings Isaac didn't stand to lose
much. You figure anyone who keeps a mad wife
will pay his debts and do his share of work.
Long before Alf delivered the axle it was clear
that the man was worthy, gentle for all his size,
he would ask no favors and do any asked of him.
His woman seemed calmer with people around;
and after one Saturday he didn't again speak of
looking for Swedes. What happened was one of
the miners found Helga with her washtub and
gave her fifty cents to wash his corduroys. The
diggers were feeling the spring and they had a
great wish to spiff up. It got to be a usual sight, a
bunch of men standing around in back of Swede's
wagon in only their high lacers and union suits,
smoking Isaac Maple's imported Regalias or
Cheroots and talking like members of a Society.
Swede enjoyed their business and their talk.
He would build a fire and hang a line of rope over
it to dry the things his wife washed, and he'd stand
trading words with the men, telling his story,
124               E. L. Doctorow
nodding his big head as he listened to theirs . . .
  I can't deny how I felt seeing this farmer settle
in the town. Molly was right, I would welcome an
outlaw if he rode in. I felt anyone new helped bury
the past. Swede's coming even put in my mind a
thought I wouldn't have tolerated before—to keep
a record again, to write things down. Alf had left
me three ledgers and a steel-point pen to keep the
Express accounts. But there was enough paper in
the ledgers to write the Bible. It was an idea that
I had to put away, I looked toward Molly as if I
expected her to read my thoughts, and I almost set
myself against the words of scorn that would come.
  Actually, once Swede and his wife were here to
stay Molly didn't say a word against them. Some-
thing about Helga had scared her into gentleness,
and it was like you find a drunkard who's sworn
off, having been cowed by the vision of Hell. Molly
was never inclined to welcome a new face but for
a long while she would not say so, her judgment
was softened. When Bert Albany came down
and I found out why, I told Molly and she even
smiled.

   Bert came walking down the trail in the middle
of one week, his shoulders were hunched and he
sighed like he was carrying the world with him.
He was the same pimply boy who always posted
his letters with me. He stood in front of Zar's place,
smoothing the ground with his boot and finally he
made up his mind to go in. "Don't you know this
is working day?" Zar said to him.
   The young fellow didn't answer and he looked
ashamed. He sat around in the saloon all day,
              Welcome to Hard Times             125
sighing and nursing whiskeys, and he didn't speak
to anyone. Zar struggled to understand what the
boy's trouble was and he finally decided Bert had
lost his job. "Poor boysik, he will not say bot I
know he must have lost favor with the mine
boss."
   Now how was that so? Bert was not more than
twenty. As well as I could remember he always
got drunk when he came to town—not because
he seemed to enjoy it but because it put him in
company with the rest of the diggers. That's the
way a young fellow does, doing twice as much of
anything to make sure he keeps up with the rest.
The mine boss wouldn't let go someone like Bert.
But Zar said, "Ah, I can afford him a few dollars,
I will take him on as helper," so I kept my views
to myself.
   When the Russian offered him the job Bert's
mouth dropped open. Then his face lit up and he
laughed. Course he'd take it! A couple of days
after this I spoke to him: "Well," I said, "now you
don't have to travel but a few steps to post your
letters."
   "Hell, Mr. Blue," he said, "I given up writin*
letters. Never got no letters back." He was cheer-
ful saying this, he didn't seem to mind. And each
morning there was a new sound to hear, Bert
whistling as he went about his chores.
   On a Thursday evening I stepped into Zar's place
 for a drink. Jenks was there, sitting at a table with
 Mae and Jessie. I could hear where Zar was—his
 snores were coming out of the side room like run-
 ning cattle. Miss Adah served me from behind the
 bar. "Where's the new man?" I said to her.
126                E. L. Doctorow
  She looked over at the two girls and they looked
back. Mae got up and went to the door to the side
room and closed it carefully.
  "Now listen Blue, please," Adah said to me in a
low tone, "you got to promise to keep this under
your hat."
  Jessie and Mae came up on either side of me
and I found myself hard put to raise the cup.
   "What's going on ladies?"
   "That Bert is sparkin' our little girl," Adah said.
   "Whut's thet?" Jenks had foUowed. "The
Chink?"
  "Jenks I sweah," Mae turned on him with a
harsh whisper, "an you say one word I'll have yo'
scalp!"
   "Gwan back to your stable, deadhead," said
Jessie, "this don't concern you."
  Jenks leaned back with his elbows on the bar
and he grinned that sly grin of his: "Shit . . .
Y'mean he's cooin' wif thet li'l yaller flopgal?"
   "Hush damn you," Adah said. She looked at me:
"It's no joke, Zar finds out and he'll kill him."
   "He's really stuck on her?" I said.
   "Lord!" said Jessie. "You've never seen the like.
You'd think she was white. You'd think she had a
papa owned a railroad!"
   "Saturday he didn't give nobody else a chance
to touch her," Adah said. "Paid her the money and
took her out by the well and held her hand."
  "I saw it," Mae said nodding.
  "Godamighty!" Jenks said.
   "Then after a while she figures it's time to come
back in, and so in he follows and gives her the
money again and out they go again."
              Welcome to Hard Times              127
   "Well what do you know!" I had to laugh. "Zar
thought he was fired from his job."
   "No sir, he just up an' quit it! That boy's crazy,
he's wild! There's no tellin' what he'll do why I
never saw a person afflicted so."
   Jenks said: "Knew a feller oncet were bedded to
a Piute. She sure did have a scent."
   "It don't seem right," Mae said biting on her
fingernail.
   "I don't know," I said.
   "Now Blue," said Adah, "that little thing is be-
sides herself. She was so scairt Saturday she
couldn't keep from shakin' all over."
   "It scares her?"
   "Why she's been cryin* ever since. He has her
out there somewhere right now moonin' like a sick
calf over her, poor thing she don't know what to
do."
   "Well if he's taken a fancy for her," I said, "there
are worse things."
    "Blue," said Adah, "there are fancies and1
fancies. She's just a child, she don't understand
that kind of business, he got no sense treating her
like that."
   "When Zar finds out he'll kill 'em both," Mae
said.
   "Well Zar don't own the girl. Any of you could
take a beau if you really wanted," I said.
   "Maybe we could, maybe we couldn't," Jessie
said. "But he bought her. Paid her Pa a hundred
dollars."
   "That Chink weren't even her Pa," Mae said to
Jessie. "He said he was but he didn't look as he
could sire a flea."
128                E. L. Doctorow
   "You won't let on will you Blue?"
   "I'm dumb ladies."
   "Poor child," said Adah, "there's no telling
what'll happen. What is it possesses that boy I
don't hope to guess."
  I downed the drink and there were these three
glum faces around me—weary Miss Adah with her
fine mustache, long-jawed Jessie, Plump Mae, her
cheeks going to fat v . . What Zar would do
worried them, but I think they were more fright-
ened by Bert himself. They were uneasy at such
a feeling in someone, it was beyond them. For
me it was a revelation that such a thing was
happening here. It was like someone had come
along to put up a flag. I made up my mind if Zar
raised a ruckus like the ladies feared I would do
what I could for the boy. I wanted to nurture
something like that, keep it going.
   The more I thought about Bert the better I liked
him. You like to see desperation still in its pimples.
I went to Isaac's tent and the Swede was there,
and I told them about Bert. They had a good
laugh. When I went back to the cabin Molly was
sitting outside. We'd been having some afternoons
of sweet rain, some evenings of slow-dying skies,
and she'd taken to sitting on a stool in front of
the cabin door and she'd watch the night come on.
I sat down near her and I could just feel the smile
when I told her there was a true lover come to
town.
   Then there was silence between us and I see no
reason now not to put down what happened: I
found myself aware of Molly in a way that was
pleasure and pain at the same time. I felt her
closeness. I kept thinking I was older than she was
              Welcome to Hard Times            129
and you see it was a too familiar thought to have,
I had no right to it. I was not Bert Albany, I wasn't
free to respect my feelings, and so nothing was said,
as the darkness came down. And when she went
inside I sat still and waited until she would be
asleep before I followed.
   But that following Saturday was the night it first
appeared all our fortunes were changing. There
was a big crowd of miners and they were feel-
ing the season, their carryings-on was not just a
bit of fun, it was liken to a shivaree. They brought
mouth organs with them, one fellow came up with
a banjo, there was a lot of dancing with the drink-
ing and since the women were scarce among so
many, the miners danced with each other, stomp-
ing out squares so as to make the ground shake.
And insisting in all that noise was talk of a new
stamping mill going up not far to the east. The
Chinagirl had no worries about Zar that night.
Bert kept her in sight of his bar all the time but
the Russian wouldn't have noticed if he had
carried her around on his shoulders: Zar was
blinded happy with the rumors, rushing around
from one fellow to the next to hear every version.
By midnight he'd decided the company was going
to lay a road down the trail from the mines so
as to cart the ore to the new mill—
   I didn't trust myself to believe him. But it is
true that the town was to be blessed with luck; and
some of it was even to rub off on me.
                         9

I thought if Zar's mind was a pony it would win
the race. I wanted nothing to do with his happy
expectations. But every time something else came
up to justify them he would laugh at me, saying:
"Wal, frand, am I crazy?" Until I had to go with
the signs and tell him one day: "No, by God, Zar,
you're saner than me."
   Now you have to season the talk of a digger
with a lot of salt. A digger's a man who'll look for
pay dirt twenty years of days with just as much
fervor and high hope the last day as the first. Why
any time you're near one you can hear his song:
"I'm savin' my money Jack, and as soon as I have
me a grubstake, it's goodbye to the Company.
I'm off to Montany and find me that vugg of pure
gold! I know where it is, I know the spot Jack,
it's jest a sittin' and a waitin" fer me . . ." And he
buys Jack a drink on it; and they both believe it.
I didn't want to put stock in any rumor come down
from the camp.
    But there was a stamping mill gone up, that was
a fact. Alf told me it too: a town called Number Six
                            130
             Welcome to Hard Times            131
and it was maybe fifteen miles dead east. Angus
Mcellhenny told me something else: the Company
shipped on the toll roads leading west from the
camp, so it didn't pay them to cart anything but
high-grade ore. But if they cut a road down to us
they could get to the new mill across the flats and
pay no toll to anyone. And they could make their
low grade pay off as well.
   The way Angus spoke the idea made sense. And
then one morning, early, a man rode down from
the lodes and he had a string of mules trailing him.
I'd never seen him before but I knew who he was,
I'd heard him cursed too many times not to know
him, Archie D. Brogan, the mine boss. He had pale-
blue eyes in a face of fat, he was much too beefy
for the miner's garb he wore. He sat around drink-
ing and jittery until Alf Moffet drove in with the
stage, and then we knew why Brogan had come:
three men in black tailored suits and derby hats
stepped out and he nearly fell all over himself
giving them a proper welcome. They were small
men and they stepped precisely in our dirt, but
they were the directors from the East and their
engineer; so we cheered as Brogan put them on
the mules and took them, bouncing, up the trail to
the lodes.
   "I shall build a hotel!" Zar cried after them and
he even hugged Isaac Maple in his joy.
   A few days later the Company men came back
down to meet a special coach. And while waiting
they fanned themselves with their derbies. "I never
seen men with such white hands," Adah said in a
whisper, "why it's indecent!" They talked to no-
body, only asking Zar, at one point, if he carried
wine. Zar was anguished because he didn't, and
132               E. L. Doctorow
when they rode off he shook his fist after them: "I
shall build a hotel!" It was a vow this time and
somehow it made the prospect surer.
   Not long afterwards we had a visit from a man
owned a public house along the toll road leading
west from the camp, and he looked us over care-
fully and measured out a lot for himself next to
Swede's wagon; and without my saying a word
he put a ten-dollar gold piece in my hand—to
hold it—and he rode away saying he'd be back.
   Well you see all this was a bloom in the heart,
a springing of hope, and even when I tried to tell
myself it was just like the afternoon sun—so cozy-
ing on the face, like a warm hand, that a man
could dream of anything and expect it—even when
I pressed myself with doubts, the hope squeezed
out like a nectar. And as I sat with Molly another
evening under the sky, with a new moon making
us shadows to each other, I talked so easy I
almost didn't know myself; and she talked with
me and it was as if we were two new people sprung
from our old pains.
   "Molly I swear I feel good times coming. The
life here is working up. They'll have to cut a road
to get those Concord freighters through here. And
to do that they'll need lots of people, they'll have
lots of jobs!"
   "I hated those three. Stepping around like they
was afraid to get their feetsies dirty."
   "We don't have ever to see "em again, they just
came out here to make up their minds—"
   "Money for their flouncy city ladies—"
   "Lord, what do we carel We're going on the
map!"
   "You really think?"
               Welcome to Hard Times             133
    "I know it. It's our turn."
    "I am living better now than Avery ever gave
me, I'll say it Blue."
    "Molly I mean to make good for the three of
us."
    "You always fancied Flo over me."
   "You were so forbidding—"
    "I can't forget him. I see him in my sleep."
   "If I can be alright in your eyes I'll be alright in
my own."
   "I keep hearing his voice: Til be back,' he says.
It's what he said to me."
   "Well then, if that's so, I doubt it but if it's so,
if he does come back then we'll be ready for him.
We'll all be ready."
   She was quiet for a minute. "We've both suf-
fered," she said. And I was holding her hand in my
hands. It was enough to start me keeping the books
again.

   No, maybe I'm not telling it right. When I dipped
my pen in the ink it was not just for celebration,
it was something that had to be done. Zar and Isaac
both came to me to claim frontage on the street
once they saw Jonce Early's ten-dollar gold piece.
What other way was there to fix people's rights?
I don't think I was such a fool as to be blinded by
my feelings. We had bunks to sleep on and another
room with a door, and they were good nights as
we lay in one bunk, hugging like the two poor
married creatures we were—she had the shyness
of a bride, she was so becoming, I never knew such
joy. But wasn't this time of our conjunction the
time of Jimmy's dismay? And the sight of her
smiles at me, like the closed door at night, a greater
134               E. L. Doctorow
reason for his hate? She might waver and relent
but it only fixed him more. He stayed out all the
day long, I didn't see him from one meal to the
next. He wouldn't talk to me and when I'd catch
sight of him outside as I'd be going about my
business he'd slip away fast like he hadn't heard
me call. How good could it have been for two of
us when there were three?

