Doc: A Novel (31 page)

“We didn’t bet against you. We
hedged
our bets,” Morg said. “Kate says they’ve been doing that on French racetracks for years. You take a hundred dollars and divide it. Twenty to win at long odds, right? Then make a couple of side bets, shorter. Thirty bucks to come in second or better, fifty to come in third or better. Unless the horse is out of the money, there’s a payoff. If he wins, you do real well.”

It made sense. Wyatt just wished he’d heard of the system before the race. He’d put everything he had on Dick to win, and lost it all.

The brightest stars were visible. The first experimental fireworks were being shot off. This could turn into the quietest part of the night or the most dangerous.

“You seen Doc Holliday yet?” Wyatt asked.

Morg shook his head. “Kate’s not letting anybody visit.”

“She told me to go to hell, that’s for sure.” Wyatt wasn’t scared of Kate, exactly, but she’d taken a dislike to him for some reason. No sense in stirring things up. “If you see her leave Dodge House,” Wyatt said, “lemme know.”

The night shift at Bessie’s was wild, and James sent word to Kate just after eleven: We need more girls—can you help us out? Morgan told Wyatt that when their paths crossed just after midnight.

Wyatt took a break a while later and went up to Doc’s room. There was a light showing from under the door, so he knocked softly. The answering “Yes?” was immediate, if weak.

Wyatt stuck his head inside. “Hey, Doc,” he said quietly. “How’re you doing?”

“Like Cousin Robert used to say: if you didn’t get hurt, you weren’t havin’ fun.” His voice was hoarse but he seemed cheery enough. “Not supposed to talk. C’mon in! Sit down! How’s that German fiddler?”

“Back playing at the Commie-Q already.” In fact, the fiddler looked better than Doc, who was sitting in bed, propped on pillows, his face all beat up from where he hit the ground.

“Press charges?” Doc asked.

“No. Somebody got to him. The Driskill kid got off with a fine for disturbing the peace. Bob Wright walked, too. Misunderstanding, the judge said.”

“Pity. Trial would’ve been entertainin’. Rest of the town?”

“Mayhem. No murder. So far.”

“Wyatt, you are good at your job. Everyone’ll go home in the mornin’.” Doc sounded respectful, but reassuring, too. The dentist closed the book on his lap and rolled onto an elbow to cough into a handkerchief. “Put that lamp out, will you?” he asked. “I fear I do not bear close inspection.”

Wyatt didn’t argue the point. Without his shirt and vest and coat and cravat to bulk him up some and make him look dignified, you could see how bony and young Doc was, besides being banged up from the fall. Still, bad as he looked, and coughing about every third word, the dentist was eager to tell Wyatt about the race, explaining about the lope out to the field to avoid a forfeit, and saying how well Dick did, despite having some of the race wrung out of him before he got to the track.

“How was he in the pack?” Wyatt asked. “He snap at anybody?”

“No, sir. All business. Hadn’t been for that damned dog—I should have you press charges against the greyhound—”

Doc cursed for a while, coughing, and getting fed up with the interruptions. When the handkerchief was soggy, he tossed it into a basin on the floor. “Move those over closer, will you?” he asked, motioning toward a pile of clean cloths, but then he went right back to the race.

This was why Kate didn’t want any visitors, Wyatt realized. Doc couldn’t help himself. If there was somebody around, he’d talk. When he talked, he got cranked up. That brought on the cough, and then those things in his chest would rip. The boy’s eyes were watering now, but still shining in the moonlight as he told about the finish.

All heart, Wyatt thought.

“I swear: two more strides, we’d’ve taken the lead,” Doc was saying. “Didn’t use a quirt on him, either—” The coughing got really bad this time, and when it was done, Doc looked exhausted. “Not supposed to talk,” he reminded himself, whispering again. “He’s a wonderful horse, Wyatt. I’m sorry we didn’t do better for you.”

