Chapter 3

Somewhere down the road they passed the line between the Creek and Cherokee Nations, invisible except for hints of somewhat less destitution. They passed a saline with a couple of wagons out front packing in bags of salt. The few farms along the road included not just single-room shacks, twelve by sixteen, but more spacious two-room dogtrot cabins, like the ones in the Ozarks where Belle had grown up. They passed a little clapboard building, recently whitewashed, with a sign out front:

DRIPPING SPRINGS SCHOOL

Belle agreed with the Starrs that the Cherokee Tribe wasn't well governed, but they made the Creek look like something out of the Dark Ages, some lost tribe who had wandered into this dust-eaten world out of a storybook.

Three horsemen reined up beside them, blowing and going and stone drunk. "You seen a balloon out here?"

"Balloon?" Belle said innocently. "Why yes. Right up over that ridge, looked like somebody was fixing to fall out of it."

"Come on boys, we got her now!" They went blasting off across the field.

"What if they come back?" Blue Duck asked her.

"Oh well, the fools, they ought to know better than to chase around after a hot-air whore financed by a Kansas bank. Serve them right if they ride to Missouri."

Mr. Prettyman informed them that the plates were ready, and they stopped at a grove for the pictures. Belle's headache and mood had not improved, despite her scheming with Blue Duck. The idea of posing and being captured in Prettyman's box made her uneasy. He stood her up next to a deeply lined old walnut tree, and then against one of his painted backdrops, a big picture of Niagara Falls, which he lowered on pulleys down from the wagon; he asked for a third pose with her pistols drawn, and another with her sitting in the wagon seat holding the reins. She had to hold each pose unmoving for several seconds, and it made her conscious of her skin, its dryness, thickness -like a damned buffalo hide, she thought, stitched up tight around her. Holding self-consciously quiet and still like that, for whatever purpose, always made her feel unnatural, trapped almost as though in iron. He fluttered and fooled around, toting his camera here and there, and took all four plates immediately for development, the smell of acid and alcohol emanating from the wagon.

She sat against the walnut tree and rubbed her temples. The day had gotten unusually hot again. Blue Duck had gone off somewhere in the grove, probably doing his morning job. She got out the laudanum bottle, swallowed a good horse dose and wondered vaguely what she was going to do with her boy when she found him. Lord have mercy, that was one mess. She couldn't deny that she was half the cause. He'd never amount to anything. There were rumors about it, too. Ed Reed was a gone cat and his own momma was the reason for it. She was what made him that way.

Staring at the wagon, she suddenly had an irrepressible urge to see the developed plates. She yelled at Prettyman that she was coming in, and he fretted and fumed and told her to stay out. She pushed in anyway. The plates were lined up one by one in dim candlelight, three still damp, one in a bath of acid. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the dimness, and then the detail of the four plates emerged.

The person on them was ugly. The absoluteness of that fact never ceased to startle her. Her chin looked like a bag of beans. Her eyes squinted up like she was sun-blind. And with that dirty shirt on, it was hard to tell that she was even a woman.

"I don't like them."

"They aren't studio settings," he said somewhat petulantly.

"But the subject is better outdoors."

"I think the subject looks like a hunk of shit, Prettyman. We'll have to do it again when my mouth isn't swole up. I don't want people looking at those pictures."

"They are quite fine, Mrs. Starr. I am satisfied."

''I'm not." She picked up the plates and stacked them on top of each other.

"Please! Don't touch the collodion, they haven't fixed yet." She pushed her way outside and dropped them into the dust.

The images began to dim in the sunlight. Blue Duck was back, and picked up one of the pictures as it dissolved. She didn't want anybody seeing any of them and so jumped down, taking the plate from him, throwing it onto the ground with the other three and with her heel smashing all of them. The photographer emerged in a blue-faced fury, shouting about agreements and words of honor and lawsuits. He got down from the wagon and stood up in her face, shrilly reprimanding and threatening her in the highfalutin way he had done before.

She watched him like a rat.

He told her that she would have to find her own ride to Catoosa, since in his opinion she was a common brute criminal without any of the qualities of honor or civility that he had seen all over this Indian Nation in even the poorest folk, and furthermore as far as he was concerned her reputation as a "bandit queen" was the most ludicrous chicanery ever perpetrated by newspapers and ignorant rumor, she was a foul-tempered, selfish, intemperate, cruel and heedless person, all on the most basic and despicable level, and having been in her presence for the last two days he could say frankly that he hoped he never had the ill fortune to ever come upon her again in a state of need, with her nakedness uncovered, because he quite honestly did not know whether given a second opportunity he would raise a finger to help her, much less give her clothing and money and make agreements with her....