   The pages are full of dealings, I see the entries,
all through the year the street grew up and you can
see how right here on the lines. I wrote each per-
son's name and what he owned. I put down how
Molly had all rights to me as wife and Jimmy as
son. I wrote out the claims. Jonce Early came back
to build a public house where he'd staked out. A
smith named Roebuck figured there would be
plenty of horses by and by and digging tools to
fix, and so he set up his forge. Another man—I
can't read his name, I never did hear him called—
rode in with a wagon of coal he would sell in sacks
when the winter came. More names with each pass-
ing month, I remember I marveled at it; hearing of
our prospects, these people were coming to settle,
it was common enough sense, but I always had the
feeling somebody had certified Hard Times as a
place in the world and that's why it was happen-
ing.
   Here it shows how my commissions rose on the
Express business. Here is the marriage notice of
Bert and the little girl—he could write, but all she
did was put a mark down. Now that tells a lot, the
minute I began to keep the records I was the
natural party to every complaint, legal or other-
              Welcome to Hard Times            135
wise. I used to feel I was a horsebreaker and each
day one of a remuda I had to cut down to size. For
several Saturdays running Miss Adah, Mae and
Jessie kept Bert happy by shunting only the drunk-
est and least able customers to the Chinese girl—
so that all she had to do was lead them to a room,
take their money and leave them sleeping there.
Bert had a good length of wood near his hand
while he tended the bar and he was ready to jump
out and use it if he thought his sweetheart was
having trouble. The ladies didn't want that; and
they suffered too whenever any of Bert's digging
friends made a joke of him for quitting his job at
the lodes. "Like to be around the stuff, Bert?" some-
one would call out—and the strain just got to be
too much for the ladies. They came to me as a
delegation and elected me to break the news to
Zar. "You can gentle him to it, Blue," Miss Adah
said, "it won't be as bad as if he finds out for him-
self."
   So I did one day, while everyone else stayed out
of sight. Well first I had to talk Zar out of killing
Bert. And then out of firing him—that I did by
convincing him Isaac Maple would hire the boy
in his place. When I had him calmed down I said:
"Look here Zar, what's some little old Chinagirl
matter when in just a few months you'll have the
finest saloon in these parts. A businessman like you
can't bother with such things."
   "Not a saloon, frand. An hotel. Two stories.
Glass windows. A mirror. A polished wood bar."
   "Well there you are, that's big time Zar, and
big times are coming."
   "You are right."
136                E. L. Doctorow
   "Sure I'm right—hell you'll be able to import
a dozen Chinese if you want, this town grows up
and you'll have more girls than you can choose."
   "We will be a city!"
   "Sure!"
   "Alright Blue: you tell the boy I will not kill
him."
   "That's the decent thing, Zar."
   "He loff s her, he can have her."
   "Fine."
   "For three hundred dollars he can have her."
   Zar was a match for me, no question. When I
took the news out to Bert and the others I looked
at some long faces. But Molly came up with an
idea: she said: "If Bert takes the girl, and brings
in someone in her stead, maybe the Russian would
make a trade."
   So I tried that and I guess Zar didn't think there
was a chance in Hell, he agreed readily. We sat
there and it was like talking to some foreign king
making a royal marriage for his daughter. If Bert
got him another woman he wanted only one hun-
dred dollars—which is what he'd paid for the
Chinagirl—and he'd let the young fellow pay him
in labor. That was all I could get out of him. He
Btuck to those terms for the best part of a week.
Till finally Bert borrowed our mule and ,rig and
rode off .and was gone two days, and Lord! if he
didn't come back with a sad grey-haired woman,
full of sags, and deliver her up with a flourish. That
was Mrs. Clement and I never found out where
Bert got her. You just didn't look to find such en-
terprise in a boy like that, and part of it was the
way he never told anyone how he did it.
   The Russian hadn't expected Bert to come up
              Welcome to Hard Times           137
 with anyone but it was to his credit he stuck to
 the terms. He might even have delighted in the
 boy's wherewithal. But then the trouble was Mae
 and Jessie. They didn't take to the new woman at
 all, they sniffed at her and found her wanting.
 When Zar offered her the same arrangement he
 had with them they went into a rage. It was an
 insult to them, there was a big fuss,and they made
 up their minds then and there to quit Zar and leave
 the town.
   That was a noisy morning in my cabin, Jessie
and Mae coming in and tearfully ordering me to
write out tickets for the next stage. Miss Adah
was with them, wringing her hands, and Zar shout-
ing and ranting; and things were all inside out now
as the girls were put out with Bert for disrupting
things and Zar was standing up for him. But when
Mae and Jessie demanded their share of the profits
which Zar had been holding in trust for them, the
Russian stopped the game: their money, along
with his own, he had invested in the wood for the
new "hotel." It was all gone, receipted by Alf, he
told the furious women, and smiling he invited
them to carry off their share of the lumber when
it came on the freight wagons.
   That took the heart out of them; and nothing
more was said or done once the whole problem had
reached its natural limits. By the time the lumber
came, and Zar was hiring a few miners who knew
how to carpenter, the women were actually looking
forward to the luxury of those second-story rooms
—although they never did warm up to old Mrs.
Clement.
   And by autumn, when the wedding was made,
everyone—Zar, Mae, Jessie as well as the rest of
138                E. L. Doctorow
 us in the town—were happy for the two young
 people. And the only shadows were on the faces
 of Bert and his Chinagirl, both comhed and clean
 but awful scared, and looking sorry about the
 whole thing.
   I was the one did the marrying. I don't regret
it, I think it was proper enough, it sort of fell on
me to finished the business I had become party to.
We stood out in front of Zar's old place. There was
a scatter of people looking on including a few folks
I barely knew. Over the heads, across the street,
was Zar's new saloon, two stories as it was
planned, with three rooms with glass windows on
the second floor and a false front another story
high; next to it, with an alley in between, was
Isaac Maple's wood store which Swede had raised
almost by himself. From where I stood the scar of
the old street was blocked from my sight. None
of the newcomers knew that I was no real Mayor,
or that the words I spoke to wed the boy and girl
were those few true phrases told to me by Miss
Adah—who seemed ashamed even to recall them
—plus what I could summon up in my mind from
the ordained minister who married me more than
twenty years before. Miss Adah had a Bible too,
and had offered it to me until Mae pointed out the
Chinagirl wasn't hardly a Christian and so it would
not be fitting.
   Afterwards Zar gave out drinks on the house.
His bar and his mirror weren't arrived yet and he
passed the liquor out from behind his plank, we all
drank up, one of the new men showed a violin,
and although it was afternoon we danced around
on that new pine floor till it was tolerably sancti-
fied. Swede brought his Helga in to dance, I
             Welcome to Hard Times           139
danced with Molly, I did alright for an old man,
that rigid back was soft in my hands and there
was a flush of pleasure on Molly's face as we
stomped around, arms around, till we could dance
no more.
   Sometime between that heady evening she re-
lented and that day we danced—there must have
been a moment when we reached what perfection
was left to our lives. "We've both suffered," she
said, but words don't turn as the earth turns, they
only have their season. When was the moment,
I don't know when, with all my remembrances I
can't find it; maybe it was during our dance, or
it was some morning as a breeze of air shook the
sun's light; maybe it was one of those nights of
hugging when we reached our ripeness and the
earth turned past it; maybe we were asleep. Really
how life gets on is a secret, you only know your
memory, and it makes its own time. The real time
leads you along and you never know when it hap-
pens, the best that can be is come and gone.

   What my mind sees now is the winter, Novem-
ber. The cabin is double-boarded, snug against
the wind. Just inside, by the front door, is my
desk, Swede's table which I've bought from him.
The*e are shelves on the walls filled with pro-
visions, pegs hung with extra boughten clothes for
all of us, a commode with an ironstone jug and
washbowl. Mr. Hayden Gillis sits at my desk look-
ing a long tune at my books, a man all the way
from the office of the Governor of the Territory.
   "What have you charged for your lots Mr.
Mayor," he says shortly, turning around to face
me.
140                E. L. Doctorow
     "Well nothing to speak of. I put down witness
  stakes whenever someone claims a section he in-
  tends to build on. And he signs the ledger and I
  sign, that's all."
     "You are not the promoter of this townsite?"
     "No..."
     "Would you believe it?" Molly says wiping her
 hands on her apron. "Anyone who wants, gets."
     He looks from her to me—a short man with a
 large head, hair falling back to his shoulders,
 small features down near his chin. "Your records
 are thorough. But I see no mention of your election
 as Mayor."
    "Well no sir, I just come by the title. You see it
 got around how I was keeping a write on things.
 And then when we found there's going to be a road
 through us why people began to claim this piece
 and that along the street, and I kept things straight
 for them so there would be no fights. Mr. Zar,
 that's the Russian, and Mr. Maple the storekeep,
 they've been building for when the crowd comes
 to lay the road. Zar owns the big place down the
 street and the public house opposite. Isaac has
 the store and he's the one put up those sheet-iron
 cribs to rent. They are the big owners right now."
    "But for this place and the windmill not a foot
of streetfront do we own," Molly says angrily, "my
husband likes to see other people make the
money."
    "Alright Molly."
    "Somebody is going to drill another well, it's
bound to happen although Blue doesn't see how.
Then where will we be? I'll tell you Mr. Gillis, this
is more than an honest man standing before you,
               Welcome to Hard Times           141
  you can trust his records for they show against
  him!"
    "Well," the man says as he stands, "I think I've
 seen enough." He pulls at his hammer-claw coat,
 takes his stovepipe from my desk. "If you will
 come with me, sir," he says to me, and to Molly he
 nods.
    Outside, although it is cold and the sky heavy,
 Zar and Isaac are waiting with their hats in their
 hands. We all four walk up to Zar's new place, not
 a word being said as the man strides in the lead,
 badly bowed in the legs and rocking with each
 step. Jimmy darts in from nowhere and begins to
 walk behind him in imitation until I take a swipe
 at him and he's gone again.
Isaac whispers to me: "Blue, if ye get the chance
ask does he know Ezra Maple. He's a travelin'
man, could be he's met my brother along the way."
I would like to ask it for Isaac, along with a few
questions in my own mind, but the official is not a
man who allows himself to be put upon. While
the others wait at the bar we go upstairs to the
room he's taken (hastily given up by Jessie the
day before) and he sits down at a table by the
window and works with a sheaf of papers and ink
stamps for a bit, muttering to himself as if I wasn't
even standing there.
   "Every time someone puts a little capital into
this Territory I'm called in by the Governor and
sent on my way. It doesn't matter I suffer from
the rheumatism, nor that I'm past the age of riding
a horse's back. If a man files a claim that yields,
there's a town. If he finds some grass, there's a
town. Does he dig a well? Another town. Does he
142                E. L. Doctorow
stop somewhere to ease his bladder, there's a
town. Over this land a thousand times each year
towns spring up and it appears I have to charter
them all. But to what purpose? The claim pinches
out, the grass dies, the well dries up, and everyone
will ride off to form up again somewhere else for
me to travel. Nothing fixes in this damned country,
people blow around at the whiff of the wind. You
can't bring the law to a bunch of rocks, you can't
settle the coyotes, you can't make a society out of
sand. I sometimes think we're worse than the
Indians . . . What is the name of this place, Hard
Times? You are a well-meaning man Mr. Blue, I
come across your likes occasionally. I noticed
Blackstone on your desk, and Chitty's Pleadings.
Well you can read the law as much as you like but
it will be no weapon for the spring when the town
swells with people coming to work your road. You
need a peace officer but I don't even see you wear-
ing a gun. I look out of this window and I see
cabins, loghouse, cribs, tent, shanty, but I don't see
a jail. You'd better build a jail. You'd better find a
shootist and build a jail."
   Then he turns and goes to his Gladstone travel-
ing bag, unlocks it, burrows under some things and
comes up with a labeled bottle of whiskey and two
small glasses. He rubs the glasses with the flap of
his coat, and then glancing up at me with that
small face in that big head he hands me a glass and
pours: "The jail can wait, but now let's drink to the
end of your tenure."
   Well everything he's said I stow in my mind,
only thinking now what his visit means: it will be
a long year of expectations but by the spring they
will come true.
              Welcome to Hard Times            143
   I don't remember tasting whiskey as good as
that. A few minutes later I walked down the stairs
while the anxious faces looked up at me from the
bar: Zar, Isaac, Swede, Bert Albany—none of them
would do. Before anyone could say anything I
went out and up the street to the stable and found
Jenks sleeping just inside the door. I shook him
awake and dragged him back to Hayden Gillia.
And at the top of the stairs, while everyone below
looked on amazed, and while Jenks himself stood
wide awake now with his mouth open the man
stuck a tin star on his jacket and swore him in as a
Deputy Sheriff, salary twenty-five dollars a year
payable the following year.
   "You ever kill your man?" Mr. Gillis asked
Jenks.
   Jenks turned red: "Yessir, reckon ..."
   "Good. You're running this town now. See to it
these folks make up a pot for a jailhouse. Get the
records from Mr. Blue here and keep them neat.
First time you get a serious outlaw, undead, write
a letter to the capital and we'll put a circuit judge
on to you. Here's paper. Town charter. Census
list forms. Petition for statehood you can get peo-
ple to sign when there's nothing else to keep you
busy."
   Then the man was clumping downstairs with his
bag in his hand and his stovepipe hat and out the
doors he went without a nod to anyone. Isaac
Maple called up to me: "Blue?" But I shrugged
and he ran out after. Everyone else crowded around
me at the bar. What did it come to, this man's
visit? What was happening? I smiled because there
could be no doubt. "Rest your mind Zar," I said
244                E. L. Doctorow
 to the Russian, "all the money you're in for will
 come back at you double."
   Jenks, in the meantime, was standing on the
stairs with that sheaf of papers in his hand, glanc-
ing down at the badge on his coat and then toward
the doors and back again at his chest. He was well
confounded. But then he began to appreciate what
had happened and as he came down each step his
wolfy smile got wider and wider.
   "Wall," Zar shouted, "we are OK and without
worry now Janks is Sheriff I"
   Everyone laughed. Jenks came up to the bar and
said to Bert who was tending: "Somethin1 fer ever-
man heah!" and he waved his hand grandly. In
the drinking that followed Jenks laid his papers on
the bar. They must have fallen off in the fun, I
found them later on the floor, bootmarks all over
them. I gathered them up and tucked them inside.
my vest.