“Hell, Doc. Wasn’t your fault.”

“He had a lot left at the end. You thought about longer races?”

“Well, not for him …”

Maybe it was the darkness. Maybe it was because Doc admired Dick and showed it, so open and boyish like that. Partly it was just to shut Doc up before he made himself cough again. Whatever the reasons, Wyatt found himself telling about the morning he first saw that mare Roxana, and how he once hoped to breed her to Dick.

Doc lay back to listen. Sure enough, the cough quieted. After a time, he shut his eyes, but his face was alight while Wyatt talked about the colts he’d expected from the pair. Milers, quick to break, like Dick, but with Roxana’s stamina to go distance at speed. Caught up, Wyatt went on to tell about how he thought of quitting the law because he kept getting laid off anyways, no matter how hard he worked, and about how he wanted to buy a piece of land and raise fine horses, but the mare’s owner wanted two grand. Even dealing faro part-time, Wyatt was never gonna put that kind of cash together, so who was he fooling?

Doc’s smile had faded by then, and Wyatt figured he was probably asleep, which is why, without really meaning to, he started to tell Doc about that deal with Johnnie Sanders. It was a way to get the matter off his chest somehow, without anybody really knowing. Except Doc was still listening, not sleeping, and he already knew what Wyatt was going to say, the way Morg so often did.

“That’s why you staked him,” Doc said softly. “You were goin’ to buy Roxana.”

“I didn’t mean for Johnnie—I never would have—”

“Not your fault,” Doc said. After a while he added, “I’d’ve done the same.”

It didn’t occur to Wyatt to ask that night if Doc meant he’d have staked Johnnie same as Wyatt, or played for Wyatt same as Johnnie.

Suddenly Wyatt needed to go back to work. Needed to get out of that sickroom, and away from everything he’d just told Doc.

“I should let you rest,” he said, standing. “Can I get you anything before I go?”

“Thank you, no.” Doc’s eyes opened. “Wait! Been meanin’ to ask … How much’s the rent on that cottage of yours?”

“Eight bucks a month. Me ’n’ Morg were splitting it, but—” He didn’t know what to say.

“You need your privacy now,” Doc supplied, eyes closing again.

“Morg, too. He and that girl Lou took the house next door.”

“Who’s the landlord?”

“George Hoover.”

“Well, ask ’bout the other one … that’s almost finished, will you?”

Wyatt promised he would, and Doc mumbled something about them being neighbors soon, and reminded Wyatt to brush his teeth, but by then he was barely awake.

The rest of the night was mostly uneventful. Wyatt made his report to Fat Larry at dawn and trudged home, the three-shift duty over at last.

Mattie Blaylock was asleep, but when he crawled into bed, she woke up and put her arms around his neck.

“Aw, hell,” he said wearily, and got up out of bed again.

“What’s the matter, Wyatt?” Mattie asked anxiously. “I do something wrong?”

“Forgot to brush my teeth,” he said.

When Kate got back from Bessie’s in the morning, Doc was scabby and pale under his bruises, but he was sitting at the table, practicing with a deck: split, square, pivot.

She looked at him, brows up.

“
A heavenly sleep … did suddenly steep … in balm my bosom’s pain
,” he recited.

Kate took off her hat and tossed it on the bureau before lifting the half-empty bottle at his elbow.

“I’m fine,” he insisted, putting some strength behind his voice. “Sore is all.”

The basin in the corner was filled with sodden handkerchiefs. Most were stained pink. The ones at the bottom of the pile were darker.

“Temporary,” he told her. “I hit the ground hard. Bound to be some minor blood vessels torn.”

“McCarty told you to stay in bed,” she reminded him.

“
Trust not the physician! His antidotes are poison, and he slays!
Tom McCarty doesn’t know one damn thing about tuberculosis that I didn’t tell him my own self.” He cut the cards and showed her the nine of clubs. “How much have I got in that carpetbag of yours?”

