Dinner in Virginia City
It was 1862 or 3, and I was a freshly minted reporter for the Territorial Enterprise. My editor, Bill Wright, known to many by his pen name Dan DeQuill, had departed east to visit his wife and children in Iowa. They were sick, but he went anyway. This left me alone to sort out the many possibilities for stories that arose on a daily basis.
There were usually fatal gunfights to report, and nonfatal ones as well. The latter lacked the drama that the reading public thirsted for, but with a bit of license I could usually amend the outcome to produce a corpse. This upset more than one breathing citizen, who awoke to find himself deceased. He would confront me with his existence and demand a retraction, and it was then up to me to point out the benefits of his demise. In this way I acquired some of the creative skills which continue to hold me in good stead.
Another source of stories which called upon my dexterity as a writer involved Virginia City’s bars and brothels, located on a a street just behind that of the newspaper office. This was convenient, both for material gathering and after work entertainment. With over four dozen establishments to choose from, I was hard pressed to explore them all, but I applied myself diligently.
In addition I was responsible for writing articles pertaining to local businesses, civic organizations, and politics, but as these produced a paltry count of cadavers, and so interested me very little, I was forced to add to the record in order to make the copy readable.
I was slaving over just such an article when I was visited by a spectral character. He was tall, lean, and dressed all in black. I judged him to be about forty-five years of age, spare as a rail, and thin of hair, what little of it I could see poking from his black hat. His face was twisted in some variety of intestinal distress, I thought. Or an injury that had lodged itself there, for the world to enjoy. I continued to write, pretending not to notice his arrival, while I slyly took him in. He stood there patiently. I could see that he was not a manual laborer, as his hands were soft. The quality of his clothing suggested some success in business, but not over much. I chanced a glance upward and saw that his teeth had long departed, save for an incisor and a molar or two, his sunken cheeks making that clear. His overhanging brow showed intense worry and old suffering.
Having ascertained that he was worse off than me, I greeted him and asked his business.
“My name is Moses Phoenix,” he announced. “I am a suttler. I own a store further down C Street,” the very street where I worked. Relieved to gain my attention, he got right into it. “I want the record put straight. I want it printed in the Enterprise. I have been slandered, and I want it put right.”
I put my cigar down and appraised him anew. Airily, I waved him into a chair. He coiled himself into a sitting position and leaned towards me. Halitosis swept over me like a malign cloud and I recommenced puffing on my smoke, putting volumes of tobacco between us. “What sort of slander?” I inquired. His face darkened and he looked at me intensely.
“I survived the Donner party in ’46,” he said firmly, “and someone is accusing me of cannibalism. Here in Virginia City!”
Halitosis be damned. I could have kissed him right then and there. Here was a story to beat every other story I had fabricated since coming to Virginia City. Oh, I thought, this story will put me on the map. It was a solid 14 carat story. And the reaction that old Bill would have when he found that I had gotten the credit instead of him, why that would be 24 carats at least. I could envision his dismay that I had gotten to the story before him. He would positively eat this spleen. But, I thought, how could there be a case of cannibalism in Virginia City which could have escaped my notice? Then I recalled that there had been a victim of a knife fight a week previously. There were many such in that lawless town, and nothing much had been made of it, but now I remembered that the loser had been literally butchered, with several choice cuts removed. The perpetrator had not been found.
Composing myself and adopting as professional an attitude as the circumstances would allow, I asked him to tell all, sparing no details. I licked the tip of my pencil and began to write the glorious words.
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