   Jenks's being a lawman didn't change things
much. People still came to me with what was on
their minds; and I still kept the ledgers. I was
ready to give them to him any time he asked. But
maybe a month after Hayden Gillis had been
through, the Sheriff came to me saying as he'd
allow me to do the paperwork for him considering
how busy he/ was on the street keeping an eye on
matters:—and how, besides, I knew how to write.
And from then, as before, he had no part in any-
thing that was on my desk, except to come in once -
or twice each day to look over my shoulder if I
was sitting there, to nod sagely, but more likely
only to get a free meal from Molly. So far as I
              Welcome to Hard Times           145
know nobody in the town paid Jenks much atten-
tion except to make a joke of him now and then;
but Molly and Jimmy treated him with respect and
deference and it made him feel more the man he
was supposed to be. He paced the street regular,
wearing a gun in an open holster from his belt,
and his star carefully displayed. And sometimes
Jimmy followed a few steps after him and it got
so you could tell where Jenks was by spotting
Jimmy at some door along the street.
    By the new year the street ran from my cabin,
which was its southernmost end, in a crescent that
found itself once more at John Bear's shack at the
foot of the trail leading up to the lodes. It was
a full year, and half again another, since the day
I put spade to earth for a dugout.
   Molly said: "All these fools have come like buz-
zards after the smell of meat."
    "Buzzards eat what's dead, Molly. This town is
alive."
    "Nobody talks. They're all keeping an eye out."
    "They're waiting for the spring, Molly." Why did
I need to tell her so? "Everyone stands to make a
little money comes the warm weather."
    "Jimmy?" she called.
   We were by the front of our door in the dark
of late afternoon. There was a crust of snow on
the ground. Up the street there were lights shining
from the windows. In the sharp, cold air, you
could smell suppers cooking.
   "Molly," I turned to her, "what's worrying you?
We are alright, can't you see that? We are prosper-
ing."
   Just then Jimmy jumped out of the shadows
146              E. L. Doctorow
where we hadn't been looking for him. He put his
hands over Molly's eyes: "Hool" he said in her
ear.
   She started. Then she pulled him around to her
and held him tight: "Oh Mayor," she said, "if this
town stretched four ways as far as the eye could
see, it would still be a wilderness!"
  The boy's trick had startled me too. And for
one chilling moment I knew what Molly meant. A
shudder ran down my back. But then the true sight
of our town returned to me, and once more Molly
and I were looking at the same scene but with
different eyes. I had to smile how like a woman it
was to scare in the good times.
  That was only last winter but it seems like
ancient days in my mind.
THIRD LEDGER
                       10

I have been trying to write what happened but it
is hard, wishful work. Time is beginning to run out
on me, and the form remembrance puts on things
is making its own time and guiding my pen in ways
I don't trust. In my mind's eyes is an arch of suns
multiplying the sky—or a long flickering night of
one moon turning over and over into its shadows.
I know this is trickery but I can't blot it out. I
think Molly, Molly, Molly and she is the time, turn-
ing in her phases like that moon, smiling and
frowning while the boy grows big, setting down in
frame like Fee his father . . . And I see something
that never happened, the two of them carrying a
giant cross with great effort, planting it over Fee.
"I ain't much for God," he protests, "I always put
my faith in people."
   Molly, could you really know what was coming?
Or did it come because you knew it? Were you
smarter than the life, or did the life depend on
you?
   There was a sign they put up when the weather
grew warm. Isaac provided a bolt of muslin and
                        149
150               E. L. Doctorow
Zar bought the paint; and young Bert spent a week
painting the red letters in the style he copied out
of a catalogue. Helga sewed on a canvas backing,
making slits against the wind. And on a dazzling
morning Swede raised up the sign over the street.
From the scaffold of the well it stretched all the
way across to the false front of Zar's saloon:
WELCOME TO HARD TIMES, it said, rippling in
the breeze like a thing alive.
   Most everyone stood outside for the occasion,
gazing up at the banner and making comment. I
figured you could see that sign half a mile away
on the flats. But that was the morning Molly broke
down crying and said: "Blue, for God's sake let's
leave this place!"
   And then, for some weeks, not a day passed and
she didn't say it again, begging, pleading with me to
sell out: "It's not safe any more, I swear we've got
to get out of here!"
   "Where do you want to go Molly?"
   "Christ, I don't know. Let's just leave, Blue.
Right now. Today. The three of us, we'll find
somewhere—"
   "Molly what you're saying makes no sense. Here
we've put all this work, and life down, we've
made a home from nothing, and you want to ride
off!"
   "God, you're a fool, Mayor. You always was a
fool!"
   "That may be. But I'm not fool enough to pull
up stakes just when the claim is beginning to pay!
You don't think it's different anywhere else do
you? You don't think there's only one Turner
riding this land!"
  "Oh Christ there are hundreds, yes I know.
              Welcome to Hard Times            151
Thousands. And they're going to get me—they're
all coming for me!"
   If I was a wiser man I would have seen where
the misery was. You could step out the door and
the scar of the old town was blocked from your
sight, but the scar was still there.
   "I suppose you'll protect me! I suppose you'll
take care of me, just like the last time. Good old
Mayor, fast with the gun he is, no worries with
Mayor Blue marching behind your skirts. No wor-
ries at all!"
   And there would be that hand closing over my
heart, that almost forgotten pain.
   "Why these fools, with their banners and their
shacks, and their big plans— Oh God, we've got
to get away from here!"
    "Molly please—"
   I would hold her in my arms and she would weep
with great sobs that made her shudder: "Blue—I
beg you—sell out—and we'll go—to some city—
Blue." I would touch her hair, press her head to
my chest and stand with her until she was quiet-
ened. I remember once how I sat her down at the
table. Her green eyes were puffed with crying as
she leaned on her elbow, her head in her hand,
trying to listen to me.
    "Molly, it could be you are right and this street
in all its bustle will bring some Bad Man. I'll say
you are right—sure as winter brings summer we'll
draw our Man from Bodie. I suppose I know it as
well as you. But you see this time we'll be too
good for him. Listen to what I say: I don't mean
I'll stand up to his gun, I mean I won't have to.
When he came last time, the minute Flo walked
over to him we were lost. Before Fee went in
152                E. L. Doctorow
Avery's place with, his stick of wood we were lost.
You fight them, you just look at them, and they
have you. Molly it's something I know, I've seen
enough, I've seen them ride into a town, a bunch
of them, feeling out the place, prodding for the
right welcome. And when they get it you'd might
as well turn your gun on yourself as try to turn
them away. But a settled town drives them away.
When the business is good and the life is working
they can't do a thing, they're destroyed."
   "Oh Lord," she wailed, "oh Jesus God, spare me
from this man, this talker—"
   "Molly! You know something? Listen to me, you
know why he came that time? We wanted him.
Our tongues were just hanging out for him. Even
poor old Fee, he built a street but he couldn't make
a proper town. He must have knowed when he
picked up that board the hope was already dead.
If he didn't know he wasn't the man I think he was;
if he was fooled he couldn't know what life is."
   "Blue—"
   "Molly, if you believe me, believe what I'm say-
ing, and that Turner will never get to us!"

   After a while she didn't ask it any more. That
in itself should have made me pack and ride us
out. It was not from any comfort I supplied that
she spoke no more of leaving; but from what, I
think now, was a giving-in to the devil that grinned-
at her. Weren't those cries—"I beg you Blue,
please Blue, Blue Blue Blue"—weren't they cries
for help? I was no help, once more I was walking
her to the saloon, behind her still.
   It was as if she grudged anyone's life who hadn't
suffered at the hands of that Bad Man. When peo-
              Welcome to Hard Times           153
pie began to ride in under the banner she grew
sullen. One day she fastened two sticks together
for a cross and with Jimmy went out to the graves
to put it at Fee's head. I watched them from the
cabin door, and I remembered the order of those
graves: they were planting the cross, by mistake,
for one-armed Jack Millay.
   She would take no part in the life on the street,
she began to stay inside, only sitting sometimes
out in back when the weather was fair, looking at
the view west of the rocks and the flats. I did the
buying for us and Jimmy brought her the news.
He was good at that, always managing to be where
something was going on; and then he'd run to
Molly to tell her about it. In that way she had all
the news; and Jimmy had all her opinions. Molly's
opinions were much the same about everything.
Whether it was someone come on the stage, or
some rumor about the road, some new business of
Zar's or Isaac Maple's, or some measure I had
taken—she didn't like it. Everything fell under
her tongue and there would be suppers where I
would eat while Molly would talk on and on, her
mind wandering over each person, each foot of
ground, and I'd be finished and my coffee drunk
and her plate would hardly be touched. Jimmy
listened to everything she said like it was gospel,
no matter what she spoke of or how many times
she'd said it before, he would drink up her words
like they were mother's milk.
   There was only one person who Molly would
tolerate and that was Jenks—not because he was
anything but a fool but because he was so handy
with guns. Jenks's name never felt the whip at our
table and that was why he was one of the few
154                E. L. Doctorow
people Jimmy had a talking acquaintance with.
Many's the time I saw the boy helping Jenks at
the stable, mucking out stalls, running errands.
For pay Jimmy got to coddle the animals, and
sometimes the boon of a lesson in gun handling. I
found him at it once, holding a Colt shoulder-high,
clicking off the trigger at the barn walls while
Jenks held a stick under his wrist and ran a patter:
"Hold 'm steady, sonny, squeeze 'm, ,squeeze 'm,
don't yer pull, thet's hit, line 'm steady ..." I tried
to put a stop to it and that's when I found out
Jenks was teaching the boy just to oblige Molly,
who had asked him the favor.
   Now there is no wrong in showing a boy arms
except it was like everything else Jimmy was get-
ting. And the effect of it all wasn't lost on other
people. He was thickening into his father's son
but the look on his face was Molly's. Mae told me
privately, because she didn't want to make any
fuss she said, that she greeted the boy one day
looking out her second-story window, and in a
sudden rage he picked up a stone and threw it right
up, hitting her in the chest. Isaac Maple caught
him once pocketing a handful of shells from the
counter. I settled with Isaac but it wasn't the
money that bothered him. And there was no set-
tling at all with John Bear: the Indian's garden
patch was more than food to him, there was no one
else who could make a plant grow. But one day he
woke from his nooning and there was his greens all
stepped on. He never thought of Jimmy, for some
reason he made me understand it was Zar he
blamed—unlikely as Zar would be to do such a
thing. But I knew who it was. And I thought it
              Welcome tq Hard Times             155
wouldn't do to talk to him or lay a hand to him. I
thought it was Molly who needed reaching.
  "Molly that boy gets wilder each day. He's
turning mean."
  "Is that what you think?"
   "He threw a rock at Mae."
  "Well I hope it was thrown true."
   "Molly this is Fee's boy—"
   "I'll tell you what's rankling you Mayor, he's a
fondness for Jenks, he looks up to Jenks. And it
burns don't it?"
   "Jenks has nothing to do with it!"
   "Were you any good with a gun Mayor maybe
you could teach the boy some manliness."
   "That's not manliness."
   "Oh I'll tell you it is, it is, Mayor—"
   "Well is it manliness to step all over the Indian's
patch?"
  She looked at me. Then she went to the door
and called the boy and a moment later Jimmy came
inside and stood in front of her.
   "Was it you ruffled up those plants?"
  The boy glanced at me with a disgusted look
on his face: "No."
  "Was it?" Molly grabbed his shoulders and shook
him and he went scared; "Yes ma'am."
   One two three she put the slaps smart across his
face.
   "You do such as that again, I'll have your hide.
You hear me?" She screamed: "You hear me?"
  Well that wasn't what I wanted either, I could
have hurt him myself if it would serve the purpose.
As it was he hated me as he fingered the slaps
Molly gave him. A night or so later I found my ink
156                E. L. Doctorow
jar turned over and the cover of one of the ledgers
all soaked. It riled me and I was ready to forget
anything but my own anger and light into the boy
no matter what purpose it would serve. But as I
turned there was Molly in the dugout, his room
now, watching the boy get ready for bed.
   "Look at them shoulders," I listened to her mur-
mur. "Molly's Jim is gettin' tall and strong, ain't
he? Molly feeds him up good and he's turning into
a sure enough man, isn't it so? Big Jim they'll call
him and he'll take care of his Molly, yes he
will..;"

   This was the time of our greatest prosperity.
Small clouds of gnats hung in the yellow evenings
and horses tied up to the porch rails were touching
rumps. Every rising sun saw another cone of dust
sprouting up from the flats. People needed work;
and it was like all the West was following the
smell of it on the spring airs, like the scent of
water on the desert. What were my feelings, did
it make me uneasy to see our town as a refuge?
How many times I would open the door to see
wheels turning past us: it was a dusty couple
pulling hard on their handcart, or a Pike County
bunch filling a flatbed wagon, one limping beside
with his kneecoat and Bowie belt, an old long rifle
on his shoulders. You could tell the Pike Counties
if only by their coughs. A man rode in one day
wearing a dirty white linen suit, a roll of green felt
was across his saddle, he was a faro dealer. And
there was much bidding between Zar and Jonce
Early to get the man. Zar got him. There was a
raggedy old woman come along, nothing in her
wagon but a pile of rags and a crate with three
              Welcome to Hard Times            157
 squawking chickens; and she made money selling
 their eggs for a dollar apiece. But most of the
 arrivals had just themselves to offer a boss and
 the money was going into the pockets mainly of
 those already settled on the street.
   We were all doing a brisk business. People paid
in every kind of exchange for my water—U.S.
silver, greenbacks, Territory scrip; and when I
wasn't busy seeing to the well I was noting Ex-
press orders and taking mail. There was another
stage on the line now and we had two arrivals
each week. If you went into Isaac Maple's store
("Maple Bros." it said on the outside in paint,
Isaac's hope lettered for all to see), if you went in
there, there was always someone ahead of you—
even though Isaac had the Chinagirl helping him
wait on customers. The store had every kind of
stock you could wish, sugar, flour, foods canned
and in brine barrels, preserves, dry goods, cutlery,
carpentry tools, tar paper, rolls of barbed wire,
tobaccos, anquitum for lice, corn starch, bottled
lavender water and honey and castor oil—you'd
think you was in Silver City.
   Directly across from the store, every morning
and evening, there was always a crowd in front of
the tent, which Swede rented now for his eatery.
They would stand there waiting for the big fellow
to let them in. For twenty-five cents you could eat
a breakfast of flourcakes and coffee, for fifty cents
a dinner of salt pork, coffee and biscuits made up
by Helga. I ate there myself once Molly stopped
cooking.
   As for the Russian he couldn't ask for better
business, even with his competition across the
street. Whenever someone rode in it was usually to
158                E. L. Doctorow
"Zar's Palace" he went for information, since it
was the tallest building in the town. Bert, behind
the fancy bar over there, would send them to my
door; or if it was Swede in his restaurant, he
would wipe his big hands on his apron and lead
the stranger over to me. There was nobody from
the mine set up in the town as yet and so I kept a
list of all those who wanted work. I didn't state
myself as an agent for the mine, in fact I was al-
ways sure to make it clear I wasn't; but it helped
me to know who was in town and besides I was
able to use the chance to get another signature on
the petition for statehood. And it always gave the
stranger a feeling of having done all he could do
until the hiring began, to write his name down. I
must have had a half a hundred names on that list.

