Calamity Read online

  Calamity Jane has come to such a poor pass in her old age that she has been compelled to apply for admission to the poor-house in Gallatin County. That’s what the paper said. Though I wasn’t old then. I wasn’t old ever, except in my bruised heart. I was forty-three, perhaps forty-four. But God’s honest truth, I looked twenty years beyond that. It’s a mistake that’s easy to forgive.

  She is likely to end her melodramatic career in the almshouse, the paper said. She has outlived a dozen husbands, killed as many Injuns as the next man, and it was doubtful that she ever had a skirt on in her life, but now poor old Calamity Jane has at last turned her back on her old-time glory and gone over the hills to the poor-house.

  Somewhere all these wild-eyed scribblers got the notion that I had trailed glories in my youth. I think they truly believed I’d been the very bride of adventure, a dazzler whose life had been one crack-bang romance after another. For reasons I’ll never know, they hung their dreams on me. I was the West they wanted—the dream they never stopped dreaming. And whenever one happened to meet me face-to-face, I couldn’t help but disappoint.

  As Piedmont grew, so did business at the Alton place, and soon enough Emma was reluctantly glad her husband had insisted on taking me in. She was often so occupied in her speckless kitchen that I was obliged to turn all the rooms myself, and I was determined to do it so well that not even Emma could fault my work. I still did the washing in the back yard, of course, but my daily climb up the stairs to the second floor was like a holiday, and a new array of inspirations waited behind every closed door.

  I was endlessly fascinated by the trinkets and scraps people left out while they went about their business in Piedmont. Every object was a relic from another life—proof that the world was greater than the one I knew. In the bone handle of a razor, left on a dresser half-folded, in the tender carefulness of pretty writing on an opened envelope, I came to recognize the endless variety of human experience. With my dust cloth in one hand, I would pick up each novel, pretty thing and turn it in my palm, feel the weight of a boar-bristle hairbrush or the smoothness of a brass button. I would breathe in the sweetness of a perfumed kerchief with threads of pink or Turkey red stitched around its hem, and hold against my lips the dry soft crackle of a letter I could scarcely read.

  I did know a few words. Now and then, when the mood struck him, my had pa taught me a little reading. Not that he was very good at it, neither. I read what I could of those letters with an effort that left me in a dream-like state—misty, wondering over far-away places and lives much grander than my own.

  How I loved the words I read—the sound and shape of them. Dear. Alone. Long. Western. The sky is so very blue.

  I wondered, Back East were the skies some other color? Did they live all their lives without sunshine? Still, the life of a grown man, or even a grown woman, must be impossibly grand, filled as it was with smooth shiny things, with the fineness of good combs and dainty-sewed kerchiefs and boot hooks with tortoise-shell handles.

  I thought as I placed each object back exactly where I’d found it, I must get into the grown-up world myself, for it’s a far better life than anything an orphaned girl can aspire to. I’d had plenty of grown-up experiences by that time; despite what Emma Alton believed, my reputation hadn’t been soiled (not enough, at least, that anyone could tell just to look at me.) I thought I had earned a piece of the grown world. I thought I was well and truly owed.

  Cilus and Lije and the little girls never left my thoughts, in all the months I worked for the Altons. I’d long since made up my mind to find my way to the Richardson ranch and check up on the boys. I intended to see to it that they was treated kindly. If they wasn’t, I had a half-formed idea that I would spirit them away under cover of darkness, and together we would all live as bandits on the open plains. Or maybe I’d teach them how to make beds and use a dust rag.

  The Altons was stiffly Biblical folks, so I did no work on Sundays—though more often than not, they took me along to the church across town, where the white minister preached his mixed-up gospel. Then I wore a dove-gray pinafore and collar over a somber, dark-blue dress that Emma had found for me somewheres. The dress was short, in the girls’ style—as was appropriate for my age, I guess, even though I was tall as a grown woman by then and looked perfectly ridiculous with my hems near up to my knees.

