Doc: A Novel (47 page)

Jau Dong-Sing stood up and made ready to go, but Doc was looking at him with the strange intensity of the very weak, and Dong-Sing was moved to add one thing more.

“I do you big damn favor,” he said, his eyes full of pride and pleasure. “This one big damn happy day for me!”

A little while later, Kate came in with a mug of beef broth. “What did the Chink want?”

Doc was looking out the window, watching a cloud move across his field of view. “Nothin’,” he said, in tones of wonderment. “Nothin’ at all.”

She set the mug down on the dresser and helped him sit up so he could drink the broth without choking, holding the cup for him, making sure he drank it all. When he was done, she fixed the pillows and bustled around, straightening the room.

“Kate.”

She stopped what she was doing and looked at him, her lovely aquamarine eyes shadowed, the skin around them spidered by fine lines of worry and fatigue.

“
Viens te coucher
,” he said.

She frowned, the lines deepening, but he asked again, so she came to his side and lay down, nestling under his right arm, her hand cool against his chest.

“Talk to me awhile,” he said. “Tell me about … tell me about a day when you were happy.”

For a long time she was quiet, her breathing regular and deep. Poor soul, he thought. This has been hard on her … When he felt the chill of her tears, he said again, “Talk to me. Tell me about it.”

“It was right after the baby was born. Silas was gone, that bastard.” She sat up, and reached for one of his handkerchiefs, and blew her nose, and smiled briefly. “Anyway, I was working again. The baby kept crying and crying. I didn’t know what to do! Nobody wants a whore with a crying baby,” she said wearily. “One of the girls said, ‘There’s a hospital that takes charity kids. You can bring him there, and the nuns’ll take him.’ So we went to the hospital, and I gave the baby to one of the sisters. I knew what she was thinking, but I was so tired … I didn’t give a damn what she thought of me. And it was such a relief. Somebody who knew about babies was going to take care of him!”

Her face was pale and scrubbed. Her fine, fair hair was pulled back artlessly. He could see the scared girl she’d been at fifteen, and the hard woman she would be at fifty.

“The other girls took me out drinking, after,” she told him. “We pooled our money and bought a bottle. For the first time since I was a girl—since before we left Mexico—I was
happy
. All us girls got drunk and we laughed and laughed, and I thought, I can’t remember when I was so happy! This is the happiest night of my life!”

Kate stopped and cleared her throat. Her voice was ordinary when she went on. “I went back to the hospital, a couple of days later. To visit him. One of the nuns came out. She told me the baby was dead. He died the night I left him. While I was having such a good time.”

Poor child, he thought. Poor child.

The baby. Kate. Either. Both.

“You did the right thing, to bring him to the nuns,” he told her. “And you were happy because that little baby stopped by to bless his mamma on his way up to heaven.”

She looked at him, and barked a bitter laugh, and wept. They slept together afterward. Side by side.

All through November, whenever anyone came to sit with him, Doc would say, “Talk to me. Tell me about a day when you were happy.”

In the beginning, nobody was sure that Doc was really listening. The lycopin kept him asleep a great deal of the time, but hearing people talk seemed to soothe him, and it seemed harmless enough. Eventually, Morg realized that Doc was saying that same thing to everyone. Talk to me about a day when you were happy.

“What did you tell him?” Morg asked Wyatt.

“Oh, hell,” said Wyatt. “I don’t know.”

He had spoken of Urilla. How she was stronger than he expected, looking at her. More determined to get her way than he’d imagined when he fell in love, but good-natured and good-hearted. When he gave up trying to read the law, she didn’t hold him a failure for it. The happiest day was when he found out about their baby. Urilla’s eyes were shining, like she was giving him a gift.

“And getting my teeth fixed,” he told Doc. “And Roxana. That was good, too.”

Doc didn’t say anything. He gazed at Wyatt. Just … waiting.

“The good of things is always kinda mixed,” Wyatt said then.

Looking out the window in Doc’s room, he had tried to remember Urilla’s laughter, but the sound of it was lost to him. Truth was, she and the baby were gone almost before he knew he had them. And getting his new teeth reminded him of losing the real ones. And riding Roxana always made him think of Johnnie Sanders.

That was when it came to him that the only unmixed happiness he could think of was when he quit his job with the city after that fight with Bob Wright. So he told Doc that, too, and said, “I never meant to be a lawman. Stumbled into it, really. When I quit, it was a weight off.”