“Six hundred and change.” She sat on the bed to unbutton her shoes.

“Does that count what I won on Dick yesterday?”

She nodded. “But not what I just made.”

They had sworn off fear, but the fall was sobering. Last night, when the bleeding was worst, they’d agreed that she should keep her earnings separate. It was a matter of pride for Doc, and he wanted her to save something. Just in case.

“We can shave forty-eight dollars a month off expenses if we rent a house instead of livin’ here,” he said. Divvy, tumble, riffle … “I don’t suppose you can cook.”

Pulling off a shoe, she looked up. “You had slaves. We had servants.”

“Fair enough.”

Riffle, arch, release … He cut again, right-handed. Nine of diamonds.

“Grier,” he said after a time, watching her undress.

“Not worth it. Word is the family’s cut him off—” Doc was staring. “
D’accord
,” she said with a shrug. “When?”

“Get me some easy work first. I’d like to take four thousand into the room.”

“Scared money don’t win,” she agreed, arranging pillows against the headboard. She climbed into the bed and laid her head back. “What’ve you got against Grier anyway?”

“It’s a family matter.”

“Don’t be mysterious with me. It’s tedious. He get some cousin pregnant?”

“Oh, nothin’ so melodramatic. The captain’s family is the front half of Grier and Cook Carriage Company, up in Connecticut. My father ordered a buggy from them, just before the war. I helped pick it out. Model Number Thirty-three … Had a lever for raisin’ and lowerin’ the top from the inside. One hundred and sixty dollars. Cash. Paid in advance.” Hands now lax in his lap, he looked out the window. “The war broke out before the buggy was delivered. Grier and Cook started makin’ gun carriages for the Northern army.”

“Smart move,” Kate remarked. “There’s money, and then there’s
money
.”

“I imagine they did well for themselves.” Shuffling again, he cut left-handed. Nine of hearts. “Anyway, Eli Grier was stationed in Atlanta during the occupation. My mother—You have to understand: Sherman’s men stole whatever wasn’t nailed down or red-hot, and they wrecked the rest. Took a Yankee dollar to buy a few damn radishes in those days, and nobody had hard currency anyway. We were all hungry, but Mamma was just wastin’ to nothin’.”

“A hundred and sixty federal dollars would have been a fortune.”

“Indeed, but my father wasn’t willin’ to swallow his pride and ask for the money back,” Doc said, voice soft with unattenuated bitterness. “Probably had his second wife all picked out by then … So Uncle John went to Captain Grier to ask if our family’s payment might be refunded. Grier promised he would arrange for the money to be returned.”

“And it wasn’t.”

“Not a penny.” There was a long silence before Doc said, “He forgot all about it, most likely. A man with a bad conscience would have remembered my uncle’s name.”

Your mother would have died anyway, Kate thought, but she wasn’t going to say so. She watched the cards dance in his hands. When he cut the deck again, she cried, “Wait! Nine of spades?”

He showed her the card. She laughed, low and cynical.

“And I thought you didn’t cheat!”

“I don’t!” There was a sly, crooked smile. “But I could.”

“Anybody but me sees you do that, you’ll get yourself shot again,” she warned. “Bring me a drink, will you?”

He set the deck aside, poured, and stood carefully. “Nectar for Calypso,” he said, handing her the glass. “We are a little short on ambrosia just now.”

She sat up in bed, and slugged the bourbon down, closing her eyes to feel the liquor’s warmth and forget about the night. Doc slid in behind her and began to rub her neck. She leaned forward, bracing against the mattress, surrendering to the sensation as he worked his way down her back.

“Sternocleidomastoideus … splenius … rhomboidei, major and minor,” he said, thumbs pressing. “Has anyone ever told you what a lovely trapezius you have?”

She snorted. “We’re lucky Texans take off their spurs.”

“Barbarians, to a man … These latissimi dorsi are unquestionably the most beautiful I have ever laid eyes on.”