  The longer I lived in their company, the less the Altons attended the services of Reverend Wilkes, who had taken me in when I hadn’t a place to go in all the world. I reasoned that I might beg Emma to allow me to spend the next Sunday at the Reverend’s church, so’s I could thank him again for his kindness. And then, when she had granted permission, I would use the time away from her watchful eye to find out exactly where the Richardson ranch lay. But I soon discarded that idea, for Piedmont was a perniciously tiny town. Gossip had legs in that place. I knew word would make it back to the Altons that I had shirked my duty to the Lord and was making suspicious inquiries. I quickly came to understand that if I ever hoped to learn where my brothers had gone, I must commit an even greater act of deceit.

  I committed that act on the very same day I made up my mind to do it—or rather, I did it that night. I lay awake for hours on my hard mattress in the tiny room behind the stairs, pinching my arms and my stomach to keep myself awake. When the house had fallen silent, and had remained silent for so long that I was certain everybody in it must be fast asleep—I slid out of my bed and dressed in the dark. I put on my Sunday dress, for I thought it would be wise to look as presentable as ever I could, though I left the pinafore and collar behind, for they seemed more than the occasion demanded. Then I picked up my shoes and carried them through the kitchen to its back door, the one where Emma would sometimes stand and watch me working at the laundry, her hard stare unwavering as she waited for me to slip up and sin.

  The door squeaked when I opened it. The sound of it rattled all down my spine; it seemed the loudest, most awful thing I had ever heard, though in truth it wasn’t noisy enough to wake the lightest sleeper, for Emma always kept its hinges oiled with goose fat or slicked up with beeswax when she could get any. I paused on the threshold, straining to catch the faintest sound of a groaning bed frame or a rustle of sheets kicked aside. But the house remained unstirring, and when my breath was a little less raggedy, I stepped outside and let the door shut softly behind me. I was terrible scared of what Emma would do if she caught me in the act, but I was scared worse of never finding my brothers again—never living up to the promise I had made.

  Outside the kitchen door, I stooped and got my feet into my shoes, quick as I could. Moonlight muted the world, draining all color from it, and the dark ring of ash where I burned buffalo chips to boil my laundry kettle looked like the pit of a well sunk deep into the earth. I skirted it nervously and hurried around the corner of the house.

  When I reached the front of the Altons’ property, the road through Piedmont was like a river in the night—broad, flat and silver. I followed it into the heart of town. I could see lights burning low and cozy against the towering sweep of a star-covered sky. Now and then the light grew and stretched out into the street, molten gold flowing over black velvet, as the doors to the few saloons at the center of town opened and allowed lantern-glow and the distant sound of laughter and music to escape into the darkness.

  I passed a dry-goods store and the blacksmith shop, shut up for the night, windows dark as punched eyes. I passed the livery, and heard horses stirring and snorting in their corrals. A few of the ponies whickered at me, hesitant, but knowing I was a friendly soul and always good to their kind. I would have liked to stop and visit with those horses—stroke their long warm faces and smell their grass-sweet breath against my cheek—but my errand was too urgent. The faster I achieved my aim and got back into bed, the less sore Emma would be with me when she learned about my sneaking. Or so I hoped.

  The noise of the saloons got louder and more distinct as I approached. Now I could pick out the high, harsh notes o
f a jangling piano, and below it the droning wooden buzz of a hurdy-gurdy. Men laughed, loud and strong. The sound broke out over the softer presence of the night, the shush of wind through prairie grass and the snick of horses’ tails swinging beside the hitching posts.

