Paradise Sky

I had bought myself a new black hat, and it fit me better than the old one. I was tricked out in a fire-red double-breasted shirt with blue buttons, and I was wearing dark blue pants with a thin blue stripe in them. In the style of Hickok I had tucked the pants into my boots, which was shiny with polish. I had on a coat made of dark leather with fringes on it.

By the time I had checked my guns, the music had already started, and people was dancing. It was the dandiest sight you have ever seen. They was flashing elbows and lifting knees and a’gallivanting about the place, kicking up their heels like young horses. The faster the music got, the faster the dancing crowd got. And dang if Wild Bill wasn’t out there dancing himself. He was at first with Charlie, and they was a reeling about like regular fools and starting to wave their arms in all ma

I seen Wow and Cullen, too. Wow was dressed in American clothes and was quite light on her feet, though Cullen danced like he had his shoestrings tied together. He had ended up with a green shirt and orange trousers and some two-tone shoes, brown and white with big red ties in them. It made him look a bit like a circus clown and in some ways reminded me of a painting in Mr. Loving’s book of a court jester called Hop-Frog.

Everyone danced and changed partners, so that it finally come mostly to men and women together, though it didn’t seem to be by design. Just whoever come up in the shuffle was grabbed. This man with that woman and this woman with that man and so on, and pretty soon it ended up that Wild Bill was dancing with Calamity Jane. If they wasn’t having a good time it was the best performance I’ve ever seen. They had big smiles and was starting to hop like rabbits. They was obviously drunk as flies in persimmon wine.

The band started growing. New members with new instruments fell into place. There was a fellow picking up a beat with a pair of spoons and another scratching on a washboard with thimbles, and one guy had two pieces of cow ribs he was snapping together. The band was made up of white folks and black, and even a Chinaman who had a triangle and a stick he was whacking it with. Fortunately the horns, fiddles, banjos, and such covered up the clanging noise. A bit of the music would run off the rails now and again, but it always managed to come back.

I was ready to get out there. I turned to Win, who was lovely in a dress green as sin, with little green shoes and a green pin through her mound of hair. I said, “Would you oblige me a dance?”

“I would, sir,” she said. “Let’s get to it. And I hope you know how.”

“I’ll figure it out as we go.”

Win looked at Madame, who nodded her consent, and away we went.

Now, I am going to brag on myself here and say I am a natural dancer. I caught that music and rode it like a bucking horse. The notes was butterflies, and I had the net. We started prancing a little here, a little there, picking up speed, like we was windup toys. Charlie Utter, drunk as a bull moose and dancing with himself, sashayed by us, totally out of step with the tune, and fell over a barrel and lay on the floor not moving.

We didn’t pay him no mind. He was one of a handful of drunks and dizzy folks who had fallen out. Me and Win was on display for sure. We reeled and spun and bounced and even went vulgar with a hump or two in the air. I don’t know what come over us there, but we did it, and when I looked at Madame she give me the eye, so we quit that foolishness.

Me and Win was the toast of the dance. We caught everyone’s eye, or at least Win did, cause when she’d spin that green dress would fly out and about, and she was moving fast as a child’s top. Around and around she spun, and me with her, us linking arms and kicking, moving sprightly about to such an extent everyone started trying to mimic us; and damned if the band didn’t pick it up a step. It led to some of the kids doing cartwheels and handstands and the like. Everyone had caught the disease. It got even wilder as the drink got to flowing more loosely, and me and Win had to stop finally and take our rest and have some punch that wasn’t spiked with liquor, and that amounted to one bowl that was served up by the Congregational church ladies. It was not a popular bowl. We found ourselves there primarily with the kids and a few women and henpecked husbands, sipping punch from cups and looking sour due to the drink being heavy on the lemon.

As you would expect, with there being drunks and women and music, some fights broke out, and some of the deacons from the Congregational church, following the laws of their creed, just beat the ever-living dog shit out of a couple of them and threw them out of the tent. When I went out once to find a place to relieve myself, I discovered them rowdies in a ditch behind the tent, and in fact found I was making water on one of them. I retreated quickly because the damp seemed to be bringing him around.

On my way back to the tent, I seen that Wild Bill had Calamity Jane bent over an outside water barrel, which he had dragged beneath a tree. Her dress was hiked up, and he was going at it like he was a hammer and she was a nail. It disgusted me, to tell you the truth, not because they was taking their pleasure, but cause they was so drunk I don’t think they even knew they could be seen clear as a hot pie in an open window. I lost a smidgen of respect for Bill after that. Not because of Calamity, but because I seen him then as two-faced and a little too prone to drink. Being a legend was wearing, I reckoned.

Back under the tent, I found Win, and we went at it again, danced to near every song until my legs and feet began to hurt, those new high-heeled boots I had not really being made for that kind of springing about.

It finally come to me that I hadn’t seen Madame in a while, and we went looking for her. We found her passed out on a smattering of hay by the side of the tent wall, a cup hanging on her finger, her tongue dangling out like a drying towel. What she had been drinking had not been provided by the Congregational church.

“She takes a nip now and then,” Win said.

“One nip after the other, it appears.”

“That describes it,” she said.

It was about then I seen that poor man that had been on the stick and then a crutch—the one with his head peeled and his face scarred up from burning and maybe being rough-carved with a dull knife. He was over by one of the punch bowls. He had a dipping cup and was doing some serious dipping, throwing it down like he was trying to put a fire out in his belly. He didn’t have the crutch no more, and in fact had a very fancy cane and expensive clothes and a bowler hat.

Win caught me looking at him, said, “He is mysterious. He never speaks unless he’s got business, and lately his business has been good.”

“Shoveling horse manure?”

“He quit that,” she said. “Way I heard it, he earned enough to buy a claim, and two weeks out he hit it. It was hard work for him, too, having that limp, but it and shoveling what the horses left seems to have been good for him. He’s gotten stronger than he used to be. Hired him three Chinamen and two white men to dig for him. Stands around and watches them, is what I hear.”

I looked at him again. There was something oddly bothersome about him, and he had his eyes laid on me as steady as a man sighting down the barrel of a rifle. But then again, he was that way with everyone. I think had my scalp been peeled, my face worked over like that, and me given a limp, I’d have had a suspicious nature myself. I was glad for him, though. At least he had money, and if he was wise about it, wouldn’t end up begging for coins with a tin cup, which was often the case for such that was in his kind of condition.