   One day I came back to the cabin in the evening
and there was no fire on the stove or supper on the
table. Then she stopped doing laundry. And then I
was the one sweeping dust, every morning, every
night. The load gets heavier and you shift to it,
that's all, you can accommodate yourself without
even realizing.
   A man came up to me in front of Swede's tent
and said: "Mayor I was just by your place to post
a letter but nobody answered the knock."
  "My wife's always home," I said.
   "Well yes, and I saw smoke from your chimney
pipe, the Mrs. Mayor hard of hearin'?" He grinned
at me.
   "Give me your letter," I said, "I'll take it now."
   I went down the street. It was a warm day and
no wind blew. A heavy stench of life filled the air,
               Welcome to Hard Times             159
 flies stuck to your clothes and you had to rub the
 gnats off your face.
    "Molly!" The door was latched and I banged it
 and banged it until she let me in.
    "Listen," I said, "you've got to stop this I"
    "I don't want filth in my house."
    "You think everyone knocks is the Man from
 Bodie?"
    "Keep away from me!"
    "People come to me with business, you run in
 the dugout. Someone wipes his feet and takes his
 hat off and you curse him!"
    "Every manner of filth and dirt, every tramp,
 every stinking lowlife!"
    "You are getting a name in this town, Molly. I
 don't like you acting this way!"
    "Get out then! They're all like you. All the filth.
They're no worse than you are, damn you!" And
she ran into the back room and slammed the door.
   That was the way she was acting. It was as if
each person coming into town was taking away a
little more of her air to breathe. What could I do?
I see now what was going on but can I say I saw
then?
   Jimmy accepted her disposition, it should have
bothered him that she began to ignore him most of
the time, but he saw her only a certain way and he
was rewarded whenever she came back to him with
a rush of feeling. He kept up his duties to her like
a faith. For instance people knowing who he was
would sometimes give him their dollars for the
water. I was keeping no strict records on such pay-
ments, but I knew he turned over to Molly as much
money as he ever gave into my hands. Where she
160               E. L. Doctorow
hid it I didn't know, or what she wanted to do
with it. I knew she wasn't making plans to leave,
she was past making plans for her life, if I could
have foreseen I would have put her on the stage
myself, I would have bought her a catalogue dress
and bonnet and packed her a satchel of greenbacks
saying Go on Molly, you were right and I was
wrong, the look of your cat's green eyes will stay
with me, go as far as this money takes you and
leave Hard Times to the Mayor...
  But one night I found out where the money
went.
   "Blue." Her whisper coming across the room.
"Blue, you sleeping?"
  "No."
   "Why aren't you sleeping? What's on your mind.
Blue, that you can't sleep?"
   "Nothing."
   "Tell me. Tell Molly your trouble."
   "What?"
   "You want to come over here, you want to come
to your Molly? Alright. Alright." I heard her mov-
ing in her bed, making room for me.
   "I was just thinking of that letter come for
Archie D. Brogan," I said quickly. I didn't know
what had got into her.
   "He's got a letter?"
   "A letter addressed with a typewriting machine.
I wish I knew what it said, that's all."
   A giggle: "Well you fool, why don't you open
it?"
   "Go to sleep Molly."
   "Come here Blue. Come give me a hug and forget
that letter you say is worrying you out of your
              Welcome to Hard Times             161
sleep. It's not any letter is it? You know what it is,
come on, come to your Molly."
   I had not thought of her that way for how long?
How long had it heen since she turned, little by
little, so compliant, that I felt I was some duplicate
Bad Man taking his pleasure?
   "I want to whisper something. I really have to
tell something in your ear—"
   I am a foolish man, I shall always have to go
to Molly when she calls, knowing everything, ex-
pecting anything, I will still go. I put my feet over
the side of the bunk and she cried, "JIMMY!"
Loud enough to wake the town, "JIMMY!" she
screamed.
   And there at the door, the dim light of the cabin
behind him, he stood torn out of his sleep and a
shotgun cradled in his arm, the boy.
   "You'll keep away from me now Mayor? You'll
stay away? You try to touch me and you see
what'll happen to you? You see you lechering old
bastard!" And that was her voice I recognized.
   With a groan I was at the boy, wresting the gun
from him. He was half asleep, he stumbled over
to her bed and fell into her arms, making sounds
like he was shivering. "There, it's alright Jim,
Molly's alright, don't you fret—" I took his arm
and I pulled him away. "Go on to your bed," I
swung him past me, "go on or I'll whip you good!"
I herded him all the way back to his cot, shoving
him so that he fell down the step into the dugout.
"Oh oww!" he cried, rubbing his toes, and I left
him sitting there and crying.
   That new oily double-barrel glinting blue was in
my hands and I swung it like a hammer against
162                E. L. Doctorow
my desk but the stock didn't break. Through the
door there was Molly sitting up, holding the
blanket up to her neck, her hair was down and
she was giggling at her joke, the laughter came out
of her closed mouth in fits. I threw the gun at her.
It hit the wall and fell behind her. She stopped
laughing, her mouth set in a prim smile, righteous
and suffering, and that was the face I slammed the
door on.
   I sat down and held my head in my hands. How
could one man have been so blind stupid in his
life! God help me for my sight, my heart went
out to this child. Was everything, even her old
sweetness to me, a design on him? She was train-
ing him for the Bad Man, she was breaking him
into a proper mount for her own ride to Hell, and
I hadn't seen it till now, I hadn't ever understood
it was not me who suffered her, it was Jimmy.

   When it was decently day I went over to Zar's
place. "Pour you a breakfast Mayor?" Mae said
quietly when I stepped through the doors. "You
look as you could use it."
   The place was mostly empty, a few people were
sleeping at the tables. The night air was still in the
room, it was cool but it smelled bad.
   "Bert not here yet?" I said.
   "Can't expeck him to leave a cozy bed jes' cause
he has a job to do," she said, pouring, "can't ex-
peck him to leave his Chink honey."
   I took my drink.
   " 'Smatter, Blue, that wife o' yourn givin' ye a
time?"
   "What?"
   "Man looks like you do in the mornin', either
               Welcome to Hard Times             163
 it's his wife or his liver. Ain't got no liver trouble
 so far as I know."
    "You don't look so good yourself," I said. She
had no color in her face, she was not so plump any
more. "You not enjoying the prosperity, Mae?"
    "What do you want, Mayor, goddamnit." She
was rubbing her forehead. "Don't know what it's
like to breathe any more. Used to be jes' the
week's end, these days every night is Saturday."
    Zar came clumping down the stairs. He dressed
fancy now. "La la la," he was singing, he came over
and pinched Mae's cheek. "Maechka," he said, but
she pushed his hand off and went to sit down with
her glass.
    "Blue," the Russian turned smiling to me, "you
are the man I am meaning to see. I have important
business to talk."
    "Not now Zar."
    "Of course now. You have just to listen." He
carefully took from his pocket a folded piece of
newspaper. "At Silver City I see there is Company,
for three hundred dollars they will go anywhere
with steam drill and dig the water."
    "So?"
  "So I tell you and you won't be mad. I am think-
ing closely of sending for them. That way I have
my own well."
  "Congratulations."
  "But not to sell water to others, I promise you
that."
  Mae laughed. He turned and glared at her.
  "Zar," I said, "do what you want. But the minute
you put up a well Isaac Maple will too. You know
that don't you?"
  He shrugged. "What do I care?"
164               E. L. Doctorow
   "Well then why should you think I care what
you do? Do what you want and good luck to you."
A couple of men walked in the doors and then a
few more after them. The day was beginning. I put
money on the bar and I walked out.
    On the porch a man stepped in front of me:
"Mornin" Mayor," he mumbled, "jest wonderin' is
there any news—"
    "You'll know when I know," I said shortly.
    "I know Mayor but I can't—"
    "Come over to my place when I'm there," I said.
 "I got other business just now."
   Isaac was on his porch, putting out some wares,
I went inside with him and spoke to him for a few
minutes. When I was through I went down the
street to the cabin. Molly was in the room behind
the door and she was asleep, but the dugout was
empty.
    It was toward the middle of the morning but
 hot and still enough for afternoon. A few men were
 walking out of Swede's tent and they were picking
 their teeth. I went up there and Swede was just
 coming out carrying a pair of kettles.
    "I'm looking for my boy," I said.
    "Ya," he smiled, "inside."
    Jimmy was not at any of the long tables. A
dozen heads glanced up as I looked around. I
found him out in back, cross-legged on the ground,
rolling pancakes and stuffing them in his mouth.
He wouldn't look at me. Swede's wife was stand-
ing by him, her hands in her aprpn, smiling as she
watched him eat.
    "Jimmy you'll come with me," I said.
    I dug in my pockets to pay for his breakfast
 bu Helga shook her head and waved my hand
              Welcome to Hard Times            165
down. When he was finished I walked away with-
out looking back. I went down the street past
Bear's shack, getting on the trail and climbing up.
I was feeling short of breath but I kept up my pace
and turned off well along the trail, when I saw a
flat rock. I picked my way to it and sat down and
waited for him. And a minute later he came along
and stood a few feet away looking at me.
   "Sit down here," I said, "I've got something to
say to you." He didn't move. "I won't hurt you,
come on."
   We sat side by side watching the town below us,
a street of houses at the foot of that vast flatland,
a small stir of life in all that stillness. A cool
breeze blew on the face but down there it wasn't
enough to turn the windmill. Horses and mules
were tied up along the railings, people were
walking this way and that, every now and then a
fragment of someone's voice would rise up to
our ears, or something would catch the sun and
flash in our eyes.
   "I brought you up here because I wanted to be
sure no one would bother us," I said. "What I have
to say is private between you and me. You under-
stand that?"
  "Sure."
  "How old do you reckon you are? Fourteen?
Ffteen years?"
   "I don'know."
   "You're a sight bigger than the day I carried you
down from these rocks. You remember that? You
took my gun, you were going after that Bad Man
killed your Daddy."
   My gaze went out beyond the town to the graves
in the flats, and I suppose he looked there too. I
166                E. L. Doctorow
didn't dare look at him, I didn't trust myself to say
just what I wanted to say.
   "You remember that?"
   "Yes."
   "I don't think I could carry you now. I don't
suppose if you didn't want it I could make you do
anything. But I'll tell you: when I got you down to
the Indian's shack I put you down too fast. I let
you go too quick. I should have made plans for
you then and there. But I never had practice being
a father before and I didn't know any better."
   I felt him looking at me but I kept my own eyes
on the town. "Now look at down there. It's not as
neat as the town Fee put up, it don't show one
man's mark. Just a patch job, spit and old lumber
but if he could see it he'd like it. He'd say it was
alright."
   "How do you know what my Pa would say!"
   "I used to talk to him. I know what he valued.
He died two years short, it would have pleasured
him to see this."
   He picked up a stone and tossed it away, watch-
ing it bounce down among the rocks.
   "Now when he died I said to myself, 'Well he
has left a son and I'm going to look after his son
and pass on the lesson I learned from Fee.' It's not
something a person could learn in one day or one
week. It's something you have to learn into, like
carpentry. You understand?"
   He said nothing.
   "And I knew that, so I never said a word to you.
I figured if I did as your father did why that would
be the way; if I did everything as Fee would have
done it, well you'd learn alright. And you mightn't
suffer the loss so bad."
              Welcome to Hard Times            167
   Down below a woman was filling her buckets at
the water tank. A man, it looked like Jenks, was
walking into Zar's Palace.
   "Course I was wrong, I should have taken you in
hand right away and talked to you as I am now.
Molly has got to you, it's natural I suppose, but if
you grow to the life the way she has, I'm saying it
clear as I can Jimmy, you won't have,the idea, you
won't be Fee's son any more."
   "What do you know—"
   "You've got to allow for Molly. She can't give
up her suffering."
   "My Pa had sand. He weren't no coward."
   "Does she call me that? Well now I've got to tell
you"—looking at him, feeling the desperation of
what I was doing—"probably your Pa did only one
shameful thing in his life and that was to rush
in after Turner."
   "What?"
   "That was the one time he was no example to
you. He went in there to get himself killed."
   "What?"
   "It's what you do when a Bad Man comes,
Jimmy. I tried to do it too but I am a humbler by
nature."
   "You better not talk that way about my Pa—"
Lord, it made me faint-hearted, it was Fee's face
with no lines, a young hairless face with a frown
of anger and no understanding at all. "You better
not talk that way," it said pursing its lips, "you
better not!"
   And what did I expect, you can't tell something
like that, who will know it? "Jim you can squeeze
the trigger and knock down a Bad Man and as sure -
as you've been shootin', another will come up in
 168               E. L. Doctorow
 his place. They take to this land, they don't need
 much to grow, just a few folks together will breed
 'em, a little noise and they'll spring up out of the
 empty shells. Jimmy!"
    He had jumped up. Molly was stepping out of
 the cabin, a small figure in the street below.
    "I have spoken to Isaac Maple," I said trying to
 control my voice. "Isaac will need someone to help
 him out before long. The Chinagirl is getting too
 heavy to move around, her time is coming. What
 do you say to working in Isaac's store? It will be
 good for you. You're going to work regular hours.
 You're going to learn reading and writing. You're
 going to grow up proper with this town and the
 day will come—"
    "She's calling me! Here!" He waved his arms.
 "I'm here!"
   I pulled him down. I took hold of his shoulders
and held him down on the rocks. "What kind of a
mama's boy are you! How far do I have to take you
to get you out of that woman's spell! Listen to me
I said the day is coming when no Man from Bodie
will ride in but he'll wither and dry up to dust. You
hear me? I'm going to see you grow up with your
own mind, I'm going to see you settled just like
this town, you're going to be a proper man and not
some saddle fool wandering around with his
grudge. Jimmy listen to me—"
   He was struggling under me, a strong boy, not
hearing, his face screwed up in hate. And I felt his
breath clean as grass on my face and I talked on
and on as if words could do something. "Listen
listen," I kept saying but the strength was draining
out of me, like hope, and my mind was doing
              Welcome to Hard Times          169
  another talking: It's too late, and I've done it
  wrong, I am too late.
    He pushed me over and jumped up and de-
 livered a kick in my side and ran off down the
 trail. It was a powerful kick and well aimed, I
 feel it now on a deep breath. Below in the town
 there was no sign of Molly. But as I sat up and
 looked I could hear a clatter somewhere and a
 moment later out of the tent two skirted figures
 stumbled into the sun, locked together. Someone
 shouted and people were running from all direc-
 tions, pouring out of the saloon, the store, to
 make up a circle around those two. Another
 moment and I saw Jimmy arrive, ducking into the
 crowd.
   It was Molly rolling around in the dirt witK
Swede's wife Helga. Molly had made up her mind
to take affront because the woman had been feed-
ing up her boy. As I ran down I could hear people
yelling encouragement. But by the time I made my
way through the circle Jenks and Swede had
pulled the two women apart. They stood glaring,
wild-haired and gasping, scratched and mussed so
you could hardly tell one from the other. Molly's
dress was torn in front. "Lookit thet tit," a man
said.
   Later I stood in the cabin holding a hand to my
side, watching the boy bathe her scalp where Helga
had pulled out the hair. Molly was moaning on her
bed. There was a knock at the door and it was
Swede, wringing his hands. Behind him, down the
street, was the sound of his ranting wife.
   "Blue, dis is a bad tang, my vault, forgive my
Helga, my vault—"
170               E. L. Doctorow
   "You big "dumb stupid Swede!" I shouted. I could
feel the water come to my eyes. How was it his
fault? What in Hell made him think he must take
the blame?
                     11
I say that was the true end of me no matter what
happened after. Sharp as the boy's kick in my
side, clear as the pain, was the sudden breathless
vision I had of my unending futility. Who as well
as I and what I am could have ensured the one's
madness and the other's corruption? But we won't
think about it: I tried to keep my heart by taking
it out of doors. And how long was I able to do
that? One week? One hour?
   Some of these spring-comers paid for lodging
and moved into one of Isaac Maple's cribs. And
there was cabin space for those willing to share
beds,, But the town wasn't big enough to take on
everyone and nobody was doing any more build-
ing. Those who had the money to build were mak-
ing it too easily in other ways. "Who cares where
they stay," Zar said to me, "they are drinking
my whiskey, they are bouncing in my beds!" So
after a while there were squatters staked out in
back of the buildings, living out of their wagons, -
lying down for the night under lean-tos. And it
began to make trouble.
                         171
172                E. L. Doctorow
   I mean people would throw their slops into the
alleys. Some didn't care where they did their busi-
ness and it got so you were hard put to walk in
the street without putting your boot down in a
mess. One morning Molly found a drunken man
peeing against the door, and it drove her to dis-
traction, she cried the whole day. I tried to call a
meeting at the well of all the people who owned
streetfront, some of them had privies in back,
but not all; but only Jenks and Isaac and Swede
came. Jenks said: "Jes watch yer step in all yer
do. Hit's good fer the land. How do the Indian get
his greens up if not by shittin' on 'em all winter?"
Isaac was righteous: "Nobody cares a damn," he
said, "but if they all come up with dysentery 'tain't
themselves they'll blame but each other. " Isaac
had the right sentiment but he was a busy man. It
was Swede and I who ended up digging and fenc-
ing sumps behind each side of the street. That
Swede would do anything you asked of him, he
would tilt his head away from his wen and close
his eyes and nod yes—no matter what it was.
   Well the sumps helped but not much. And there
were other troubles too. A few of the job hunters
were men not easy to look at, there was one fel-
low who had running sores all over his face, an-
other, an old man, who was humpbacked with
hands twisted and swollen out of shape. Isaac
came to me claiming whenever one such came into
his store everyone else cleared out and he lost
business. It was not true, of course, he just wanted
me to run these people out of the town. "Speak to
Jenks," I told him, "Jenks is the peace officer here."
Then Zar joined the protest, he refused to serve
the hunchbacky one day and the man, in resent-
              Welcome to Hard Times            173
merit, ran over to Mae and Jessie and waved his
crippled hands in front of their eyes. Zar told Bert
to throw the poor fellow out but Bert wouldn't step
out from behind the bar. The Russian came running
to me and I told him he'd best serve the man his
drink and he'd leave then twice as fast and with
no trouble. "It's easier in the end," I said. But Zar
like Isaac was for running these people off and
Jenks finally rounded up three or four of them at
gunpoint and shooed them away into the flats; but
at night they were back, they wanted work like
everyone, and for a while they made their way be-
hind houses and took their meals behind Swede's
tent from what Helga handed out to them though
the flap. And after a while they came into the
store again and the saloons and so the trouble
was not ended but in fact greater, with greater
hard feelings.
   One morning the egg lady found one of her three
chickens with its head wrung off; she was an old-
timer in the West and she told her sorrows to
nobody, but grabbed up her cane and went into
Zar's Palace swinging. She must have been a
teetotaler to blame only the whiskey for her lost
hen, she bruised a number of shoulders and broke
some bottles and a row of glasses Zar had proudly
imported from the East before she was finally
herded out; and that was my problem too because
I was the one who had to gentle her.
   The weather was getting hotter; and each morn-
ing of prosperity that would start out fresh and
easy to breathe was turning into a day more hot
and burdensome than the last. Every time Alf's
stage came in, or a freight wagon, all I wanted to
see was some Eastern engineer, a man in black,
174               E. L. Doctorow
with plans in his pocket and wages to give out.
On Saturday night with the miners pouring in the
town and the street filling with the noise of frolic
from one end to the other I found Angu's Mcell-
henny lighting up his pipe in front of the stable.
   "If the Company is going to lay a road," I asked
him, "why in hell don't they start in?"
   "Blue it's many years I've been diggin' the earth
and I've seen fortunes in my shovel. But I've
nought to show for it but my calluses and m'
mind is as weak as it ever was. I dinna know."
   "Well what do you hear around Angus?"
   "Don't pry at me my ferlie friend. I know
nothin'. We are diggin' hard six days o' the week
and keepin' our eyes on the ground. I can tell you
no more."
   "Alright Angus. But tell Archie D. Brogan when
you see him there's a letter in his name down
here."
   He took the pipe from his mouth: "Who from?"
   "It doesn't say, Angus, it's only his name on the
front. You'll tell him?"
   He nodded and walked away.
   It baffled me that Angus should be so close-
mouthed, it wasn't like him. Meanwhile the same
questions I had put to him were being asked of
other miners and none of them liked it, the hungry
looks in the eyes of the towners didn't go well with
them. Some newcomers, not happy about waiting
around, had gone up the trail looking for work at
the lodes; and though they had ridden back, sour-
faced, the same day, it didn't sit well with the
diggers that a lot of men were in the country
wanting jobs. There was no love lost between the
two groups that Saturday night. The miners, having
              Welcome to Hard Times            175
their pay to spend, sort of took over at the saloons.
One thing led to another and Jenks was kept fairly
busy breaking up scuffles, once or twice he even
had to draw his pistol to get things quiet. In our
cabin I was at the desk trying to put some order
in all my papers, and Molly sat with sewing on her
lap, and we heard clearly the screeches of the
ladies over at Zar's every time a fight started.
Molly's hands shook so she couldn't work the
needle, she dropped her hands in her lap and I
saw out of the corner of my eye how frightened
she was. Every few minutes Jimmy would come
rushing in to tell of the latest fuss, sweat on his
forehead and such joy in his eyes he could hardly
speak without stammering: "Old J-Jenks, he took
care of 'm alright, socked 'm on the head, poom,
like th-that—"
   "Jimmy," I said, "you stay in here now, go on to
bed, it's late. You hear me, son?" But he would
never hear me.
   He gave one glance to Molly and ran out, leav-
ing the door open wide.
   She made no move to stop him, sitting there her
eyes fixed on nothing, one hand on her throat's
cross, the other knuckled against her teeth.

