Epitaph (46 page)

GEORGE GOODFELLOW WAS A DECENTLY TRAINED PHYSICIAN,
but he'd had little experience treating tuberculosis. “John, I know you don't want to hear this,” he'd said, “but you really ought to consider permanent retirement to a sanatorium.”

“Why? So I can die of boredom instead?”

“Be serious,” George snapped. “Your life is at stake, dammit.”

What young Dr. Goodfellow could not have known was that John Henry Holliday was all but broke. Lawyer's fees had nearly cleaned him out in May. There would be no more help from home. When Kate's allegations were reprinted in Atlanta's papers, his family had given up on him. The only one who still answered his letters was Sister Mary Melanie, and nuns had very little in the way of ready cash.

He hadn't worked since the fire, when—in the literal heat of the moment—he had risked his life amid soot and ash and smoke, hoping to save the piano in the Cosmopolitan Hotel. That, at least, should have been obvious to George, and there was an edge in Doc's voice when he pointed out that “sanatoria—like physicians—want payment for their services, however useless they might be.”

His friends' kindness and generosity had been almost limitless, but there comes a time when a proud man would rather die than ask for more. So he'd used the last of his savings for the last of his expenses. He laid in a supply of bourbon and laudanum, paid Mrs. Fly for a month in advance, hoping that would be long enough to finish the job, and took to his bed.

There was a time when he hated laudanum. The taste was bitter and nauseating, but this hemorrhage was deep in his chest. The pressure and pain had never been worse, and bourbon couldn't touch it.

Once, Mattie Blaylock came to see him. “I told you laudanum was good,” she said. That might have been a dream.

There were a lot of dreams. One of them was beautiful. It was a dream of his own death. Not of dying itself, for he'd watched this disease kill his mother and knew how terrible his end would be. The dream was of . . . afterward, and in the dream, he could breathe again. Easily. Fully. Thoughtlessly.

“This is heaven,” his mother told him. “We are in heaven now, sugar.”

No one who does not live with constant pain can imagine the toll it takes. The way it grinds you down. The sheer damnable tedium of it.

His mother was waiting for him, but his friends would not let him go.

Eat this, they said. Drink this. Keep fighting, Doc.

We love you. Don't give up.

L
ATE SUMMER RAINSTORMS ARE NORMAL IN ARIZONA,
but not even Chiricahua elders had seen anything like the drenching August downpours of 1881. Thunder that year did not boom or rumble and roll; it exploded like a bomb. Lightning bolts flashed blindingly, terrifyingly close. It was one storm after another, every afternoon, each more astonishing than the last. Day after day after day.

In Tombstone, packing crates floated down the flooded streets. Gales ripped off new awnings and sent freshly painted signs flying. Water poured into mine shafts, clogging the pitheads with rubble. Ore wagons bogged to the axle before rolling three yards and stamping mills had to be shut down. Roads washed out and repairs were impossible. Even when laborers could get to the damage, the next storm would undo all their work. Stagecoach service and mail delivery ceased. The city was cut off from resupply.

Vagrants stood around under leaky wooden galleries, watching busier men splash across streets holding squares of tent fabric over their heads. Merchants passed the time making lists of stock on hand and of stock to be ordered, if the damnable rain ever ended. In livery barns, harnesses were mended and leather was cleaned, to pass the time. In homes, wobbly chairs were fixed and stockings were darned. New shirts were sewn and old ones were cut up for quilts by those
imaginative enough to believe they might be cold again someday, for the rain did nothing to abate the heat.

Sweating and wretched in Lou and Morgan's front room, propped up with pillows on their chaise, John Henry Holliday tried and failed to be grateful for his rescue.

There were frightening, snarling outbursts that took everyone by surprise, even Doc himself. He would weep afterward, ashamed of his bad temper, powerless to control it. Then he'd curse Morgan's meddling in a voice halfway between a whisper and a whine. “Damn you, Morgan! Damn you! If you'd just . . . let me go, this would . . . be over by now.”