Dealing faro was better. No politics. Just the cards and the money. Nice of Bat to give him a job like he did. Not a lot of business this time of year, but even with winter coming, there was enough going on at the Lone Star to keep one dealer working full-time.

He was embarrassed to think so much about his own life, and embarrassed that he’d told so much to Doc. He asked Morg, “What’d you say?”

Morg got that big, boyish grin of his. “Oh, I said it was hard to name something particular. I’m happy a lot of the time. James said it was when Bessie agreed to marry him. Bessie said it was the third time James told her, ‘Don’t worry, honey. I’ll take care of it.’ First time he told her that, she didn’t believe he would, but he did. The second time, she still expected him to forget or not do it, but the third time, she thought, I can count on him. I don’t have to do everything myself. She said that was the first time in her whole life she believed she could count on a man. And Lou? She told Doc she’s happy every morning when I get home safe from work. Isn’t that sweet?”

“Mattie say anything?”

Morg hesitated. He wanted to tell Wyatt that Mattie was happy on the day Wyatt said she could stay with him, or something like that. But Wyatt could always tell when Morgan was lying.

“She’s still thinking,” Morg said.

“Seems kinda strange, Doc asking people to talk about things like that.”

Morg thought it over. He and Doc were the same age, and Morg tried to imagine being so sick, but it was hard. When you’re young and strong, it seems like you’ll live forever just the way you are, but Doc probably couldn’t even remember what it felt like to be healthy.

“I guess—You know how people say, Don’t borrow trouble? Well,” said Morgan, “I guess it’s the opposite of that. Doc is borrowing happiness.”

The weeks passed. The patient’s color improved. His chest pain abated.

Tom McCarty eased off on the lycopin; John still managed to sleep a good deal of the time. When he sat up, he didn’t cough much. The cough itself was drier. His appetite began to return.

When the dentist felt well enough to complain about being bored, McCarty partially lifted the embargo on visitors, but restricted him to no more than one a day. It was imperative that the boy not tire himself out just as he’d begun to make some gains.

Eddie Foy was the first to visit, but it was to say good-bye. His contract at the Commie-Q was over. He was going back to Chicago, where he had work lined up at a theater over Christmas and New Year’s.

Isabelle Wright came by as soon as she heard it was permitted. She offered to read books to Dr. Holliday during his convalescence, but for some reason he wasn’t willing to let her see him. When Morgan asked why, Doc said, “I am the ghost of Christmas yet to come.” That didn’t make any sense, but Doc wouldn’t explain. “Just thank her for me,” he said. “Tell her I am not yet fit company for a young lady.”

Morgan wired Alex von Angensperg that Doc could have visitors, and the priest arrived by train two days later. “He was real glad to hear you were coming,” Morg told Alex as they walked to Doc’s from the depot. “He looks bad, but he’s better, honest. Kate sleeps over at my place, days. She’ll be back later. Her and Mattie and Wyatt and me take turns with him. Don’t let him get wound up. He’s not supposed to get excited.”

Morgan left Alex in Doc’s room. The weather was still pretty nice, and Morg went outside to sit on the front porch so they could talk without him hearing. Things stayed quiet for a while, but the conversation got louder and more lively. Finally Morg decided he’d best go back in and settle the two of them down.

By that time, the priest was laughing so hard he was almost crying, though Doc was only smiling, propped up on a pile of pillows and lying under a heap of quilts that Mabel Riney brought over when she first heard that he was sick.

“Why, hello, Morgan!” Doc said, sounding mildly surprised to see him, like they hadn’t spent damn near every day of the last six weeks together. “Father von Angensperg and I were just discussin’ the vagaries of translation from Greek and Latin to English.”

“We were speaking of Handel’s
Messiah
,” Alex told Morg.

“Which I heard for the first time when I was ten—” Doc said.

“—and the text was
He gave his back to smiters
, but Doc heard the choir wrong—”

“And I spent a very long afternoon wonderin’, Now why would Jesus give his hat to spiders …?”

Alex busted up laughing again. Then Morgan asked how a handle could have a messiah and the priest laughed even harder, but Doc explained about how the
Messiah
was music, and a man named Handel wrote it. Morgan told the two of them to behave themselves and not let Doc get overtired.

About half an hour later, Wyatt arrived for the afternoon shift just as Alex came back out into the front room, pulling the door closed behind him. “He’s sleeping,” Alex reported. “Hello, Wyatt. Good to see you again.”