She backed off, he kept walking up in her face, so she pulled out her pistol and shot him in the foot.

His yelling monologue thus interrupted, he looked down at his foot and up at her, down and up. "You can't do that. You shot my foot." He looked morose in a sudden weird sort of way. "You shot my foot."

"I made a mess of your foot."

Blue Duck made no move.

"Now get up against that tree, fatmouth."

"You shot my foot."

"And I'm going to give you something to chew on unless you get up against that tree."

Face transformed by fear and wonderment, the photographer hobbled a few steps and fell down, moaning. She stood over him and cocked the pistol. He looked up in complete astonishment and began to crawl on hands and knees toward the tree. She laughed. One minute ago he was spurring her like a rooster.

"Tie him up to that tree."

Blue Duck looked at her.

"We'll take his wagon."

"Somebody will be along this road pretty soon," he said.

"So you want me to kill him?"

"Of course not. But he'll be found and come to Catoosa. If we take his wagon that'll be evidence of assault and theft."

"Smart figuring there, Mr. Blue Duck. What do you suggest we do -walk? Time we get there he'll have caught up. Besides which, what difference does it make? Lighthorse aren't going to get up a posse because we borrowed this twirp's wagon. Go on. Tie him up."

Blue Duck looked thoughtful. ". . . It's possible too that he might be here for some time. He's bleeding."

She sighed.

"Why don't we take him to Catoosa. Let him get his foot fixed. If he's in the wagon with us, he can't claim theft. If he tries to press charges, you can say that it was a mutual squabble and you acted in self-defense."

"He can't press charges anyway, unless he uses the telegraph. There's no place to press them." She was irritated and gloomy. "Okay, okay, throw him in the back. But you better watch him."

Prettyman was sitting at the base of the walnut tree, looking at his foot with tenderness and remorse. Blue Duck helped him up. "Come on man, you'll be all right."

Belle scowled down at the broken plates and kicked dust over them.

Blue Duck rigged a bandage for Prettyman and tried to keep him calm in the back of the wagon. He would doubtless have liked to make a speech, to delineate in clear language why he did not like his foot having a hole in it. But he knew better. By the time they rolled into Catoosa he had worked himself into a sullen tempest.

Belle pulled up before a saloon and invited them both in for a drink. Prettyman hobbled along behind groaning and making what were, for him, rather indelicate comments. Belle propped up on the brass footrail and ordered bonded whiskey.

"You go to the wine room," the bartender said. "The womans go to the wine room."

"The womans stand right here, buddy."

"The womans go to the wine room," the bartender repeated.

Belle wiped at the side of her mouth with a bar towel. "I don't like the wine room in this place, little buddy. It's about as big as an outhouse. Get us something to drink."

He eventually poured, annoyed.

Belle toasted Prettyman. "Here's to the end of our dispute."

He glared at her. "You apologize as though this were an insignificant event? As though you had splashed mud on me?"

''I'm not apologizing. Shut your trap before you swallow a bee."

"This is egregious," he muttered.

"Drink your whiskey, it'll numb you down."

"That isn't a bad idea," Blue Duck said.

She turned to the bartender. "Ed Reed ain't upstairs, is he?"

The bartender didn't answer.

"Go find out for me, Blue Duck. Black hair and a piece of a moustache. About six foot. Has a sneaky, glancy-eyed look to him. Find out if he's up there."

Blue Duck went upstairs and returned shaking his head.

"Nobody there except the dealer setting up."

"Did you ask him?"

"He saw him last night."

She nodded and took a deep breath. "Where are you sleeping?"

"I board with a friend here."

"You want a woman tonight?"

"I beg your pardon."

"You heard me."

"A married woman?"

"Widow woman, if you're talking about the record."

"But in common law ..."

"What would you know about that?"

"Word gets around."

"What word? You been hearing rumors about me?"

"For many years."

She looked at Prettyman. "See there. Rumors. I'm famous."

Prettyman held his drink and stared at her, deflated. He stood favoring his wounded foot, sipping resentfully.

"I can rent a room at the inn," Blue Duck said.