“It's the pain,” Morg would say. “He don't mean it.” But Lou suspected that Doc meant every word and sometimes she, too, thought it might have been kinder to let Doc go.

I love Morg, she would remind herself when Doc was at his worst. I love him. I do.

How could you not admire a good-hearted man who, seeing that a friend was sick, would, without a moment's hesitation, bring him home to be cared for and looked after? Even if Morgan
had
thought to ask her first, it wasn't as if Lou would have refused. She was as fond of Doc as Morgan was. But everything was so much harder this time!

Back in Dodge when he was ill, Doc had a lot of friends to care for him. Now Kate Harony was gone. Mattie Blaylock was worse than useless. Allie was busy helping Bessie, whose tumors were getting worse. The brothers did what they could, but they all had jobs. There was no one to share the burden with Lou here in Tombstone, and no way to escape it, either. In Dodge, Doc and Kate had a place of their own. Lou could stay a few hours and then return to a home that was neat and clean and didn't smell of fever sweat. Here, the sick man was an inescapable presence, no matter how quiet he tried to be.

Doc himself was different now. Peevish, contrary, abrupt. Beaten down by his illness. More hopeless, less stoic. As awful as it had been then—watching the poor man fight for air, hour after hour, trying
not to drown in his own blood—it was worse now, with the bleeding trapped inside his chest.

They didn't want him to end up a hophead like Mattie Blaylock, so Lou had to refuse when he begged for more laudanum. It broke her heart, but she was hot and irritable herself, and weary of his misery.

“I don't . . . want to die,” he whispered once, “but I don't . . . want to live like this.” And Lou knew exactly how he felt.

THEN ONE GLORIOUS MORNING,
Josephine Marcus showed up at the door with a basket of groceries.

“Doc has always been so nice to me,” Josie said. “When I heard he was sick, I just had to visit. And I thought of some things he might like to eat. I hope you don't mind.”

“Mind?” Lou cried. “Oh, Josie, I could throw myself at your feet and kiss your hem!”

Across the street, Mattie Blaylock was standing on the porch, her hair snarled, her wrapper untied. “Jew slut! I know what you're doing! First Wyatt, now Morgan!”

“She's visiting Doc,” Lou called.

“You want 'em all, don't you!” Mattie yelled. “Greedy goddam Jew.”

“Has she always been crazy?” Josie asked, but before Lou could respond, Josie was inside and in motion, unloading her basket, laying out ingredients. “You are doing me
such
a big favor! The only thing I miss about living with Johnny Behan is having an oven. Well, I miss seeing Albert every day, too,” she amended wistfully, but shook that off swiftly. “I'm going to make a cheesecake for Doc. Very easy to digest. It'll put some weight on him, too.”

She came again the next morning, and the next, and soon they had a routine. Lou and Morgan were up at sunrise, for Morgan was working the day shift at the Alhambra, which was busier than ever because the miners had nothing to do except gamble and drink the beer that was still being brewed locally. Morg left for work at seven. Josie arrived at eight and while she looked after Doc, Lou did laundry,
washing sweat-sodden sheets and shirts, hanging them on the line. Happy to get out of the sickroom for a while, Lou would just sit in the porch rocker afterward, waiting for the sheets to dry, which only took an hour or two. Then she'd bring them in and get them ironed before the next cloudburst.

At noon, she and Josie had a meal on the table. Wyatt often came for lunch and to visit the dentist. Afterward, Lou cleared and washed the dishes. Josie read aloud until Doc fell asleep. Wyatt liked to listen, too, but he worked nights—as Josie did, though no one ever talked about that—and he sometimes fell asleep in the heat, like Doc. Tired herself, Josie would gaze at the two men for a time and then whisper to Lou, “I'll just sneak out now—before the rain starts. Time for the cuckoo to sing.”

