Doc: A Novel (16 page)

Doc’s wheezy laugh ended with a cough. “Can’t afford it, son. Spent my last two dollars on those Cuban cigars,” he said with a lopsided grin.

So much for the fifteen grand. Morgan made a note to divide anything Bat Masterson said by five. “You can bunk with me. If you need to.”

“I ’preciate the offer, Morg, but Kate usually stays at Bessie’s.”

“Doc, I probably shouldn’t ask this—”

“Then don’t.”

“It’s not about Kate.”

Doc didn’t say anything, but he didn’t tell Morg to shut up, either.

“I just wondered—and it’s not ’cause you’re Southern or anything—I just wondered about why you did all this tonight. I mean, I don’t know how much a piano costs, but it seems like you could’ve bought a nice one with what you spent on the wake. I liked Johnnie, too, but you seem to care so much …”

Sudden, slanting light broke the horizon and made the dew glitter. Doc sat silently for a time, watching the short grass ripple in the breeze, listening to the red-winged blackbirds down by the slough, and to the meadowlarks and the quail.

Morg was about to apologize for asking when Doc spoke at last.

“Oh, it was selfishness, I expect.”

Which didn’t make any sense at all until Doc finished.

“That poor boy died all alone,” he said softly. “He has no kin to bury or remember him … So I took him for my own.”

Eddie came back. The room was empty. It was safe to go to bed. Half-amused by the situation, Doc let Morgan haul him to his feet. Anyone watching would have thought he’d drunk himself bandy-legged.

“I fear I shall not be able to attend the funeral,” he told Morg and Eddie as they walked him back to the hotel. “I may have overplayed my hand.”

He refused to let them accompany him to his room, insisting that he was fine now, and demonstrating it by taking the staircase with a sudden show of energy. He had discovered a few years ago that if a thing could be accomplished quickly—between one breath and the next—it could be done with a brief but serviceable burst of strength, though there was a price to pay. The ache in his hip became a sharper pain and he was winded when he got to the second floor, but no matter. For a few moments, he looked and felt healthy and unimpaired.

In case Kate had returned with someone in the meantime, he knocked on their door. No one answered. He let himself in. The sun was climbing, and he pulled the curtains closed.

Sleeping was somewhat easier this time of day. Dodge roared in the darkness, but it was quiet in the early morning light. He thought, We live like bats in this burg, and wondered idly if the habit of being up all night had given Sheriff Masterson his nickname.

Undressing seemed almost more trouble than it was worth, but in that way lay degeneracy and ruin. Feeling pleased by his own resolve, he slipped out of his coat and by-God hung it up. Carefully removed the diamond stickpin that Uncle John had given him and returned it to the small velvet-lined box. Unknotted his cravat. Folded it neatly. Placed it on the chiffonier. His boots proved more of a challenge. He sat down, intending to take them off, but gave the project up and laid his head against the high-backed chair.

He was learning to doze while sitting up. Sometimes it was easier to breathe that way. The chair was upholstered and reasonably comfortable, but when he woke, he wouldn’t feel rested, and that would make him short-tempered. Still, when he was tired enough, it was possible to drop off for a few hours.

Soon he would have a better alternative. Last week, he’d fallen asleep while getting a shave. Upon awakening, it came to him that barbers and dentists had the same basic requirements for working on people’s heads. A reclining chair that could be raised to a comfortable level would reduce the muscular effort expended while leaning over during examinations, and he could nap in it between patients. That afternoon, he’d telegraphed an order to a supplier in St. Louis and asked Bob Wright to transfer the money.

Tom McCarty had been generous about sharing his clinic space, accepting no payment apart from occasional help with injuries of the face, teeth, or neck. Still, it would be good to have a proper office of his own again, and Deacon Cox had given him very reasonable terms on No. 24, Dodge House.

Jau Dong-Sing was surprisingly distressed by this good news when told of the new office. Mr. Jau had peculiar ideas about numbers. “Twenty-four no good! Bad luck for you,” the Chinaman had insisted with strenuous conviction. “Number nine much better.”

Too late now. The lease was signed.

