Past All Dishonor

8

They raked me over the fire in the grand jury room till my face had blisters that felt like they’d last the rest of my life, because if there was no axe it was the rigging, and that meant me. But there was nothing I could be indicted for, like something willful, and I had my $600 a month, and that helped with the blisters. It was all over town, and if the men had despised me before, they hated me now. But I kept my gun on me always, and began weeding my mine. I mean, six or eight at a time, every Saturday night, I fired the men I had been miners with, and took on new ones, mostly men that had arrived a few days before and didn’t know me from Adam. Hale paid no attention, because we were making plenty of changes, moving from the big shaft in four compartments to the little one where the strike was. I used special cages I had made, with three decks for cars, so we wouldn’t have to slow down to enlarge the shaft, and specially so we wouldn’t be enlarging it on bank money, but on our own, after we made some from the strike.

Then came the day when I was rid of all the miners that were sore at me, except Olesen, the big Swede, and Gator, the fellow that claimed he was a flat boat man, and would jump up and crack his heels and say his grandpappy was an alligator, and let on he was tough. It was Saturday, and they were to get it that night, and I could tell they knew it. How they found out I don’t know, but in a mine the timekeeper has a wife or a girl or something, and everybody knows what goes on practically before it happens. I could tell, from the way they were just pretending to work, there on the loading platform, rolling on cars, that they’d been told. And then all of a sudden, while I was leaning against a square set, waiting for the next car to come down, it was like some bee had stung me, only a lot worse.

I looked, and a candlestick was through my hand, pinning it to the timber.

A candlestick is like a clay pipe made out of iron, with the stem part a sharp point that they stick in wood or in dirt wherever they want a light, the bowl a cup that holds the butt of the candle, and the nub a curlicue that comes around and under, so they can hook a finger in it and yank it out as easy as they stuck it in. I reached for the curlicue with my good hand, but I didn’t catch it. Because a six-pound striking hammer swung past my head, and the breeze put out the candle in my hat, and the jolt put out the candle on the stick. And then there I was in the dark, with that candlestick driven so deep in the wood I couldn’t get it out no matter how I pulled with my free hand, and the hot wax spilling down and mixing with the blood, and still I couldn’t get loose. “Get his gun!”

“His gun, hell, get his guts!”

They kicked me and beat me and did their best to get my gun, but I used my teeth and it stayed under my arm, even if I couldn’t get it out to use it. Maybe I hollered. Anyway there was plenty of noise, and pretty soon there were lights up the entry, where other miners were on their way, running. But before they got there Gator jumped on the cage, pulled Oleson aboard, and gave the signal. He and the boy were up to the top by the time they prized me loose.

They got me to the top at last, and took me to a doctor on Taylor Street. It wasn’t bleeding much, but it was all mashed and raw, and hurt like holy hell. The doctor was named Rausch, and if he was a regular doctor or a horse doctor I don’t know, but the way he treated me it felt like he thought I was a horse. He poured a liniment over it that he made from mixing whisky and witch hazel in a bottle, like it was a salad dressing, and then he bandaged it up with rags he tore up from women’s petticoats he had in one drawer of his desk. When he got done I was so weak I could hardly stagger, and he got sore when I asked him to call a cab, but I hadn’t taken the gun off and when I begun fingering it with my left hand he went outside, and pretty soon a cab was there.

Next day I went to work, but by noon I felt so queer I had to come up and sit down in the office. Hale kept watching me, and pretty soon said I ought to go home. He didn’t send me, he took me, in his own carriage, and didn’t leave until I was in bed, and another doctor had come, a young fellow that at least acted like I was human. It wasn’t like Hale at all, but I figured out why he was so kind. I was out of my head a little, and he was afraid I’d talk.

How long I lay there I don’t know, but Mrs. Finn would come, and the doctor, and every time he washed my hand and bandaged it, it made me sicker to look at it, because it was swelled up the size of a ham and about the same color. And then one afternoon they were all in there, Hale and Mrs. Finn and the doctor, and the Chinese cook bringing hot water, and a look on their faces that said they were up to something. The doctor opened his case and got out a bottle of whisky and some tools. He poured me a tumbler full and told me to drink it. I put down a swallow or two, and gagged on it. “What the hell is it for? Ain’t I sick enough already with out a bellyful of this stuff?”

“You’ll need it.”

“What for?”

“For what I’ve got to do to you.”

“And what’s that?”

“...Take off your arm.”

“Oh no you’re not.”

“Duval, you’ve got blood-poisoning. I’ve done everything I know to prevent it, and nothing I’ve done has helped. There’s only one thing left, and that’s an amputation. The alternative is, if we don’t resort to that, and resort to it now, while there’s still time, or we hope there’s still time, in three more days you’ll be dead. Now let’s not deceive ourselves. Removal of an arm is a major operation, and one hell of a painful one. You’ve got one little thing in your favor, on that score. You’ve had practically nothing in your stomach since day before yesterday, and I think this liquor is going to put you out pretty completely. I’m not going to start till you’ve had a lot, but it’s going to be bad. You may as well be prepared.”

