Page 37 - Sorrow of the Earth: Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business

W. Colby used repeatedly to tell the story of how Buffalo Bill had escorted

him to Pine Ridge, accompanied by John Burke, his impresario, and how, as
they rode along together and talked, they had eventually caught up with the
reserves. After leaving their bags in the white army tents, between the stocks
of gunpowder and the barrels of bacon, Leonard Colby and Buffalo Bill went
on to Wounded Knee. But as soon as they climbed the hill and saw the plain
littered with burnt-out wagons and a swarm of vermin, booty-hunters and
scavengers, all in search of Indian goods, Leonard Colby and Buffalo Bull,

both of whom had experience of war and had seen battlefields before,
instantly realized that what had taken place was not a battle, but a full-scale
massacre.
Afterwards they went to the Pine Ridge trading post and then to the bar
where Buffalo Bill was a regular because May Asay, the queen of Pine Ridge,

was his mistress. I don’t know if May Asay actually enjoyed being kissed by
Buffalo Bill in the outhouse next to her shop, or if she liked feeling his big
military moustache against her lips. I don’t know if she liked being fucked on
the dusty table, wiping herself with a dusty dishrag, and then returning behind
the counter to allow her climax to subside. What I do know is that James
Asay, her husband, had distributed whisky to the soldiers the night before the
massacre. He ran a business, and it needed to make money; a little present to

the troops couldn’t do any harm.
However, James Asay was perhaps not entirely immune to scruples. He
would start boozing in the morning, and by midday his life had liquefied into
oblivion. He slept all afternoon, sweating between filthy sheets and calling to
some shadowy figure in his sleep. His wife would drag him roughly out of his
bed in the evening, and pack him off to mind the bar. You can see that there

are many ways a man can be snared in the coils of his own existence; and
Asay, who had gone and given barrels of whisky to the cavalry regiment at
Wounded Knee in order to win their custom, is now crushed under the weight
of his own self, right there, in the middle of the afternoon, and, with his flesh
pinned fast to his own nullity, it’s impossible to hate him entirely. You can
imagine his forehead sticky with sweat, his cadaverous breath, his pallor, you
can imagine how horribly alone he is when he’s with other people, and even

when he’s not, perpetually alone and in anguish. Maybe he’s a man to be
pitied. Yes, he certainly pitied himself! He wanted to act the way they do in
books, to throw himself into the abyss of his own being and end it all. But he
hadn’t read any books, and he hated them. All his intelligence had turned