Paradise Sky

Deadwood was prone to a horde of vermin, and sometimes at night, men, and women, too, would sit on their porches with a lantern lit and watch rats run along the edges of the street. This led to a number of low-caliber rifles being used to pop them, and in the act of that at least three people, two men and one woman, had died in the practice of rat tapping, as it was called by some. A few small dogs and cats had met their demise in much the same fashion.

Rat tapping and rat trapping also jobbed up a mess of young boys who was paid by the pound of dead rats brought to the general store in tow sacks. The bags was weighed up, same as gold nuggets, and the boys was paid off, sometimes in pe

Them critters scuttled about in squeaking, sniffing, scratching, biting hordes. They came at night and hustled along with great excitement. They’d climb right up on you if you had a crumb on your shirt or a spill of beer on your pants. We even had them come directly into the saloon through the open doors, as if they was there to belly up at the bar and order a beer. They was bold, I tell you. The working girls in them places would scream, and so would some of the men, and then the revolvers was drawn, and rats was shot, or shot at; the quicker ones scampered to safety while the patrons ducked and hoped they didn’t catch a round of hot lead.

Night I decided to be a ratter was the same night I was at the Gem Theater, my job having expanded from Ma

I was emptying spittoons, and a fellow come down the aisle during an act, striding toward the stage, where a woman was howling like a wolf over a deer corpse, this being some of that less professional entertainment I mentioned. All of her bellowing was done to the numbing tinkle of bad piano; it couldn’t have been no worse if the player was playing with his toes.

This man coming down the aisle had a pistol, and he started firing off shots at the piano player. I could understand this, as that was some racket that fellow was putting out, and combined with the woman’s hollering, I could see how a fellow might fly off his bean. But unfortunately for the music world, it turned out the piano player was a better shot than the other. He pulled a little gun and popped a shot at him and laid him on the floor, leaking blood. We all gathered around the shot man, who said, “That singer is my wife. She run off with that goddamn piano player.”

By then the piano man had come over and was standing with the rest of us over the dying man. His gun was taken from him by a big bruiser who served as a bouncer for the theater, and a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder.

The dying man said, “I am dying. There’s a cloud settling over me. I chased them here, and I’ve been undone. But boys, you got to get a preacher and make this cad marry her, and now, over my dead body. You got to promise me that.”

He talked just like that, I do not kid, and the men around him started nodding, and promises was made. When the old boy died, which was pretty quick after that, a preacher was brought in, and the howling woman was hustled over in her little feathered outfit, and her and that piano player was married right away, for what it was worth. When that was done, the dead man was laid out on a table, his hat was put on his chest, and a wad of dark cloth was stuck in his wound to stop the leaking. The bullet hadn’t gone out the other side of him, so it wasn’t as messy as you might think.

The preacher said some words over him, and his bravery was attested to, though the piano player made a few grumpy sounds during this. The preacher went on and on, extolling the virtues of this fellow who he had never met. You would have thought they’d grown up together and had spent many a night on the trail and had fought a grizzly bear to death in tandem, the two of them having only pocketknives and each other’s asses to ride all the way down the mountainside. It was a preaching to beat all preachings. A few men was sniffling, and there was a couple who had gone beyond that and was right-out blubbering. I was a little sick to my stomach.

When this finally got over and we could put our hats back on, the dead man was given to what passed as the town undertaker, and the body, supported by four volunteers, was carted out.

I mention all this to give you the tone of the place and to get back to the bouncer, who was a husky white Southern boy; a redhead with a bad attitude. He come by me carrying that piano player’s gun, shoved me with a shoulder, saying, “Out of the way, boy.”

I had a spittoon in my hand, and I had on heavy gloves I was using to hold the lip of it, and I brought it around and clocked him. He was lucky I had already emptied it and was returning it or he would have been covered in tobacco spittings. He dropped so fast I figured him dead, as only the week before I seen a man throw a beer glass and kill a fellow. They was going to hang the glass tosser, but he said he had to pee, and they let him go out back. He was never seen again. Such was the vigilant law enforcement in Deadwood.

A crowd gathered around the bouncer—Red, as he was known—and I felt a little better when he rolled on his side and spat out blood. Soon a stout man come shoving through the crowd. I recognized him right off as Al Swearengen, the owner of the place and my employer.

“I seen what you done,” he said, “and it was a good whack.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I put my full arm into it.”

“Listen, put that down, come over to the office, and see me.”

I put the spittoon down and followed him into a very nice office with ornate furniture and a painting of a naked woman on the wall doing something with a swan. He said, “Take a chair there.”

I took a chair in front of his desk. I studied the girl and the swan. She had one leg halfway wrapped around it, and the swan was looking back at her. I couldn’t figure if he was surprised by the leg wrap or if he was somehow in charge.

Swearengen gathered his hands together, made a steeple of his fingers. He was a man that would look oily fresh from the bath. His hair had enough grease on it a small moth had got hung up in it. I started to point it out, then decided not to. Swearengen pursed his lips as if in thought. I could tell right off he was the kind of man that would try and give you goat shit and tell you it was raisins.

“Now, listen here,” he said. “Red, he’s a pocketer.”

“What?”

“He steals from me.”

“Oh.”

“I need a new bouncer, and a man your size might be just the ticket. Red, he’s done here. I was trying to decide if I was going to fire him or have him whipped. I’ll count that spittoon as a licking, and when he wakes up, I’ll kick his ass free. So the job is yours.”

“Well, sir, I don’t know.”

“Look at it this way,” he said. “Red there could press charges.”

“To who?” I said.

“To me,” he said. “I’m the law in this saloon.”

“I see,” I said, and did see, and didn’t like it.

“But you come to work for me as a bouncer instead of a swamper, and I will say he shouldered himself into you on purpose.”

“He did,” I said.

“I know. I would like to have you take the job. Lot of men here are scared of colored.”

“Lot of men here hate colored,” I said. “That ain’t exactly the same thing.”