Doc: A Novel (44 page)

“Yes,” Doc whispered. “So I hear.”

Junior leaned the shovel in the corner, and helped the dentist onto his feet, and got him out into the aisle, and kicked the stall door closed, and found a stool for Doc to sit on, and double-checked the latch on Roxana’s stall, because if a horse that valuable got loose, there’d be hell to pay. Then he went off to look for Morgan Earp and found the deputy at home. Morg’s girl, Lou, said that Morgan was sleeping. Junior explained about how he’d found Doc Holliday sitting like Job on a dung heap, so she got Morg up, and he dressed and came over to the barn with Junior.

Doc was still on the stool when they got back to the barn, and Mr. Earp hunkered down next to him. Junior had more work to do, but naturally he wanted to find out what was going on, so he decided to sweep up the aisle. He was real quiet about it, too, though he still didn’t hear much of anything because Doc Holliday’s voice was always so soft. Then Junior saw out of the corner of his eye that Doc’s face was wet. That surprised him so much he stopped sweeping, and he heard Doc say, “I couldn’t do it, Morg. I just couldn’t do it.”

Mr. Earp’s face got soft. “Don’t worry, Doc. I won’t tell nobody.” The deputy stood up and looked away. “Sonofabitch probably had it coming, but you’d’ve hanged.”

Doc kind of laughed and said something else.

Mr. Earp frowned and said, “Don’t talk like that.” The deputy looked thoughtful. “No point going after him. His word against yours. We wouldn’t be able to prove a damn thing.”

Doc lifted a hand toward Roxana and asked a question.

Mr. Earp glanced over his shoulder at the horse and said, “Not a chance, Doc. You know Wyatt.”

Doc sounded stronger and more awake when he said, “Not well, but well enough. Help me up.”

Leaning on his broom, Junior watched the two men as they left the barn. Doc Holliday was unsteady on his feet, and Mr. Earp was helping him quite a bit, but they were talking, heads down, all the way out to the tracks. They had just turned toward their little houses north of Front Street when Junior saw Mr. Earp stop short. Doc turned back to look at him, and the dentist was smiling now. Then Morgan gave a great shout of a laugh and put his arm around Doc Holliday’s bony shoulders, and damn near lifted the dentist right off his feet.

“Now, what do you suppose that was about?” Junior asked Roxana, but she was eating and paid no mind.

The next few days were pretty lively in Dodge. On top of the usual drunk-and-disorderlies, Dora Hand got killed. People felt bad about that. She was a whore, but she sang real nice. Then Nick Klaine reported that Dull Knife and Little Wolf were headed toward Kansas with a bunch of starving Cheyenne, hoping to steal some livestock. That got everybody worked up for a while and sold a lot of newspapers, but nothing came of the scare. Then a badger burrowed under China Joe’s laundry and collapsed one side of the shack, which burned down, although the new fire brigade got over there pretty quick and stopped the blaze from spreading. Eddie Foy made a funny story out of that and added it to his act. Jau Dong-Sing considered the fire good luck. He would build a new bathhouse and a better laundry, and add a cookshop. He had stoves going all the time to heat water anyway. Might as well get a big pot to boil noodles, too, and sell them the way Doc Holliday suggested.

Even with all that to talk about, the main topic of conversation in Dodge City at the end of September was how Captain Eli Grier and a good bay gelding had gone missing and how, right after that, Alice Wright took her two youngest kids and boarded the train for St. Louis, and how Bob Wright was making out like it was a pure coincidence and nothing was wrong.

His daughter Isabelle was doing her best to take over the household, though anybody could see the girl was still feeling washed out and sickly from that damn cold. Soon the Belle of Dodge became Poor Little Belle. As much as she hated the pity, Belle herself was glad to see the end of September. It had been a hell of a month, made worse when her father started looking at her like he’d never seen her before. Once he even muttered, “No wonder you’re so pretty. You’re probably not mine.” He was drunk when he said it, but still.

Wyatt Earp didn’t participate in the gossip about Alice and Eli. He wasn’t exactly living a blameless life himself these days, so there wasn’t a whole lot of room to look down on Eli Grier or the Wrights. Which isn’t to say that Wyatt didn’t take a certain amount of secret pleasure from the notion that Bob Wright had gotten his comeuppance. Maybe ole Bob would pay attention to his own troubles now, instead of going around hiring ignorant kids like George Hoyt to shoot at men who were just trying to do their jobs.

