More than a decade ago, I did a cross-country road trip from St. Louis, MO to Texas to Montana, across the Dakotas and through the Midwest, back to where I’d started in Washington, D.C. I wrote a lot of prose on that trip, including the very first entries of this blog.
Along the way, I stopped in at archives and museums in various states. One of those was in Pierre, SD, where I spent a day browsing historical records from Deadwood. There were weather reports (captured in handwritten Army meteorological records), marriage records, coroner’s reports. I read as much as I could. Partly because historical research draws me like catnip. And partly because I’d been enthralled by HBO’s Deadwood series, and here I was turning pages that contained names I’d seen as characters on the show, only now appearing in records that were about real people. I was particularly struck by one of those records. The result is written below.
The Ghost of Dan Doherty Speaks
You meant to go swimming, you said.
Meant to go up to the pool
behind the dam,
but you didn’t get off.
That afternoon, July 3
the day before the fireworks.
Your occupation: saloon keeper.
And these words your deposition at an inquest
into some drifter’s death.
You just wanted to swim.
To feel the silence of being underwater
away from the whiskey and the whores,
into such peace as can be known
in this god-forsaken place.
A clear-eyed peace, you sought.
The brown creek waters the only opiate
to slip solace into your veins.
And you, standing, rising
face uptuned, smiling.
Shaking the droplets from your hair,
the creek’s mud sticking to your feet.
Note: On the HBO series, the character’s name is given as Dan Dority. In the records I viewed, the name appears as Dan Doherty.