Doc: A Novel (13 page)

A barber, whose name Alexander didn’t catch, mercifully interrupted the undertaker before additional detail could be supplied. The barber, too, had many nice things to say about Johnnie Sanders, as did everyone who’d known the boy, one way or another.

It was heartwarming but all rather overwhelming, and Alexander was relieved when Kate reappeared at his side and steered him through the crowd toward a table covered by a variety of aperitifs, spirits, and wines.

“And Dr. Holliday?” Alexander asked, pulling out her chair. “Am I correct in believing that J. H. Holliday is also the ‘Doc’ to whom I owe so many thanks?”

“
Ja, das ist mein Mann
,” Kate said comfortably when Alexander sat across from her. “He’s going to be a little late.”

Mein Mann
. The term meant “husband” in German, but Kate had introduced herself as Harony, not Holliday. The discrepancy registered, though his curiosity remained focused on his host. “
Und so
, Dr. Holliday is a physician, as your father was?”

“A dental surgeon.” She lowered her eyes, adjusted her skirt, and folded small hands in her lap. The rustle of silk took Alexander back to his days at court, as did the impact of her eyes when she slowly raised them to his own. The effect was slightly diminished when she added in English, “A cowboy got shot in the face at the Bon Ton this afternoon. Doc’s doing the surgery. He’ll be here soon.”

When they were settled, a stout blond waitress pushed through the crowd to provide Alexander with a menu. The selection was amazing, and he frowned at it in a mighty effort to focus on what might best counter the liquor. Iced oysters, broiled salmon, turbot in lobster sauce, fillet of sole, trout. Roasted beef and lamb and venison. Spring chicken, duck, and quail. Potato dumplings. Green peas. Six kinds of cheese. Strawberries. Compote of cherries. Ice cream. A Neapolitan cake, charlotte russe—

“Doc had most of it brought in, iced, on the train. I recommend the pork tenderloin,” Kate said in German, smiling. “It’s Doc’s favorite. He’s from Georgia, and Southerners like pork almost as much as Austrians do! The cabbage strudel is quite good, as well. Sweet and buttery, savory and crisp in just the right proportions. Those are made right here. Delmonico’s cook is from Straubing, the widow of an immigrant farmer.”

Alexander was silently pleased to know that at least one woman in this town had found honest work with which to support herself. “I shall rely on your recommendations,” he told Kate, and smiled vaguely at the waitress as Kate translated the order.

The meal was as good as Kate promised, as was the bottle of wine she ordered and the brandy she selected after the dessert. There was an excellent cigar at the end of the meal, but still no sign of their host. To pass the time, Alexander offered his hostess amusing if rather dated court gossip. Guests came and went around them, ordering dinners, taking full advantage of the freely available liquor. Every few minutes, someone would raise a glass and call out, “To Johnnie!”

With each round of drinks, the room got noisier. Conversation with Kate grew difficult, then ceased. Alexander had always found small talk somewhat enervating; small talk at the top of his voice was even less pleasurable, and he was becoming aware of the fatigue beneath an alcoholic fog.

With every new arrival, Kate turned toward the door. Over and over, her look of eager anticipation was replaced by a disappointment that was hardening into unconcealed anger. Rolling cigarette after cigarette, she was drinking now with alarming steadiness, no longer pretending that this was in response to the toasts. Alexander was concerned, if not shocked. He had, of course, witnessed indiscretion among ladies at court who embarrassed themselves and others with overindulgence, but Kate’s mood was like the crackle in the air just before a lightning strike. While he pitied the poor man upon whom this matrimonial storm would soon be unleashed, he felt no desire to witness the event. Indeed, he decided, it might be considered an act of charity and a sign of respect to remove himself from what might well turn into an unpleasant public scene.

Sliding to the edge of his chair in careful preparation for departure, he suggested loudly, “Perhaps Dr. Holliday has been drawn into some other medical emergency. I’m afraid I’m no longer used to such late hours, so with your permission?”

Fingers drumming on the table, Kate shrugged. With some relief, Alexander rose, but before he could withdraw, he saw Deputy Earp pushing through the crowd.

“Doc’s on his way,” Morgan reported to Kate, “but he went over to China Joe’s to clean up first. He was bloody to the skin—”

The first curse was like the thunderclap that heralds a cloudburst. In quick succession Kate called down the wrath of God on drunken Texans, on someone named Tom McCarty, who “should do his own goddam surgeries,” and on Doc himself for “wasting his time with that shit when he can make so much more at the tables!”