For a time they all spoke quietly about how ill Doc had been, how near to death.

“I hope you know how much he appreciates your care,” Alex told the Earps.

“
For I was sick, and you came to me
,” Wyatt said.

“Nah,” Morgan said. “It was selfishness.”

Wyatt and Alex were both surprised, but Morgan just shrugged.

“Doc doesn’t have any brothers,” he told Alex. “So we took him for our own.”

November ended. Doc continued to make gains. Explanations varied.

Perhaps it was the prayers of Indian children that saved him.

Perhaps it was simply rest and care. And Jau Dong-Sing’s noodles.

Most likely James Earp came closest to the truth.

“That’s why it took us four damn years to beat them rebs,” he said. “Skinny, inbred sonsabitches are tougher than they look.”

Whatever the reason for his survival, by early December John Henry Holliday was laying plans to defy his doctor’s orders to stay home and stay quiet. Two months cooped up in a little rented house were all that he could bear. He craved bright lights and noise, more company and livelier conversation. He became determined to celebrate the eve of his twenty-seventh Christmas by escorting Kate to a party that Bat Masterson was throwing at the Lone Star Dance Hall that night.

And nobody could talk him out of it.

Wilfred Eberhardt was paid a dime to shine the dentist’s boots to a fine black gleam. Jau Dong-Sing was called upon to take in the seams of Doc’s best suit. A note was sent to Wright’s General Outfitting Store, ordering a burgundy cravat and a silk shirt in pale pink, to set off the newly fitted frock coat of fine dove gray wool.

Doc wanted Kate to order a gown for the party as well, but they were still living off the two grand she’d won from Eli Grier. With no money coming in, Kate was concerned about expenses. She insisted that her blue silk would do for Bat’s party, but Doc would not take no for her answer and wore her to a nubbin on the topic.

On the evening of the twenty-fourth, she made him wait in the front room while she took her time getting dressed. When she emerged, she was glowing like a bride in a grass green satin that brought out the aquamarine of her eyes.

Doc got to his feet. “Sweet Jesus,” he breathed. “Darlin’, you are a vision, and I am a lucky man.”

He helped her into her wrap and offered her his arm. They strolled toward town, stopping now and then to let him catch his breath and to gaze upward, for the west Kansas sky is black velvet on clear, cool December nights, and the Milky Way is strung across it like the diamond necklace of a crooked banker’s mistress.

Turning onto Front Street, they could hear Beeson’s Famous Cowboy Band and agreed that the musicians were pretty good. Chalkie had provided them with first-rate instruments and imported a decent conductor as well. Bat had rented their services for the evening.

“Is that Strauss?” Kate asked.

“Does anyone else write waltzes?”

“Oh! Speaking of Vienna! I saw Alex von Angensperg today. He came on the afternoon train.”

“He stayin’ longer this time?”

“Overnight at least. He’s here to do midnight Mass for the Germans. He’ll be at the party tonight.”

Presuming that he had the strength, Kate stepped aside and let Doc open the door of the dance hall for her. They stood in the entry for a minute, letting their eyes adjust to the dazzle.

“Well, now,” Doc said. “Looks like Sheriff Masterson takes the prize.”

It was Bat’s widely reported goal to spend more on his Christmas party than Doc Holliday had famously squandered on Johnnie Sanders’ wake. By all appearances, he had achieved his ambition. The Lone Star was festive with drapery, blazing with candles and lamps, jammed with couples dancing. At dozens of tables crowded around the edges of the large main room, guests were taking full advantage of expensive booze and lavish food brought in by train from St. Louis, and made available in abundance. Hundreds of people were crammed into the place. Even the more prosperous German farmers had been invited, for they were becoming an important voting block that liked its beer and opposed the temperance reforms. Bat was courting votes.

Word got around that Doc Holliday and Kate had arrived. People started coming over to say hello to the dentist and to lie about how well he looked. Christmas Eve was a big night at the brothel, so Bessie and James were working, but Wyatt and Mattie led the way to a table where Morg’s girl, Lou, was saving a couple of places for Doc and Kate. Wyatt told Kate quietly, “We got a table near the door, so you can leave easy if he gets tired,” while Doc told Mattie that she looked ravishin’. Even if she wasn’t sure what that word meant, Mattie could tell it was nice and said, “Thank you,” with a smile.