"No you can't. To hell with it. I've got my boy to find." She drained the whiskey and walked out of the bar.

She found an inn with an upstairs room and went immediately to rest. She felt broken up, nervous, scattered. There were about six bars in Catoosa, half of them with gambling rooms. It was too early in the evening for much action, but Ed would be down there after a while, playing at being a grown man and getting fleeced, as usual. He was a fool about gambling, a perpetual tinhorn. Belle had pulled him out of more than one mess he didn't know how to pull himself out of. Recently she'd helped finagle him a parole after less than a year of a seven-year sentence for larceny at the penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio. And what did he do but steal away from home after a few weeks, find a whore off the row and start running with her all over the Territory.

She'd have liked to forget about Ed, but for some reason every little thing he did hit her hard. She got those strange feelings. She had them now -in bed, fully dressed, pistols still around her waist, in a room that she hardly noticed. They were like deep winter dreams, seeing his eyes, the way they took a while to blink, lazy-like. And Jim July (not five years older than Ed) living there at the Bend pestering her to death served only to make things worse. Some nights she would wake up scared, unable to move, eyes open, mind flowing with darker and darker thoughts. Her body would feel heavy as a stone. On the morning that Ed ran off a few weeks ago, Jim July took to pawing at her when she was in a spell like that, and she knocked the hell out of him. It was before sunrise. She remembered it now, how she got out of bed, weak in the knees, and went to look at her babies.

Only they weren't her babies now, and it seemed like she could hardly get them to come home anymore except through some kind of careful strategy.

Pearl-sweet-tempered fat Pearl, a little stupid, with her pretty pale skin and big eyes. Belle had once hoped to make a dramatic star of her, but she collapsed onstage in her first performance with what the doctor called a brain hemorrhage. She was now the mother of her own bastard child, whose name Belle hated and would not repeat and whose unknown father had best keep himself unknown. Pearl slept like a baby with her little rosebud mouth partly open, her white unlined face showing no signs of distress or pain even in passing dreams. Belle had managed to get her home from Kansas, where she had gone to live with the child, only by trickery. She sent word that Ed was dying of a bullet wound. He had been shot in a bar all right (less than two weeks after his parole), but was only slightly wounded. Once she got Pearl back home, she figured she could keep her there and leave the child with relatives. She didn't want it to come between them. She wanted Pearl to marry a man of prominence. She wanted her to find a place in the world. She had no doubt that she could engineer a fine future for the girl if she would just do right. There were rich men to be had in Fort Smith -owners of livery stables, hardware stores, even professional men -who would be proud to marry the daughter of Belle Starr.

Belle knew how their eyes followed her when she rode into Fort Smith, how they waited for her to appear -straight-backed, plumed, dressed like a goddess, regal on her sidesaddle. How they really liked it when she clattered onto the wooden sidewalks up Garrison A venue scattering onlookers, and circled around her when she played the piano in bars, waiting for what she would say next, unwomanly words that opened strange possibilities in their minds. How their expressions toward her tried to be humorous but then would grow intrigued and oddly worried. How they loved what they could not figure out she was.

(It was hardly that way here in the Territory, where there was no prosperity, no standards, no fixed order. Here she was only one more odd creature in the circus. )

Belle knew that she could set Pearl up handsomely. She had been away from home these many months eating the bitter fruits of her foolishness, but now back home sleeping so quietly, she was untouched as a virgin in appearance and still ripe for the market.

But on that morning, over in the feather-tick mattress that she and Sam had used for seven years, was a different story. Ed slept in a curl as he always had. She didn't know what it was about Ed that made her feel this way. Maybe he looked a little like Cole Younger. Maybe it was the desperation she felt about his life or the strange mood that had been building up this last couple of years. She wanted to hold him down and scream in his face. She wanted to do things that were not fit for a mother to think. It wasn't thoughts so much as the flow of blood, her legs tingling like getting off a horse after a long ride. She went to the foot of the bed and looked down at him. Earliest morning light through the glass and chinks between the walls made the room transparent, uncertain, and his naked curled-up body looked as though it might disappear in the blue shadows. He hadn't said much about the penitentiary, nor had he been much concerned about how she got him out. He was spoiled that way -all her men were -they took for granted her ability to perform legal miracles.

His head rolled to the side and his body straightened. He had a hard-on. Unexpectedly, his eyes blinked open and after a moment he noticed her.

