I am doomed ~ Marrant's Journal Entry

It is not fair.  Life.  Just when we were someplace interesting, we are to be thrown back into the humdum doldrum of life amongst those who may as well be dead.   Where everything can be predicted.  Like the ticking of clocks, one rises at a certain hour, goes to school, eats lunch, returns to school, does schoolwork, has supper, plays piano in the parlor to the tick tick ticking of a clock.

I want to scream, yes, I shall scream, I shall go out back by the river and scream and scream and scream.

Were I to do that at Grandmother's, she would clasp her hand over her tidy chest, raise her monocle to her eye and stare at me then call for the doctor, I suppose.  Grandfather would look over the newspaper and mutter something about quiet.

Quiet.  As I sit here writing, Mary is singing and packing, running out and hugging Mother, then running back and repacking.  She cannot wait to leave, she has hated it here from the beginning.

There are things one could dislike, it really depends on how you look at things.  The streets are dirty, and there are sometimes people lying in places where one would not think to find a soul asleep.   What I likea about Deadwood is that it is never the same, never boring, never predictable.

You sometimes see the same people - like Auntie Bluebird - oh how I shall miss her, the way she sings while cooking makes the food taste most delicious, unlike anything anyone else can make, because nobody hums like she, nobody says the things she does or looks at you so that first you want to shrink away and then she laughs and you do too and the biscuit she hands you is like it came straight from heaven.  Or those girls that live next door to her, how they poke at her pig and use swears that are so different than those that come out of the mouths of the men across the way who sell liquor - same words but out of those ladies lips, they are almost heavenly to me, they turn the little hairs on the back of my neck straight up!


You never know who else you might see- all kinds of people come through, more every day, so many that my sketch pad is full as I have never seen so many unusual faces of all kinds and colors and sizes and expressions.

And the river, just as it is getting warm and I can wade in, carrying my shoes, laces tied together, all dangling around my neck, my socks stuffed in (they hardly stink so bad as America is using some soaps Auntie made that smell stronger than my feet ever did).

There is some kind of freedom in seeing the blue blue sky, having a sweet breeze touch your hair,  feeling cool water between your toes with smooth round rocks tickling the soles of your feet as you can watch a fish swim by maybe close enough to grab if you were able to practice some more  - Grandmother will never allow any of it - it will be shoes and socks, hats and gloves, corsets, young lady lessons - I am doomed. 

Freddie was teaching me some more German, he can't help it if it isn't even French, and I was going to teach him how to paint real good.  Now he'll have to find something better to do, and there's nothing better to do than paint.  Grandmother won't let me paint unless it's with lessons and I paint flowers in vases.

I cannot bring Buttercup, Grandmother would not like him.  I am not to worry about what will become of him, though I do not know how I cannot.  He has been my companion - if he was smaller, I could put him in my trunk.

Mother and Father say they will be fine without us.   I have my doubts.  I will miss them terribly.  Not America. 

It is time to pack.  Before I do that, I am going to go down by the river and have myself a good cry.

Good bye Deadwood.  You are dusty and dirty and dangerous.  I love you.

Someday I'll be back.