   A day or two later and the sun not even up, Bert
Albany rapped on the door until I heard him, and
with the sleep still in my eyes I went with him up
the street to Zar's place. The faro dealer was lying
on the floor there, ashen white, and a big red rent
in his vest where he had been stabbed. Jenks was
standing nearby, clutching the collar of that little
hunchback, his gun was drawn and sticking in the
man's back. Bert told me the faro dealer had been
176                E. L. Doctorow
lending out money to people at high rates, some-
times winning it back at his table. He had a list,
Bert saw it, of the men indebted to him. The
hunchbacky had been sitting there losing all of his
loan, and when it was gone he jumped up and
stuck a knife in the dealer's belly.
   The dealer was quiet, concentrating on his
breathing, he was in his senses enough to know to
lay still. I went out to John Bear's shack. It showed
even then the signs of resentment, the door was
splintered, a board or two was gone from the roof.
I woke the Indian up and gave him to understand
there was someone needed doctoring. He came
with me up to the saloon but when he saw it was
Zar's place and the Russian waiting at the door,
he turned on his heel and went back the way he
came.
   Zar and I carried the dealer up to one of the
rooms, Zar being careful every step not to get any
of the man's blood on his clothes. Miss Adah, with
her hair ia braids and a shawl over her nightdress,
said she'd sit with the man and see what she could
do.
  When I came back down the stairs Jenks and his
prisoner were gone, the few people who had
watched the goings-on had drifted away. Zar
offered me a drink but there wasn't anything I
wanted less. Outside was the sound of hammering,
and from the porch, in the grey light, I saw Jenks
in the front of his stable. He had put the hunch-
back in Hausenfield's old boarded-up hearse wagon
and was nailing the door shut.
   "Jenks," I went over to him, "what in God's
name are you doing!"
   "Hit'11 do fer a jail, don't ye thank?"
              Welcome to Hard Times            177
     "You could tie him up without putting him in
  there!"
     "Mayor, I is Shurff an' I ain't seen m' pay yet.
 Don't you fret, I'll see he's fed and stretches his
 laigs. Swede'11 proffer his leftovers. This man has
 stabbed a man, he's got to pay."
     "You've thought it all out have you?"
     He nodded: "Ah reckon we'll requar that circus
 jedge," he said solemn with his decision.
     I looked at him. "Jenks," I said, "I remember
 when you used to sleep most of your days and here
 it is not dawn and it's clear to me you're a changed
 man, thriving on his duty."
     He grinned. "Y'll write thet letter fer me? Per
 thet jedge?"
     "I'll think about it," I said.
    The night was paling. I walked back toward
 the cabin in my untucked shirt and my bootlaces
 flapping. In the dirt against Isaac's porch a man
 was asleep. On Zar's steps another was huddled
 over his knees coughing fit to wake the dead. I
 should have been feeling sympathy for that dealer
 but I was feeling the pain of my own breathing.
    Jimmy and Molly were still asleep. In the after-
math of her great battle he had taken my bunk to
be near her if she needed, and the dugout had been
left to me. But I was too shaken to lie down again,
I boiled some coffee and sat at my desk looking at
that letter for Archie D. Brogan, thinking Here rises
another morning, a little hotter than the last. If
someone from the mines doesn't begin hiring soon,
Jenks's wagon will be filled to overflowing. Once
there was work, once there was money, I told my-
self, everything would be alright. It was the
promise of a year, a settlement growing towards
178                E. L. Docforow
 its perfection. That was my notion but the only
 thing growing was trouble; and it made me shud-
 der to think whatever perfection was, like the
 perfection I had with Molly, it was maybe past,
 silently come and gone, a moment long, just an
 instant in the shadow of one day, and any fool
 who was still waiting for it, like he dreamed,
 didn't know what life is.
    I counted the savings in my drawer—some two
hundred fifty dollars' worth—and I went out and
hired four men who said they knew carpentry,
and I sent them on a hunt for wood. The terms
were three dollars a piece for each day they took
to get up an office for me against the south wall
of the cabin. After I did that there was a gather-
ing in front of the cabin and I spoke to a number
of people, one at a time. One man said he knew the
printer's trade and I gave him backing of seventy-
five dollars to start up a press ha the town. An-
other, an old drover, claimed he knew where if he
could get a dozen head of fat prime cattle at three
dollars a head, he would have them across the flats
in a week and would sell them for slaughter for ten
dollars. I told him to go ahead. A couple of people
I lent money to straight off at a rate of one percent,
and by noon I had gotten rid of all my money
except what I needed to keep the three of us.
    I went outside and stood up on a box in front of
the windmill and I made an announcement to the
people that gathered. I said until the roadwork be-
gan all water was free to anyone not owning prop-
erty on the street. "The banner means what it
says, boys!" I cried like a true politician. "There's
a psiyday coming for all, but until it comes we'll
              Welcome to Hard Times           179
wait togetherl" Nobody cheered but I didn't think
they would.
   In all that time Molly stayed in the back room
with the door shut, the boy carrying her cups of
tea or some food.
   I wasn't finished by any means, I planned to
write a letter to two or three of the banking
companies in the Territory, asking them to con-
sider opening up a branch in the town. I was tempt-
ing myself to ride up to the lodes with Brogan's
letter to see if I could commit someone to a hiring
date. My mind was teeming with plans to keep the
temperature down and the money fluent. Toward
dusk Zar came barging in the front door. I had
expected him.
   "Mayor, what a frand is this!"
   "What do you mean Zar?"
   "I tell you I shall drill a well and then you cut
your water prices. Is this the way a frand does?"
   "Why you told me you would drill only for your
own use," I said, "I shouldn't think it would mat-
ter to you."
   "This is dirty business, you are making angry
a dangerous man!"
   At that moment he didn't look so dangerous. He
had on his fancy check vest and kneecoat and a
hempen cravat and around it all was his barkeep's
apron. He raged on, not even knowing he gave
himself away, till finally I said: "Now you listen
to me, Zar. You're sending for a well driller?
Fine, you'll make it back soon enough, just go right
ahead. You can hire out a good half dozen men to
put up a windmill for you. While you're at it
think up a couple of more jobs so you can
180               E. L. Doctorow
give out wages. God knows you've made enough
money not to have to sweep your own place."
   "What's this?"
   "These people are lying around here spending
their cash and they're not making any. We're
grabbing everything they have—"
   "Is this bad?"
   "It could be. The Company seems to be taking
its own sweet time about the road. Until it gets
going we're in a bad position. You can't just take
out, you have to put back in too, you're a business-
man, you know that."
   "I do not make whiskey to give away, frand. I
do not tell a man to keep his money so he can
spend it across the street."
   "Alright, you can still hire some of these people,
give them a way of paying for your wares."
   He looked at me, his anger forgotten: "Blue, I
think you are losing your mind . . ."
   "I have lived around this country a long time,
Zar. Take a look at the faces along your bar;
if you can't read the meanings you don't stand to
last very long."
  "They say you are giving away money—"
  "I've invested some."
  "Blue, frand, I'm sorry I have screamed. You
are a sick man."
  "You'd better give some thought to what I'm
saying—"
  He stomped over to the door shaking his head.
"Alright," I said to him, "I hope you're hiding your
gold in a good safe place."
  But when he was gone I had to ask myself:
Could I be wrong? Was I running scared? If things
               Welcome to Hard Times            181
 were really tight neither the Russian nor any of
 the others would have to be told what to do. The
 situation was not all that bad. Isaac Maple, for
 instance, I knew for a fact he credited anyone
 who said he knew Ezra, his brother. Every poke
 came into town, it didn't take him one day to find
 out how to get by Isaac, all he had to say is he'd
 seen Ezra, and was it at Bannock or'Virginia City,
 it was all the same, he got down on Isaac's
 books . . .
    Was this not a way of hoping; or was I just being
 typical of myself, unable to do something in the
 morning without regretting it at night?
    If Jimmy understood what I had done he gave no
sign. Nor did I hear from Molly. I slept well at
night, there were no sounds to waken me. In the
morning Jimmy dragged in that bathtub from the
well and pushed it into their room. He went back
and forth with a bucket, I suppose Molly had de-
cided to cleanse herself of what filth she could.
When he had filled the tub he sat outside her door,
his neck flushed red to his ears and that cursed
shotgun across his knees.
   Outside the front door there was a crowd gath-
ered—for what? What more did I have to do? And
then Archie D. Brogan showed up. He must have
pushed aside a few of them, there was a lot of
grumbling and a few shouts behind him when the
door opened.
   "Are you that Blue feller? Mcellhenny tells me
you've a letter in my name. Brogan."
   I stood up. "That's right. It's been here more than
a week."
   "Say what?"
182                E. L. Doctorow
   "It's been here in my desk a long while—"
   "Why that son of a bitch sot, I'll fix his hide, he
just now told me last night. Well give it here."
   It was clear he was a mine boss. His hat was
off but just to fan his face, he was a beefy man in
his corduroys and he suffered the heat. I got the
letter and handed it to him.
   "Too bad you had to make a special trip," I
said, "you mostly get your mail up at the camp,
don't you?"
   "What the hell business is it of your?" he said
ripping open the envelope. And then, as he stood
there puzzling out the words his florid face went
pale. He stuffed the paper in his pocket and
stomped out, leaving the door open wide.
    Outside they made a path for him and he walked
 up the street to Zar's Palace. Bert was standing by
 the door and I motioned him inside.
    "Bert, what's troubling you, what are you doing
 here?"
    "Well Mr. Blue the girl is getting big as a melon
 and we don't have a bed yet for the chile to be
 born in. I want us to have a real furniture bed,
 you know how I mean, but I'm already two weeks
 ahead on my pay—"
    "Won't Isaac Maple order on your word?"
    "No sir, he knows me. Also, he's been paying
 my honey wages and I can't—"
    "Alright, Bert, listen, I'll loan you for that bed
 whatever it costs—"
    He stammered, he looked sorry he had joined
 the crowd at my door. He was a fine gawky young
 fellow and I remember thinking, unwillingly, how
 just a few years older than Jimmy he was.
    "Alright, Bert, you pay me when you can, now
              Welcome to Hard Times             183
listen. That man just walked out of here, Archie
Brogan?"
    "Sure, don't have to tell me that's Mr. Brogan—"
   "Go on back to your place and keep your eye on
him. He has a letter I'd give my arm to know what
it says. Man has a drink he sometimes talks out
loud, you know what I mean?"
    "Sure, Mr. Blue—"
   "I wanted to say something to him about the
road, he could put all these people out here to
work if he had instructions, go on now."
   I showed him out and closed the door. I had
been waiting for the mine boss to come down for
his letter; and now that he had my heart pulsations
ran so fast I could hardly keep myself sitting
down. I bit off some plug and chewed and listened
to the noise outside one door and the silence inside
the other. The boy was gazing at me. I thought
Well let me write Jenks's request to. the capital, let
me compose my letter to the banking companies.
But nothing I could do would matter if the
mine didn't lay its road. Why had that note been
addressed to Brogan care of the town? Why had
Angus said nothing to him for over a week?
   I stepped outside and walked quickly up the
street to the saloon. Some of those people walked
along with me. "I've no news, I've nothing to say,"
I told them as I walked. "I'm going in for a drink,
anyone who'd care to stand me one is welcome to
come along." That put them off and I went into
Zar's and stood by the bar until I caught Bert's eye.
   He put a glass in front of me and poured: "Up-
stairs, Mr. Blue, he bought a whole bottle and went
upstairs with Jessie."
184                E. L. Doctorow
     "Well this is a working day," I said softly, "he
 must have something grand to celebrate."
     "He said not a word. He didn'i even act he knew
 who I was. Just took a bottle and marched up there
 with Miss Jess."
    Mae came over, pushing her hair back on her
 temples: "I wish that bastard would hurry up and
 die. How are you Blue?"
     "Mae."
   . "That goddamn dealer. Two days he's been lying
up there bleeding all over my bed. I don' under-
stand oP Adah, she sits up theah you'd thank 'twas
her own man dying'."
    "Well," I said, "she has a feeling for such
 things."
    "Hell, he's jest a-festerin' away. And Lord if it
don't serve him right. First day he was here he
wanted me to go upstairs just for the love of it. You
hear me Blue? 'Why you cheap bastard,' I tell him,
'I'll go with you and you pay me like anyone elsel'
And you know he wouldn't? How do you like that
for a dealer! One on the house Bertie, if'n you
please."
    "Where's Zar?" I said.
    "Who cares!"
    I sipped my whiskey and waited there at the
bar, watching the stairs and trying not to look
concerned. There were men sitting at the tables,
talking, playing small-change poker, but the noise
wasn't such you couldn't hear things. From one
room above I heard the low moans of that dealer;
and from another the sound of Archie D. Brogan
singing up a song. After a while Jessie came down.
Long Jessie went over to Mae and whispered some-
thing and they both giggled.
              Welcome to Hard Times            185
   How many verses of that song I must have lis-
tened to, making out no words, but the Irish of the
tune again and again. It would stop and I'd think
well now we'll hear no more, but he would start
up again^ having only paused to wet his throat.
   Then, finally, a door opened and down the stairs
came the mine boss, lurching and holding the rail
tight. He slipped and sat down on the bottom step;
and he began to laugh. His face was red and his
cheeks shot with thin blue veins. I was over there
in an instant offering to help him up and that made
him stop laughing. He waved my hand away, mut-
tered something and went out the door. I followed
and watched as he threw up in the street. When
he was done he wiped his face with a red handker-
chief and stalked into Isaac's store, walking sober
as a judge.
   How clear I call up these moments—even the
song he sang, a wild dirge, sings in my ears. A man
I never knewl He came out of Isaac's place with a
bundle and brand-new saddlebags, stuffed full. He
threw it on the back of his mule, mounted, and as I
stood transfixed, rode down the street and into the
flats.
   I watched him a long while. Nobody else seemed
to notice his leaving, people were all over the
street, the lunch crowd was grouping in front of
Swede's tent. I went into the store. Isaac was
there toting up figures on a pad. The fat Chinagirl
was sitting and resting by the door, breathing with
difficulty, her hands on her knees.
   "Isaac what did that fellow buy?"
   "Weren't that the foreman?"
   "It was."
   "Well he took some vittles, a fryin* pan, a box of
186               E. L. Doctorow
cartridges, matches, a blanket, bottle of castor oil,
coupla ounces smokin' tobacco .. ."
   Did I have to be told? Did it have to be in a
letter? The next day miners began coming down the
trail, walking with their picks on their backs, riding
two up on their mules. They filled the street. Angus
Mcellhenny told me: "As long as the payroll kept
coming, Blue, we kept diggin' that rock. But I
knew weeks ago it wasn't ore we were diggin'.
Twas only the color."
   Like the West, like my life: The color dazzles
us, but when it's too late we see what a fraud it is,
what a poor pinched-out claim.
                        12

