She stood then and walked into Bill’s tent.

On the third afternoon, only Charlie had the courage to approach my mother. “He needs burying,” Charlie whispered to her. The flies about the tent hummed their disapproval.

“No,” my mother said. “Soon. Not yet.”

Charlie worried for her sanity at the entrance to the tent, was surprised but fascinated to watch the young preacher pass him and into it as the afternoon grew long.

“Miss Jane,” he heard the preacher murmur, “it’s time to let him go to God.” Charlie cocked his ear, listened for the wail, for the sounds of gunfire or gutting through the thin walls. But all he could make out were a few whispers, a Lord’s Prayer, a tiny sob.
As the sun set, six men emerged from the prospector’s tent, Bill Hickok’s casket raised on their shoulders with Charlie and the preacher at the lead. Like sparrows at dusk, the crowd chattered then grew still. They flocked about the grave, gently shoved closer, and cocked their heads as the boy preacher declared Wild Bill dust to dust, watched as the preacher sprinkled water onto the casket as ropes lowered it down. Some say that the smoke of incense and camp stoves played tricks with the light, the sky burning orange like a prairie fire drawing near. Some even claimed they witnessed my mother present at the burial, in her black lace, damping tears with Bill’s white handkerchief. But I know different.

One rarely hears of Calamity Jane’s last years, of her nursing the smallpox ridden of Deadwood or of her birthing me. But the gossips certainly do chatter about her death, of how the conductor on her last train carried her from it to a cabin in the woods, how he reported that she was dressed in buckskin and smelled badly, how he somehow noticed that she wore no undergarments and stunk of whisky with her dying breath.

The truth is my mother watched Wild Bill Hickok’s burial from the entrance of that tent, watched the crowd get their fill of him until they realized there was nothing left, watched every one of them pack up their gear and depart as the night crawled across. She kept witness until the preacher rode away alone on his mule, until she was the last one standing, the canvas walls still smelling of Bill’s remains, and the smouldering campfires all around her.

And that is when she spotted him, sitting by Bill’s grave. She called out, “Charlie Utter, you are his one true friend.”

The man who was soon to become my father startled, turned his head to her voice, saw it was she, picked up the last full whisky bottle the deserted camp had to offer, and raised it. She walked to him. They drank.

“I need,” she said, holding Charlie’s shaking hands in hers. For the first time in her life, but sadly not the last, my mother begged. She pleaded that night for Charlie to help her get the wailing of squaws from her ears.

All he could muster was, “Calamity Jane, I can make you no promises.”

They did what they had to. After that night, they were never again able to look each other in the eye.

I don’t know what happened to my father. He became mist burnt off by the morning sun. My mother, though, she’ll live on. Her exploits, truth and lies, are carved. Buffalo Bill did take her in not so long after my birth, and he eventually came to terms that she’d become too wrecked for his company. Her once-steady hand, more and more, slipped into shaking.

My mother, a wanderer, she left me young to the care of others, but she did visit, rarely, time to time. I don’t hold her decisions against her. I watched careful when she came, and I listened. Especially, I listened. In her right moods, she had a lot to tell.

I need to go now. I am the bastard son of Calamity Jane, of the West, and, truthfully, I’m already gone. But you must know this by now. Facts and lies, they are so often the same when all you get is glimpses. But I know the truth. I am her blood. She was my mother.