Of course, it had not escaped Wyatt’s notice that Roxana was still over at the Elephant Barn. She didn’t belong to the post, Wyatt knew that much for sure. The fort commandant said she was Grier’s personal mount, not government-issue. Somebody was paying her keep at the barn, but when Wyatt asked Hamilton Bell who it was, Ham said he didn’t know. That seemed kind of odd, but it wasn’t really any of Wyatt’s business, so he didn’t push it.

Like Belle Wright, Doc Holliday hadn’t really gotten over that cold either and he was back in bed, trying to kick it. Wyatt noticed that Kate was splashing some cash around and seemed to be in a better mood for some reason. So it was pretty quiet next door, though Doc’s cough sounded worse than ever.

Then one morning Morgan told Wyatt he was going over to see how Doc was doing, which was ordinary enough. Except Morg looked like he used to when he was a little kid and had some big secret, like he caught a toad or something and planned to scare the girls with it, but didn’t dare tell Wyatt because he knew Wyatt would stop him.

Which is why Wyatt decided to sit out on the front porch for a spell before going to bed, to see what was going on.

Doc must have been feeling better because after a few minutes, he and Morgan came outside. Morg got Doc settled into the wicker rocker on the porch and pulled a shawl around the dentist’s shoulders before setting off toward Front Street, grinning like an idiot.

Wyatt decided maybe he’d just go on over to Doc’s and ask what in hell that was about. All Doc said was “I’m sure I haven’t the slightest idea, Wyatt,” but he was grinning, too, and then just sat there, rocking and looking pleased with himself, until Morg came walking back up the street.

With Roxana. Saddled.

Confused, Wyatt stood, one hand on the porch post. From behind him, he heard Doc say, “She’s yours, Wyatt. A gift.”

Stunned, Wyatt looked back at Doc, whose eyes were shining above a shy, sweet, crooked smile and—Well, hell. Wyatt supposed it wasn’t the
worst
moment in his life. Seeing the light leave Urilla’s eyes was the worst, but this came pretty close. It took him a few seconds because he hated to do it, but he said what he had to.

“I’m sorry, Doc. I can’t accept anything like that.”

It pained him to see Doc’s reaction. The dentist looked like he’d been slapped.

“Why, you stubborn, stiff-necked, self-righteous—! I can’t believe it!” Doc cried. “And I thought you were a friend—the more fool me!”

“I told you, Doc!” Morgan tied the horse to the post by the front gate and scuffed along the walk toward the porch. “I knew he wouldn’t take her.”

“Doc,” Wyatt pleaded, “try to understand! It was a real nice idea, but I’m sorry, it’s just not right!”

Doc was almost sputtering, he was so mad. “Are you—are you actually goin’ to stand there and accuse me of tryin’ to
bribe
you? I won the damn animal in a card game! What in hell am I going to do with a horse like that? I can’t afford to have her standin’ around in the Elephant Barn, eatin’ me out of house and home! I ask you for one damn favor and this is the—”

Wyatt said, “Calm down, Doc! You’re gonna make yourself sick—”

Sure enough, the dentist was looking for his handkerchief now.

“All I’m askin’ is that you take her off my hands! That is the rock-bottom
least
that any sort of friend would do for a sick man, but no! You are too goddam—”

“Hey, Doc! Maybe you could sell her,” Morgan suggested helpfully. Digging into his pocket, he pulled out some money. “How does two dollars and fifteen cents sound?”

Doc didn’t even pretend to think about it before holding out his hand for the coins. “Morgan, that sounds just about right,” he said. “Help me up.”

Morg offered him an arm for leverage. For a while, the two of them just stood together, side by side, watching Wyatt work out exactly which ethical issues would be rendered moot if
Morgan
owned the horse.

Doc said, “Listen close, Morg. I believe you can hear the gears grindin’.”

It sounded like he was making fun, but Doc had that look on his face again: pleasure and satisfaction and affection, all mixed. And Morgan himself felt just about as fine as he had ever felt in a lifetime of feeling pretty good about things. He was proud of his older brother’s earnest, boneheaded, mulish honesty; tickled that he and Doc had surprised Wyatt so completely; grateful to Doc for seeing to it that Wyatt got his dream back, even after his money had gone to build a library full of books Wyatt couldn’t read if he gave each one a whole damn year.