Of course now I put it down I can see that we were
finished before we ever got started, our end was in
our beginning. I am writing this and maybe it will
be recovered and read; and I'll say now how I
picture some reader, a gentleman in a stuffed chair
with a rug under him and a solid house around
him and a whole city of stone streets around the
house—a place like New York which Molly talked
about one night, with gas lamps on each corner
to light the dark, and polished carriages running
behind the horses, and lots of fine manners . . . Do
you think, mister, with all that settlement around
you that you're freer than me to make your fate?
Do you click your tongue at my story? Well I wish
I knew yours. Your father's doing is in you, like
his father's was in him, and we can never start
new, we take on all the burden: the only thing that
grows is trouble, the disasters get bigger, that's all.
I know it, it's true, I've always known it. I
scorn myself for a fool for all the bookkeeping
I've done; as if notations in a ledger can fix life, as
if some marks in a book can control things. There
                          187
188                 E. L. Doctorow
 is only one record to keep and that's the one I'm
 writing now, across the red lines, over the old
 marks. It won't help me nor anyone I know. "This
 is who's dead," it says. It does nothing but it can
 add to the memory. The only hope I have now is
 that it will be read—and isn't that a final curse on
 me, that I still have hope? I would, laugh if I could,
 who will come here to find my ledgers of scrawls:
 that old toothless drover who took my savings to
 bring hack beef on the hoof? If he wasn't a liar
 he was old enough to be smart. I think I knew he
 was lying when I gave him the money, I was pay-
 ing him a debt, I was paying him to leave. Maybe
 the circuit judge . , . although now I'm not clear
 in my head whether I wrote Jenks's letter or not,
 did I give it to Alf or not, and anyway why should
 he come by since nothing is left to judge?
   Jenks let free that bent-over fellow the minute
he saw what chance there was. The hunchback
scuttled off in the crowd, I caught a glimpse of him
later, he was one of those looting Isaac's store. At
least I think so. In all that noise I can't be sure
what I saw, there was moonlight hot as the sun,
bright as noon, but it was like the light of pain
shining from the blackness.
   "Jenks!" I remember Molly screamed. She had
run outside and was standing, waving at the coach
coming down the street. The Sheriff was atop his
hearse wagon, the door on the side flapping open
and shut. Sitting up there with him was Miss Adah
and Jessie.
   He thought Molly wanted to get on. "Hurry up,
ma'am," he said, leaning over to help her, "them
bastards is about to cut loose." And I thought
too she was climbing up, even though I had de-
               Welcome to Hard Times            189
 spaired of getting her to go. But what she did, she
 pulled him down from the box and was all over the
 poor man, holding around his neck, clutching him,
 giving him kisses, moaning out her words: "Jenks,
 get him for me, you've got to get him, you have a
 hankerin' don't you Jenks, I've seen it, a woman
 can tell. Get him and I'll go with you anywhere,
 I'll be your natural wife, anything you please, I
 swear—"
    The boy and I were looking on and the two
 women from up on the box. All the sound was
 coming from the saloon.
    "For God's sake Jenks," said Jessie turning and
looking back. "For God's sake will you come on!"
    "But ma'am, if'n hew please!" He was trying to
get loose of Molly.
    "Jenks, just one shot, why the man's a target,
why he's just looking to come up deadl"
    "Lady I done throwed my star away."
    Adah was weeping: "I left him up there, he's still
breathin'. I've no call to leave that dyin" man
alone."
    "Hush up! You dumb old woman," Jessie said to
her. "You think that damn dealer is .worth gettin'
what Mae is gettin'? You want to go back there
with Mae and that other one?—Lord God, Jenks,
will you come on!"
    At the saloon the crowd was spilling back on the
porch and into the street. People were trying to see
in like a crowd pushing toward the words of a
preacher. You could hear Mae's screams. I knew it
wouldn't be long and we'd all be suffering Turner,
feeling his sermon. When he had come only God
knows. He must have ridden down from the rocks,
grinning to see such a boom of people; he must
 190                E. L. Doctorow
 have come from the north, on the heels of the min-
 ers, he had left that way after all, the scythe swings
 back.

    Wouldn't I have seen him otherwise? All after-
 noon I had stood watching the dust roll back from
 the flats, once the stage came and went it was like
 a signal, folks were tying up their things, loading
 their animals and taking the walk. In front of my
 cabin it was like how many years before at West-
 port, Missouri, people standing and saying good-
 bye to each other but with their eyes gazing at
 the plains in front of them.
. That old egg lady left, riding a wagon empty but
for squawks; a chicken feather floated out behind
her. Jonce Early pulled up stakes without so much
as a look back. There were other smart ones, a
handcart couple walked by with no expression at
all on their faces. But most of those people who'd
come looking for work, they were not moving be-
yond the street.
   I had looked on too numb to move watching the
street fill to overflow;. I didn't want to believe it, I
wanted to tell Angus he was lying, I had the wild
thought if I ran up the trail and pushed boulders
across it, I could turn them back, those miners. It
was a farrago, a sweltering of angers. The noise of
talk was like a hoarse wind blowing. A miner came
up to me and said quietly, "Stage due anytime you
know?"
   "Why yes," I said with all politeness, "matter of
fact it should be here this afternoon."
   He spit out some plug and looking at the ground
said, "I'll buy a passage, ye don't mind." He gave
me a pouch of dust so I took him inside and wrote
               Welcome to Hard Times              393
a ticket. When he left there was another miner in
the door. And before long there was a line of men
waiting their turn for tickets. They dropped bills
into my hand, silver, chunks of high-graded.
Through the doorway, over their heads I could see
some towners watching.
   I wrote slowly, making more contracts than Alf
could comfortably carry, and thinking Now isn't
this queer how I got through these motions with
my hands of ice, how peculiar to be doing busi-
ness; like I once saw a man who was shot in the
heart, he was as dead as you can be but he
walked around awhile before he lay down.
   I knew Zar and Isaac would come after me
once the truth struck them, they would make me
share their suffering. I gave the last man in line
his ticket and they pushed in past him, their faces
all dismay. They didn't want to believe what their
own eyes told them.
   "The road Blue, whan shall they make the road!"
the Russian kept saying.
   "You know these flats out here, the way nothing
is growing? Well when it's an orchard of big, leafy
trees with each leaf a five-dollar gold piece—that's
when you'll get your road."
   "It ain't fair," Isaac said, "it's not right. What do
I do now, tell me what I'm s'posed to do now!"
   "I don't know Isaac."
   "I said it would come to this, I knew it would.
I'm ruined! Ye sure sold me, ye surely traded me!"
  "Maybe so."
  "Why I'd have found Ezra by now, I'd be with
my brother today but for you!"
  "I haven't heard you complaining the past year
Isaac. You've done alright."
192               E. L. Doctorow
   "Is that right, is that so? Curse your wretched
 soul I've put every penny I made into this street!"
   'You must stop this Blue," the Russian shook
his fist, "you must do something!"
   "Shall I put the gold back in the ground?"
   "My hotel! My beautiful hotel! From where shall
come the customers—"
   "Goddamn you both, why don't you let me be!
What is it you want of me! Why am I the one
always, people come running to me—-get out of
here, go on get out, I'm as hung up as you, can't
you see that?"
   "Frand—"
   "Why you think you're bad off? You don't even
know! You've made enough money from this
town, you've made enough I'll tell you and if you
don't have tidy little bundles cached away you're
bigger fools than I take you for."
   "Blue, please"—the Russian held out his arms
and he had this begging smile on his face, I could
see that gold tooth of his—"please, we are losing
everything."
   I had to sit down. I put my hands on my face and
I felt my breath on my icy fingers. Those white-
faced, black-derbied Eastern sons of Hell! How
long had they known—maybe since the afternoon
they waited for Alf, fanning themselves and keep-
ing their mouths shut? Someone said they had
made tests when they were up there, they had
made markings on their charts—a year past! But
they'd had their intentions, else why had the
Territory Office sent Hayden Gillis? How long had
we been waiting for something that was never to
be? Even as the street was filling up the ore wagons
were carting worthless rock westerly to the mills.
              Welcome to Hard Times           193
Even as I scanned the flats each morning that
letter to Brogan was lying on my desk. There is
no fool like a fool in the West, why you can fool
him so bad he won't even know his possibilities
are dead, his hopes only ghosts.
   I said: "Get out while you can. Load your
wagons and travel, because sure as you're breath-
ing it won't be long and all these people stuck here
like pigs on a pitchfork—they're going to set up a
holler."
   "What's this!"
   "A pair of dumb cowboys, that's all you are.
Fretting about your property when it's your hides
you should be thinking of—"
   "What ye mean?"
   "God help you what do you think I mean, you
got eyes don't you? This town is a bust. Every man
in it has been sold!"
   Now what I wonder is why they didn't leave. I
saw by the looks on their faces they knew I was
telling them right. They had the chance to get out
and I can't account that they stayed, that they ran
out of my door and went back, each to his selling
counter, putting on a face and coddling the custom-
er right past the time it became too late to leave.
Will we not believe our disasters? Or was there
nowhere they could go? It was the same with
Swede too, there was time to pack and move on
before the moon rose but he didn't, not even in
those last free moments after the man came.
  Molly had opened her door to see the fuss, she
stood there barefooted with her hair hanging
down, she looked like Wrath. By the time Zar and
Isaac had run out there was a dawn in her eyes.
Color came into her cheeks and she broke out in
194               E. L. Doctorow
a smile and she said to the boy, who was standing
by her: "Lord, did you ever hope to see such a
sight? Mayor, is that you I hear telling people to
get on their horse?"
   She began to giggle, she was really joyful, it
might have been some farm girl laughing at her
suitor. "Jimmy I swear, listen to Mayor Blue here,
all these people he's been a-wishin' and a-wantin',
well here they are and look at him, he's sick, the
shit is scared out of him—"
  When Alf came along in the afternoon he had
from a distance the sight of a town filled with
people and he didn't need to be told what was
going on. He reined his team a good way out,
near the graves, and turned them around the other
way before he and his helper started to toss off the
freight. Even so they weren't fast enough, miners
were running out there, lugging their gear, there
was.a rush for the stage. I ran out too to say
something to Alf but he was in no mood for talk.
He grabbed the money pouch I gave him without
even counting and climbed up on the box and flung
out his whip and off the coach went, groaning, men
were all over it like ants. I watched it going and
then one man who hadn't gotten a good hold fell
off and he ran after for a bit, ending up standing
out there waving his fist as the dust covered him.
   Here was all this freight, boxes and barrels,
standing in the open like wreckage. In my hands
was the order list for Alf, and I looked back at
the street and tore the paper into pieces. Swede
came out, half running, pulling a handcart behind
him, and began to load it up. He grunted and sweat
fan down from his yellow hair and he picked up
those barrels in a hug, those crates, even scooping
              Welcome to Hard Times            195
up crackers where they had spilled out of a box
broken open in its fall.
   "Damnit," I said to him, "it's not some lady's
rug you have to leave clean!"
   He began pulling the cart in, it was Isaac's goods
more than his own, he leaned forward on the bar
like some ass, some dumb ox. I couldn't help being
furious at him, I wanted to hit him. •
   I walked beside Swede, my eyes on the town.
It had no earthly reason for being there, it made
no sense to exist. People naturally come together
but is that enough? Just as naturally we think of
ourselves alone. "Listen to me Swede: Gather up
your belongings, take the locks off your spokes and
you and your woman get out of here. With those
bulls you got you'll need a good start. Do you un-
derstand what I'm saying?"
  "Aaah, ya—"
    "Find yourself some' other Swedes . . ."
   I had the same advice for Bert Albany. When I
got back to the street I suddenly thought of Bert
and I sought him out. He was in the crib where
they lived, comforting his wife, but nobody was
comforting him. At first he didn't want to leave—
"Where to?" he said, he felt a loyalty to Zar, but
more he was afraid any trip would put his China-
girl in labor. I said, "Bert don't argue with an old
man. Wrap up what you can carry and come with
me. No child has ever been born in this town, and
that's the saddest thing I will ever know, but it's
true and it always will be."
  Roebuck, the smithy, had a wagon, I found him
ready to leave and I gave him all the greenbacks in
my pocket to take on the couple. But when I put
Bert and his wife up behind him I said only: "This
 196                E. L. Doctorow
  man has consented to let you ride." And I walked
  with the wagon through the milling people, stop-
  ping at the edge of the flats and watching it go on.
  "We was doing alright, Mr. Blue," the boy called
  back, "what happened to us? Where do we go
  now?" And I saw that little girl turn back to look,
  a puffy, tear-stained face taking in with her eyes
  what her mind didn't understand.
    Soon there was a string of travelers spread out
 on the flats. And then, not ten feet in front of me,
 Angus Mcellhenny was standing, pulling tight the
 ropes on his mule's load; and though I had known
 what to tell Zar and Isaac and Swede and Bert my
 brain was muddled now, and I couldn't believe
 what was happening any more than they could. I
 went over to Angus but no words would leave my
 mouth, I didn't even know what I wanted from
 him. His pipe was tight in bis teeth, he wouldn't
 look at me.
    "You don't tarry, Angus."
    "I'm no fool. Ye'll be traveling yerself hae you
 any sense."
    "Angus," I grabbed his arm, "can there still be
 gold up there?"
    He sighed: "That mountain is picked so hollow,
why it's holey as a honeycomb, there's nothin'
holdin' it up save air. Listen to me Blue, there's
maybe a score of men still up at the site who can't
bear to be sold out. They'll rot up there tryin' to
take it out on the rock."
    "It's a property isn't it? The Company will sell
it if they can."
    "Aye, there's enough fer salt. They will make a
Chinaman of some poor soul who will buy the
              Welcome to Hard Times            397
stock and come out and dig. And when he sees
what he's got he'll blow out his brains."
   Another miner standing near Angus gave a
laugh.
   I tried to say something but the words choked
in my throat. I looked ahead at the endless
reaches, lit red in the late afternoon, and I felt
the blood drying up in me.
   "Blue," Angus Mcellhenny said softly, and he
glanced a moment at me, "dinna spook me wi" yer
troubles. Goodbye to ye. I know yer feelings fer
yer wee town but I canna bear to think on it."
   Well that was the moment I asked myself what
I was going to do. Everything was come to nothing.
You try to dispose of your life to some purpose
even though it appears to have none. My savings
were gone; if I could get Molly and the boy on
the buckboard how far could they go? Like Angus
marching away out there among the others was
the shambles of the town blowing off in every di-
rection. All afternoon I watched to see who was
leaving, feeling the pain of slow torture. But I have
always been one for the protraction of misery and
perhaps I counted each man who left as one less
twist to the final pain. What I mean to say is I
never made up my mind to leave, my will was
exhausted. When the dusk came on there was a
stillness over the town although the numbers were
still thick. Men stood around, hardly anyone was
moving. Anger, like heat, lay on the dust of the
air. Jimmy came running by me, his eyes bulging,
his mouth open as if he were about to scream. I
looked where he'd come from, and I walked closer
to see what I was seeing. From inside Zar's saloon
198               E. L. Doctorow
came the sound of one man's haw haw laugh. Tied
up at the railing was a bony used-up nag that I saw
was once Hausenfield the German's handsome bay.