He lay that way on his back, head unmoving, looking at her. Through the leaden paleness she saw a kind of smile on his face. She wanted to move, go about making breakfast or something, but was unable to. She was dizzy. His eyes looked down across his body at her. They blinked that slow way. Was there a challenge in his face? His dick was hard and flat across his belly.

"What's the matter with you?" a voice said.

"What?" She spoke as if across a clouded distance.

"What's the matter with you, old woman?" Was it his voice? She was stiff with confusion.

Her frozen body cracked, melted and was finally able to move. A rawhide horsewhip, off the wall, was in her hand. She lashed his body. Cut down hard across his thighs, across his penis, chest. His face exploded in fear and pain, he writhed back and forth trying to find a place to hide in the mattress. He was a little boy again, helpless, croaking.

"Stop! Oh Momma, stop!" Pearl shouted from the other side of the room. She lashed him out of bed and followed him across the puncheon floor, striping his back as he fell and struggled to get up off his knees. Out the door he ran zigzagging in every direction, wild hoarse exhalations pushing out of his throat. He stumbled over the iron kettle, fell fiat, got up and went into the barn.

Belle stood in the doorway looking at the quirt in her hand. A great fear bloomed inside her skull.

"Oh Lord Jesus!" Pearl breathed."Oh Lord Jesus!"

Belle ground her hurting teeth. Jim July appeared with his usual silly smile. "What's the matter?" She stared into his face and tried to collect her thoughts. "Take some britches to him,” she said. "In the barn."

Ed was gone within a half-hour, stealing her palomino and three hundred dollars, and that was the last she'd seen of him.

Now he had to be found. Lying in the strange hotel room, the fact became clearer and clearer. He had to be brought back home. He was a dead man if she didn't get him back. He would kill himself. He went on binges that were bound to end bad. Showed off, talked loud, stepped on toes, and all the while kept about as alert as a snake in winter. She hadn't seen him act this way so much, because she wouldn't put up with it, but she knew from what people said about him and just from things that she picked up. She had a special connection with him, could read his mind almost and know what he was doing halfway across the Territory. He was an open book to her. It was one of the things that made her perpetually angry with him--the availability of his thoughts and weaknesses. He had to learn to be meaner, closer, to hoard things better. You couldn't be half blue jay and half chicken and expect to live very long out here.

She couldn't sleep. Downstairs she got a boy to bring her a bottle of whiskey. It was going on suppertime, but she had no desire to eat. Back in the room she drank from the bottle.

It was a large room in the old style, built for as many people as the innkeeper could pack in. Her daddy had run an inn just about this size in Carthage, Missouri, when she was a little girl, before he got burned out in the war. He was prosperous in Carthage, owned a blacksmith shop, livery stable, and also --she thought, but was never quite clear on this fact--a tavern. That was about half of Carthage. She sipped on the Indian whiskey and tried to remember those days.

It was sad how little she could recall. There was a slave girl--Leanner, was that her name? Leanner? It didn't sound quite right. They'd been best friends and she couldn't remember her damned name. She stood at the dining table fanning away flies and mosquitoes and going to sleep on her feet day after summer day, meal after taciturn meal. Her old daddy would reach out with his big hand and thump Leanner when she nodded off. He thought that was a great joke. Dried beans boiled in salt pork. Fried chicken. Chicory coffee. Her momma jaundiced, gaunt, dryskinned, working like a mule seven days of the week.

School, she remembered that better than the hotel. Mr. Cravens, headmaster, a worried and distracted man in all subjects but one, he labored through French, Latin and Hebrew, dutifully plowed through Ray's Arithmetic, drudged through McGuffey, expounding dully upon Keats and Byron -but then, wonder of wonders, Mr. Cravens would sit down at the piano and a great change would come across him. He would grow quiet and self possessed, a gravity would descend upon his otherwise ravaged and nervous countenance, and he would quickly lose himself in the keys. He was a damned good pianist. That was how Belle picked it up, she supposed, and why the little cabin at Younger's Bend had a good-sized upright taking up half of one room. Pearl could play, but she didn't have the knack for much more than simple accompaniments. Pearl, Pearl, her sweet Pearl.

And Ed. She ought to get out of bed right now and find him. Catoosa was waking up for the night: shouts in the street, doors slamming. But the whiskey was beginning to taste good and she was so tired.... A mother on top of it all. It was putting her in a mood. She drank from the glass and felt sorry for herself.

