Carl and Calamity Jane 1

Context: Madonna finds herself alone in Carl's Roycroft studio shortly after they become friends. She discovers a scrapbook he keeps there and learns that he has many secrets.

Scanning the titles of his books, she expected the volumes by Byron and Shelley, but the copy of Jane Eyre gave her pause. Did men read such novels? She opened a slim edition of Robert Burns, skimming a few lines of a bawdy love song before blushing and replacing it on the shelf. She pulled out a tattered leather scrapbook and sat at his desk to examine it.

A photograph of two small boys, inscribed Berlin, Ontario, 1865. The younger child, perhaps three, was recognizably Mr. Ahrens. Another picture showed him older, maybe ten, also inscribed Berlin, Ontario. That must be where he had grown up. A train pass to Winnipeg, dated May 14th, 1878. Mr. Ahrens as a teenager, lean and dapper in a frock coat and top hat, from a photo studio in Sturgis. A playbill from Deadwood dated four years before she was born. Her mother’s letters from Dakota Territory had described a totally uncivilized place. Madonna could not imagine how lawless and primitive it would have been a decade earlier.

Glancing at the caption of the next photograph, she thought there must be some mistake. Jane, me and the boys – Deadwood – 1879. The image was of four men beside a stagecoach. The slight man standing beside Mr. Ahrens looked oddly familiar, though. 1879. Deadwood. Jane. Calamity Jane? Surely he would have told her.

Hands shaking, she turned the page to find a clipping from a Nebraska City newspaper dated 1886: Dr. Ahrens yesterday received from the International Medical Congress an invitation to attend the meeting in Washington, DC, in connection with the section of oral surgery. We congratulate him, as it is no small honor to be bestowed on a man of only twenty-four years of age.

“No wonder I barely felt a thing.” Madonna said aloud, scanning his age and the date again. She frowned. He was thirty-eight, not thirty-two. Why would he have fibbed about such a thing?
The next clipping was from a Toronto paper, dated 1892: The hanging committee of the Ottawa Art Exhibition unanimously gave the place of honor to “Cradled in the Net” by Mr. Carl von Ahrens. The painting features the artist’s son asleep in a fishing net hammock, with the strong light from a window touching cheek, brow and hair.

“What can’t you do?” she asked as though he stood beside her.

“I can’t whistle.”

She jumped, dropping the book on the table.

“It’s only me.” Mr. Ahrens chuckled, resting his hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t sneak up on me. You know I startle easily.”

“That’s why I said your name twice.”

“Oh.” Turning her face toward his hand, her cheek grazed his knuckles. His fingers smelled of turpentine. She wondered if he did more painting than sweeping at Eleanor’s. “Should I call you Dr. Ahrens?”

“No, you should call me Carl.”

“I can’t.”

He squeezed gently. “You don’t call Sammy ‘Mr. Warner.’”

Hearing his wounded tone, her hand was halfway to his before she realized it. She scratched a feigned itch at her collarbone before lowering it again. “That’s different. I’ve known Sammy for years. He’s like a brother to me.”

“So you’ve said.” He pulled away. “I believe you persist in such formality to irk me.”

In the privacy of her mind, he had always been Carl, but she sensed this was a line she should not cross aloud. “Blame seventeen years of Mother’s etiquette lessons.”

“Fair enough. For now.” Brushing aside his supplies, he sat on the table beside her. “I only call myself ‘Doctor’ when it opens doors that would otherwise remain closed. I never went to dentistry school. I can’t practice in Ontario.”

“Carl von Ahrens” She smiled. “That’s dashing. Makes you sound like an aristocrat.”

“My grandfather was a Danish nobleman, but the title means nothing outside of Europe and I find it pretentious. The stuffier members of the hanging committees take me more seriously when I use it, though. They assume I’m wealthy and attended the best art schools abroad. In reality, I’m penniless and self-taught.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “You look pale, my dear.”

“You said you were a dental apprentice when you’re actually a famous surgeon. You dabble in portraits yet you won the place of honor at an exhibition for a portrait. And then there’s this.” She thumbed through the scrapbook to the page with the stage coach picture. “That’s Calamity Jane, isn’t it?”

“You know of her?”

“She’s a character in the Deadwood Dick novels. My brother loved them.”

“I’ve been anxious to tell you this story, but it’s a bit -- off color. I feared you wouldn’t believe me. People usually don’t.”

“Right now you could tell me you hung the moon and I’d believe you.”

“The clean version, or the daring one?”

“Which do you think?”

“The daring one it is.” He cracked his knuckles, ginning mischievously. “The first time I saw Jane, she was trussed up to a post in the center of a Deadwood saloon with a rope wrapped around her from here to here.” He indicated chest to ankles. “She was gagged, too. I thought she was a man until her hat fell off. I was eighteen then, and considered myself chivalrous, so I was horrified that a room full of men ignored the lady’s obvious distress.”

“Well, I would hope so.”

“I asked the bartender. He spat into a glass, wiped it out with a filthy rag, poured a shot of whisky and pushed it towards me. ‘Jane knocked Harry out cold’ he said, pointing to a burly man in the corner with blood pouring from his nose. ‘Then she went after Tom. She’s so soused I reckon she couldn’t have hurt him none with that meat clever, but I don’t want to drag another body from my bar. It’s bad for business.’”

“Another body?” Madonna leaned forward in her chair. “A meat cleaver?”

Carl held a finger up to his lips to silence her. “So anyway, I rejoined my friends, but Jane was in my line of sight, doing her damnedest to get loose. Eventually, her gag fell. She said, ‘Tom, you motherf…” Carl stopped, flushed crimson, and shook his head, “You’ll have to settle for the slightly milder version, Madonna. There are things I can’t say in front of a lady, even when I’m quoting one.”

“Perhaps you could paraphrase?”

“Well, yes, let me see. She insulted his character, his mother, his dog, and his, um, anatomy, or lack there of, apparently. This tirade included rather picturesque images that fascinated me immensely. I was still fairly innocent at the time, despite having a room downstairs from a brothel.”

“A brothel!”

He shrugged. “It was a mining town of mostly single men. The hotels and boarding houses all served an alternate purpose.”

“I see.” She raised one eyebrow, uncertain she wanted to hear more but too enthralled to object.

He unbuttoned his cuffs, rolling his sleeves halfway up his forearms. “Anyway, after Jane insulted poor Tom in every way imaginable, she threatened to kick his -- manly parts -- until they came out of his, well, never mind, and then Tom doused her with a bucket of water. At least that’s what I think it was; I saw no one use it as a spittoon.”

“How revolting.”

“Yes, and she was mighty displeased. Unfortunately, the ropes were wet, and all her thrashing about made the knots tighter. Someone had to cut the bonds.”

Madonna shifted in her chair, resting her forearm on the table beside his leg. “That would be you, of course.”

He nodded. “She had no cause to harm me, as we’d never met before.” He scratched an itch at his collar and lowered his hand again, brushing against her wrist. “I don’t suppose you’ve been in close proximity to someone who’s truly inebriated?”

“No.”

“Imagine being trapped in a room full of rotting fruit, only she didn’t smell that good because she hadn’t bathed in awhile. My eyes watered as I worked, which isn’t reassuring when you’re holding a sharp knife. She’d have decked me if I cut her.”

“But you didn’t.”

He shook his head. “We were friendly after that. She hired me to work on her ranch in Montana and taught me how to cuss like a cowboy.”

“You said you couldn’t speak like that in front of a lady.”

“Jane was many things, but a lady was not one of them.”