#1 Alive in Deadwood, South Dakota

Deadwood and The Black Hills, South Dakota

Towns like Deadwood are full of ghosts.  The usual ones -- sheriffs and outlaws, gold-rushers and gamblers, renegades and way-makers, pistol-packers and peacemakers.  But on the main street of Deadwood, I also see the ghosts of my two oldest kids. Their lingering younger selves from our first cross country trip and stroll down Deadwood’s sidewalks and saloons peek out from behind lampposts and around corners inviting me to follow, to reminisce, to feel the wisp of time when I reach for them.  It is not so much that I want them small again, I just want more hours with them and I want their childhood lives to play back for me like a movie reel.  I’ve lost so many mundane moments with my poor memory and in-the-moment mind that seems to only capture and release.  I want to remember more than the shape of them, more than the milestones, more than what the camera snaps.  I want voices and words, their bodies in motion, their baby faces animated and returned to me.  The ghosts of little Jack and Emma on the streets of Deadwood are fleeting. Emma’s blond, tangled hair and strong, little body, her snaggle tooth and darting eyes.  Jack’s sure gait and swiveling head.  Both brush close to me for a moment as they were, and I feel them back in my orbit for a moment, two moons to my planet.

I want the memories of their childhood to be pure, not impressionistic and corrupted by time. I have been present, bearing witness to their lives even creating as we go, shaping and smoothing, coaxing form from a marble block.  Yet, I can’t recall the ordinary hours of all those days despite my constant gaze upon their lives.   A haphazard scrutiny, I suppose, trusting too much in the determined imprint of the past.  Memory isn’t fossilized though; it feels more encrypted and in need of recovery prompted by familiar places and sounds.

My husband has a picture on his desk he took of us in Deadwood.  I’m standing with Jack and Emma on either side of me, a small galaxy in front of Kevin Costner’s Midnight Star posing with new cowboy hats and travel happy smiles.  I remember fumbling for the present while awash in 1980’s flashbacks triggered by the memorabilia in Costner’s restaurant and also imagining the bustling town of Deadwood circa 1870.  A strange bit of time travel of the mind like a fourth dimension.  The past is a hive of the mind, relentlessly busy with the present, constantly overlaying a moment, coating it with conjecture and supposition.  Here I am in Deadwood remembering our previous trip with my two older kids, my own girlhood in the 1980s and the deep history of this place I know from books and movies and television.  So, there is history on the streets of Deadwood, a little of mine and a lot of the world.

Now in present time, I add another layer. A new child in Deadwood on our second trip.  Henry, the fifth wheel throwing things out of whack, off-balance.  At least that is what the looks of friends and family seemed to say when we revealed I was pregnant again after ten years.  But I knew with Jack and  Emma growing fast and furious away from us, off into the world, soon there would be just three, and three is nothing if not sacred and true and magical.  I wasn’t aiming for five but rather thinking ahead to three, a triumvirate, a trinity, a threepeat, a hat trick, a number to signify moving in synchrony...1, 2, and on 3, we go!  Three feels lucky and girded with religion, mathematics, science, philosophy and sport.  Mostly, I hope three is enough to cover the loss of two when Jack and Emma leave for good.

But the future can wait and the past can be shushed, for now we are a family of five strolling the streets of Deadwood looking for souvenirs and ice cream.  Stretching our legs after the long car ride, feeling the sun full on without the tint of a window, staring into casinos listening for winning sounds and spinning, whirring hope coming from the slot machines.  Oh, the possibility gleams and a fortune is ready for the taking.  This town seems built on that premise, but I don’t expect it will oblige.  We move on past bars and stores, landmarks and namesakes, invocations of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. We wave off tours to gold mines and cemeteries and tours on the trails of ghosts and legends and the lawless deeds of time past.  The west doesn’t feel so wild as we walk and shop. The only dangers these days are boredom and opportunity.  Maybe the nights around here are more raucous in the saloons and casinos.  It’s much easier to be rambunctious under the cover of darkness rather than at high noon with families buying cowboy hats and postcards.  The dust feels settled here in ways it doesn’t in other parts of the country.  I get the sense people really want guns out here because it is remote and feels survivalist in ways big cities do not.  I am not wary the way I might be in Chicago or Los Angeles, big, modern cities with old ideas about gun slinging and drive-by duels.  

Sometimes spurred by too much binge reading and binge watching, I imagine myself with a gun.  Imagine the places I could go alone, the fearlessness with which I would move around in the world.  It’s a strange wonder all women aren’t accessorizing with a Beretta, causing calamity as Jane would have us do.  Forget the intellectual arguments, the policy interventions, the sexual deprogramming and reprogramming waiting out the pass of a generation.  Let’s all practice deterrence with our own threats of violence with a gun on our hips or thighs, or in our tiny clutch purses, our sports bras.  Sometimes I want to make the fight more fair.  Isn’t that the way of the wild west, everyone open carrying and twitchy but feeling like they have half a chance?   I’m shocked at the vulnerabilities I accept in my life as a woman. But certainly, I don’t want to shoot my way out.   Deadwood makes me think maybe I do.

Michelle

READING RECOMMENDATIONS and TRAVEL ENHANCING RESOURCES ABOUT OR NEAR Deadwood, South Dakota by Chris Jacobs

CUSTER STATE PARK

https://gfp.sd.gov/parks/detail/custer-state-park/

DEADWOOD CASINO and RESTAURANT FORMERLY OWNED BY KEVIN COSTNER STORY

https://www.mykxlg.com/news/local/iconic-deadwood-casino-the-midnight-star-purchased-by-investors/article_f687baa2-54ac-11ea-933d-a37e0c706d78.html

SEE THE REAL DEADWOOD

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/see-real-deadwood-180972287/

THE BLACK HILLS AND THE BADLANDS

https://www.blackhillsbadlands.com/cities-towns/deadwood

NATIVE AMERICANS AND MOUNT RUSHMORE

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/rushmore-sioux/

Watch Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves (1990)

CRAZYHORSE AND CUSTER: THE PARALLEL LIVES OF TWO AMERICAN WARRIORS (1996) by Stephen E. Ambrose

CRAZYHORSE MEMORIAL

https://crazyhorsememorial.org/