She smiled, eyes closed. “You’re mad.”

“That’s the rumor … Sweet Jesus! Just look at you!” he murmured. “Round and soft as a ripe peach … Lie back.”

“
Mon dieu
,” she whispered after a time. “
C’est merveilleux!
”

“My hand skills have always been considered exemplary.”

She giggled.

“I can stop if you’re too tired,” he offered.

“Stop, and I’ll shoot you myself.”

“I wonder what the odds are,” he mused. The numbers seemed to come to him from nowhere. “Eight to five,” he decided. “Against.”

“Against what?”

“Me dyin’ of consumption ’fore another bullet finds me.”

She twisted around and looked at him, eyes serious. “Don’t talk like that, Doc.”

“No hope, no fear,” he said with a grin, kissing her with each word. “And I am not … dead … yet.”

Chinaman’s Chance

E
very Wednesday, Jau Dong-Sing went to the post office in Wright’s General Outfitting to mail a letter and a few dollars to his father in Kwantung. Since arriving in San Francisco back in 1859, Dong-Sing had written each week. He nearly always sent money, too.

In the beginning, he hoped to elicit a reply.
My health is good but I am lonely
, he wrote.
I yearn for news of home
. Though he would not have said as much, Dong-Sing desired to be acknowledged for his contributions to his family’s well-being. He also wished to be reassured that the money he sent had not been stolen during its long journey from America to his family’s village in China.

Letters from home were rare. Paper and ink and postage were too expensive for his family to buy often. When Dong-Sing did receive news, it was never happy or encouraging.
Your uncle died. The crop is poor. My joints are stiff and I suffer at night. Everyone is hungry. Yes, we received the dollars. Send more next time
.

And Dong-Sing did.

He had prospered in America. It didn’t take much capital to establish a laundry, and you could make good money if you worked hard. When Dong-Sing moved to Dodge City, in ’75, he built a shack near the river using scrap lumber. With a total cash outlay of $5.47, he bought kettles, and washtubs, a stove and irons. Then he went from saloon to saloon to announce in the only English words he knew, “I wash! Two bits!”

By the end of his first week, he had doubled his investment. At full capacity, he could clean and press forty pieces of clothing a day. He charged twenty-five cents per garment, which was less than the Irish washerwomen at the fort wanted, and his skill in ironing was unsurpassed. Pretty soon everybody preferred China Joe’s washing. His business grew and grew. Now there was plenty of hotel trade, which added bed linens to his work. Families were moving into town, too. Ladies like Mrs. Hoover and Mrs. Wright didn’t do their own washing anymore.

I already have two helpers and it is time to hire more
, he would write home this week.
Tell two strong boys in our village if they come to San Francisco, I will hire them and bring them to Dodge
.

It seemed crazy to import laborers from so far away, but white people wouldn’t work for a Chinaman, and Americans were too lazy anyway. Doing laundry was arduous. You had to haul water and stoke the fire with cow chips, all day long. Sheets and clothing were rubbed with yellow soap on ribbed-tin scrubbing boards, then dumped into giant tubs of boiling water and stirred with a big wooden paddle. Heavy, hot, sopping-wet cloth had to be lifted, wrung, hung to dry, and ironed. Even with his helpers, at the end of the day Dong-Sing was too worn out to speak or eat.

In the mornings, though, when he was fresh, he planned letters in his mind as he worked.
When you do laundry for people, you learn things about them. You know the size and shape of your customers. You know their habits. You know what people eat and drink from what they spill. You know who is so poor he must have his clothing mended again and again. You know who is so careless of money he leaves coins in his pockets
.

Don’t keep the coins, his father would advise. You will be called a thief and punished.

Dong-Sing knew that, and he had always returned the money. Some Americans thought he was such a dumb Chink bastard, he didn’t know enough to keep the cash. Others admired his scrupulous honesty.