   Looking over the doors I could see only his
shoulders and his hat. But then he raised his head
and there was his dark reflection in Zar's fancy
mirror behind the bar. Two Bad Men, the Man
multiplied. I remember feeling: He never left the
town, it was waiting only for the proper light to see
him where he's been all the time.
   "Hey, who's the boss here," he called out.
   Someone pointed to Zar who was standing at the
 end of the counter.
   "Say, friend, come have a drink, it's good pizen
ye made, I'll swar—"
   Zar didn't move, and in the silence of that
packed saloon the man leaned down the bar and
shoved a full glass along. It went the whole dis-
tance, people stepping back not to block the way;
and at the end of the counter it tipped gently on
its side, a-making a pool of whiskey that spread
and began to drip to the floor.
   With a frown Zar lifted the bottom of his apron
and began to dab at the liquid. The Man thought
that was funny and laughed, and everyone looking
on in that steaming glowing room began to laugh
with him. Then Turner stood up to his full height
so I could see now that blaze on the side of his
face, the peculiar stare of his eye. He had caught
sight of Mae and Mrs. Clement, standing shy be-
hind the Russian.
   "Hey honey," he said softly but there was no
other sound now. "Hey honey," he said crooking
his finger. In that moment I could feel my heart
               Welcome to Hard Times            199
 tipping, spilling out its shame, its nausea. I had to
 run from the Trick, I couldn't tolerate it, what
 other name is there for the mockery that puts us
 back in our own steps? Here the earth turns and
 we turn with it, around it spins and we go mad
 with it.
    Inside Jenks's stable I found the mule and led
 him quickly. to the cabin, but not by the street
 but behind the houses. I hitched him to the major's
 rig and then I went around to the front and stepped
 inside the door.
    There was no light and I couldn't see. I heard a
 rustle from the dugout and when I lit the lamp
 and held it up I saw them both cowering back in-
 side there. Molly had the boy in front of her, he
 was gripping the shotgun; and over his shoulder
 she was pointing that knife at me.
    "The mule's hitched," I said, "y°u want to quick
take some things and ride out."
   "I'll kill you Mayor," she whispered. She stared
at me like I was some animal ready to spring,
poised with her legs wide and her hand high hold-
ing that stiletto. She looked as if it was I who
had summoned him up.
   "Don't come any closer—"
   "Molly in the name of God listen to what I'm
telling you!"
   In the shadows her eyes had the light of fire.
   "Don't you care!" I shouted. "You want it to
happen again? You think I can atone more? Take
him away from here, you're mother to him, a
bobcat'll curry its young, won't you do that, won't
you take him the hell out of here!"
   The boy stood between us and now he raised
the gun a little. "Look at this," I said, "it should
200               E. L. Doctorow
make you proud the way you've hexed this boy.
Well I'm finished, I don't want him, he's nothing
to me, go on the hoth of you, get out. The rig's
yours, the mule's yours, everything—but quit my
sight, you've been only misery to me. I rue the day
I saw you Molly, I swear I curse the moment I
laid eyes on you. Had I known what you was why
I would have stood up to be shot, I would have
held out my arms to the Bad Man. Shoot true,
brother, or Molly Riordan is waiting who will do
it much slower—"
   And all the while I raged I could see I had no
name in her gaze, this was what she wanted, for
the Bad Man to returnl She'd been waiting for him,
a proper faithful wife. Nothing mattered to her, not
me, not Jimmy, just herself and her Man from
Bodie. I was ready to kill her.
   And the boy standing there like he thought he
was her son, it filled me with disgust. "What do
you think you're guarding there sonny, something
worth the trouble? You think she cares a damn for
you? Why she thinks no more of you than she does
of me, right now she wouldn't know if you put
that, muzzle in your eye and squeezed the trigger.
Tell him Molly, he don't believe me. Why you're
a simp to stand there, you ain't got half the sense
of your Daddy, you did and you'd be riding away
right now!" I said, "Go on Jimmy, get out of here
while you can, you don't need her, you're not the
first she's fooled, it's no shame. Go on, boy. Go
on—"
   But he only raised the barrel a little. Well I'm
 thankful for that, there was not a flicker of belief
 in his eyes. What he was to do was not my reckon-
 ing, it burst from him with the force of shot, he
             Welcome to Hard Times             201
was a long time in the squeeze. How I failed is how
Molly did not fail, and in the miserable waste of
our three lives I want to declare only for my own
guilt.
   Now in all this and what followed only once did
it strike me to overcome both of them, hustle them
on the wagon and take them away myself. It was
at this moment, with no thought as how it could
be done. I lunged at Molly over the boy's out-
stretched arms almost at the same instant she
heard the coach coming down the street. She
crouched and came up past me, swiping at my ribs
with the stiletto, putting a rent in my side—and
she was out of there while I was stumbling over
the boy.                                        ,
   That was as close as I came. Afterwards I hadn't
the time.

  "Jenks," screamed Jessie, "in a second I'm driv-
ing this thing myself, Jenks—"
  "Now," Molly was cooing, "here you tell me Mr..
Jenks will run and just one man he has to take
care of?" Her voice was as soft and natural as a
sane woman's. "Why Sheriff, I know you can shoot
the balls off a man quick as a blink. You're not
runnin" Sheriff, no sir, it makes no sense. Look
here, even this shit yellow spine of a Mayor ain't
running."
  "That's his business, please ma'am, the way
I see hit I can't shoot all those people down in
much health."
  "Just him," Molly gripped his shirt again, "just
him, just that Bad Man from Bodie, you know
what he did to me, you have any idea?"
   "Well—"
202                E. L. Doctorow
   "Jenks I promise good things, I swear, I can do
 more than those two on the box put together. Do
 you believe that?"
   That brought Miss Adah out of her daze. Every-
thing Molly had been saying suddenly made her
stand up and point her finger: "Why I always
knew," she said with a voice of surprise, "yes I
did, even when I passed on my wedding dress to
you, that you was no lady."
   Down the street someone near the door of Zar's
Palace turned and saw the woman's figure atop the
coach. He said something and then a few men had
separated from the crowd and were running to-
ward us, shouting. The Bad Man was putting a
match to everyone.
   "Oh Lord, Jenks—" Jessie screamed, and she
took up the reins. The Sheriff started to climb to
the box but Molly grabbed his arm. At the same
time I found myself slapping the horses' rumps
just as Jimmy did, although I think we had different
reasons. And off lurched the coach, Miss Adah fall-
Ing back on the roof.
  The wheels spun up a cloud of blue dust under
the moon. A minute after they were gone, three or
four men hooted by on their horses, giving the
chase, choking us standing there, flattening us
against the cabin wall. I never saw either of those
women again and I don't know what happened to
them.
   "Oh lookit thet!" said Jenks. "Godamighty," his
voice broke, "lookit what hew done to me!"
   Molly giggled: "Sheriff honey, you'll listen to me
now, won't you?"
   I'm trying to put down what happened but the
closer I've come in time the less clear I am in my
               Welcome to Hard Times             203
 mind. I'm losing my blood to this rag, but more, I
 have the cold feeling everything I've written
 doesn't tell how it was, no matter how careful
 I've been to get it all down it still escapes me: like
 what happened is far below my understanding be-
 yond my sight. In my limits, taking a day for a
 day, a night for a night, have I showed the sand
 shifting under our feet, the terrible arrangement of
 our lives?
    I can't remember her foul words, poor Molly,
what she said to Jenks, but only that it kept Jimmy
rooted where he stood; and that by and by Jenks
was spinning his Colt and checking each chamber,
his simpleton pride rising like manhood to her
promises. Or did he really believe he could stop the
riot by killing Turner? At the far end of the street
a bunch of men were running out of sight toward
John Bear's cabin. Next to the saloon Isaac's store
was locked and dark, but already someone was
banging on the door.
    In those moments I was unable to act. The way
I am, I will do as well as anyone until a show-
down. But also I was raging that Jenks could be-
lieve this woman cared for anything but herself
and the Bad Man. The wolfy fool licked the syrup
of her words and was marching up the street al-
most before I could run back inside and get my gun
from the drawer. Molly ran in the dugout, already
praying with that cross of hers. Jimmy, holding
the shotgun slack in one hand, was in a stupor.
"Get back inside!" I said to him.
    I ran to catch up with Jenks: "You know what
you're doing?"
    He was trotting like a hero: "Reckon," he al-
lowed himself to say. I wasn't worth too much
204               E. L. Doctorow
of his attention now Molly's declarations were in
his ears.
   "Well I hope you find it worth it, Mr. Sheriff," I
said. "But you better have a plan!"
   "Stay back—"
   "You're a damn fool. He won't give you the time
to sight. This ain't a target to shoot, this is a Man
from Bodie!"
   "I kin get 'm awraht."
   I wanted to believe him. On the left side of the
street one side of Swede's tent was buckling and
there was the clatter of pots and kettles. I could
see now to the end of the street and in the bright
blue shadow they were knocking John Bear's shack
to pieces. I thought Yes, can one shot do it? It will
scatter the flames and the fire will go out,
                       13