That had become their nickname for Mattie Blaylock. The cuckoo. When Mattie was awake, she spent her time peering through her curtains, keeping tabs on everyone's comings and goings. Rarely dressed, often drunk, always angry, she still had enough sense left not to yell at Wyatt, but when she saw Josie, she'd pop out onto her porch, like the little bird in a German clock, yelling, “Bitch! Jew slut! I see what you're doing. You've got to have them all, don't you! First Wyatt, now Morgan.”

Which was absurd. Josie hardly ever saw Morgan, and she rarely spoke to Wyatt. In fact, her entire attention seemed quite focused on Doc, and Lou began to wonder if he wasn't the one Josie had her heart set on.

Josie was really good with him. “Sick people are like that,” she'd say when Doc was fretful or despondent. “Besides, in this weather—who
isn't
a little crabby?” She was full of energy and chatter and good cheer, but somehow she didn't set Doc's teeth on edge. Maybe it was because she complained about things, too, and that gave Doc permission to feel as bad as he really did, instead of trying to pretend that he was fine.

“I'd have thought all this rain would cool things down,” Josie said one morning. “Dry heat is bad, but
this
!” She waved at her face with both hands and laughed at her own discomfort. “This is horrible! And
poor you, with a fever! I don't know how you stand it, Doc.”

“I might as well've . . . stayed home, in Atlanta,” he muttered, “instead of comin' all . . . the way to Arizona to die.”

“Don't talk like that,” Lou said automatically, but while Josie didn't exactly change the subject, she always found ways to distract Doc.

“The weather is awful in Washington, too,” she told him. “They're hoping to make Mr. Garfield more comfortable with a new machine. It's an air blower that pushes an artificial breeze over a big chest of ice. A navy engineer invented it, just for the president. They say it brings the temperature in his room down by twenty degrees! I wonder if we could set up something like that here?”

Nothing came of the notion, but she got Doc interested in how such a device might work, and that gave them all something fresh to talk about.

She always stopped at Western Union on the way to Lou's. The morning bulletin from Garfield's doctors was good for half an hour of discussion every morning. Once, however, she reported that the latest attempt to remove the bullet from the president's body had led to an infection, and the dentist flew into a sickly, startling rage.

“His surgeons . . . are killin' him! Idiots . . . still think a filthy . . . gore-spattered frock coat is . . . evidence of their . . . vast professional experience. They won't even . . . wash their hands, let alone rinse . . . their instruments in carbolic!”

“Doc, please!” Lou cried. “Don't upset yourself—”

But Josie asked, “What's carbolic?” Which made for nearly fifteen minutes of more reasonable conversation before Josie got up and took something out of the oven.

“Here,” she said, bringing Doc a dish of something bland and custardy-looking. “Try this.”

“Not hungry” was always his first reaction, but when Josie pouted, he always gave in. “All right. I surrender. What have you . . . made for us today?”

“Noodle kugel. Try one bite and I promise I won't nag anymore!”

“You are . . . a shameless liar.”

Which was true, of course. Josie never gave up until he finished everything on the plate.

“It's a match made in heaven,” Josie told Lou once. “Doc needs to eat. I love to cook. Every bite he takes feels like a curtain call.”

Lou smiled at that, but she couldn't help thinking, Maybe she'll marry him and he'll be off my hands forever.

The idea made her very happy, for reasons both kindly and selfish.

“MR. GARFIELD IS BEING MOVED
to the Jersey shore,” Josie reported one morning. “They're hoping ocean air will help.”

It didn't, and a week later, a national day of prayer and fasting was declared. “Tombstone's ahead of the times,” Josie noted. “We're already fasting!”

The roads remained impassable and food supplies were dwindling. There was no starvation, for beef was available in monotonous quantity, but it took real thought to make the most of a narrowing selection of ingredients if you wanted more than meat. Josie's “night work” sometimes gave her access to hoarded delicacies, which she shared with an exuberance that made Lou forget how the girl had earned them. One day she arrived with a miraculous can of peaches and declared, “God knows what we'll do tomorrow, but today? I think we've got just enough flour for cobbler! We'll use the juice to sweeten the batter and save the last of the sugar to sprinkle on top.”