Big George Hoover had to have a pair of panels put into the side seams of his shirts and vests to make the buttons close around his belly. He is going to run for mayor again
.

Who is Big George Hoover? Dong-Sing’s father would wonder, but he would think, If he is fat, he must be rich. Make friends with him. Get on his good side.

Dong-Sing didn’t need a letter from his father to tell him that.

George Hoover was one of the men who left money in his pocket the first time he brought clothes to China Joe. Mr. Hoover was impressed by Dong-Sing’s honesty. The investment of a few coins—returned instead of kept—had paid off handsomely. Soon Big George would build a bank right down the street from Wright’s General Outfitting; he had warned China Joe about Bob Wright’s bad accounting practices even before Johnnie Sanders was killed.

Knowing things about people is not the same as understanding them
, Dong-Sing would admit in the letter he planned to send next Wednesday. Americans simply didn’t make a lot of sense to Jau Dong-Sing. In China, a smart but poor boy like Johnnie Sanders could have studied hard and taken the civil service test to become a bureaucrat. Everyone would have been glad to know him. In China, if a rich man needed a favor, he could go to the bureaucrat who used to be poor and say, “Hey, my good friend! Nice to see you doing so well! I got a problem with some business dealings. Can you help me out?” In America, when Johnnie Sanders tried to better himself, he was killed.

In America, it is dangerous for a colored man to have money, so I pretend I am poor
, Jau Dong-Sing wrote when the nigger boy was found.
I keep my money with George Hoover, and not in Bob Wright’s safe
.

Why don’t you join a
tong?
his father must have wondered.

Certainly, that would have been Dong-Sing’s preference, but it took twelve men to make a
tong
. There were only four Chinese in all of Kansas, too few to club together for investments.

Dong-Sing was still a little nervous about doing business with George Hoover, but so far the arrangement was working out well. It was George Hoover’s suggestion that he and Jau Dong-Sing enter into a silent partnership to build small rental houses up on Military Road. Already they had three, with plans to build a fourth. Nobody knew the capital was China Joe’s, and that’s the way Dong-Sing wanted it.
Big George orders the wood and supervises the carpenters so white men do not become envious of my wealth
, he wrote in his mind.

Renting to Wyatt and Morgan Earp was Big George’s idea, too. He pointed out that they were Republicans and Methodists, and Wyatt was Reform like George. Dong-Sing appreciated that the Earps didn’t get drunk and break things, but he didn’t like the idea of taking the Reform side against Mayor Kelley and Bob Wright and a hotel owner like Deacon Cox. After Wyatt arrested Bob, Dong-Sing got even more nervous about the factions. The Earps might lose their jobs. Then Dong-Sing would have no tenants for two houses.

“You say yes to Doc,” Dong-Sing insisted, even though George didn’t like how much Doc drank. “He good tenant! You say yes!”

Doc likes noodles now. He is a friend who helps me with English
, Dong-Sing planned to write soon.
Everyone says I sound like him when I talk, and I am proud. I have not told Doc that I am his landlord. I don’t think he would mind renting from a Chinaman, but he might tell Kate and she cannot be trusted. Last week they had another fight. Doc told me to take Kate’s things to Bessie’s house, but I made an excuse and waited. Kate always returns and Doc always takes her back
.

Who is Doc? His father would wonder. Who is Kate? Who is Bessie?

When you do laundry for people, you know who sleeps alone and who has taken a lover. You know who is pregnant and who is not. You observe the coming and going of semen and blood, Dong-Sing thought. You can read in these stains the stories of people who hardly notice you and never speak when they pass you in the street.

Dong-Sing was shocked when he realized that Mattie Blaylock was Wyatt’s girl. Dong-Sing had used Mattie himself a few times because she was so cheap, and because he wanted to see what a white woman was like down there.