Wincing at her language, Morgan took Alexander aside. “I know how you feel,” he said quietly, glancing at Kate, “but Doc’s really looking forward to meeting you. Educated people are kinda scarce around here. If you can stay a little longer, I promise he’s worth the wait.” The deputy must have noticed that Alex was impaired, for he added, “You should probably sit down, Father.”

A graceful exit effectively blocked, Alexander took his seat once more. Morgan tried to raise Kate’s spirits a little but gave up when she snarled at him, leaving uneasy silence at their table amid the general din. Suddenly, the restaurant door was flung open to admit a loudly dressed young man with a mop of curling black hair, who made his entrance to a round of applause and came straight to their table. For a disorienting moment, Alexander thought this might be Doc, but with an impish grin, the fellow dropped into a chair and introduced himself as “Eddie Foy, headlining at the Commie-Q Theater, I’ll have you know!”

Alexander recognized at once the voice of the Irishman who’d handed him the bottle of bourbon that afternoon.

“I decided not to bring Verelda tonight,” Eddie said in a stage whisper, leaning over to nudge the priest in the ribs. “I’d hate to have to fight you for her, Father.”

For the next half hour, Kate drank steadily, fuming and smoking like Vesuvius, while the Irish boy tucked into a thick steak, told jokes, sang snatches of song, and complained about the paucity of imagination American mothers employed when naming their sons.

“Watch this,” he told the priest before yelling, “Hey! John!”

At least a third of the men in the room turned around.

Eddie waved to them happily, pointing as he listed, “John Riney, John Tyler, John Mooar, John Pope, John Morgan, John Reynolds, John Mueller … And that doesn’t count Doc or Johnnie Sanders, let alone all the Jacks. Texas Jack, Jack Belmont, Missouri Jack—Ah, Christ, look who’s coming, will you? You’ve heard of mountain men, Father? Well, here’s a man worthy of the title! That boyo’s suit must have been stitched from a whole day’s output at a Massachusetts mill, without taking a bit of his shirt into consideration!”

Alexander turned to see a giant approaching. Easily two meters tall, almost half that broad, with a nearly square head sitting on massive sloping shoulders, this colossus slowly made his way through the room on a circuitous course that would eventually lead to the table at which Alexander and Kate and Morgan and Eddie sat.

“Big George Hoover,” Eddie said, leaning sideways and speaking close to Alexander’s ear. “Reform Party, and he’ll shake every hand in the room. Watch, now! Grasp the hand firmly! Grip the elbow! Yes … Gaze into the eyes … Ah, the sincerity! If a politician can fake that, he’s got it made. Damn few votes for him in this room, but he’s a grand hopeful optimist, our George. That speck behind him is the former Maggie Carnahan. Not a bit better than Verelda, but all dignified she is now.”

When the couple arrived, Eddie hopped to his feet and did the introductions. “Father von Angensperg, may I introduce Mr. George Hoover?”

The hand firmly grasped. The elbow gripped. The sincere gaze applied.

“Very pleased to meet you, sir,” Hoover said in a startlingly high voice. “And welcome to our community. It’s an honor to have a man of learning and religion in our midst. Until just last year, I was the mayor of Dodge City, and I hope to serve the public again—”

“George Hoover has always served the public,” Eddie declared in a burlesque of civic pride. “Served the public bourbon. Served the public rye.”

“You are the proprietor of a drinking establishment?” Alexander asked politely.

“Long ago, sir—”

“Four years,” Eddie noted. “Everything in America is done double-time, Father.”

“I am in wholesale liquors, wines, and cigars now,” Hoover said, “but my wife and I yearn for the day when Demon Rum is driven from our community and I am reliant on tobacco alone for a modest but honest income—”

“Hypocrite,” Kate muttered.

“To be put out of business, sir, that is my ambition,” Hoover continued smoothly. “What a blessed day that will be! And what a tragedy young Sanders’ death was, sir! The second dreadful loss to our community in less than a month, and all on account of drunkenness!”

Alexander stared. “Am I to understand that Johnnie was a drunkard? Because he had never touched liquor when—”

“No, sir. No, you mistake me! While young Johnnie did not take the pledge, neither had he fallen to the depths of so many of his kind. Nonetheless! He was the victim of drink, sir—”

“We don’t know that,” Morgan said, but Hoover didn’t even pause.

“—just as our late chief deputy Edward Masterson was, and that, sir—” There was a small noise behind the massive Mr. Hoover, and he paused in his stump speech to look behind him. “Goodness! Margaret, my sweet. I forget my manners! Permit me to introduce my wife, Father.”

