Classics Mutilated (39 page)

"Tell you what," I say. "You tell me how you met Frankenstein, or whatever he called himself, and I'll try to get you the consulting job. If you do get it, it won't pay much. Maybe we can do something with your story, anyhow. I could record it on this machine...."

Damn if his story couldn't be a movie itself. I think so now and I thought so even then.

Henry thinks about it and then he says real slow, "Maybe you're the one I saw in the dream."

"Which dream is that?"

"I had a dream that a fella would tell my story, my true story, but I had to ride the mountains to find him. Since my time with the doctor I've learned to take advice from dreams." He looks at me and says, real slow, "My story's been percolatin' in me many a year and it could be the time has come. I'll do 'er. One thing though—you got anything to eat, maybe some pork and beans? I like those canned pork and beans...."

"Got some canned chili. I'll get you some, but don't touch that machine." 

So he eats some chili out of the can with a spoon, cold, really relishing it, his yellow teeth chewing with his mouth open. He seems to have some trouble swallowing, and drinks a lot of my jugged water to get it down. When he's done he asks, "You got a truck I see to tote this here modern trailer. I expect there's a battery in that truck? One of those big car batteries?"

"Sure. Why?" Is he thinking of stealing my truck battery? Maybe he's got a broken-down truck in the hills somewhere.

"I'll show you, by and by. Got a smoke, there, bub?"

Does he mean grass? "Lucky Strikes, if that's what you mean...."

"Now that's a name I like. Did some prospecting. Never had a lucky strike that wasn't a smoke."

I give him the pack and matches. He puffs the cigarette and drinks tequila and I switch on the tape recorder. What's coming up now is his voice, spliced in after my voice: Mr. William Henry McCarty aka Henry Antrim aka William H. Bonney—alias Billy the Kid.

There is a lot of lies told about me. One is that I'm left-handed. You can see I am no lefty. Another is that I was some kind of full-time cow thief. I threw a wide loop in my time but I'm no cow thief, or hardly ever. I was a good hand for Mr. Tunstall. It's true I did start out as a horse thief with ol' Johnny Mackie. Another lie is that I killed a man for each year of my life. Here's the truth on the Holy Book: I killed but nine fellas, before Pat shot me. After that, well....

See, bub, I was in Fort Sumner, in New Mexico Territory, visiting my girl Paulita. Her brother Pete was keeping a close watch on her. He didn't like a wanted man dating his sister.

We was to meet up in the cantina. I was playing cards that warm night, my back to the wall, watching the door for her, and for law dogs. I was a dozen hands into a game with a couple of vaqueros up from Old Mexico. I pretended to drink more ta-keeler than I was, letting them get good and drunk so they make all the wrong calls. Then into the cantina came this nervous, quick-walking old man with a big bush of white hair 'round his head and a beak of a nose. He wore a funny old gray suit and knickerbockers and he chewed a crooked cheroot. He spoke the Español to the bartender. Spoke it with a funny accent. "What the hell kinda Spanish that old duffer's talkin'?" I said it out loud in English, not thinking he'd understand me. 

But he did. He turned, with his Spanish wine in his hand, and looked at me real close, raising one of those old spectacles on a stick to do it with; and he said in English, "I have learned my Spanish in Spain, young man. But me, I hail from Germany." He said it like,
Chermany.
"But I know many languages," says he. "Even some Comanche, I know." He looked me up and down and says, "I have not seen you here before...."

"You want to play some cards, old horse?" I ask him. "I'll take German gold same as any other."

When he smiled, there were only a few teeth in there. "No, I think not. You are an interesting young man. You have the stamp of destiny on you. Such I have learned to see." 

That's how he talked.
"Such I have learned to see
." Struck me as real entertaining. A man sure gets tired of vaqueros and blacksmiths and cowpunchers for company. Here was a man who'd traveled to Europe. My Ma, she was born in Ireland, and I was born in New York, and I hankered to see more of the world. Especially when my neck was like to be fitted for a rope halter in New Mexico. 

"
The stamp of destiny
," I repeated. "I like that."

He nodded and drank his wine, staring at me the whole time, then he gave me a little bow, from the waist, and walked out of the cantina.

"Well, I'll be goddamned," I said, and the bartender laughed. 

