“I’ve been here since the very beginning of this town,” the woman who called herself Al Swearengen said as Jane chowed down on a huge plate of steak and potatoes at the Shaggy Dog Saloon, which her mother claimed had the very best food in Deadwood. “I knew this was the place where I would make a name for myself.”
Jane wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “For coming up with the cure?”
Al smiled and patted Jane’s hand across the table. “The cure, of course, my dear, and other things. This is a town of opportunity.”
It was a town of surprises, too, but good ones, Jane reckoned. She couldn’t stop gawking at her mother. All these years, she’d thought Charlotte Canary was dead and buried, but she’d changed, was all, as Jane herself had changed. A new name. A new life.
“By the end of my first week here I had a dance hall up and running,” Al was boasting now in that new, more-refined voice, too, different from the Missouri country talk that Jane had known. “By the end of the first month, I’d built a tavern—so small I called it the Cricket. I held prizefights there for the miners. And now I have the Gem. The papers described my theater as being ‘as neat and tastefully arranged as any place of its kind in the west.’”
“It sure is nice,” Jane said, remembering all the polished wood and velvet seat cushions. “You’ve done right well for yourself, Ma.”
At Jane calling her “Ma,” Al’s expression shifted, almost a wince, and Jane thought she knew why.
“I understand,” Jane said, a lump springing up in her throat. “I’ll keep our family connection to myself.”
“Oh, no, my darling, you misunderstand,” Al said, laughing. “I want people to know that you’re my daughter.” She squeezed Jane’s hand. “I’m simply emotional. This is all I’ve ever wanted, you know. A piece of this world to make my own. My precious daughter, by my side, sharing in my legacy.”
Jane’s chest filled with something like relief. Her mother hadn’t been nearly so affectionate when Jane was a child, but now her ma seemed (gulp) proud of her.
“Not to overlook that you have your own legacy,” Al said. “My daughter, Calamity Jane, the Heroine of the Plains. Everybody’s heard of you. You’re a legend.”
Jane coughed and muttered that she had something in her eye. “Well, I figure if a girl wants to be a legend, she should just go ahead and be one.”
Al beamed at her. “Quite right. Take the world by the horns.” Her eyes focused on Jane’s tangled hair that was half loose from its ponytail, the dirty work shirt and worn buckskin vest. “We should get you cleaned up.”
“Cleaned up?” Jane didn’t know if she liked the sound of that.
“You may be a legend, but you look like you’ve been dragged through a pigpen.”
That was more like the Ma Jane remembered. And that’s how, ten minutes later, Jane found herself in a private room at the Gem that Al said would be hers, now, buck nekked, staring down at a steaming bathtub. She took a tentative step into it, lowered herself into the water, and then shot up again.
“Ah!” she screamed. “I just burnt my butt!”
“Well, wait a bit,” her mother advised from the other side of the room, where she was laying out what looked to be a dress. “It’ll cool.”
Jane had never been good at waiting. She slipped down into the water again, wincing at the blistering heat, but she forced herself to stay this time, crossing her arms over her breasts because her ma had never seen those before and it didn’t seem proper. She stayed that way for several minutes, steeping like tea as the layers of dirt floated off her.
(At this very moment, dear reader, Frank and Annie were breaking into the cellar of the Gem. If Jane had known about the kissing she would probably have laughed herself sick. But she didn’t know. At this point Jane didn’t know a lot of things that would have been useful.)
After a while Al came over, poured some of the water over Jane’s head, and started to scrub her hair with a bar of castile soap.
“I’ll rinse it with a wash of vinegar and rosemary,” she said. “You’ll shine up like a pretty penny.”
But Jane knew deep down that her being pretty was not a matter of being clean.
They were quiet for a while, Jane holding still while Al scrubbed at her. Then Jane worked up the courage to ask the question that’d been on her mind all day.
“Ma,” she said, because they were alone now, so she was pretty sure it was safe. “What happened?”
“What happened when, sweetheart?”
“When you died.”
“Oh.” Al stopped scrubbing. “Did your father tell you I died?”
“He told me . . .” Jane swallowed. “He told me you went to be with the angels.”
Al laughed, a hard, tough-sounding noise. “The angels. How droll. No, I went to be with the wolves. My pack. I suppose I can understand why your father lied about it. You were a headstrong thing. You would have come after me, I think.”
“Yeah, I guess I would have. I thought he killed you.”