She slept the night away but the next morning was up before sunrise trudging down the potholed main street toward the hotel she knew he would be in. An expression settled across her face like an iron mask. She pounded the bell until a bedraggled man in one suspender appeared.

"What room is Ed Reed in?"

"Who?"

"Reed. Ed Reed."

"Who's inquiring?"

"Belle Starr."

He coughed and hocked up a big wad, expertly disposed of it

in a can across the floor, and looked back at her. "Who's that?"

"Me. His blood mother. Now which room is he in?"

He squinted in mild perplexity. "Three."

Tramping up the stairs, she knocked twice on the door and pushed in. The walls of the hotel were plastered and wallpapered, probably the only such in Catoosa. Ed was in bed with his whore, as expected. She stood at the door until they awakened, the girl, then Ed. He groaned. The girl started digging at her eyes to get the sleep -or this illusion -out.

She walked to the foot of the bed and looked down at them, a light quilt covering them. She could feel the smile on her face hard, mean. "That's real pretty hair you've got, honey."

The girl grinned confusedly, her face stiff with sleep.

"Real pretty. I always like a good black head of hair. Especially when it's kind of oily like yours. Makes it easy to see what you are."

"Oh," Ed groaned into the mattress.

"I have a couple of things to talk to you about. Like to do it in private. You don't mind that, do you honey? Put some clothes on your little fanny and go to the crapper or something. My boy and I have to talk."

The girl squirmed out of bed, trying to take the quilt with her, but Ed held it down, and for a moment there was a struggle to see who would stay covered. Flailing turbulently around under the covers, she managed to get her bloomer panties to cover herself, then quickly slipped out of bed, dressed and disappeared.

Ed lay face down.

"You're too smart to ride with a whore, Ed."

"She's not a whore," he said into the bed.

"You stole money from me when you ran off. That's the first thing that we have to talk about. If you've lost it I'll take it out of your hide. I got waylaid by a tribe of Crows coming to find you. They killed Faith and stole my clothes. I had to walk seventeen miles naked across the Creek Nation. Nearly died. Had to stand up before a two-bit photographer and have my picture taken in swap for a ride to Tulsa."

He turned and looked at her, face clouded. "What?"

"That's right. You shamed your mother once again, Ed Reed. Where's that three hundred dollars?"

"Coat."

She found his wallet, counted out $210 in paper and took all of it. "Ain't as bad as it could be. I assume you've already paid for this little frolic in the hotel. What horse do you have besides Zero?"

He put both feet on the floor and sighed, looking down. "An old cayuse. Cost me twenty-five."

"That what you put your whore astraddle?"

"She ain't a whore," he said resignedly.

"She's a whore and a breed. Looks like part of a nigger. You're too smart for that, boy."

He glanced up as though to speak but didn't. He looked like he'd had the breath knocked out of him. Cheap perfume and the smell of sex mingled in the air. Thighs covered by the quilt, moustache bristling in all directions, he was a big gangly boy caught once again with his hand in the sugar bowl, and looking down on his helplessness she experienced a feeling she'd had before, a Hood of pity and love and bewilderment. Bewilderment because she didn't know why this had to happen again and again -why she had to break his back. It was against her philosophy. She knew better. A boy had to sow his wild oats. But there was an instinct behind it. An absolute certainty that gripped her stomach. He was going to be dead if she didn't make him do right. He was going to be dead.

Standing up naked and trying to put on his britches, he had trouble with his balance. By the way he hopped around the floor, he must have gotten drunk as a wheelbarrow last night. He looked like he was dancing a hoedown. She scolded him for it. She helped with his shirt and picked up a few things around the room and scolded him good.

They had breakfast together downstairs. Belle ordered up three eggs and a pot of sheepherder's coffee. "And don't put no water in it, either." The girl entered the common room and sat down beside Ed. After a cup or two of good solid coffee and some eats, Belle felt slightly more generous toward her. "And what's your name?"

"Laura Ziegler Reed."

"You from Fort Smith?"

"Yes," she said prissily.

"Well you're a pretty girl, Laura, a pretty girl. You know how to take care of yourself, don't you?" Laura looked at Ed for an interpretation of that question. "How old are you?"

"Eighteen."

"Well good. You're old enough to ride the train alone."

Ed spoke after a moment. "We're married, Momma."

"Who married you?"

"Pete Ishtonubbe in Sallisaw."