"The doctor, Señor Victor, he has a silver mine," said the bartender. "But with no silver in it."

He told me the doctor had a cabin at an old silver mine that was all played out, some miles from town. He had some way to make ice down in that mine, where it was cool, and sometimes he sold it to the town. He did some doctoring on 'em too but most were scared of him. 

"But he always smiles, and speaks softly to me." There was a priest, there, in the cantina, as drunk as any one of us, hearing me and the bartender talking, and he spoke up. He said, in Español, "The devil always wears a smile, and speaks with a soft voice." 

I put it out of my mind and set to playing stud. That ricket-legged little Mexican dealing had given me three aces down. He was grinning, thinking he had me with his two pair, and his tall, drunken partner with the pitted face was trying to look all cucumber-cool so I knew he had a hand too. So I said, "Boys, let's bet it all out there, and see what happens."

They went for it and when the next cards were dealt I had me a full house, aces full of tens. When we turned those cards over I never saw two sicker-looking vaqueros. I scooped up the double eagles, except for one to buy 'em enough a drink or two, gave 'em a wink to go with it, and walked out. I was tired of waiting for Paulita—I was going to take the bull by the horns and find her.

I went out to my mare and was leading her out through another alley to the street, thinking about where I'd look for Paulita, when I heard a scuffling behind me. I knew right away what it was—the drunk vaqueros wanting their money back. I jerked my single-action and turned. Sure enough, they were coming out into the moonlight, side by side, the tall one unlimbering an embossed-silver shotgun while Mr. Rickety-legs was aiming his pistol. The pock-faced bastard fired and missed so wide I never even heard the bullet pass. Hell, he didn't even hit my horse. I couldn't hardly miss him from eight paces, and my first round caught him right in the middle of the chest, knocked him back off his feet. The other vaquero would have done for me with that shotgun but the damn fool hadn't cocked it. He was working on that, cussin' to himself as he realized it wasn't set, when I shot him through the throat, just above the collarbone—that'd be right there on you, bub. And over he goes, crying out "Madre Mia" and then spitting blood. He rolled over, tried to crawl away. I spent two more bullets making sure of them—and then I knew someone was watching. I could feel it.

I looked around to see a shadow shaped like a man out on the street, standing by a buckboard. There was a big halo, like, of white around its head. Then I worked out it was that German doctor with the light from the whorehouse behind him. He said to me, "Ach, hold your fire! The law will be here, chure—but if you help me load these men on my wagon, I'll tell them you were not here. And I will pay you for your help. You have already helped me much tonight."

He held up a little leather sack and jingled it. What did he mean, I'd helped him? Then I remembered that doctors liked to cut open dead folks to see what made 'em tick—and what made 'em stop ticking. And this man, something about him seemed like a kindly old uncle. Never had me a kindly old nobody. So I said, "You can keep your gold, I'm flush now. Come ahead." 

We dragged the bodies to the buckboard, heaved them on. I heard some shouting, someone asking for the constabulary, the voices of the whores talking in Spanish nearby, so as soon as he got up on the buckboard I slapped his horse's rump and it pulled him off into the night.

Pretty sharp after that I rode off to Paulita's cabin, out on the edge of Pete Maxwell's ranchland. We were shacked up for true, hardly going out, for two days. 

Well sir, we were drinking and lovin' up in that shack on a hot July night, not so different from this one, bub. But hotter, it was, hotter'n a whorehouse on nickel night. We got hungry, as you do. I thought I'd go to her brother Pete's house, cut some beef from his stores like he'd offered, maybe have a drink and talk to him about Paulita. Clear the air. We used to be friends. 

I had no shirt on that night, just some jeans. No gun, because I didn't want to spook Pete. Just a knife in my hand for cutting some steak for me and Paulita. I rode over, barefoot and bare-chested, singing to myself. I was a pretty good tenor, you know. Hard to believe, hearing me now.

I was drunk but able to sit a horse, still remember that the air felt good on my skin as I rode. I reined in when I saw some strangers on the porch of Pete's place. I was wanted for shotgunning Bob Olinger and shooting one or two others, so I was nervous. I skirted around to the back, dismounted, and went in the back way, carrying that knife. Went to Pete's room to ask him who those fellas were on the front porch—couple of deputies, is who they were, I found out later—and then I see someone in there, just the shape of him in the dark. Doesn't look like Pete to me. So I say, "Quien es?" and
boom
, the fella shoots me. When his six gun goes off, that flash showed his face. Pat Garrett. I'll never forget it. Fella I'd ridden with, turned sheriff. He looked scared as a deer in a ring of wolves, even though he was facing a man without a gun. 