Suddenly jubilant, Morgan couldn’t keep still any longer. Giggling like a six-year-old, he did a little dance, and threw an arm around John Holliday’s shoulders, and pulled him close. “Hot damn! We got him good, Doc! Look at that, will you? He’s … Yes! Here it comes! A smile! Wyatt Earp is smiling!”

“Nice teeth,” Doc remarked.

Wyatt laughed. “Should be,” he said. “They cost enough.”

“Somebody get Nick Klaine!” Morg yelled out at the empty street. “Stop the press! Wyatt Earp is laughing!”

Wyatt murmured, “Doc, I don’t know what to say.”

“Sure you do, Wyatt,” Doc said softly. “Mississippi. Fifty-five. Go on, now. Take a ride on your brother’s fine new horse.”

Wyatt walked out to Roxana, who pranced some and shifted away, but settled as he stood talking to her quietly, letting her get to know him a little. When the time was right, he swung up and wheeled her a turn or two, until she was ready to pay attention.

He leaned forward. She gathered herself beneath him. They took off, headed north through the short grass toward a ripening wheat field, gold and copper and ocher in the mellow autumn light.

“Now, that is a sight to see,” Morgan said, for it appeared that his brother was flying, as though Roxana had no legs at all but just swept along, weightless as a bird skimming the prairie. “You did good, Doc. That was a real nice thing to do.”

“Yes,” Doc said, sounding content. “She’ll be something to remember me by.”

Morgan turned and looked at him hard, but Doc’s eyes were on Kate, who was walking up the street now with some groceries.

“Morgan,” Doc said warily, “if Miss Kate were to ask you about Roxana? Remember: I cut the cards for the horse with Grier the other night, just after she and Bob Wright left.”

Turning the Play

F
or Morgan, autumn had always been a special joy. Of all the Earp kids, he was the one who liked it best when the family lived close enough to a town for him to go to a regular schoolhouse in the fall. Back when the Earps lived in Iowa and Illinois, he liked how the air got crisp as an apple, and how the leaves smelled when they piled up in heaps against buildings. He liked how his mother’s eyes warmed when he brought in as big an armload of wood as he could lug for the stove. Most of all, Morg liked climbing up to the attic after supper and getting into bed with a book.

He always claimed the space closest to a western window. It was colder there, but he’d pull a knitted cap down over his ears and burrow into the quilts and stick the book up to catch the dying light, reading until his hands were frozen and his eyelids were too heavy to stay open for another word. Now, of course, working nights the way he did, he didn’t go to bed in the dying light, but his and Lou’s bedroom window faced east. When the bright morning sun came in and hit his eyes and helped them close, he got that same feeling as he read himself to sleep.

This fall, he was working on a book called
Black Beauty
that he’d borrowed from Belle Wright. It was kind of strange because you were supposed to believe a horse was telling you the story, but it was good, too, and said a lot of true things about horses and made you think different about what you saw every day. Morgan thought Wyatt would enjoy the story if he could get past the silliness of animals talking to each other, so Morg was planning to read it aloud to Wyatt this winter when the weather closed in.

Unless him and Wyatt and James wound up moving to the Arizona Territory, that is. Morg would have to give the book back to Belle before the Earps left Dodge.

“There’s no end of silver down by Bisbee and Tombstone.” That’s what Virgil’s last letter said. The veins were so rich, the metal was right out on the surface, the way gold was in California back in ’49. So Wyatt and James were talking about how if they all went down to Arizona right now, the Earps could get in on the ground floor of something big, instead of showing up a year late, when the big money was done.

Bessie wasn’t real happy about the notion. And Morg hadn’t actually agreed to the plan yet, either. Lou wanted to go up to Utah to see her family again and find out if her folks had softened any about her and Morg getting married. So Morgan was caught in the middle, because he didn’t want to say no to Lou but James was ready to pack, and Wyatt was edgy and restless and not inclined to what Doc called “rational argument.”

For Wyatt, autumn meant the end of the cattle season, and that meant he’d be laid off again. The injustice of it ate at him, and his temper shortened with the days. Dodge was down to half a dozen herds a week, and the city had already let John Stauber and Jack Brown go. Wyatt had a big argument with Mayor Kelley over that. Sure, the number of cowboys was down, but so was the quality. These were men nobody wanted to hire, peak season, and they joined idlers who’d been fired or quit work the minute they hit town: drunks and shirkers and troublemakers who couldn’t be bothered to ride back to Texas. It was no time to cut police staff, but that’s what the city council wanted, so that’s what happened. And then Chalkie Beeson and the other saloon owners grumbled that Wyatt was bashing extra cowboys and hauling them in on the smallest pretext so he could rack up arrest fees before the winter, but all the deputies shared that money, so it wasn’t like Wyatt was making anything extra in October. He just didn’t have any patience with idiots this time of year. About the only thing that cheered Wyatt up was going to the Elephant Barn to spend time with Dick and Roxana, working them in a circle corral or taking one of them out for exercise.