“Your father wasn’t a killer. Ironically, that’s what killed him.”
Jane gazed at her feet in the water. She knew there was no happy, surprise resurrection of her father in store. She’d seen Robert Canary laid out in his coffin, stiff and gray. She’d put flowers on his grave.
“I killed Pa,” she whispered. “It was me.”
Her mother stopped scrubbing her hair. “What’s this nonsense? Your father was killed by a garou hunter.”
“I know. But I was the one who outed him. I told the sheriff he was a garou.”
Al stared down at her thoughtfully. “Now you listen,” she said after a minute. “It wasn’t the sheriff who killed your father.”
“I know, but—”
“You don’t know,” Al said sharply. “I know, because I was there that night. I saw it happen.”
“You.” Jane’s breath whooshed out of her. “You was there.”
“Were there, my darling. Yes. I came back. It had been a year since I bit him.” Al smiled with a touch of bitterness. “I thought maybe he would be thinking differently now that he was also a wolf. I hoped he might change his mind about how things should be.”
“And did he?”
“No,” Al said sadly. “But that hardly mattered, in the end. As soon as I left town, I was hunted and made to fear for my life for simply being what I was. There was one particular garou hunter who was relentless in his pursuit of me, this man who would not stop in his determination to destroy me and my kind. I thought I’d lost him, but that night he tracked me down again. Your father took the silver bullet meant for me. I myself barely escaped.”
Jane hadn’t known about any of that. She’d come back to the house that night to find herself an orphan. “But why didn’t you come for us, after? We could have been with you. This whole time, I could have—”
But Al was shaking her head. “It wasn’t safe. The hunter was always two steps behind me, until I was finally able to lose his trail, years later. I changed my name, changed my life, and became so powerful he could not touch me. But until now I’ve had to stay away. To keep you safe.”
Jane shivered. The bath had gone cold. Her mother helped her out and slung a robe around her, then toweled off her hair. She made Jane put on silk undergarments, a petticoat, and a corset with whale bones in it.
“This ain’t my style,” Jane tried to protest. “I like to . . . you know . . . move a bit.”
Al sniffed. “No daughter of mine is going to be walking around in Deadwood dressed like one of those filthy miners.”
Jane didn’t see how she was going to be walking around in this getup, period.
“You’re Calamity Jane, ‘a lovely, spirited waif,’ the heroine of this story,” Al said. “You should look the part.”
Hero-eene, Jane thought. “What’s a waif?”
“Never mind.” Al helped her into the dress she’d picked out. It was a rich forest green with a lacy white collar at the top and a neat line of pearl buttons down the front. Then the fabric of the skirt swooped around to the back, where there was a large bustle.
“Doesn’t this make my butt look big?” Jane asked doubtfully.
“It gives you a shape,” Al pronounced. “And it makes you look female, which is a vast improvement.”
She made Jane sit (which was difficult, what with the bustle), and brushed out her hair until it did indeed shine, and then she pinned it up in a simple, loose chignon at the nape of Jane’s neck. By then Jane felt like a china doll, and she didn’t much like it, and she certainly didn’t feel like herself, but Al stepped back and smiled approvingly.
“There. That’s so much better. You’ll never be the beauty that I was when I was your age, but you’re presentable.” She pressed a finger to the side of her chin, thinking, then spritzed Jane with perfume. Lemon verbena, she said it was, and it reminded Jane of someone.
Edwina Harris. Winnie. She had worn this same perfume.
Al took a hat box off the bed. Out of it she drew a tall straw hat with silk flowers on it. “Here’s the finishing touch.”
Jane stood up and backed away. “Now, see here. Nobody said nothing about no flowered hat.”
“Come here,” her mother ordered. “Martha. Come to me, baby.”
Jane felt a jolt of panic, enough to bring the wolf to the surface for the briefest of moments. A growl vibrated in the back of her throat. Her eyes flashed golden.
Al tilted her head to one side, smiling, unafraid. “Ah. So. There is a wolf in there. I wondered when I would see it.”
Jane fought the urge to grab her flask from her things and drink the wolf down. The corset choked her. “You knew? You knew I was bit?”
“Of course. Why else would you come to see if the cure really worked?” Al said.
“Yeah, about that . . .” Jane was still eying the hat warily. “When can we do it?”
“Do it?”
“I want the cure,” Jane said hoarsely. She cleared her throat. “I don’t have no hundred dollars, but maybe you could spot me, seeing as I’m your daughter and you’re proud of me and all?”
