Chapter 28
I had never before seen so many pelts and heads and cotton-stuffed hawks and owls in one place as in Mister Mayfield’s well-equipped parlor, located in the town of Mayfield’s one hotel, which I was unsurprised to learn was named: Mayfield’s. The man himself sat at a desk, behind a curtain of cigar smoke. Not knowing our business, neither who we were nor why we had come, he did not rise to shake our hands or greet us verbally. Four trappers matching the description given by the hit-on-the-head boy stood two on either side of him. These enormous men looked down on us with full confidence and no trace of concern. They struck me as fearless but mindless, and their outfits were exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness, being so heavily covered in furs and leather and straps and pistols and knives that I wondered how they stood upright to carry these burdens. Their hair was long and stringy and their hats were each matching but of a kind I had not seen before: Wide, floppy brims, with tall, pointy tops. How is it, I wondered, that they all look so similar to one another when the dress is so eccentric? Surely there was one among them who had been first to outfit himself in such a way. Had this man been pleased when the others imitated him, or annoyed, his individual sense of flair devalued by their emulation?
Mayfield’s desktop was the base segment of a moderately sized pine tree, perhaps five feet across and four or five inches thick, with the bark intact. When I reached up to touch the chunky outer ring Mayfield spoke his first words: ‘Don’t pick at it, son.’ At this I jerked my hand back, and experienced a flash of shame at succumbing to the reprimand. To Charlie, he explained, ‘People love to pick the bark. Drives me crazy.’
‘I wasn’t going to pick it, just touch it,’ I said, a statement that effectively doubled my discomfort with its wounded tone. I decided the table was the stupidest piece of furniture I had ever laid eyes on.
Charlie handed over the she-bear’s pelt and Mayfield’s face transformed from its expression of apparent indigestion to that of a lad gazing upon his first set of naked breasts. ‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘Aha!’ There were three brass handbells on his desk, identical save for their sizes, small, medium, and large; he rang the smallest bell, which summoned an old hotel crone. She was told the pelt should be hung on the wall behind him and she unfurled it with a snap. But as I had failed to scrape the skin, this sent red globules of fat and blood flying across the room. These clung to the windowpane and Mayfield, scowling distastefully, called for the pelt to be cleaned. The woman rerolled it and left, her eyes on the ground as she walked.
The trappers, meanwhile, were unhappy we had usurped their glory with the she-bear and were, I felt, preparing to exhibit rudeness. To thwart this I introduced Charlie and myself, our full names, which silenced them. Now they will hate us ever more virulently, but secretly, I thought. Charlie found these men amusing, and could not help but make a comment. ‘It seems you four are involved in a kind of contest to become totally circular, is that it?’
Mayfield laughed about this. The trappers looked at one another uneasily. The largest one of the group said, ‘You do not know the customs here.’
‘If I were to linger, do you suppose I too would take on the physical proportions of the buffalo?’
‘Do you plan to linger?’
‘We are only passing through, for now. But I am for getting to know a place intimately, so do not be surprised if you see me on my return trip.’
‘Nothing in this world could surprise me,’ said the trapper.
‘Nothing?’ Charlie wondered, and he winked at me.
Mayfield sent these men away. As the evening came upon us, he called for the room to be lit. This was accomplished by ringing the medium-sized bell, which produced a different tone and thus summoned a different human, a Chinese boy of eleven or twelve; we watched as he flitted from candle to candle with admirable precision and not a half second wasted. Charlie said, ‘He moves like his life depends on it.’
‘It’s not his life, it’s his family’s,’ said Mayfield. ‘He’s saving to bring them over from China. Sister and mother and father—a cripple, from what I gather, though to tell you the truth I don’t know what he’s talking about half the time. Little bastard might see his mission through, though, the way he hops to.’ When the young fellow had finished, the room was bathed in light, and he stood before Mayfield, removing his silken hat and bowing. Mayfield clapped and said, ‘Now, you dance, chink!’ With these words the boy began dancing wildly and without grace, looking much like someone forced to stand barefoot over hot coals. It was an ugly thing to witness, and if I had not before this point made my decision about Mayfield, the matter was now settled in my mind. When he clapped a second time the boy dropped to his hands and knees, panting and spent. A handful of coins were tossed to the ground and the boy scooped these into his hat. He stood and bowed, and as he left his footsteps made no noise whatsoever.
The crone soon returned with the red pelt, now scraped and set on a kind of display to stretch it taut, something like a large drum lain on edge. She pulled this cumbersome apparatus across the threshold; I stood to assist her and Mayfield ordered me, a little too curtly I felt, to sit. ‘Let her do it,’ he said. She dragged the display to a far corner where we all might study the strange coloring of the she-bear. The crone wiped her brow and walked heavily from the room.
I said, ‘The woman is too old for such tasks.’
Mayfield shook his head. ‘She is a dynamo. I have tried to assign her simpler, lighter work, but she won’t hear of it. She enjoys industry, is the long and short of it.’
‘I could not see the joy. But perhaps it is the inward kind that strangers can never read.’
‘My advice is to not bother yourself about it any longer.’
‘I would not say I am bothered, exactly.’
‘You are bothering me.’
Charlie said, ‘About our payment for this pelt.’
Mayfield watched me a moment, then turned to Charlie. He tossed five double eagles across the table and Charlie dragged them into his palm. He handed me two coins and I took them. I decided I would spend the money even more carelessly than usual. What would the world be, I thought, without money hung around our necks, hung around our very souls?
Mayfield hefted and rang the third, largest bell. Presently we heard hurried footsteps in the hall and I was half prepared for the trappers to barge through and set upon us. Instead of this, the room filled with painted whores, seven in number, each of them in frills and lace, each of them already drunk. They fell to putting on their playful shows for us, re-creating themselves as curious, doting, loving, lusty. One of them thought it prudent to speak like a baby. I found their presence depressing but Charlie was in highest spirits, and I could see his interest in Mayfield growing before my eyes. I realized that by looking at this boss man I was witnessing the earthly personification of Charlie’s future, or proposed future, for ours was so often in jeopardy; and it was true, just as the dead prospector had said, that Charlie and Mayfield bore a resemblance to each other, though the latter was older and heavier and doubly pickled from alcohol. But yes, just as I longed for the organized solitude of the shopkeeper, so did Charlie wish for the days of continued excitement and violence, except he would no longer engage personally but dictate from behind a wall of well-armed soldiers, while he remained in perfumed rooms where fleshy women poured his drinks and crawled on the ground like hysterical infants, their backsides in the air, shivering with laughter and brandy and deviousness. Mayfield must have thought I was acting without sufficient enthusiasm, for he asked me, in put-upon tone, ‘You don’t like the women?’