Mary Russell - Doc

“Can’t you just picture it? Flowers make such a difference!” she told Bessie. “If each business donates enough for a flower box, think how pretty it will look! It’s a nice way to show civic pride, then, isn’t it.”

It’s a nice way to wring cash out of every saloon and brothel owner in Dodge, Bessie thought, but she gave generously anyway. Big George was letting it be known that if Dodge went Reform in the next election, he might be persuaded to tolerate a vice zone south of the tracks, as long as the north side of Front was cleaned up and kept quiet. And Bessie felt sure George Hoover was keeping track of precisely how many “flower boxes” had been donated and by whom.

Unbuttoning her shirtwaist, she peeked through her bedroom window’s lace curtain and watched Chalkie Beeson’s brass band getting into position. After the parade, there’d be pie-eating contests, a greased-pig chase, and a full slate of horse races. Women were auctioning off baked goods and quilts to raise money for a school. In the evening, there was going to be an ice cream social with dancing, and fireworks after dark.

The town was getting civilized, and Bessie knew what that meant: time to think about moving again. Just last week, a letter from Virgil came, saying there were rumors of a big silver strike in Arizona, down near the Mexican border. That had James and Wyatt and Morgan all talking about how maybe they should go south in the autumn.

Unlacing her corset, rolling off her stockings, unpinning her hair, Mrs. James C. Earp looked around the cozy, private room she kept aside just for herself and her husband, with its carved walnut bedstead, its pretty curtains and Turkey carpet, and the framed steel-cut engravings of Grecian ruins that reminded her of Nashville.

Dammit, she thought, sliding under the sheet. I just got the wallpaper up.

The blare of trumpets, the shrill of piccolos, and the thud of drums were clearly audible on the second floor of Dodge House, as was the nearly constant crackle of fireworks and the flat bang! of random pistol shots, but the noise outside didn’t disturb John Henry Holliday’s sleep. It just made him sigh and give up trying to get any.

The hoorah had begun before midnight, about the same time the police force was rather belatedly informed that gunfire within town limits was legal on the Fourth. Wyatt was furious when he found out. Public order would be set back by a good three weeks. There was, however, nothing he could do about it, apart from insisting that his men stay on duty for the next thirty-six hours to keep anarchy at bay.

All night long, Texas visitors to Dodge took full advantage of their temporary immunity from prosecution, shooting out lights and breaking windows. They seemed evenly divided regarding the 102nd birthday of the Union so recently preserved at the cost of so many lives and such destruction. About half viewed the Glorious Fourth as an occasion for sullen, resentful drinking followed by fistfights; the rest considered it a good excuse to get loaded and look for someone to beat up. Tired of the gladiatorial drunkenness, Doc had cashed out of an uninteresting game and gone to bed, where he had remained wide awake ever since.

Even without the noise outside, sleep would have eluded him, for Wyatt would be starting treatment soon.

This was the part of dentistry that John Henry Holliday liked most. Planning procedures step by step. Rehearsing the entire session in his mind, moment by moment, to minimize the time a patient spent under ether. By nature, he was inclined to begin with the most difficult aspect of any work so he could truthfully promise his patient, “Today was the worst. It’ll be easier from now on.” When he had a full practice back in Atlanta, however, he discovered that it was good policy to inquire into the patient’s own preference in the matter.

“If there is good news and bad news,” he’d ask, “which would you rather hear first?”

“Bad,” Wyatt had answered, without hesitation. “Get it over.”

So Doc would begin on the right side of the mandibular arch, which was seriously degraded. Start with the extraction. Once that hopeless molar was pulled, excavate the decay in the occlusal surfaces of the other two, drilling to find clean dentin. He preferred to use gold foil for the fillings, but that was like working with flakes of ash; his cough being what it was, the best technique was beyond him now. Silver amalgam would be good enough.

Most dentists would have pulled those bad bicuspids without hesitation; the interproximal surfaces were severely hourglassed. On the other hand, the gingival bone seemed to be intact. He hated to give up on firmly rooted dentition, but he just couldn’t see a way to save those two …

Just past noon, when he was nearly asleep at last, the solution came to him. Suddenly and fully awake, he sat up, coughed for a while, threw on a shirt and trousers, and hurried downstairs to No. 24. There he composed a detailed outline of a novel dental procedure that would involve yoking the bicuspids together with a gold collar, for structural strength, to be combined with a variation on a cantilevered pontic. He added two diagrams—occlusal and lingual—to illustrate the idea, then rolled himself a cigarette and settled back to review what he had written, making several changes to clarify the description.

If the procedure worked as he anticipated, he decided, he would submit an article to Dental Cosmos . A publication like that would be a genuine contribution to the profession. And it would please Uncle John no end.

Wyatt’s case had presented a variety of interesting clinical challenges, but the real satisfaction would come a few days after the patient’s final session. With his gums healing and the trauma behind him, Wyatt would begin to realize how much his teeth had bothered him all his life, how much pain he’d come to accept as normal. He’d eat better, feel better than he had in years. He’d also be able to say more than a few words in a row without thinking of his missing teeth. Occasionally those few words might be addressed to someone with dental trouble: “Go see Doc Holliday.”

By all accounts, Wyatt Earp was as honest a lawman as you could find in Kansas—admittedly, not a high bar to clear. Still, if he told people that Doc Holliday was good at his job, it would count for a lot. And that was as close to advertising as a dentist could come, for the A.D.A. prohibited anything beyond the simple announcement of the opening of his office. He had no legitimate competitors in the region, but like all credentialed dental surgeons, he was up against charlatans who roamed the countryside in colorfully decorated wagons emblazoned with signs that proclaimed the driver to be a “Painless Dentist.”

These shameless frauds were—in all fairness to them—vicious, destructive scoundrels, and John Henry Holliday hated them, individually and as a class, with a pure and unwavering flame.

They would drive into town and attract a crowd with a drummer’s patter, offering to demonstrate their skill by extracting a tooth free of charge for the first person brave enough to volunteer. An accomplice—usually a woman—would act frightened and hesitant but come forward complaining of toothache. In a snap and with a flourish, a horse molar would be held aloft, like the rabbit pulled from a magician’s hat. Proclaiming herself completely free of discomfort of any kind, the woman would urge others to approach and pay in advance to have their teeth ripped out with pliers. Howling victims were ridiculed. “Why, what a big baby you are! That little lady didn’t make a peep!” Half an hour later, the butcher and his girlfriend would leave town before the infections set in, the patients died, and their survivors developed a lifelong horror of dentistry.