  I stopped dead in the middle of the road, staring into the heart of Piedmont. Two saloons watched one another other from opposite sides of the street. I kept my eyes on those saloons, fixed by a grim enchantment. Already I could feel those two patches of light pulling at me—oases in the desert of my personal dark, my isolation. I found the draw of singing and laughter damn near impossible to resist, for it had been unaccountably long since I had last heard such sweet music. Now and then, the men who came and went chanced to open their doors at exactly the same time, and then the lantern glow came together in the center of the street. What a beautiful sight those bands of light made when they met. Warmth and cheer called to me—Martha, come and have a taste of what you always hungered for, deep down. Come and find the joy your life has withheld. My mouth watered, just as if I’d been hungry, but it wasn’t my belly that wanted filling. It was my spirit. I hadn’t had a spot of joy in my life, long as I could recall—unless you count the times in Princeton when, as a little girl, I stood among the horses in the field and watched the wagon trains creep slow along the distant foothills.

  I stood in the Piedmont road feeling the tickle of laughter and music run through me. I watched men come and go along the planks of the sidewalks—how long I stood and watched, I cannot say. Then I recalled Cilus and Lije, and took a deep breath to break the spell, and continued on my mission.

  I had to pick which saloon to visit first, so I chose the one on the left, for no reason I could name. As I stepped up onto the boardwalk, the piano was like a hand closing around me, holding me tight. The air seemed to thicken, and I felt as if I swam along the boardwalk rather than strolling. The saloon I chose had a red door with a big square of wire screen set into it, and the sounds from within gushed out through that opening like water from an upturned bucket. With a trembling hand, I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  The moment I was in, all apprehension fled. A spirit of joy pulled up strong beneath my heart, so overwhelming that I laughed aloud at nothing in particular. Emma didn’t allow for whooping-up anywhere near her property—not even from her boarders—but I was a young thing, frolicky as young things are, despite my many months of toil and deprivation. The piano’s music was as bright and saucy as the girl who danced beside it. She had rows of red sausage curls in her hair, and they bounced like loose springs while she bobbed with hands on hips. Her fine, tiny feet bore velvet slippers set with glass gems. Those beautiful slippers tapped out a quick, clever rhythm. The dancing girl wore a flounced skirt of blue velvet, too, with a tight bodice and no collar a-tall, just bare skin across the top of her bosom. I thought that girl the finest, happiest, prettiest thing in all the world. I wanted to be her—free to jig to my heart’s content, possessed of a happiness well worth jigging about. And how I did envy the tribute of appreciative hoots the dancer collected from all those men. The life of a dancing girl surely beats the life of a laundry girl, I told myself as I watched her stamp and spin and set her blue velvet skirt to flying. I guessed a girl that happy must own a hundred tortoise-shell boot hooks and more embroidered kerchiefs than she could ever count.

  “The Hell you doing in here, girl,” a man said close beside me, shouting over the noise of the bar.

  I looked up in alarm, thinking perhaps he recognized me as the Altons’ orphan, and was set to march me straight home and expose me to Emma and her whipping stick. He wore a stained apron and carried a towel slung over one shoulder. His was no face I recognized from the church or from town. He was only the proprietor, I realized—and my short skirts had given me away as being sinfully young for saloon life.

  “I’m looking for somebody,” I said.

  “Who—your daddy?”

  “No,” I answered more sharply than I should have, “my pa’s dead.”

  That was a mistake, and I knew it the second the words left my mouth. How many orphans could there be in Piedmont? I was only cracking the whip behind the team of rumor, ensuring it would speed all the faster to the Altons’ door.

  I said, “I’m looking for anyone who can tell me where the Richardson ranch it. I got some business there, and I must go to the ranch tomorrow.”

  The proprietor’s face kind of jumped, in surprise or in amusement, and he blew out harshly through his lips, so his mustache rippled in his self-made breeze. “Girl, you got no business anywhere. Go back to wherever you belong and don’t come back in my saloon till you’re old enough to associate with mixed company.”

  Mixed company. I know what that means now—the roughs and unpredictables of the Western landscape. And I mean the West as it was then—not as it is now. In those early years—my early years—this was a different world entirely. How quickly things change. Much faster than we’re ever prepared to believe.

  “It’s real important, Mister,” I said. “Can you tell me where the Richardson ranch is? Please, and then I’ll be on my way.”

