Welcome to Hard Times Read online

  Praise for

  Welcome to Hard Times

  “A superb novel.”

  —NORMAN MAILER

  “Excellent.”

  —The Los Angeles Times

  “Taut, dramatic, and exciting.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Terse and powerful.”

  —Newsweek

  ALSO BY E. L. DOCTOROW

  Big as Life

  The Book of Daniel

  Ragtime

  Drinks

  Before Dinner (play)

  Loon Lake

  Lives of the Poets

  World’s Fair

  Billy Bathgate

  Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution (essays)

  The Waterworks

  City of God

  Sweet Land Stories

  The March

  Creationists: Selected Essays, 1993—2006

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part 1 - First Ledger

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Part 2 - Second Ledger

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part 3 - Third Ledger

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  About the Author

  FOR MANDY

  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 redhead, 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 before, 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 coming. 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 and wider. To the north were hills of rock and that was where the lodes were which gave an excuse 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 meanwhile 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 screaming 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 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 rub. Behind him in the dirt was a pile of new manure.

  We waited and then there was a noise from inside—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 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—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 window, 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 wagons, 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 time 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.”

  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 build 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 clanking 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.

  “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 everything 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.”

  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 riding 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 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 swinging ones and pulled shades down over the windows.

  “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.

  “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 something!”

  “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.”

  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. Hausenfield 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 Hausenfield, straddling him with his gun holstered 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 bullets 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 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.