“I won’t let you.”

“I tell you, you’re going to die.”

“Then all right.”

But next thing I knew he was washing my arm, and Hale was shoving the whisky bottle against my teeth, and Mrs. Finn was standing by, with a basin. I knocked the bottle away with my chest and kicked the basin out of Mrs. Finn’s hands. The doctor began to cuss at me. “Goddam it, we’re trying to save your life, and the least you can do is act like you had sense.”

“Nobody asked you to save it.”

“Well, we’re going to.”

He motioned with his hand, and two miners stepped up, that I hadn’t seen before, and began tying me down, with rope. I fought and they fought back. I screamed at Hale, told him he’d be better off if I was dead, on account of what I knew, and why didn’t he make them let me alone? He screamed back, and I got the point a little bit then. Paddy and Williams had been paying him a few visits at night and he had just prayed them out of there when now I’d be teaming up with them, and the three of us, he figured, would really be tough. So he helped tie. And then all of a sudden they let go, and she was standing there, and my heart gave the same jump it had given in Sacramento, because she had that same look on her face, and I knew neither they nor fifty more like them could do anything to me now, because she wouldn’t let them. How she got there I didn’t at that time know, but it was easy to figure, later on. The house entrance was on B Street, but you climbed stairs in a long tunnel of a staircase to the rooms, which backed up on A. The boardwalk ran right past the window of my room, and she had just stepped off it to the sill, and then to the floor.

She looked things over, and said: “Thanks ever so much, doctor, for what you’re doing to Roger, but I’ll take charge of him from now on, if you don’t mind.”

“And who are you?”

“Just a friend.”

“Do you know what this man has the matter with him?”

“I see it’s his hand. I’m curing him up.”

“Not in my house you’re not.”

That was Mrs. Finn, who had been looking Morina over. One of the miners or somebody must have whispered something, because she cut loose with a spiel that sounded like something she had learned up for church, all about the respectable house she ran, and how nobody like Morina could come in it, even over her dead body. She was one of those dumb, worked-out women that naturally has it hard no matter where she goes. She had run a lunchroom for rivermen in St. Louis before she married Finn and came with him to the minefields. He put down so much booze she got religion, and after he died in Grass Valley she came on to Nevada and opened up the same old rivermen’s joint, except here it was miners.

She was hooking it up good when Morina stepped over to her, her hips swinging and her eyes showing that same cold glitter I’d seen there before. Right in the middle of a holler Mrs. Finn broke off, and when the doctor wigwagged her she went out in the hall with him and for a whole minute they were whispering to each other, while Morina looked from one to the other in the room, trying to figure out what was being said. When they came back Mrs. Finn nodded to the doctor, and he did the talking. “You’re willing to assume responsibility for this man, knowing as I now warn you that his injury will probably prove fatal unless he submits to the surgery I have recommended?”

“I told you once I am.”

“You know you’re not allowed out of this room?”

“If that fool says so, it’s her house.”

“You’ll provide him with what he needs?”

“I will.”

“You—”

“I’ll put you out if you don’t go. Now git.” By that time she had spotted my gun, where I kept it, hanging by the straps to a bedpost. She walked over, unstrapped it, let it swing over her arm. They got out of there fast, and when they were gone she hung the gun up again and came over to the bed.

“Roger, I got to tell you something.”

“How’d you know what they were up to?”

“Oh, things get around.”

“You mean you keep track of me?”

“My little piece of live bait, I got to watch him.”

“You mean you love me?”

“I mean I got something to tell you.”

“Then tell it.”

“I know a salve I can make.”

“I need it, God knows.”

“It’s a conjure salve, Roger.”

“All right.”

“You know what that is, a conjure salve?”

“If you make it, it’s all right with me. I know you won’t let me die. And if I do die, I’ll know, from how you came here today, that you love me.”

“Conjure, that’s in cahoots with the devil.”

“I said all right.”

“It’s like you pray that somebody gets well, only you pray to the devil, and you got to give him a live snake, and then while you pray you got to put the snake in the salve, and then you get well.”

I thought a long time about that, if you can say you think when your ears are ringing with fever, and your hand is pounding like a sledge hammer was mashing it up, and you’re so sick you want to throw up even when you haven’t got anything to throw up. It seemed so funny, that no sooner she did something that made me want to stand up and cheer, and brought me so close to her it seemed we were made to be together, than here would come this other thing, this side of her that was sin, or evil, or whatever you’d want to call it. If a snake went in the salve, what did I care? I’d eaten five hundred eels that I caught off Bay Ridge, and that part meant nothing to me. But what kind of Louisiana swamp drip did she have in her blood that made her get the devil in it? Once more I said all right, but for one second it swept over me to tell her no, I’d die before I had any part of the devil, because even if I didn’t believe he was there, she did, and that made it wrong.