  He pulled the towel off his shoulder and flicked it toward me, like driving off an especially pesky mosquito. I jumped back, but not towards the door. I stumbled deeper into the crowd, the men milling about or lounging in simple cane-back chairs around the tables. And as I stepped away from him, the proprietor was pulled off in some other direction by business more urgent than me. He shouted over his shoulder, “Out with you, girl!”

  I ignored him. I had my mission, and aside from that, my fascination with the place was growing by the moment, my heart beating faster and more insistent with every bar the piano played. I moved from table to table, interrupting men at their card games and conversations. Such presumption is nothing I could get away with now. (You were the exception, Short Pants, having set down alone at this bar.) Even a few years after that night, while I was still accounted young, I couldn’t have justified such rudeness. But there’s something about a pert young girl-child that amuses men and inspires their favor, even if she ain’t especially pretty.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said at every table I came to, and I put my hands on my hips in imitation of the red-haired dancing girl, and I smiled my biggest. “Do you know where to find the Richardson ranch, and how long it would take a body to walk there?”

  Nobody knew—or if they did, they wasn’t telling unless I got friendlier. A few men grinned up at me with their glasses half-drunk, or with beer spilled across their tables. They said, “Set down on my lap and I’ll tell you,” or, “Give me a kiss and I’ll tell.” But I sensed they didn’t know any better than the rest, and the wagon trail had made me too canny to fall for such simple tricks.

  After I’d made thorough rounds of the first bar, I reluctantly turned my back on the pretty, jewel-bright dancing woman and crossed the road to the other saloon. My luck to the right was just as slim as it had been to the left, but the music in that place was nicer, with a man who cranked the hurdy-gurdy so it hummed like a great fat bumblebee. Three ladies danced at that saloon, instead of just one. Those dancers were more sedate—not as bouncy—but their grace and prettiness captivated me, so that after I asked every man in the place about the Richardson ranch I stood with my back against the wall and watched the ladies twirl and sway, wide-eyed and open-mouthed till the barkeeper grabbed me by the shoulder and shoved me out the door.

  “Buy a drink or move along,” he shouted. “Looking ain’t free!”

  Well. Now that I had learned first-hand what a grand and joyous place the world could be, how could I hope to stay shut up inside the Altons’ home? When I lay awake at night, I just about believed I could hear the dry-throated moan of the hurdy-gurdy singing along my bones, with every creak of my tired joints—much too tired for a girl of thirteen. Despite how ragged I was run by my chores around the boarding house, the minute I bedded down in my narrow cot under the kitchen stairs my mind boiled wit
h excitement. I saw all over again the scenes I’d witnessed at those two saloons—the dancer’s red curls bouncing, her hands so jaunty on her hips—the men with their cards bright as sunbursts in their hands—the lamplight shining like spots of sun on glasses half-filled with liquor or beer. Everything I’d seen behind the saloon doors was warm, glowing, smiling. And it was a brighter world than the one I knew under the Alton roof.

  It took those saloons to make me realize I had come to view the whole damn world as a dark and disappointing place. A heavy shadow had stolen over my spirit—sometime back along the wagon trail, or maybe when I held my baby sister in my arms and gave her to a stranger to raise. Somehow, everything within my purview had deadened and grayed. But color and laughter could be found. And in the saloons, music played, flowing out into the night, out into the cold and dark, a beacon to guide me to a sweeter life.

  I’m ashamed to tell you this, but it is God’s honest truth. I forgot about the ranch and Cilus and Lije. I intended to remember, and in the daytime when I was drooping and shivering from tiredness, I thought of nothing but my brothers. Then I resolved all over again to find their ranch, come Hell or high water. I swore to myself that when night came, I would give in to no more distractions. But after sunset and supper, the house fell silent, and my loneliness rose up like a snake making ready to strike, and all I could think of was the jangling piano in the golden saloon.

  There came a day when Emma sent down some of her oldest dresses for me to clean. “These are to be packed away till next spring,” she told me, “so once they’re dry and pressed, you must see that they are folded neatly with lavender to keep the moths away.”