Boy's Life (23 page)

     “Wyatt Earp could do it.” Mr. Cathcoate spoke up now. “If he was still alive, I mean.”

     “I reckon he could at that, Owen.” Mr. Dollar glanced at me, gauging my interest, and then back to the old man. “Hey, Owen! I don’t think young Cory here knows about you and Wyatt Earp!” Mr. Dollar winked at me conspiratorially. “Tell him the tale, why don’t you?”

     Mr. Cathcoate didn’t answer for a moment, but it was his turn and he didn’t move any of the checkers pieces. “Naw,” he replied at last. “I’ll let it rest.”

     “Come on, Owen! Tell the boy! You want to hear it, don’t you, Cory?” Before I could say yes or no, Mr. Dollar plowed on. “See there? He wants to hear it!”

     “Long time gone,” Mr. Cathcoate said quietly.

     “Eighteen hundred and eighty-one, wasn’t it? October twenty-sixth at Tombstone, Arizona? You were all of nine years old?”

     “That’s right.” Mr. Cathcoate nodded. “I was nine years old.”

     “And tell the boy what you did on that day.”

     Mr. Cathcoate sat staring at the checkers board. “Go on, Owen,” the Jazzman urged in a gentle voice. “You tell him.”

     “I… killed a man on that day,” Mr. Cathcoate said. “And I saved the life of Wyatt Earp at the O.K. Corral.”

     “There you go, Cory!” Mr. Dollar grinned. “Bet you didn’t know you were sittin’ in here with a real live
gunfighter
, did you?” The way Mr. Dollar said that, though, made me think he didn’t believe a word of it, and that he enjoyed goading Mr. Cathcoate about it.

     Of course I’d heard about the O.K. Corral. Every boy with even a passing interest in cowboys and the Wild West knew that story, about the day the Earp brothers—Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan—and cardsharp Doc Holliday faced down the rustling Clantons and McLowerys in the hot dust of Tombstone. “Is that for real, Mr. Cathcoate?” I asked.

     “For real. I was lucky that day. I was just a kid, didn’t know nothin’ about guns. Almost shot my foot off.”

     “Tell him how you saved ol’ Wyatt,” Mr. Dollar urged as he blotted the last of the lather off the back of Dad’s neck with a steaming towel.

     Mr. Cathcoate frowned. I figured he didn’t like remembering it, or else he was trying to put the details together again. A ninety-two-year-old man has to open a lot of locks to recall a day when he was nine years old. But I suppose that particular day was worth remembering.

     Mr. Cathcoate finally said, “Wasn’t supposed to be anybody on the street. Everybody knew the Earps, Doc Holliday, the McLowerys, and the Clantons were gonna spill blood. It had been a long time brewin’. But I was there, hidin’ behind a shack. Little fool, me.” He pushed his chair back from the checkers board, and he sat with his long-fingered hands twined together and the fan’s breeze stirring his hair. “I heard all the shoutin’, and all the guns goin’ off. I heard bullets hittin’ flesh. That’s a sound you don’t forget if you live to be a hundred and ninety-two.” His slitted eyes stared at me, but I could tell he was looking toward the past, where dust clouds rose from the bloodstained earth and shadows aimed their six-guns. “A terrible lot of shootin’,” he said. “A bullet went through the shack next to my head. I heard it whine. Then I got down low and I stayed there. Pretty soon a man came staggerin’ past me and fell to his knees. It was Billy Clanton. He was all shot up, but he had a gun in his hand. He looked at me. Right at me. And then he coughed and blood spurted out of his mouth and nose and he fell on his face right next to me.”

     “Wow!” I said, my arms chillbumped.

     “Oh, there’s more!” Mr. Dollar announced. “Tell him, Owen!”

     “A shadow fell on me,” Mr. Cathcoate said, his voice raspy. “I looked up, and I saw Wyatt Earp. His face was covered with dust, and he seemed ten feet tall. He said, ‘Run home, boy.’ I can hear him say that, clear as a bell. But I was scared and I stayed where I was, and Wyatt Earp walked on around to the other side of the shed. The fight was over. Clantons and McLowerys were lyin’ on the ground shot to pieces. Then it happened.”

