E.L. Doctorow (9 page)

“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, thinking 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.”

“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 together. 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 nibble 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 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. Alfs hat was on the table, Mae was sitting on his lap and Jessie was standing in back of him holding his ears, and they all three were laughing.

“Blue!” Alf called throwing his head back. “I begin to
see your way of thinking’, 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 received. 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 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 percentages 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 this? 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 knowing he was coming.

“What are you going to do now?” I said to him.

“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, licking 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 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 times what we could have by buying it ourselves,” she said.

“Well Molly I don’t favor keeping a store. Settling Ezra’s brother here puts money in the town.”

She looked at me. “The town! 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?”

“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 to do with any of us while Zar was in our company—he spent most of his time away in the rocks, preparing 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 pony, 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 whatever I told him to do. But I remember the way 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.

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 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 somewhere 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.