Son of a Gun (30 page)

She slumped against the shelf. The book fell to the floor. Her world went slow. The word, she had just thought of it, and now it was gone, the puzzle left unsolved. He must have said something then, but I doubt she grasped his words. She must have felt what I do, words failing. Once she’d known what love meant, had said the word in vows, and she’d used it again and again, meaning something different every time, until it brought her here, to a place without a name, with a man she didn’t love anymore, and now the words were done. Only acts remained. She was going to die.

His bootheels beat on the floor as he approached. She whirled and raked her nails across his face. He shoved her away. She landed facedown on the shelf and knew that he was aiming. She never would have thought he’d shoot her in the back.

In that last moment she must have felt it all acutely. Pain. The sun on her back. The tang of gunpowder on her tongue. A shred of desert through the window. The last swell of hope: if she could talk him down, it was only her shoulder, she could call an ambulance, she might still live. She clenched a hand against her wound, loved her body for doing what it was told,
loved it more now that it wasn’t hers for long. She must have thought of her parents, her brother, her horses. God.

And her children. Where we were. How we’d hear. What we’d do without her, the men we would become. Her hopes for us, the weddings and grandkids she would miss. The bond we had. Reading to us in the womb before we knew the words. The messages she’d sent us from the sky when she’d thought the end was near. As a shadow arm rose on the wall, as she braced for the bullet, she would have tried to speak to her sons. We might not hear her now. We might not think we could. But she believed that one day we would hear her voice again, and know that she had never left us.

The events depicted in this book happened, and the people exist. When possible, sources other than memory have been used to verify facts, including journal entries, letters and emails, photographs, videotapes, police reports, newspaper and magazine articles, recordings and transcripts of personal interviews, and my own notes. Some names, including company names, potentially identifying details and locations, have been changed to disguise the individuals involved. Some events are presented outside of their actual chronology. Some of the dialogue is reconstructed from my memory of conversations; some is selected, excerpted, and edited from interview recordings and transcripts; some is included verbatim.

Historical information about Tombstone, the Earps, and the events surrounding the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral comes from many different sources. Many of the facts of Tombstone’s history are matters of dispute, and in those cases I chose whatever
version I found most compelling. Casey Tefertiller’s excellent biography,
Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend
, was especially useful in the researching and writing of this book. The following sources were also consulted:

This book took a long time, and a lot of people helped along the way. I’d like to thank my agent, Julie Barer, for always being there, and for always being right; Noah Eaker, my editor, for his diligence and care in making this book better; Margo Rabb, for being its first reader and champion; Laura Ford, for believing in this project from the beginning; Judy Clain, for her gracious and selfless advice; everyone at Random House; and everybody at Barer Literary, especially William Boggess, Leah Heifferon, and Anna Weiner.

I’m especially grateful to the friends and colleagues whose advice and feedback helped me at critical points in the process: Andrew Foster Altschul, Molly Antopol, Bonnie Arning, Will Boast, Harriet Clark, Rob Ehle, Stephen Elliott, John Evans, Sarah Frisch, Jim Gavin, Skip Horack, Vanessa Hutchinson, Ammi Keller, Josh Rivkin, Mike Scalise, Stephanie Soileau, Chanan Tigay, JM Tyree, Abigail Ulman, and Jesmyn Ward. I would also like to thank my teachers, especially Robert Houston,
for his encouragement, and Tobias Wolff, for his advice and his example. The Stanford Creative Writing Program supported me during the writing of this book, and I’m honored to have been a part of that remarkable community of writers and teachers. I’d also like to thank the University of Arizona’s English and creative writing faculty for teaching me how to write.

Thanks to the men and women of the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office for their work on my mother’s case, and for their help in researching this book. Thanks to everyone who appears in these pages, by their real names or otherwise. Special thanks to Parents of Murdered Children and the people I met there—as well as to Connie Juel, another survivor—for reminding me that our stories matter. I’d also like to acknowledge the complete lack of cooperation of KVOA Channel 4 in Tucson and the Tombstone Marshal’s Department.

For being there when we needed them most, thanks to Peter Bidegain, Joe Huntsman, Orion McKotter, Stacy Mitchell, and Nolana Nerhan. Other friends have helped and inspired me in more ways than they knew: Charlie Bertsch, Connor Doyle, Mike and Anna Doyle, Ryan and Kim Finley and the Finley family, D. Seth Horton, Ric Jahna, Christa Mussi, and Jim Wheeler. Love and thanks to the Reischl family—Julie, Robert, Marques, and Byron—as well as the Moncayo, Chirco, and Nurss families, who, together, have never let me feel alone. Love and gratitude to Laura “Tennessee” McKee, for her patience and grace.

Most of all, I’d like to thank my family: my brother, Josh; my grandmother; my cousins, Leighanne and Sean and Eric; my grandfather, John Bennis, the best man I ever knew; and my mother, Deborah Ann Bennis, for raising me, and for all the sacrifices.

Justin St. Germain was born in Philadelphia in 1981. He attended the University of Arizona and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. He lives in Albuquerque.