     “What happened?” I asked when Mr. Cathcoate paused to breathe.

     “The fella who’d been hidin’ in an empty rain barrel raised up and took aim with his pistol at Wyatt Earp’s back. I’d never seen him before. But he was right there, as close to me as you are. He took aim, and I heard him click the trigger back.”

     “This here’s the good part,” Mr. Dollar said. “Then what, Owen?”

     “Then… I picked up Billy Clanton’s pistol. Thing was as heavy as a cannon, and it had blood all over the grip. I could hardly hold it.” Mr. Cathcoate was silent; his eyes closed. He went on: “Wasn’t time to call out. Wasn’t time to do a thing except what I did. I was just meanin’ to scare the fella by firin’ into the sky, and to get Mr. Earp’s attention. But the gun went off. Just like that:
boom
.” His eyes opened at the memory of the shot. “Knocked me down, ’bout busted my shoulder. I heard the bullet ricochet off a rock about six inches from my right foot. That bullet went straight through the fella’s gunhand wrist. Blew the pistol out of his hand, broke his wrist open so the edge of a bone was stickin’ out. He bled like a fountain. And as he was bleedin’ to death I was sayin’, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ ’Cause I didn’t mean to kill anybody. I just meant to keep Mr. Earp from gettin’ killed.” He sighed, long and softly; it was like the sound of wind blowing dust over the graves on Boot Hill. “I was standin’ over the body, holdin’ Billy Clanton’s gun. Doc Holliday came up to me, and he gave me a four-bit piece and he said, ‘Go buy yourself a candy stick, kid.’ That’s how I got the name.”

     “What name?” I asked.

     “The Candystick Kid,” Mr. Cathcoate answered. “Mr. Earp came to my house to have dinner. My dad was a farmer. We didn’t have much, but we fed Mr. Earp as best we could. He gave me Billy Clanton’s gun and holster as a gift for savin’ his life.” Mr. Cathcoate shook his scraggly-maned head. “I should’ve thrown that damn gun down the well, like my momma wanted me to.”

     “Why?”

     “’Cause,” he said, and here he seemed to get irritable and agitated, “I
liked
it too much, that’s why! I started learnin’ how to use it! Started likin’ its smell, and its weight, and how it felt warm in my hand after it had just gone off, and how that bottle I was aimin’ at flew all to pieces in a heartbeat, that’s why.” He scowled as if he’d just had a taste of bitter fruit. “Started shootin’ birds out of the sky, and believin’ I was a quick-draw artist. Then it started workin’ on my mind, wonderin’ how fast I could be against some other boy with a gun. I kept practicin’, kept slappin’ that leather and pullin’ that hogleg out time and again. And when I was sixteen years old I went to Yuma in a stagecoach and I killed a gunslinger there name of Edward Bonteel, and that’s when I put a foot in hell.”

     “Ol’ Owen here got to be quite a name,” Mr. Dollar said as he brushed the clipped hairs from Dad’s shoulders. “The Candystick Kid, I mean. How many fellas did you send to meet their Maker, Owen?” Mr. Dollar looked at me and quickly winked.

     “I killed fourteen men,” Mr. Cathcoate said. There was no pride in his voice. “Fourteen men.” He stared at the red and black squares of the checkerboard. “Youngest was nineteen. Oldest was forty-two. Maybe some of ’em deserved to die. Maybe that’s not for me to say. I killed ’em, every one, in fair fights. But I was lookin’ to kill ’em. I was lookin’ to make a big name for myself, be a big man. The day I got shot by a younger, faster fella, I decided I was livin’ on borrowed time. I cleared out.”

     “You got shot?” I asked. “Where’d it hit you?”

     “Left side. But I aimed better. Shot that fella through the forehead, smack dab. My gunfightin’ days were over, though. I headed east. Wound up here. That’s my story.”

     “Still got that gun and holster, don’t you, Candystick?” Mr. Dollar inquired.