What woke me was a drum-beat, and when I opened my eyes it was night, and there by the wash-stand was the biggest, blackest man I had ever seen, with a broken nose that was mashed flat all over his face, nothing on from the waist up, and a little drum in front of him, made from a gourd with a skin stretched over it, that he kept touching with the tips of his fingers. Later I found out he was named Scott, and was the husband of Mattiny, the cook down at the house on D Street. In a minute she stepped through the window, just as black as he was, with a red tignon over her head and big gold rings in her ears, and carrying a pot. She crossed the room, and all of a sudden her face was in the light, and I noticed the smell of rock oil. I looked, and there on the floor, kneeling in front of a big lamp, was Biloxi, whispering to herself, and motioning for the pot. Mattiny set it on top of the lamp, on a little attachment that held things that were to be heated. Then Biloxi closed her eyes and began waving her hands.

Outside, a board creaked in the hall. I opened my mouth to tell them to watch out, somebody was out there, probably the whole damned boarding house. But Mattiny went over and listened, so they knew about it.

I must have gone Under again, because next thing I knew a chill was going up my back like cold feathers had tickled it, from a sound in the room you’ll never forget if you hear it once, and in that God-awful country you hear it often: the rattle of a rattlesnake. It’s dry, like the rustle of old leaves, but it gets louder, and all of a sudden it’s going right into your belly, or wherever you keep your guts. I opened my eyes, and across the ring of light on the ceiling something was waving. I looked toward the lamp, and Morina’s face was right over it, white, and screwed up hard. The pot I couldn’t see and her hands I couldn’t see, but then came a hiss and the bang of a pot lid, and for three seconds the roar of all hell boiling. Then it was quiet, and her face relaxed, and she nodded. Mattiny came into the light beside her, and lifted off the pot.

“Roger.”

“Yes, Morina.”

“This is going to hurt.”

“Then send them away, Biloxi and the others. I can’t stand much more. If I bawl or something, I don’t mind if it’s only you, but I don’t want anybody else to see it.”

“There’s nobody here but me.”

“Then go ahead.”

“It has to go on hot.”

“If that’s all, I’ll be all right.”

“Boiling hot.”

“I won’t mind.”

I almost hit the ceiling when she put it on, a whole big gob of it in the middle of the cloth, but I clenched my teeth and didn’t holler. When it was bound on tight it got worse, and she held my head to her breast, and I could feel her tears falling down over my cheek. After it had been on a few minutes it had to be changed, and each time was worse than the last, and each time she held me to her was sweeter than the last, and I could feel it stronger, the way she loved me. And then one time after she bound on some more of it, my hand gave three or four throbs, like a knife had been stuck in it and I told her I thought something had happened. She took off the bandage and washed off the salve, and looked. Then she told me to double up my hand as far as I could. Before I half moved my fingers it squirted across and hit the wall. “That’s it, Roger! That’s what it wanted!”

“Christ, but it stinks.”

“Never mind the stink, let it come!”

She bathed it and squeezed it and pulled strings out of it all that day. And then around sundown the pain, the fever, and the fear were all gone, and I sank down in a deep, wonderful sleep.

Around dawn I was thirsty, and reached out to pour myself a drink of ice water from the pitcher she had set on a little bench beside the bed. She came over and did it, and held the glass while I drank, and sat down and felt my head. “You slept nine hours.”

“I feel so much better.”

“Your hand hurt?”

“None any more. It’s better. I can feel it.”

“Later on I’ll bandage it.”

“Tough on you.”

“Oh, I’m all right. I caught some sleep in the chair, and Biloxi’s feeding me wonderful. Your breakfast’ll be along directly.”

“What do you call this dress?”

“Gingham.”

“Never saw you in that before.”

“I’ve been working.”

“Makes you look like a young girl.”

She smoothed my pillow and patted my cheek and gave me a little kiss on the forehead. I put my arm around her and half pulled her down beside me. We lay that way a long time, she running her fingers through my hair, me touching her and smelling her and feeling how warm and soft she was. I kissed her on the cheek, just a little brush of a kiss. She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t come closer either. I kissed her again, a little nearer the mouth. “No.”

“Just one.”

“If you ask for more, I’ll move.”

I kissed her, then held her tight and kissed her again, and again after that. I could feel her lips get hot under mine. “Roger, I don’t want you to kiss me that way.”

“Why not? We love each other, don’t we?”

“I’ve told you why not.”

I held her tighter, and her lips got hotter, and I knew I was going to have her. But when I did, she cried, and kept on crying.