I seen Wild Bill frequently after that, and he was always friendly and would have me at his table for a drink, even though a colored man was not usually invited by others. Sometimes his companions would stand up and leave us to it when I arrived, not wanting to share a drink with a nigger, though they wouldn’t have said that in my presence or Wild Bill’s. I had a reputation of my own by this time, it coming from how I handled myself at the Gem.

I appreciated Wild Bill’s friendliness and never so much as said a thing about them men we killed, same for the note, until now. I also managed to help him dodge Calamity a few times, though I felt small over that, as she seemed a nice enough woman. I admired the way she could handle a cuss word, and her ability to string them together was unmatched by mule skinner, miner, and bullwhacker alike. When she come around, Wild Bill often found he had forgotten to do something or another, or needed the outhouse, whatever excuse he could muster. I was sometimes given the job of serving her whatever lie Bill had cooked up in that moment. I’d have to tell her his lie and have her look at me with her kind eyes and her hard face, made that way by time and men and alcohol. What good looks there might have been had fallen behind the crags of her bones, and lay there in hiding, unless you stared at her long and hard and she turned her head just right.

However, the main thing in my life back then was that I took to watching Win Finn like I was a viewer of rare birds. I would check on her during breaks or the few times when I was off work or at night, in hopes of seeing her and the old lady about the ratting business. I was fortunate to come across them at times, and made it a now-and-again job to help her drown the rats, though I never grew used to it. The ratting business all went to hell, however, when some half-breed figured out there was a major nest where the bulk of them was housed, and he burned it out with coal oil. This didn’t entirely eliminate the rat population, but it put a dent in it, and what with them boys and their clubs and the men with their popping rifles and Win and Madame Finn with their traps and drowning, the rat infestation was knocked down to a gray dribble.

It was then that the two women became laundresses, and though I could hardly afford it, I took to having my shirts cleaned by them at a dear price. It was worth it, though, and one day as I brought in some shirts, Madame Finn said to me, “Son, let me have you aside here.”

She took my shirts and put them on the board outside next to a big pot of boiling water set over a fireplace built of rocks. The shirts was boiled in there like pears for jam.

Me and Madame walked down the hill, and at the base of it, out in the street, she said, “You hear me on this. You must have the best of intentions with Win.”

“I don’t know it’s a mutual feeling between me and her, but on my end my intentions are purely good,” I said.

“To speak bluntly, Mr. Ears—”

“Nat.”

“—a man finds he sometimes has needs, and so does a woman, and them things can lead to something don’t neither of you need, something that can turn wrong on a cat’s hair.”

“I don’t follow you.” That was a lie, but it seemed the right thing to say.

“Yes, you do,” she said. “You are thinking of linking up with my girl like the beasts of the fields.”

“I ain’t never thought of such a thing for a moment,” I said. Which was, of course, a big goddamn lie. It’s about all I thought about.

“I will tell you this,” said Madame, and she put her face close to mine as she spoke. “You ask to see her, it will be with a chaperone, and I will be well armed with a pistol.”

“You think she would see me under courting circumstances?” I asked. “You can carry two pistols if you like.”

“I hoped she might choose more wisely than riffraff,” she said, “though it’s natural she would gravitate to a colored boy. You are not hard to look at, though you could easily hang laundry on those ears. I suggest you let your hair keep growing and get yourself a bigger hat.”

“Thanks,” I said.

By this point my hair had grown out considerable and was as bushy as mulberry bramble. I had also taken to wearing leather chaps I didn’t need over blue-and-red-striped pants. Like Wild Bill, I had bought me some boots with high heels on them at a dear price, and they gave my already goodly height a greater measure. I thought I looked pretty good, though my hat didn’t quite fit me anymore on account of the thickening hair. I tended to pull it down tight over my bushy head so that the hair fanned out like a parasol half open. During the day the hat would ride up on the hair and finally sit atop it like a bird on a rock.

“There is a dance being held this Saturday,” Madame said, “and you may ask her to that if you must. No one cares what color you are at a barn dance, because it costs a dollar to get in. But you should do the asking with me nearby. I will not have done to her what was done to her mother.”

“She’s not a slave,” I said.

“That is why it will not be done, Ears. Times are different.”

That’s how I come to walk back up that hill and go directly to Win and say as if it was my thought all along, “There is a dance this Saturday, and with you and your chaperone, Madame Finn, I would love to invite you to attend.”

“I would be delighted to come,” she said, and there wasn’t a moment of hesitation. I hadn’t actually expected a positive answer, and so quickly. I stood there stunned.

“You will come by to walk us to the dance, then?” Win said.

“I will. Whenever it is.”

“The time can be found out,” Win said.

Well, now, if I was floating the first time I met her, I was flying now. I went down the hill and hadn’t gone far when Win caught up with me and took my elbow. She said, “I want you to know I asked Madame to ask you to ask me to the dance. I thought I should start out being honest.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” I said.

“I didn’t know anyone else who is of the same color.”

“I was the only pig left at the slaughterhouse?”

She laughed. “Well, you got a kind of ignorant country charm about you, but we should start soft, don’t you think?”

“I suppose we should,” I said.

“I look forward to it, then,” she said.

16

It was a tent dance, and it was a big tent, striped red and yellow, having once belonged to a circus. It was lit up with all manner of lanterns and candles and things that led one to think a fire could get started real easy. The ground had been covered in sawdust and patches of hay around the sides. There was barrels to sit on and stools and assorted chairs and overturned buckets. The tent had a musty smell to it, and I could almost imagine the animals that had paraded beneath it. In fact, on this night a whole different batch of animals paraded about. A band was brought in, one with horns and fiddles and banjos and the like, and there was food and drink and people was dressed up in their finest, which meant there was a lot of color and a rustling of women’s dresses. Even the China folk was there, though except for Wow none of them came to dance. They came to see what this crazy business was about and mostly stood over to one side near the hanging tent wall.

It was a cool night, and the door flaps was wide open and spread back so you could have rode a circus elephant in there without having to duck your head, which was something I’m sure had been done in the past.

Wild Bill and his friend Charlie Utter showed up. I had been introduced to Charlie briefly one night at the Gem, where I was bouncing. He was a dandy, like Wild Bill, only a shorter version. Even Calamity Jane came, and she was all dressed up in women’s clothes. It was the first time I had ever seen her that way. Her hair was fixed a little, and her face was washed. Normally she was dressed in buckskins, her face twisted up in a scowl, hair tucked inside a hat like a caged animal, a revolver stuck in her belt, and foul words flowing out of her mouth like loose sewage.