Neither of us have left her room for some days. Pneumonia incapacitates her. Worry immobilizes me. My breath trails hers warily, as her last leads my last.
Calamity Jane coughs violently, and though she never liked pretty things, she inadvertantly decorates her bedsheets with the floral pattern of a portentous funerary bouquet: verdurous phlegm flecked with crimson buds. The brutess does not notice, continues to cough until empty, then spits. To her violence, I flinch and squeal and wail, just as her ongoing regimens of daily abuse had conditioned me to react. My histrionics, which normally elicits her boastful guffaw, fail to fruit even a smirk. She slips into a defeated sleep, and I contemplate the brief life that may await me without her protection.
Nervously, I watch through the window slats. Her illness advertises an opportunity to all the prairie's marauders: the coyotes and the desperados. Now Calamity Jane cannot protect Deadwood or, more selfishly, me. With its heroine fallen, they come to exact retribution upon all which abides by that very society which shuns them. Man and beast alike run Main Street amok, gobbling the vittles off still-clucking chickens, urinating to claim property like conquistadors, nipping up skirts at feminine softnesses, howling with the seductive madness that makes one join in; But I resist their call. How they meet my eyes through the window slats, I know they know I am a gentleman, and so I too shall bear retribution.
Two years ago, Marsh & Coe, Co. declared their intent to establish the first and only bank in Deadwood, South Dakota. As an apprentice, the firm paid me a meager stipend, affording me scarcely enough to rent the lowliest flat in all Dorchester. Like a peacock among pigeons, I failed to blend in with Dorchester's denizens. No one likes an outsider. Daily, I drudged through the mires of Dorchester's worst. And every day I arrived, my suit disheveled, my complexion bruised blue, my pockets picked. So every day Marsh & Coe, Co. found the degraded gentleman that remained of me. Of their staff, the executive management estimated me to be their rowdiest employee. They shuttled me off to orchestrate the construction of their bank, the First Deadwood Bank.
I arrived and Deadwood knew. One posse procured my luggage set; another posse procured Marsh & Coe Co.'s realty payment; a third posse procured my accouterments momentarily; Calamity Jane procured me as her chattel, clobbered the thieves, reclaimed the clothing that was now hers (by extension of me), left me undressed and sinful, and checked us into a single room with a matrimonial bed at the Loose Dove's Roost.
No one disturbed Calamity Jane or her belongings. Though she slew many men during our courtship, she remained a sensitive lover. But as a partner, she lacked the eloquence needed to garner my respect, so she domesticated me by whip. Once I thought I might grow old with Calamity Jane, forever: she, my man, and I, her dude. But our romance best suited brevity. All her sweet nothings smell of sour mash. She wears other men's blood like mascara and other men's sweat like perfume; She does not disclose how she becomes stained so. She has reprimanded the impudence of my mouth so many times my words wear the swollen drawl of one who fears speech.
Now I see the First Deadwood Bank, its scaffolded skeleton, half-built, without a blueprint or plan, unsound.
Now I see my beloved Calamity Jane, half-dead, half-loved, her eyes on her bottle and her gun.
I step outside to renounce my life as a gentleman, to become one of the Calamity Johns, to ravage the Dakotas from south to north. But they shoot me. I think hear her muster the strength to guffaw.
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