In any case, he himself did not believe in lucky numbers. He did not believe in luck at all, good or bad. Gamblers believed in luck, and he was not a gambler. Never had been, never would be. John Henry Holliday believed in mathematics, in statistics, in the computation of odds. Fifty-two cards in a deck. Make it easy. Say it’s fifty. Any card has a 2 percent chance of being dealt from a full deck. Keep track of what’s out. Adjust the probabilities as the hand progresses. Observe your opponents. Be aware of the chemistry of the table, the nerves, the tells. At his best, he played poker with the same combination of informed artistry and complete concentration he had once brought to the keyboard, and yet …

There is always something else—something uncontrollable—at work in every hand. The most cold-blooded card counter knows that, though he might not name it luck.

Moera, the Greeks called Mother Fate, the ancient apportioner of lots. Her decisions were unalterable and made long before a mortal’s birth, rendering human striving valueless and vain. Fortuna was the Romans’ answer to that grim Grecian goddess. Not everything was settled before a babe drew breath, but Fortune ruled over half of life; her caprices could explain why a man might prosper one day and come to ruin the next, without a single change in his habits or his character. Providence, Christianity countered. Destiny is divinely dictated, but influenced as well by our decisions and our deeds. Providence, moreover, holds out the promise that, one day, a just God’s plan will be made known to his puzzled people.

John Henry Holliday believed in none of them.

He did not imagine that Moera had decreed before his birth that he would die as soon and as wretchedly as his young mother had. He could not accept that Fortuna might smile on him for half of his short life, only to watch pitilessly while his lungs gave out, leaving him to suffocate slowly. He refused to bow before a Providence determined to deliver him to an unmarked pauper’s grave in Colorado, fifteen hundred miles from the home he would never see again.

John Henry Holliday believed in science, in rationality, and in free will. He believed in study, in the methodical acquisition and accumulation of useful skills. He believed that he could homestead his future with planning and preparation: sending scouts ahead and settling it with pioneering effort. Above all, he believed in practice, which increased predictability and reduced the element of chance in any situation.

The very word made him feel calm. Piano practice. Dental practice. Pistol practice, poker practice. Practice was power. Practice was authority over his own destiny.

Luck? That was what fools called ignorance and laziness and despair when they gave themselves up to the turn of a card, and lost, and lost, and lost …

An hour later, he woke to Kate’s fingers on his buttons, to her lips, to her voice, to her breath, whiskey sweet, smoke sour.

“
Viens au lit
,” she was saying. “
Viens t’allonger près de moi, mon amour
.”

“Darlin’, please,” he mumbled. “I am beat flat. I can’t—”

“You don’t have to do nothing, Doc. I’ll do it all,” she said. “You’ll sleep good.”

“I
was
sleepin’.” His voice sounded fretful and peevish, even to himself, and he tried to spunk up. “You have to let me rest, Kate.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Doc. I was drunk last night, that’s all. I’ll make it up to you. I’ll make it right.”

The vulgarity. The exaggerated, theatrical, lascivious carnality. All that was gone. In its place was this fearful, earnest, pathetic need to please. He fought to open his eyes, too tired to lift a hand and stroke her hair.

“Let me make it up to you,” she said. “You’ll get some rest, you’ll feel better.”

He was consumptive and exhausted; he was male and twenty-six. And Kate, too, was practiced in her trade.

“See how good that is?” she whispered, lifting her skirts now, straddling him, lowering herself. “That’s good, isn’t it, Doc?”

She watched his face as she worked, saw the growing tension, the rigidity. She slowed her rhythm, deepening her hold, smiling when she saw release, triumphant when his breathing caught, and stopped, and then went on, without any coughing at all.

“That’s my man,” she said softly. “That’s my loving man …”

The doctors said this was bad for him, but she knew that they were wrong. They all said something different. He should rest. He should exercise. He should go to the mountains. He should stay on the plains. Get plenty of fresh air. No, stay inside. They said the smoking was bad for him, the drinking, the all-night games, but he could make so much money at the tables, and it was so easy for him! It was this day work that was killing him, anybody could see that. And it didn’t pay!

Doctors don’t know nothing, she told herself. They said he’d be dead by now, but I’m good for him. He don’t cough with me.

She waited until he slipped from her, then lifted herself and backed away. Leaving him asleep in the chair, she lay down on their bed and watched his thin chest rise and fall, rise and fall, regular and even.