Al walked over and held Jane by the shoulders. “The cure is not for you,” she said. “There are those who benefit from the injection, no doubt, those for whom the blood of the wolf is more than they can handle. But not you, my darling. You are strong. You’ve always been strong.”
“But I’m becoming a . . . beast,” Jane said.
Al scoffed. “You are perfect. You should be proud of the wolf, as I am. Instead of searching for some cure to fix you, you should be thinking of all the ways in which the wolf part of you can help shape your future. You could be unstoppable. You could change the world. We could, together.”
“I’ll think on it,” Jane said, “but the cure still sounds awfully nice.”
Al’s hands dropped from Jane’s shoulders. “The cure is not for you,” she said again matter-of-factly. “It would break my heart to give it to you.” She picked up the flowered hat again. “Now, no more talk of that. Hold still.”
The cure is not for you. The words rattled around in Jane’s brain as she came down the stairs a few minutes later with Al, who once again wore the accessorized top hat and the bearing of the benevolent ruler of the Gem. Al announced in front of the entire place that this was her long-lost daughter, the one and only Calamity Jane, and everyone clapped and cheered. A few men even asked Jane to dance, but she told them to get lost. She wanted to be alone, to sort out the events of the past few hours.
She wished Bill were here. He’d always been good at talking things out, making her see the situation clearly without making her feel like he was telling her what to do. She bit her lip, then blinked as she saw a boy who looked remarkably like Frank (good teeth and all) slipping out from a back room, escorting a prostitute who was the spitting image of Annie. But it couldn’t be them. Jane knew darn well that Annie wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this, wearing a dress like that. It was wishful thinking, wanting these people to be Frank and Annie, who were surely back in Ohio, performing the show.
Would she ever get back there, now that her ma was alive and wanted her? Jane supposed that was the hundred-dollar question. She sighed and swiveled to look for her mother but couldn’t locate her, either, so Jane took a seat at the bar and ordered a drink. Brandy, because ladies in fancy dresses drank brandy.
“What do I owe you?” she asked when the barkeep put the glass in front of her.
“Your money’s no good here, Miss Swearengen,” he said. “Everything’s on the house.”
“Is that right? Huh.”
You could change the world, her mother had said earlier. Jane had never given much thought to changing the world. She’d been too busy trying to survive it.
From the stage, one of the painted ladies drew out a violin and began to play a lonesome tune. Jane sipped her drink, because ladies in fancy dresses sipped.
“Hello, miss,” said a random gentleman, sidling in next to her. “May I—?”
“You may not,” Jane said. “Go on, now.”
A few minutes later another one tried. “Pardon me, miss.”
“Git,” was all she said.
He got.
And there was still one more. “Hello, Jane,” this latest fellow said.
She glanced up, half expecting it to be Jack McCall. It struck her as odd that Jack McCall hadn’t popped up in a while. (Wait. Or had he?)
But this time it was Ned Buntline, that no-good, stinking writer.
“Oh, rocks,” she grumbled. “Not you again.”
“I must say I am surprised to find you here, Miss Calamity. You’re looking . . .” He looked her up and down, smirking. “Well-rounded.”
Jane jumped to her feet. She really wished she had the bullwhip on her, but the darned dress had no pockets. So she grabbed Buntline by the shirt front. “Say that to my face,” she snarled.
“I, uh, did,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean any offense, truly.”
“Well, consider me offended,” Jane said.
Buntline smiled. “Why are you in Deadwood, Jane? Did you come looking for someone? Or something, perhaps?”
Her skin prickled at the idea that he might know her secret. She let go of his shirt and turned away in disgust. “I said it before, and I’ll say it again, Buntline, slower, since you don’t seem to catch my meaning. No. Comment.”
“Isn’t it obvious why she’s here?” came another voice from a person who’d been standing on Buntline’s other side, a slender fellow with green eyes and glasses. “She came to be reunited with her mother, Miss Swearengen. For Pete’s sake, Ned. Pay attention.”
“Hello, there,” Jane said, delighted. It was like Winnie was here by magic, conjured from Jane’s previous thinking about her.
Winnie’s eyes sparkled behind her glasses. “Why, hello.”
“It’s good to see you, Mr. . . . ,” Jane said. “Oh shoot, I forgot your name again.”
The side of Winnie’s mouth quirked up. “Wheeler . . . Edward Wheeler.”