He fired twice. One round went through my right hand, changed direction when it smashed a bone, passed through and smacked into my left leg right above the kneecap. Second shot cut into my chest. I guess it nicked an artery, and spilled a mess of blood into my lungs. Getting shot like that felt like being kicked by the meanest mule ever was. 

Then I was flat on my back, trying to breathe, and Pat was yelling to his men, "I shot Billy, by God!" And there were a lot of voices, including Pete's. Then I thought: I expect I'm dying. Everything went black.

Next thing I remember is a stroke of lightning against the blackness. The blaze of the thunderbolt seemed to linger there, not going away like lightning usually does. 

Second thing I remember is a voice speaking in foreign, like a man muttering to himself. I tried to open my eyes but they were too heavy. "Mr. Bonney, you are stirring, I see," he said to me. "Das ist gut. But now, sleep...."

After that, I remember the pain of sitting up. It never hurt so much to sit up, bub. The light hurt my eyes at first, too. Even though it was just a railroad lantern, down in a dark hole in the ground. Doc Vic had him a little operating room way down in that played-out silver mine of his. There was what looked like telegraph wires on the ceiling, nailed to the rafters, and there was a machine, big as a pedal sewing machine, 'cept it had a crank on it. Doctor Vic was turning the crank, faster and faster, and I felt right then like someone poured pure grain alcohol in my veins and lit it on fire. Soon after I went under again.

Next time I woke I felt some better. Just kind of funny. Like part of my body was missing, or half missing.

Something else was missing. I couldn't remember my name. Or who I was. Took me a long time to get that back. Years. It was in there somewhere, but locked away. Doc Vic said it was something to do with my poor brain losing breathing-air when Pat killed me.

Pat Garrett did kill me, too. The doc told me he bribed the Mexican fellas watching my body, replaced it in the coffin with one of the vaqueros I shot, or part of him. The doc drug my body back to his mine, covered in sawdust and laying on blocks of ice. He took it down deep underground, patched it up and he put the life back in it. He says my spirit was hanging around my body, like they do for a time after dying. When he called down the lightning for me it's like my spirit rode that lightning down—like a bronc-buster riding a thunderbolt. Rode it right back into ... up here. My brain.

I realized, when I woke up, that I was nekkid as a jaybird. This did not sit well with me. I was cold, and felt like a man with his back to the door on a night when his enemy is looking for him. But what bothered me more was all that sewing. My right wrist was sewed up. And my hand looked all wrong. That's because it wasn't my hand—Pat Garrett fair destroyed that hand—and this one belonged to that pock-marked vaquero I killed. You can see it's too big for me. My left leg from the thigh down belonged to that other hombre. It's crooked and fat, but I make do with it. Now, some of my inner parts is theirs too. I got my own heart, thank God, but my lungs belongs to the tall vaquero. Later I got me a new liver—a young priest died from falling off a horse, and the doc sent me to dig up the body. Hadn't been embalmed—liver was still good, he said. It was in winter, too, that helped keep it fresh.

Doctor wouldn't take body parts from people who died of disease on account of they was tainted. He liked to get the bodies of folks been killed from falls or hangings—or from being murdered, long as it wasn't poison. That's why he kept watch on me that night. Said he knew I was a killer the minute he laid eyes on me. Knew I'd tangle with those Mexicans. He saw the stamp of destiny on me, and he saw their destinies too—short.

How'd he do that? He spoke of the power of lightning and "animal magnetism." That thunderbolt power he put in me—he put it in himself. Not quite the same. He takes his different, in something he calls a charged tonic. He says that's because he never died. But me, I got to have it right in the old nerves. Now I got what he calls a feeder, right here in the back of my neck, just under my collar. 

Me and him, though, we had one thing in common. The thunderbolt, it changed us both somehow. It makes a man live longer. Real long. And it makes him sense things, like a rattler sensing your footstep a ways off with his tongue on the rock.