Hoover reached down and took the tiny hand of a tiny woman whose head barely topped the middle button on her husband’s waistcoat. Emerging from his considerable shadow, this miniature brunette dropped a well-tutored curtsy, her eyes downcast.

“Pleased to meet you, I’m sure, Father,” she said, Ulster still audible in her voice.

“The lovely Margaret,” Eddie announced, “and isn’t she a picture!”

Eddie said something in Gaelic then, and the lovely Margaret shot him a defiant look, as though accepting a dare.

“I’m a Methodist now, Father,” she said, chin tilted upward. “And didn’t I leave the Church because Rome refuses to join the battle against intemperance! German Catholics have fought Prohibition every step of the way in Ford County, and aren’t
you
a fine example! If I were a betting person, I’d wager you heard this afternoon how many drink has ruined. Lives blighted. Pay pissed away, wives in despair, sons thieving, daughters on the street!”

Kate moaned with boredom and tossed back another shot.

“The church will be free tomorrow by half past twelve,” Eddie told her helpfully. “Come back then, and you can preach all you want, Maggie.”

“Not afraid to speak her mind, my little Margaret!” George declared, putting a huge square hand on Maggie’s shoulder. He pulled her toward him with affection and not a little pride, but with a slightly better idea of how their audience was taking her remarks. “You came in from Wichita, I understand,” Hoover said, and turned the conversation toward weather. “We had quite a rainstorm here last night! It must have reached you by this morning!”

Appointing himself host, Mr. Hoover inquired then as to the comfort of the priest’s journey, his satisfaction with his hotel room, his enjoyment of the meal, and his possible desire for anything additional to eat, or to drink, or perhaps to smoke. (“Those cigars are Cuban, sir! The very finest in the world!”) The interrogation stopped only when Kate demanded, “Who in hell do you think you are? It’s Doc’s party, not yours, you arrogant sonofabitch.”

“You see, Father?” Margaret Hoover asked. “You see the depths to which liquor has brought this woman?”

Kate was on her feet. An instant later, Morgan Earp was between her and Maggie, who was shouting now about walking with Gentiles in lasciviousness and lust and excesses of wine, while Kate cursed in three languages. Big George lifted his wife off the ground and deposited her behind him, concocted a credible excuse for leaving early, and promised to attend the funeral in the morning. Before the Hoovers were halfway to the door, Alexander found himself refilling his glass.

“You see, Father?” Kate mimicked triumphantly. “You see the depths to which that woman has driven you?”

“The pair of them don’t bear thinking of, now, do they, Kate?” Eddie remarked. “She must ride that bull or risk being squashed flat!”

Kate hooted. Morgan snickered. Alexander choked on his drink.

Eddie clapped his hands and pointed at the priest. “Got you good with that one, now, didn’t I, Father!” Just then, the comedian’s eye was caught by the tall and sparely built young man entering the restaurant. In the voice that filled the Commie-Q twice nightly, Eddie Foy announced, “And here’s himself at last!”

Kate’s face lit up, only to darken in a mixture of wifely concern and fury. Like everyone else in the room, Alexander had turned toward the door.

The newcomer was in his mid-twenties, slim in well-tailored silver-gray. Freshly barbered, with a neatly trimmed imperial mustache, he was also visibly fatigued and leaned on a walking stick that was not merely a fashionable accessory. Shaking hands, murmuring greetings, he occasionally paused in these brief conversations to cough into a square of fine cotton cloth.

When he came even with Mr. and Mrs. Hoover, he learned that they were leaving. His disappointment at this news might have been just a shade too sincere. When he glanced at Kate, one eye twitched ever so slightly in what might have been a wink.

Uncharmed, Kate snarled, “Just look at him! He’s exhausted, goddammit.”

Alexander tried for diplomatic neutrality. “So! This must be your husband at last!”

“That’s Doc,” she confirmed, but her tone implied correction. With drunken hauteur, Kate lifted her head and chose High German. “My husband left me the day that he discovered I was pregnant,
Hochwürden
. Oh, the baby wasn’t his,” she admitted breezily, speaking now in the language of the brothels, “but the bastard didn’t know that when he left me high and dry.” She looked at the priest, and then at the other two—the Irishman and Bessie’s brother-in-law—and laughed at their dismay. “And that makes my
husband
a no-good goddam lying sonofabitch! Doesn’t it!”