     Mr. Cathcoate didn’t reply. He sat there, motionless. I thought he’d gone to sleep, though his heavy-lidded eyes were still open. Then, abruptly, he stood up from his chair and walked on stiffened legs to where Mr. Dollar was standing. He pushed his face toward Mr. Dollar’s, and I saw his expression in the mirror; Mr. Cathcoate’s age-spotted face was grim and thin-lipped, like a skull bound up with brown leather. Mr. Cathcoate’s mouth split open in a smile, but it was not a happy smile. It was a terrible smile, and I saw Mr. Dollar shrink back from it.

     “Perry,” Mr. Cathcoate said, “I know you think I’m an old fool half out of my head. I accept the fact that you laugh at me when you think I’m not lookin’. But if I didn’t have eyes in the back of my head, Perry, I wouldn’t be alive right now.”

     “Uh… uh… why, no, Owen!” Mr. Dollar blubbered. “I’m not laughin’ at you! Honest!”

     “Now you’re either lyin’, or callin’ me a liar,” the old man said, and something about the soft way he said that made my bones grow cold.

     “I’m… sorry if you think I’m—”

      “Yes, I still have the gun and holster,” Mr. Cathcoate interrupted him. “I kept ’em for old time’s sake. Now, you understand this, Perry.” He leaned in closer, and Mr. Dollar tried to smile but he only summoned up a weak grin. “You can call me Owen, or Mr. Cathcoate. You can call me Hey, you or Old Man. But you’re not to call me by my gunfighter name. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Do we see eye to eye on that, Perry?”

     “Owen, there’s no call to be—”

     “Do we see eye to eye?” Mr. Cathcoate repeated.

     “Uh… yeah. We do. Sure.” Mr. Dollar nodded. “Whatever you say, Owen.”

     “No, not whatever I say. Just this.”

     “Okay. No problem.”

     Mr. Cathcoate stared into Mr. Dollar’s eyes for another few seconds, as if looking for the truth there. Then he said, “I’ll be leavin’ now,” and he walked to the door.

     “What about our game, Owen?” the Jazzman asked.

     Mr. Cathcoate paused. “I don’t want to play anymore,” he said, and then he pushed through the door and out into the hot June afternoon. A wave of heat rolled in as the door settled shut. I stood up, went to the plate-glass window, and watched Mr. Cathcoate walking slowly up the sidewalk of Merchants Street, his hands in his pockets.

     “Well, what do you think about that?” Mr. Dollar asked. “What do you suppose set him off?”

     “He knows you don’t believe none of that story,” the Jazzman said as he began to put away the checkers pieces and the board.

     “Is it true, or not?” Dad stood up from the chair. His ears had been lowered considerably, the back of his neck ruddy where it had been shaved and scrubbed.

     “’Course it’s not true!” Mr. Dollar laughed with a snort. “Owen’s crazy! Been out of his head for years!”

     “It didn’t happen like he said it did?” I kept watching Mr. Cathcoate move away up the sidewalk.

     “No. He made the whole thing up.”

     “How do you know that for sure?” Dad asked.

     “Come on, Tom! What would a Wild West gunfighter be doin’ in Zephyr? And don’t you think it’d be in the history books if a kid saved Wyatt Earp’s life at the O.K. Corral? I went to the library and looked it up. Ain’t no mention of any kid savin’ Wyatt Earp’s life, and in this book I found about gunfighters there’s nobody called the Candy-stick Kid, either.” Mr. Dollar brushed hair out of the chair with furious strokes. “Your turn, Cory. Get on up here.”

     I started to move away from the window, but I saw Mr. Cathcoate wave to someone. Vernon Thaxter, naked as innocence, was walking on the other side of Merchants Street. Vernon was walking fast, as if he had somewhere important to go, but he lifted his hand in greeting to Mr. Cathcoate.

     The two crazy men passed each other, going their separate ways.

     I didn’t laugh. I wondered what it was that had made Mr. Cathcoate want to believe so badly that he’d been a gunfighter, just as Vernon Thaxter believed he really had somewhere to go.

     I got up in the chair. Mr. Dollar pinned the barber towel around my neck, and he combed through my hair a few times as Dad sat down to read a
Sports Illustrated
.

     “Little bit off the top and thin the sides out?” Mr. Dollar asked.

     “Yes sir,” I said. “That’d be fine.”

     The scissors sang, and little dead parts of me flew off.