Every time Morgan thought about what Doc had done, he could feel himself getting a big, dumb smile on his face. Good thing, too, because it made him more tolerant when Doc got himself into trouble.

The little German kid who pumped the foot drill for Doc—Wil Eberhardt, his name was—he’d taken to keeping an eye on the dentist when Doc was gambling, even if it meant staying up all night, or sleeping in a corner of a saloon. When a bartender noticed things getting out of hand, he’d send the boy to find Morgan, and Morg would have to stop whatever he was doing and go on over and settle everyone down some. That was happening a lot lately, so Morg knew what it meant when Wil came running over around two in the morning, calling, “Mr. Earp! Come quick! There’s trouble at the Lady Gay!”

Didn’t take long to get to the bar. Front Street wasn’t near as crowded as it had been even a couple of weeks ago, but the mood was worse. Spring carousing was celebratory and pretty good-natured; at the end of the season, knots of drunks stood around outside, passing bottles and glaring. There was more sullen defiance about the city ordinances and a greater willingness to pick fights just for the hell of it. The crib girls hated October. It was a lot more dangerous and they were more likely to get cheated, so they stole more. Usually they were too plastered to do that without getting caught and they got smacked around for it. Even at James and Bessie’s, there was trouble almost every night.

So Morg figured that Doc was probably getting roughed up, but when he got to the saloon, it was quiet except for some young drover who was noodling around on the piano, trying to pick out a tune that might have been “Lorena” or maybe “Bonnie Blue Flag.” Or “Buffalo Gals.” Hard to tell.

Doc was just sitting at a table, playing poker. True enough, the other fellas looked pretty unhappy. Well, that’s what makes it gambling, Morg thought. Not everybody gets to win.

Brows up, Morg turned back toward Wilfred, who was peeking underneath the swing doors, afraid to come inside. “Ask him,” Wil mouthed, and pointed toward Kevin Ballard, who was wiping up beer slops but watching Doc and the cowboys.

“Hey, Kev,” Morg said quietly. “What’s the trouble?”

“Morg,” the barkeep whispered, “God knows I’ve seen men drink, but Jesus … And he keeps winning! They’re going to take it out of his hide, the way he’s been mouthing off at them.”

Morgan approached the table, but leaned against the wall to watch the action for a while. He didn’t have to listen to the muttering for long. Kevin and the Eberhardt kid were right. Doc was riding for a fall.

Pushing away from the planks, Morg scuffed over and stood across the table from Doc. “Cut your losses, boys,” he told the Texans. “Go have some fun with what you got left.”

Doc leaned back in his chair and stared at Morgan while the cowboys gathered up the remains of their wages. They indulged in a certain amount of unpleasant commentary about Dodge in general and about Doc in particular, but they went quietly, happy enough to quit the game while they still had money for another go at the girls.

It was a cool evening, but Doc was sweating.

“Doc, are you all right?” Morg asked. “You don’t look so good.” He meant it kindly, but the moment he said it, he knew Doc was going to take it wrong.

“Why, thank you, sir,” Doc said, cold-eyed. “How charmin’ of you to point that out. You, of course, are the very picture of rude health, which evidently entitles you to interfere with the livelihood of others, you arrogant, meddlin’ sonofabitch.”

Morg had heard plenty of that kind of thing come out of Doc’s mouth, but this was the first time he’d been the target himself, and it was a shock to be spoken to like that. Virgil took no guff and would have cracked Doc for it. Wyatt was tolerant of back talk as long as it stayed talk; he’d have shrugged it off and walked away.

Morg sat down and glanced at the bottle on the table. It was three-quarters empty. “Hitting it pretty hard tonight,” he observed.

“And precisely how is that any business of yours? Was there an election I missed?” Doc asked. “Has temperance come to west Kansas? I have not created a disturbance. Am I in violation of some new city ordinance?”

“No, Doc, but we’re friends—”

“Well, get off me, then!”

Doc reached for the bottle. Morg got to it first. That alone was a sign of how much Doc had put away. Morg meant to move the bottle just out of reach, but a hand clamped over his wrist.