That was the idea I held on to like my life, it
moved me to action, it was a clear simple thought
and I took it over from Jenks, becoming the fool
he'd been, lifting the fool's hat from his dead body
to fit on myself, becoming Molly's final fool, as I
am now. But who could not in the face of such
ruin, with the race burning crazy in that moon's
light? It was justice to kill him, the single face,
the one man; I had to do something and what was
most futile made the most sense. It was a giving
in to them all, every one of those accursed people
rolling over each other in the still warm dust of
the street, scampering this way and that to find
what to destroy.
   But I wasn't going after it the way Jenks did. He
marched up the steps holding his polished pistol
and he pulled one of the saloon doors back. "Hey!"
he cried, raising the gun to sight, but the flood of
light from inside made him blink, and what easy
game he was bathed and blinking against the dark.
After a great second's silence there was a rush for
the door, men stumbling outside, their shadows
                        205
206               E. L. Doctorow
looming long on the lighted porch, down the steps,
shadows turning into men in the street. Jenks was
knocked off his balance, he tried to right himself,
his gun hand was swinging wildly.
   I heard Zar's voice, "No, no!" and maybe the
Russian was going toward the door thinking in a
panic of the mirror in back of his bar, or the
lamps hanging so grandly above the sawdust. I
think it was Jenks's wild shot which caught Zar
in the stomach. From inside the Bad Man's gun
sounded twice, but Jenks was hit twice, the first
shot took him in the chest and spinned him
around, the second surely broke his neck. Jenks
did a clown's tumble down the steps and there he
was twisted double, his face in open-mouthed sur-
prise looking up at me from under his arm.
   He's still there, they're all as they are. I can
write with one hand but I can't dig. Horses shied
away from his fall, a man was running toward me,
I thought What is he going to tell me? but he had a
barrel stave in his hand. I held up my gun and he
veered off like a dog on a richer scent.
   Across the street Swede's restaurant was a pile
of canvas, humping and shifting, a living thing. He
was pulling his wife out from under and I ran over
and helped him. We put her on her feet and she
grabbed Swede and held on to him, sobbing and
hugging him. He was crying too, holding an iron
skillet in his hand, his anger making him cry, and
when it got the best of him he broke out of her
grasp, cursing, and started to beat at the movement
under the canvas, swinging that skillet with all his
strength..
   Helga pulled at him, trying to get him away.
People were running every which way, meeting
              Welcome to Hard Times            207
 and grappling in the street. It was a lunatic town.
    "Swede," I cried, "get her out of here!"
   He came to his senses, I have a glimpse now of
 his face suddenly calm under its shock of hair,
 white in the moon's color. He picked up his wife
 and walked away quickly, straight out past the
 sump, going toward the shadow of the rocks.
   From Zar's Palace issued a woman's rising voice
 of moans stopping short in one deathly scream.
   I had remembered a bale of barbed wire stand-
ing behind Isaac's store, a big spool of it, maybe
Isaac from Vermont had been expecting the herds
to come to Hard Times. I made for it, proud of
my cunning; and I was in such a fever with my
idea, the tear in my side didn't hurt, nor the
thought of Molly and the boy awaiting what might
be, nor the moment's glimpse I had, going down
the alley of the looters beating down Isaac's door.
Through the walls of the saloon I could hear
Turner begin to sing drunkenly, throw the furni-
ture around—and it was thrilling to concentrate
my hate.
   Now from that spot there was a clear view to the
rock hills lying under the moon as far east as the
eye could see. I have the image in my mind of
John Bear looking on from a ledge up there, al-
though I'm not sure now this was the moment I
spotted him. What can I say, he had no hat or
shirt as he waited there on one knee while the
mob wrecked his shack, by then he had no reason
to wear white men's clothes. I can't understand
how my eye found him, he was so still. But the
moon picked him out for me, it was a lye moon
etching him on my brain. There was motion in his
stillness, something already done in his pose, and
 208               E. L. Doctorow
  although I was not to see him again there is no
  break in the picture I have between then and this
  morning when I found the Russian on the floor by
  his bar.
    Plotting for the Bad Man I couldn't have under-
 stood John Bear last night, if I'd known what he
 was contemplating it would have made no sense to
 me. I was dragging that heavy spool up the alley in
 sweat and in pain and in righteousness. I saw
 Swede return, striding heavily toward Isaac's store,
 and I called him and made him help me with the
 burden. "Ezra!" came Isaac Maple's cry from with-
 in his store, "Ezraa-a-a!" out of the cracks and
 crashes from within and the agonized Swede
 wanted to go help him, but I kept him with me,
 infecting him with my madness, and like penitents
 hurrying before God's wrath we made a bed of
 barbs on the porch, a trip wire from one post to the
 other, unwinding the roll, pushing it back and
 forth, back and forth, as Turner sang.
    Swede had a length of planking and with it he
climbed atop the overhang and lay flat, waiting;
while I stepped back into the street feeling the
moon's light like a desert sun on my back. Behind
the man's horse I crouched, Hausenfield's bay—a
friend, like me, spurred to its bones—and "Turn-
er!" I cried out. "Do you dare come out, Turner!"
screaming his name again and again, the voice in
my throat someone else's, some stranger's voice
doing my work while I watched quietly as one by
one the gas lights inside tinkled out and the saloon
became dark. Then I shut up. My fingers squeezed
out the slack in the trigger, my arm rested across
the man's own saddle, with my other hand I held
the bay's ear twisted tightly in my fist. In the
              Welcome to Hard Times            209
great silence between that saloon door and me
there was no movement. But all around there was
riot: people were banging on sheet iron, attacking
Isaac'8 rented boxes down the street; someone
was trying to get his wagon going but his horse
shied and reared; it was the moment I saw, from
the corner of my eye, the hunchback scuttling out
of Maple Bros, store with his arms laden, a roll of
yard goods streaming out after him.
   Well he had the darkness he wanted, if he'd
kept the light he might have seen the wire, but
he needed to know where I was, where he'd be
shooting. He came out, those doors snapping back
against the wall, just a shape, a shadow with a
hole of fire in its center. Even before the thwack
in the horse's side I had let go my shot. I heard a
roar of surprise and saw him fall across the porch,
a shadow becoming a man hideously stuck on
those infernal barbs.
   It is so easy if you have the conviction. I stood
up and fired two more times, missing him but not
caring, feeling the wonder of the event like a child.
A fine spray of blood from the bay's neck covered
one side of my face. I could taste it. The Bad Man
was trying to get off the wire, but I had hit him in
the leg and he couldn't raise himself. Swede didn't
have to swing down with that plank, he hung over
the edge trying to bash the Bad Man but there was
no need, his reach was too short. "No, Swede!"
The man turned over on his back on his bed of
barbs and shot straight up through the wood.
   Swede slumped where he lay, dying like he
would, with no sound. This morning Helga came
back to the street from her hiding place. She called
him and looked everywhere, poking at bodies in
210                E. L. Doctorow
the wreckage, but she didn't think to look up. Then
she caught sight of those long arms hanging over
the edge of the porch top, that head of yellow hair
—and for a long while she screamed at him to
come down. Swede dead was one of my blunders,
one of the last great ones in my life of blunders
beginning when I came to this land. I clubbed the
Man from Bodie till he was insensible but it didn't
help Swede.
   And then you see that wasn't my last blunder at
all, for I didn't kill Turner I stopped too soon. It
was still the Trick that made me cry out my misery
and feel the shame of my being. Had I finished my
work I would have only damned myself. All around
the fights were going on, miners and towners try-
ing to cripple and kill one another, hate riding their
voices, gleaming on their knives, imprinted behind
their running boots. And none of it had to do with
Turner. He was just a man, my God! I felt his
weight, I felt the weight of him over my shoulder,
I smelled the sweat of him and the whiskey, it was
blood that ran from his head and matted his hair.
He had lost part of a staring eye on the barbs, his
leg was broke, all my senses were glutted with him,
I held his wrists together in my hands, and stum-
bled past that patient horse standing in the street
and bleeding to death—and what else but the con-
tinuing Mockery could have given me the strength
to tote him to the cabin?
   "Alright Molly? Is it alright now? Is this what
you wanted Molly?"
   But she didn't hear me. She stood against the
wall as far away as she could and watched me drop
him on the table. I could hardly catch my breath, I
thought my head would burst and I remember
               Welcome to Hard Times             211
falling and crawling to the cabin door and leaning
my back against it because I felt if I lay down I
would never be able to get up again. And I wish
now I could not have seen what happened, or if I
had to see it that my mind could split me from the
memory. I would like to die on some green some-
where in the coolness of a tree's shadow, when did
I last sit with my back against a tree? the wish is
so strong in me, like a thirst, I believe I must perish
from it. When I think that Ezra Maple might have
put him up on his mule and ridden him off to learn
the storekeep's trade; or that I might have taken
him away myself, in those first hours, before Molly
ever put her hooks into him, a carpenter's son, just
a hollow-eye orphan—a groan pushes through my
lips like my ghost already in its Hell before I am
dead. Helga walks up every few minutes, her hair
hanging straight down, and she stands gazing at
me with her mad eyes while she slowly tears her
dress to tatters. Is it Molly again, those eyes? Is it
all the eyes of those dead faces? I think no man
has ever had such a watchfulness of dead faces, I
have farmed the crop of this country, the land's
good yield along with Men from Bodie.
   I told him to get by the door for it wouldn't be
minutes before the looters would reach us. I said
with what breath I could gather, "Jimmy, over
here, stand here with that gun." But he was look-
ing at her as he'd been looking for the year or
more, he couldn't do anything but look at her. It
was his suffering, it was what she demanded.
   What caution was Molly's, what disbelief as she
slowly moved toward Turner, the man of her
dreaming, the great insulter, lying helpless in his
own stinking juices on the eating table. Yes it was
212               E. L. Doctorow
him alright the same one sure enough by God it
was him and no need to wave her cross for protec-
tion, a knife would do, the stiletto, now she would
use it. A jab to see if he was still alive, a gentle
stick to hurt him awake, and he flinched and
groaned. Back she jumped and then forward into
another place and he tried to writhe away from the
point. "Eh?" says Molly. "Eh?" as if to say re-
member me? remember your Molly? "Eh?" does
this make you remember, or this, or this!—almost
dancing with the grace of retribution.
   "Molly, oh Lord, Molly stop it, stop it—" I
shouted stumbling up, going for her. It was an end-
less frenzy, I cannot describe what she was doing,
God have mercy on her, I saw the boy's horror, for
how many endless moments did he endure it? And
how else could he speak, finally, when he had to
call her and claim her as a right? How else could
he make the sound of his need, create it true again?
He spoke as she had taught him, manfully, with the
proper instrument, booming of birth.
   It was the moment Turner's arms had closed
around Molly as if in embrace. My hand was over
the muzzle of the gun but the blast killed them
both. Fainting, I could hear people outside tipping
over the water tank, and it was that sound I lis-
tened to, the spread of water, an indecent gush.
                        14

And now I've put down what happened, every-
thing that happened from one end to the other. And
it scares me more than death scares me that it may
show the truth. But how can it if I've written as if
I knew as I lived them which minutes were im-
portant and which not; and spoken as if I knew the
exact words everyone spoke? Does the truth come
out in such scrawls, so bound by my limits?
   But for Helga I have the town to myself, who's
not dead is scattered over the plains. The air is hot,
and dry and still. The light of the sun parches me,
my mouth is filled with dust, I cannot make spittle.
There is no wind to stir the welcome banner, not a
cloud. Only the flock of buzzards-—sometimes
rising, fluttering from some imagined scare—makes
an occasional shadow. The .street is busy with the
work of jackals and vultures, flies, bugs, mice. To-
gether they make a hum of enterprise.
   I can forgive anyone but myself. The way I'm
facing I can see out over the flats as the afternoon
sun bakes colors across them. Who am I looking
for, Jimmy? He's gone, he's riding hard, that mule
                          21
                          3
214               E. L. Doctorow
and rig will take him places, another Bad Man from
Bodie, who used to be Fee's boy.
   I seem to remember a man saying once they
would build a railroad along the wagon trails west.
It will bring them along the edge of the flats with
their steam engines. I can see if I peer hard enough,
I can see those telegraph poles up there like stitch-
ing between the earth and sky. Am I dying that
slow?
   This morning, before I started this, when the
pain was too much to sit with, before my arm
turned numb, I walked up and down seeing the
fruit of the land. Isaac is dead in his store. In the
rubble of Zar's Palace that Mrs. Clement is dead
although I don't see a mark on her. The dealer
must be upstairs, Mae is lying across a table, her
dress pulled up around her neck. Her skull is
broken and her teeth scattered on the table and on
the floor.
   In front of his bar lies the Russian, scalped ex-
pertly. The bullet he got was in his stomach—a red
stain over his apron—he must still have been alive
when John Bear reached him. As much as anything
it was the sight of Zar, who once struck the Indian
from behind, which got me to take my books out
here and sit down and try to write what happened.
I can forgive everyone but I cannot forgive myself.
I told Molly we'd be ready for the Bad Man but we
can never be ready. Nothing is ever buried, the
earth rolls in its tracks, it never goes anywhere, it
never changes, only the hope changes like morn-
ing and night, only the expectations rise and set.
Why does there have to be promise before de-
struction? What more could I have done—if I
hadn't believed, they'd be alive today. Oh Molly,
              Welcome to Hard Times            215
oh my boy .. . The first time I ran, the second time
I stood up to him, but I failed both times, no matter
what I've done it has failed.
   Helga is standing here, she will watch me die.
Who will take care of Swede's wife? The mortal
stench is everywhere, especially on me, and there
is so much carrion in this town I wonder every
buzzard on the land won't be here before the sun
sets. It has crossed my mind to set the street afire
—that would scatter them. But there's no wind and
it would be hard work, harder than I can do.
   And I have to allow, with great shame, I keep
thinking someone will come by sometime who will
want to use the wood.
         ABOUT THE AUTHOR
E. L. DOCTOROW was born in 1931 in New York
City. He went to P.S. 70 and to the Bronx High
School of Science and spent his summers in a
camp in Massachusetts, a few miles from where
he has recently built a family cabin. He graduated
from Kenyon College, went on to Columbia Uni-
versity and to the U.S. Army in Germany. He
came back to New York and got a job as a reader
for a motion-picture firm and then went on to edit
for a paperback house. Subsequently, he became
editor-in-chief of The Dial Press. During these
years, he wrote Welcome to Hard Times and Big
as Life. Eventually he left publishing and found a
teaching job in California which allowed him to
write mornings. Doctorow's third novel, The Book
of Daniel, came out in 1971 to a remarkably en-
thusiastic press and was nominated for a National
Book Award. That same year he began to teach at
Sarah Lawrence College and to work on the novel
that became Ragtime. He was awarded a Guggen-
heim Fellowship in 1972 and a Creative Artists
Program Service Fellowship in 1974. He lives now
in the 1906 house described in Ragtime with his
wife, Helen, his nearly grown daughters, Jenny
and Caroline, and son, Richard.
Welcome to Hard Times is where
the career of E. L. Doctorow begins.
Like Ragtime it is set in America; this
time in the West. Its characters: whores,
silver miners, a sheriff, a bartender, a
child, and a remarkable villain, the
Man from Bodie, whose outlaw rage
destroys a town in a single day.
It is a novel like a ballad, terse, blood-
thirsty, charged with menace. Open
the book. From the first sentence, when
the badman at the bar grins down at
the redhead, you will be hooked.
            THE CRITICS PRAISE
          WELCOME TO HARD TIMES
            BY E. L. DOCTOROW
           AUTHOR OF RAGTIME

Norman Mailer: "A superb novel."
The New York Times: "Taut, dramatic, and
  exciting."
Los Angeles Times: "Excellent and exciting."
Newsweek: "Terse and powerful."
Washington Post: "A forceful, credible story
 of cowardice and evil."
"Chicago Sun-Times: "We are caught up with
  these people as real humans . . . This is a
  book you'll be hearing about."
Times Literary Supplement: "A taut, blood-
  thirsty read."
New Republic: "A superb piece of fiction."
Philadelphia Bulletin: "Doctorow's first novel
  is also a masterpiece,"