“Mr. Wheeler.” Jane could not keep herself from smiling.
Buntline glanced back and forth between them. “You two know each other?”
“We met in Ohio when I was there working on a story.” Winnie smiled and stood up. “Might you take a walk with me?” She offered Jane her arm.
Jane downed the rest of her brandy in a single swig. “Sure.”
Buntline and the barkeep were laughing as Jane and Winnie walked away. “Now that there’s a small man with a big woman!” she heard Buntline exclaim. “Woof!”
“Ignore him,” Winnie said.
“Oh, I do,” Jane said, but her cheeks were turning pink. “Buntline’s the worst. Plus I don’t much like writers.”
They pushed out onto the street and started toward a better (but only slightly better) part of town. The sun was sinking below the steep Black Hills, but it turned all the brown of the streets to shades of gold and rose. Dust floated in the air, catching the light like sparkles. Jane felt as if she’d slipped into some kind of improbable dream.
“Wait. Are you following me?” Jane asked.
“In a manner of speaking,” Winnie replied, and Jane didn’t understand what that meant, but she didn’t really care. They stopped in the doorway to a bakery, and the smell of bread washed over them.
“Now, what’s this about you not liking writers?” Winnie said.
Jane’s hand tucked into the crook of Winnie’s arm felt strange and awkward. She pulled away. “I didn’t mean you. I guess I don’t really think of you as a writer, because I can’t . . . you know.”
“I could teach you,” Winnie said. “Then you can read my work and tell me what you think. I’m a decent writer, too, at least my editor seems to think so. But he doesn’t know my big secret.”
It took Jane a few seconds to catch on. “Why do you have to be a man to be a writer?”
“It’s just easier.” Winnie shrugged. “Why do you so often pose as a man?”
“Well, it’s more comfortable, for one thing.” Jane pulled at the starchy lace collar of her dress. “So, yeah. Easier. I guess.” It was easier, in almost every situation, she’d found, to be a man.
Except perhaps this one. With Winnie.
Winnie was gazing at her with the intent expression she often had, her eyes inquisitive. Searching. And very close, Jane realized. They were standing so near to each other that their faces were mere inches apart.
“Well, you don’t seem quite yourself dressed this way,” Winnie said. “But you are undeniably pretty.”
“Shut up,” Jane said immediately.
Winnie threw back her head and laughed, and when she stopped laughing she was even closer.
“You’re pretty, too,” Jane got out after a long pause. “But not so pretty as people would know to look at you, that you’re a female sort.”
“Thank you. I think.” Winnie stifled a smile, her bottom lip caught in her teeth in a way that Jane found oddly distracting. “It is so good to see you again, Jane.”
“Likewise,” Jane murmured.
Then, seized by an impulse, she bent her head to kiss Edwina Harris. Their lips touched gently. Sweetly. Jane couldn’t have said how long the kiss lasted—an instant and also an eternity in which everything Jane thought she knew suddenly shifted.
(She’d never really even wanted to kiss a person before. She’d never had what she would call a romantic interlude with anyone, boy or girl. But Winnie was good and kind and beautiful, and Jane wanted to kiss her. And so she did.)
Then she was gazing down at Winnie again, suddenly aware that she had just kissed a woman on the mouth. On the boardwalk in Deadwood. In public.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted.
“Please, don’t be sorry,” Winnie said, but took a small step back. She touched her hand briefly to her lips and then smiled. “Well. We should . . . walk.”
Jane glanced around, but no one was looking at them. Then she realized why. She was dressed as a woman, for once, and Edwina a man. Jane was six inches taller than Winnie, but height didn’t matter. Only the clothes.
She took the arm that Winnie offered her again. They strolled down the boardwalk like they were promenading in some fancy city like New York. Jane could not think of what she should say then, and Winnie didn’t speak, either. They quietly ambled along, night falling around them. Crickets literally started to chirp.
Jane coughed. “Do you want to know a secret?”
“Always,” Winnie replied.
“My name isn’t really Calamity Jane.”
Winnie pretended to be shocked. “Is that so? Is it Jane Swearengen? Because I don’t think that’s exactly a secret anymore.”
“Ugh, no,” said Jane, her nose wrinkling. “Not Swearengen. How she even came up with that, I’ll never— Anyway, my name is Martha.”
Winnie’s eyebrows lifted. It was satisfying, Jane found, to tell her something she didn’t already know.