“Leave it,” Doc warned.

Morg let loose, a little startled by how strong Doc’s grip was.

Doc refilled his water glass and damn near drained it.

“Damn,” Morg whispered. “Jesus … What’s
wrong
, Doc?”

Certain that if he were to move at all—even slightly, even to speak—everything human in him would be lost to blind, bestial, ungovernable rage, John Henry Holliday sat silently while in the coldest, most analytical part of him, he thought, If I go mad one day, it will be at a moment like this. I will put a bullet through the lung of some healthy young idiot just to watch him suffocate. There you are, I’ll tell him. That’s what it’s like to know your last deep breath is in your past. You won’t ever get enough air again. From this moment until you die, it will only get worse and worse. Bet you could use a good stiff drink now, eh, jackass?

So he let Morgan Earp wait for his answer, just as he himself waited—patiently, helplessly—until he could be sure that the liquor had taken hold, and he could feel himself inch back from the edge of the abyss. And when at last he spoke, his voice was soft and musical. “Flaubert tells us that three things are required for happiness: stupidity, selfishness, and good health. I am,” he told Morgan, “an unhappy man—”

The coughing hit again, and though he was shamed by the whine that escaped him, he kept his eyes on Morg’s until the fit passed. “Tuberculosis toys with its victims. It hides, and it waits, and just when we are sufficiently deluded to believe in a cure—”

“But I—I thought … It’s just that cold, Doc. And the laudanum’s helping—”

“Oh, Christ, Morg! This is not a cold! As for laudanum—God knows how Mattie can stand that poison! Usin’ it is like bein’ dead already.”

“But you were better this summer,” Morg insisted. “I thought—”

“Well, you were wrong! We both were …”

He had spent his entire adult life dying, trying all the while to make sense of a dozen contradictory theories about what caused his disease and how to treat it, when his own continued existence could be used to support any of them. Or all of them, or none. Because of what he’d done, or not done, or for no reason at all, the disease sometimes went into retreat, but only as a tide retreats—

He tried to think of a way to explain all that—maybe telling Morg to think of the difference between a pardon and a reprieve—but the taste of iron and salt rose again in his pharynx, and it took all he had not to gag and vomit when he swallowed the blood.

“The disease is active again,” he said finally. “It is gnawing on my left lung, as a rat gnaws on cheese. Except: a rat sleeps. This never, ever lets up. Every goddam breath I take hurts, Morg. I need
that
much liquor so I can quit cryin’ and leave my bed because—” he turned away and coughed, again and again, shredding adhesions, his chest aching with the effort to keep on pulling in air—“because like every other damned soul in this godforsaken hell, I still have to make a livin’.”

His voice broke and he looked away, blinking, and for a terrible moment, Morgan thought that Doc might weep.

“I was buildin’ a practice,” the dentist whispered. “People were bringin’ their children to me … I had to turn away three utterly wretched patients this week! Who will care for them now? This mornin’ I had a denture like Wyatt’s nearly finished for Mabel Riney. I coughed while I was adjustin’ the mount. Broke it in half. Hours of work shot to hell, and nothin’ to give that poor woman but her twenty-three dollars back. That’ll just about clean me out. I can’t make the month’s rent on the office! I will have to give it up …”

“Where’s Kate?” Morg asked softly. “She usually finds you better games—”

“She left,” Doc snapped. “This morning. She found out that I am broke, and then she found greener pastures. Of course, one can hardly complain when a whore goes where the money is.”

“But, Doc, all the money you paid for Roxana went to Kate!”

“I swear, Morgan: you tell her that, and I’ll—”

Threat dying on his lips, Doc closed his eyes, swallowed hard, and sat trembling, left hand holding the sodden handkerchief, the right pressing hard against his chest for what felt like forever.

When at last he spoke again, it was with a bitter, quiet, hard-won precision. “When I am like this, dentistry is beyond me. So I play cards. I play cards with the most ignorant, fatuous, misbegotten clay eaters the benighted state of Texas has to offer. I
cannot
do that sober, Morgan! I have tried. The task is more than I can—”

Suddenly he was on his feet, winging his glass at the piano where the cowboy was trying to pick out “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and kept getting a note wrong.

“A-flat!” Doc shouted. “It’s
A-flat!
”

“A flat
what?
” the cowboy shouted back.

“God as my witness,” Doc swore, pointing at the piano, “I shall be driven to
slaughter—
”