Working on the wrong side of the tracks, Jau Dong-Sing had plenty of opportunity to observe the flesh trade, and it confused him. In China, good fathers had the right—the duty, even—to sell a daughter in order to feed the rest of the family. In America, daughters ran away from their fathers and whored to feed themselves alone. In China, when a wife grew old and unattractive, a rich man would take a concubine or two into his household. Here, rich men used the same girls as any lousy young cowherd who stank of dung and sweat. George Hoover had married a prostitute, and Doc was a gentleman but lived with Kate, even though she still sold herself.

The news about Wyatt and Mattie is all over town now. Everyone thinks this is a good joke
, Dong-Sing wrote in his mind.
Wyatt is embarrassed, but he has been a long time without a woman
.

Wyatt didn’t even recognize Mattie Blaylock when he saw her a few days after dropping her off at Bessie’s that night. She was clean, and her hair looked nice, and her eyes were clear. She was wearing a different dress, too.

China Joe had traded it to her for a ride, but Wyatt didn’t know that. There was a lot Wyatt didn’t know, including why his sister-in-law wouldn’t give Mattie a job. He figured that out when he caught a dose off the girl, though it would remain a lifelong mystery to him why he never fathered a child except with Urilla. Mattie herself would never tell Wyatt how she got the idea of coming to him that first morning, either. (“Idiot. Just move in with him!” Big Nose Kate had said. “A man like that won’t throw you out.”) All Wyatt knew was Mattie showed up at the house one morning after he got off work.

“Bessie told me you paid for my whole night,” she said. “I’ll work it off.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he told her.

“Don’t take what I don’t earn,” she said, head up. “I’ll pay it off in cash if you give me some time, but I’d rather do it this way. James says you’re widowed. I reckon you loved a girl once, you won’t be mean to one now.”

There didn’t seem to be a good way to tell her no. It helped that she didn’t look anything like Urilla. Mattie was dark-haired, and sturdy, and didn’t seem likely to get sick, though later on he found out she had bad headaches with her monthlies.

After his first time with her, he couldn’t hardly think about anything else. With the long drought over, he welcomed her when she came back the next day. He got bullyragged about it a lot, but he got bullyragged about not doing it, too, so he ignored the laughing, and the jokes, and the snide remarks. A few extra cowboys got bashed for mouthing off. Otherwise, he kept his temper.

James was merciless. It was rich: Wyatt being with a whore after he was so uppity about Bessie, whose husband was, James pointed out with immense satisfaction, lawfully
married
to the woman he lived with, unlike some brothers he could name.

And Wyatt wasn’t the only Earp living in sin, James noted. Virgil had left his wife to fight in the war. Afterward, he let her think he was dead but hadn’t divorced her, which meant he couldn’t marry that little Allie he was with, down in Arizona. And now Morg and Lou were shacked up, too, because Lou was a Mormon and her parents refused to let her marry a Methodist.

Morg had started calling Lou his wife anyhow, and in his opinion, Wyatt ought to be satisfied with what passed for marriage in Kansas.

“Mattie’s not such a bad person,” Morg said one morning when he and Wyatt were over visiting Doc. “You know, if things had gone a little different, even Lou might have wound up a whole lot worse than a dance hall girl.”

“Say what you will about Mormons,” Doc murmured, lying in bed but paying attention. “They are very fine dancers.”

Doc had been up and around right after the fall on the Fourth, carrying things to the rented house and helping Kate fix the place up the way she wanted it. It was too much, too soon. Tom McCarty diagnosed overexcitement and ordered him back to bed for a few days. The rest was doing him good, but Doc enjoyed having visitors, no matter what Kate or Doc McCarty thought, so Morg and Wyatt stopped by a lot.

“How long ago did Urilla die, Wyatt?” Morgan pressed. “Is it nine years now?”

“Eight,” Wyatt said, halfway between stubborn and sad. “I promised to love her all my life, Morg. I meant to keep my word.”

That shut Morgan up, but Doc’s eyes opened and he gazed at Wyatt for a long time.