"Pete Ishtonubbe doesn't even speak English. What'd he marry you with, a stick and a piece of cornbread?"

"He married us with the Book, Momma."

"You ain't old enough to take care of a horse, much less a wife."

''I'm nineteen."

She took another few knifeloads of egg, swallowed a fist of coffee, and asked quietly, "Which house did you get her out of?"

"You can't talk to me like that."

"I can talk to you through my butt hole if I want to, Ed Reed, and don't forget it." She made a noise like a fart. The fierceness in her face was barely controlled. She turned over a cup, splashing hot coffee across the table onto the girl. "Oh now, excuse me. Did I spot your little dress? That's too bad."

Ed gave her his green neckerchief and she dabbed at the coffee and sniffied. She was not flinching, and that made Belle madder by the moment. She wanted to be rid of the girl immediately, abolish her dirty brown eyes. Mad energy rattled through her body. It was hard to hold back from using a pistol. Level metal in the little trollop's face and she'd flap her wings all the way back to the row.

Blue Duck walked into the common room. He looked amiable and composed -but saw that something was strange and held back. He didn't speak.

Belle went silent. Laura's eyes darted. Ed sat with his head down. "How old were you when you married Cole Younger?" he finally muttered. "Didn't marry him. Run off with him. And God knows it's been my sorrow ever since."

"How old were you when you married Jim Reed?"

"Old enough to raise two babies back and forth across this continent from California to Missouri is how old."

He muttered even more indistinctly, "How old is Jim July?"

She looked into his eyes. "I don't know and it's none of your business if I did. Quit asking questions. Any asking, I'll do it."

"Not anymore," he said doggedly.

She turned to Blue Duck. "How do you like this? My son I raised -gave him everything I had--he goes off and gets married without even telling me. What kind of thing is that?"

A hint of a smile came to Blue Duck's face. "Looks like he's man enough to handle it." Her back grew stiff. Standing up slowly, she went around to the girl and leaned down beside her with one hand on the table.

"There's some mothers that cry when their sons go to the dogs. There's some that pray to the Lord. I don't do neither one of those, honey." She took a handful of scrambled eggs and allowed them to slip down the girl's blouse. The girl was astonished. Belle stuffed a ten-dollar bill after the eggs. "Now there's a train out here. It's called the Arkansas Valley. It'll take you through Fort Gibson, Vian, Sallisaw, and Fort Smith. I advise you to get on it."

The girl tried to weep but for the moment could only choke and turn red in the face. She left the room very quickly. Ed fell into a helpless rage. He pounded his cup on the table, geysering coffee all over the place. "That's my wife, God damn it!"

"She's no more your wife than every drunken drummer that pays five dollars to see her."

"She wasn't in Fort Smith a year."

"Fresh whore's like a fresh corpse. She'll stink pretty soon."

Ed broke a plate with his cup, then proceeded to break the other two. He was white-faced, huffing, smothering in fury. He pounded his fists among the broken shards of plate.

Blue Duck stood back watching, impassive as when he pulled teeth. Belle walked out to the front desk, where the hotel owner, still in one suspender, was squatting down fiddling with an old squirrel rifle, apparently loading it. "What do I owe you for breakfast, plates included?"

He answered quickly, as though he had been goosed. "Three dollars!"

She put down a bill and waited for change. He fumbled around, ridiculously trying to hide his money box even as he got it out to make change. Seven silver dollars. She left one of them on the counter. "That's for the mess."

Down the street, Blue Duck caught up with her. "Where are you going?"

"Buy me a bath. Haven't had one in a while."

"Prettyman has gone to the district sheriff, by the way."

"Ain't no district sheriff in Catoosa."

"He's on his way through."

"Who is it?"

"John Eno"

"Eno's okay. We used to have some transactions together in the cattle business."

The little town was awake now -fresh manure in the street, a cotton wagon rattling by, a stream of dirty water poured from an upstairs window, Indians squatting at the corner of a building sharing a pipe of sumac.

As they approached a hotel/bathhouse, a shout echoed down the street, "What about you?"

People turned to look. Belle paused for a moment but did not turn. She looked at the sign: BATHS GIVEN/PURE WATER/ PRIMROSE SOAP PROVIDED/CLEANSE YOURSELF TODAY/30¢.

Her son's voice reverberated down the main street. "What about you?"

She went inside the bathhouse. Blue Duck followed.