Well, a little shallow, a little labored …

Don’t mean nothing, she told herself, but he looked so pale in the sunlight, his skin as colorless as his ash-blond hair.

“
Ne meurs pas, mon amour. Non morais
,” she whispered in the language of love, and the language of prayer. “Don’t die on me, Doc,” she whispered, over and over, watching him until her own eyelids drooped and closed. “Don’t die on me. Don’t die …”

When Wyatt Earp rode across the Arkansas River toll bridge into Dodge the morning after Johnnie’s funeral, it was not quite noon and the city was still pretty much asleep. Apart from a few hungover cowpunchers who’d drawn the short straw and had to work the stockyards, the only things moving were cottonwood fluff, dust, and Dog Kelley, who was crossing Front Street with half a dozen skinny greyhounds.

Dog knew what was coming, and waited. “Wyatt,” he said. “Welcome back.”

“You still mayor?” Wyatt asked.

“Reelected in April,” Dog confirmed.

“Still looking for a chief deputy?”

“Job’s open yet.”

“If you’d hired me in the first place,” Wyatt said, “Ed Masterson would still be alive.”

Dog squinted up toward a clouding sky, scratching at the three-day beard on his stretched-out neck. “Wyatt,” he said peaceably, “you’re probably right about that.”

Wyatt Earp was the most fearless man Dog Kelley had ever met, and Dog had known a fair number of truly brave men in his time, for he had ridden under the Stars and Bars in the late war, and courage was commonplace among his comrades. That said, Wyatt Earp was not
quite
the most arrogant bastard Dog had ever met, for Sergeant James H. Kelley had also served in the U.S. Cavalry after the war, scouting for General George Armstrong Custer. It was, in fact, a direct result of Custer’s unwavering, unflappable belief that he was something awful damn special in the eyes of God and man that Dog Kelley had inherited his former commander’s pack of coursers and wolfhounds, acquiring a nickname into the bargain.

No doubt about it: George Custer took first prize for arrogance. But give the devil his due, Dog thought, watching Wyatt ride on. That prissy goddam sonofabitch comes in a real close second.

Just then Bob Wright appeared outside his store with a broom. “So,” Bob said to Dog, sweeping up the boardwalk, “Wyatt’s back. That’s good news for the town.”

“Could be,” said Dog.

“Say, Dog! You suppose the town oughta hire Wyatt again?” Bob asked.

Like he hadn’t already decided.

“Maybe so,” said Dog.

“Let’s talk about that at the city council meeting,” Bob said.

Like it was a suggestion.

“Whatever you say, Bob,” Dog replied, but his eyes were on Wyatt, who was halfway down Front Street now.

I’ll take honest arrogance over fake humility any day, Dog thought.

“See you at council,” he said.

Bat Masterson was sitting in front of the Green Front. He was dressed like he was going to a wedding except for a black mourning band around his arm for his brother. Wyatt drew up.

“Hey, Wyatt,” Bat called. “You finally shoot that two-dollar horse?”

“This’s him. You spend all your money on clothes, or just most of it?”

“Appearances count, my friend. Appearances count.”

“I was sorry to hear about Ed. What happened?”

“Drunk shot him.”

“Hell. You get the drunk?”

Bat looked like he was deciding something. Then he said, “Damn right I did.”

“Good.” Wyatt glanced over his shoulder at the Elephant Barn. “When’d that happen?”

“Monday night,” Bat told him, and looked away.

It wasn’t until he found Morgan that Wyatt learned the rest.

The first time a man was killed in Dodge, the corpse just lay around all day until, toward evening, somebody decided to dig a hole in a scrubby little hill northwest of Front Street. The deceased was buried as he’d died: with his boots on and without the dignity of a coffin.

Boot Hill received sixty-two more bodies in the next three years—mostly killings, though smallpox took a few one season. At that rate, it wasn’t long before Dodge outgrew its makeshift cemetery. On top of the crowding, there was the additional problem of where to bury townspeople whose friends and families didn’t want to plant their dearly departed next to some overconfident fool who’d picked a fight with the wrong stranger in a bar. So Bob Wright opened the Prairie Grove Cemetery down by the Union Church. It was prettier than Boot Hill, but you had to pay to get in.

Leave it to Bob, everybody said. Damn if he didn’t find a way to make money off you, even after you was dead.