“Martha Canary. Like the bird.”
“How do you do, Martha Canary?” Winnie held out her hand, and Jane shook it, holding her hand a little longer than was absolutely necessary.
“Fine. Nice to make your acquaintance,” Jane said, and laughed nervously.
“So I wonder if you would tell me something,” Winnie said then.
Her expression was suddenly, inexplicably mournful, in such a way that Jane wanted to give her a hug, to ask what ailed her, even if Jane was the problem. Even if Winnie had felt differently than Jane did about the kiss, Jane wanted to fix it. “I’ll tell you anything.”
“Al Swearengen isn’t really your mother, is she?”
Jane’s heart sank. She’d meant to tell the truth just now, but her mother’s secrets were not hers to spill. “My mother went to the angels when I was a kid, like I told you. Her name was Charlotte Canary.” It wasn’t a lie, she reminded herself. But it wasn’t the whole truth, either.
“Why does Swearengen say she’s your mother, then?”
“It’s an arrangement we have” was all Jane could manage.
“Because you want the cure,” Winnie filled in. “And Al Swearengen has it.”
Jane’s breath caught. “How did you . . .”
“Oh, come on. You had me read you the pamphlet about the cure, and about it being in Deadwood, and then that very night you left Cincinnati to make your way to Deadwood. I’m not a genius, but I can put two and two together. You’re a garou, Jane, aren’t you?”
“Oh.” Jane looked at her hands. “Yeah. I guess I am.”
She waited for Winnie to pull away from her, horrified, repulsed, but there was only sadness in the girl’s expression. That and something else Jane couldn’t read. Winnie reached up and touched Jane’s cheek, which Jane felt through her entire body. Jane even thought that Winnie might be the one who would kiss her this time.
But then Winnie said, “I’m writing a story about it. That is to say, I already wrote a story. It may be the best thing I’ve ever written so far, but . . .”
The words were like an ice bath (and Jane had had enough of baths for one day). “You wrote a story about me being a garou,” she said, hoping she’d heard it wrong.
Winnie’s hand dropped. She nodded. “Yes.”
Jane shook her head. “But you promised. You said you wouldn’t write about me.”
“I can’t keep that promise.”
“Why, because I’m a garou?”
Jane felt her shoulders expanding. Her fingers curled into fists; her nails felt sharp against her palms. She ran hot, then cold, then hot again. She was sweating. She could change, right there, on the street, and give Winnie the proof she needed. It was all Jane could do not to explode into the beast on the spot.
“No,” Winnie was saying, but Jane wasn’t hearing words at this point. “No, it’s not like that. I can explain. It’s—”
“You lied to me!” cried Jane. “You promised!”
Then she turned and ran, as fast as she could, leaving Winnie calling after her in the street.
She managed to stay mostly human until she was back in her room at the Gem, the door slammed and locked behind her. She tore off the stupid flowered hat, and then the dress, popping a few pearl buttons as she struggled to get out of it. The corset, however, had been tied from the back. She was trapped. She ran to the vanity and splashed water on her face, then saw, in the mirror, that her teeth were fangs. Her nails were claws. Her face was changing shape, her nose and ears elongating, hair sprouting up all over. In a flash she was completely hairy. The bindings on her corset broke and the contraption fell away from her. Her legs bent and snapped backward. “Geeze Louise,” she cried.
There was a knock at the door.
“Go away,” she said hoarsely.
Another knock. A familiar voice. “Jane?”
It sounded like Frank, but it couldn’t be. Frank was in Ohio.
“Go away,” she roared.
“Jane, it’s Frank. Can I come in?”
It was Frank. How was it Frank? It didn’t matter. He could definitely not come in. “Uh, no, Frank,” she said. “I’m doing something in here.”
“Jane, just open the door,” Frank said. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
“No, you don’t want to see this,” Jane moaned. “No, no, no!”
Frank’s voice became gruff. “Jane, you open this door. I mean it. Right now.”
She knew that tone. When Frank got like that he was like a dog with a tooth in a towel. There was no use resisting. He’d get his way.
“Okay, Frank. You asked for it.” She lurched over to the door, unlocked it, and then threw it open.
Frank was standing on the other side. At least she thought it was Frank. He was wearing Frank’s clothes, but his face was entirely covered with fur. His ears were pointed, too. His eyes, which were normally brown, were golden.
Frank was a woof.
“An explanation is probably long overdue,” Frank said.