IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING that sighting of Wyatt Earp, I brooded a good deal on the situation which I was apparently stuck with lifelong, namely, being naturally attracted to a lady superior to me in most every department.
But you might well ask why I never done more to improve myself, beginning with trying to use better English. Well, to be fair to me, I did and though I would talk better for a while, it didn’t stick for long at a time. I remember that German friend of mine back at the Major’s school, Klaus Kappelhaus, told me he knowed how to talk better in his adopted language than you would think if you heard him only late in the day when he was tired.... Which reminds me of how tired I am at this minute, after talking so long into this machine since my last rest, way back when telling of our second trip to Europe, but I got so much to relate and so little time.
So I did improve my speech by picking up words and grammar from Amanda, along with the other ladies on the staff at Hull House, and I even tried some of Buffalo Bill’s rhetorical flourishes, which I admit impressed me all the more for him having no more education than me, but Amanda generally caught these right away and warned me against them.
I already mentioned acquiring an up-to-date city wardrobe and learning how to act like I belonged there when in respectable restaurants, tearooms, and the like. Books still scared me, for even in the smallest of them there was so much printed all at once, so I was working my way up to them by starting with newspapers, which I had seldom read previously, and I didn’t take to them much now so far as content went, but I realized certain sacrifices was necessary if I was ever to be worthy of Amanda’s friendship.
However, I was also convinced I’d basically stay a sow’s ear no matter how much effort was expended towards achieving another result, and that accounted for what looked like a permanent despair on my part. It seemed pretty clear that my use to Amanda would be at an end once she had exhausted what I had to offer for that book she was writing. Which by the way, if you think by now she wasn’t ever going to, for I believe that is the case with many who prepare for such a job for a long time, you are wrong.
She had already wrote several chapters by this point and read them aloud to me from her manuscript while we sat side by side on a park bench, and it was the truest commentary I ever heard from a white person on Indians, and not only because of all the information I had furnished her with but what she added by way of interpretation, not to mention how it was wrote, which even exceeded my high expectations. Every once in a while I would ask her to repeat a certain passage just for the grace and authority of her language. She wasn’t given to writing pretty but rather true, and there was a beauty in that.
Unfortunately, the finer I considered her achievement, the more discouraged I was about myself, for apart from the Indian lore I could impart, what else was left?
Well, maybe a sense of fun, which apparently had been missing hitherto in Amanda’s life. I actually got her to go with me to the building at the Fair called Manufactures and Liberal Arts, a name itself which made her snicker for some reason, and look at a knight on horseback modeled in California prunes, a chocolate statue of Venus de Milo, and a recognizable map of the U.S.A. at a distance, which when you got close turned out to be an arrangement of pickles. The last-named made Amanda laugh out loud, something she was lately doing more and more, I guess as a result of knowing me better. I had had this effect on many people, always with the exception of Wyatt Earp.
“Amanda,” I said at this point, “you want to go down to the Casino and ride the moving sidewalk?” The former was the building where you would wait for the excursion boats on Lake Michigan, and then go out on the pier to board them by means of the latter, which according to the Wild West cowboys lived up to its name, a sidewalk that was one big conveyor belt, operated by electricity.
“And take a cruise?” she asked with a little knowing grin, being aware of my feeling about boats larger than a gondola on an enclosed waterway without waves.
“Why, sure,” I says. “If you really want to, I’m game. Or we could just go on board the Santa Maria. I know you don’t think much of Columbus, but if you see that dinky little ship of his, you’ll have to admit he done a remarkable job in getting here at all.”
As I say, we didn’t ever argue with bad personal feeling, like the other person was a fool or scoundrel, but nevertheless always held to our own positions, hers being that the mischief resulting from Columbus coming to the New World probably outweighed the good, whereas mine held that somebody was sure to of done it sooner or later with the same results, for such was the natural itch of mankind to go to wild places and tame them, and of all the examples of such throughout the world, America was by far the best result even if not yet perfect.
But Amanda was in a funny mood today, and I couldn’t get her going. “I expect you’re right, Jack,” says she, winking her blue eye, “ole Chris was better than most.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Of course,” she says, bumping me with her hip real saucily, which some old biddy seen and scowled at as we strolled out of Manufactures and Liberal Arts onto the lakeshore walk.
“You’re getting mighty fresh, as well,” I noted.
“Someone has to,” said she.
Lake Michigan, as I have pointed out, might as well of been an ocean when you looked at it from the shore. You couldn’t see across it in any direction, and it got real rough in a wind, of which Chicago was seldom without. I looked at today’s whitecaps and said, “I guess when he closes here Cody will want to go back to Europe.” I didn’t know any such fact, as I hadn’t talked to him on the subject, but was saying so now for effect.
“And you’ll be going along,” Amanda said rather than asked.
I scraped my foot a little. “I don’t know about that.”
“Jack,” said she, “I’ve seen you at moments when you could have been killed, and you had more confidence than you’ve ever shown with me.”
“You’re right about that, Amanda.” I was amazed she understood. “It’s probably because I seen a lot of dying and know what to expect. I ain’t, uh, haven’t ever been able to figure you out.”
“You don’t know whether I like you or not,” said she.
“By golly, you’re right again!” I says loud enough so we was stared at again by passersby.
“Well, I do,” said Amanda. “I like you, Jack. I like you a whole lot. I should have told you that before.”
I had quite an elated feeling. “Oh, that’s all right, Amanda, I realize a lady ain’t supposed to speak first—” I stopped, on account of she just had. “That is, I mean—”
“You ought to know by now that I care little about what others, usually men, present company excepted, ordain that women should do. At quite a young age I was married for a short time to that sort of person.”
“I’ll be damned,” I said before I could catch myself.
A gust of wind come off the lake at that point, threatening her hat, which she had to grab, but she was smiling at me.
“Amanda,” I says, “and if this is insulting to you, feel free to—”
“Jack, will you stop pussyfootin’ around?”
She was making fun of me again, but I never minded. In fact I thought it was nice. “Well, what I wanted to ask you is if you would want to get married, again. I mean, to me.”
But now I had gotten it out, I flinched inwardly at how crude I sounded. I hadn’t even said I cared for her. So when she answered as she did, I wasn’t surprised.
“No,” said she.
“Well, at least I got the nerve to say it.” And at that, my own skimmer straw was seized by a sudden violent blast of wind and sent on a whirling flight that ended out in Lake Michigan, where the hat bit into the water with the brim, like the blade of a circular saw, which meant it sunk as quick as my hopes just had.
But when my eyes come back to Amanda, she was still smiling sweetly. “I didn’t say,” said she, “that I wouldn’t live with you.”
Now I was real shocked. “Don’t talk like that, Amanda. It ain’t decent.”
She snorted in derision. “Jack,” she said, “you used to tend bar in a whorehouse!”
“Yeah,” I says, “but they was whores.”
“I played piano in another,” Amanda said, “and didn’t work upstairs, but maybe I was corrupted all the same.”
“No!” I says. “That couldn’t be true.”
“Not the least interesting thing about you,” Amanda noted, “is that while you tend toward cynicism in most other areas of human behavior, you are mawkishly sentimental about women.”
“I thought it was you who was always sticking up for them,” I said, “not wanting them mistreated. Your Ma, way back in Dodge, told me you even believed women should vote.”
She wrinkled her brow to pretend to be irked. “Jack, are you sassing me?”
“Oh, no, Amanda, now don’t you—” At that point I realized she asked that with her tongue in her cheek, and I stopped, but didn’t have nothing better to say than, “Well...”
Amanda was laughing, which made her somewhat less beautiful, her features being more elegant in repose, but also made her less distant. I had begun over these weeks to slowly replace my worship of her with genuine enjoyment of her company, but had not understood that till now.
“It’s true,” I says, “Wild Bill Hickok never lasted long after he finally got married, whereas I heard in Tombstone that none of the Earps ever actually married any of the women they lived with, and Virgil and Allie sure seemed happy, and if the same principle applied to Wyatt and Josie, they are still together after a dozen years.”
“Jack,” Amanda says now, “are you talking to yourself? You’re mumbling.”
“Sorry, I guess I was. Say, maybe we ought to get something to eat instead. What’s your pleasure, the Swedish Restaurant, the Polish Cafe, the Japanese Tea House, or the Clambake? Unless you don’t want to be seen with a man without a hat.”
“Jack, you got a yella streak where your spine oughta be,” says Amanda, imitating me further, which made it hard to stay serious.
“You gonna keep that up when we’re living together?” I said it lightheartedly, but the idea still shocked me, I admit.
“Probably,” she said, “if it works now.”
“Oh, it works,” I says, “but you oughta be ashamed of yourself.”
“For what?” She was laughing while hanging onto her hat again with one hand, the other fastened tight to me.
“Corrupting my morals,” I says.
You can see Amanda was a real modern woman, advanced beyond her time.
I read in a newspaper that all politics is local, and maybe all discovery comes down to that point as well. Whatever Columbus means to others, pro or con, I’ll always be grateful for the favor he done me: Amanda.
Well, I’m going to tell you about what became of me and her during the best period of my life, what happened with her book, what kind of work I done next and where, for the Fair ended in October of ’93 and while I was technically speaking a middle-aged man, I had lived not quite half my life at that point, so there’s lots left to relate of what still for some time was my competent years, with quite a bit happening, in the world at my disposal, as the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth: for example, Tom Edison begun to make moving pictures to be shown in theaters rather than just peep machines, gold was discovered in the Klondike, and Colonel Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders fought in a battle at Santiago de Cuba, not on horseback as you might think but on foot, and took a hill with the name of Kettle and not San Juan. Who would straighten you out on such details but me?
I had some kind of connection with them events and more, and as usual you might hear a somewhat different version from me than from them with axes to grind. All I ever tell is what I seen and heard for myself.
Right now, though, I got to take a nap. If I ever wake up, you sure will hear the rest of my story.