Mary Russell - Doc

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— ”

The coughing hit again. Morgan said, “C’mon, Doc. Sit down. I’m sorry. Look, I have some money saved up, and—”

“I don’t need charity! All I need is to be left alone to earn my way as best I can! And now I must go buck the tiger—which is a fool’s errand—because you just busted up a poker game that I was winnin’ , God damn you, and this time of night, faro is the only game in town that will be open to me. In future, I will take it as a personal favor if you would kindly refrain from interferin’ in my affairs. Good evenin’ to you, sir.”

Everyone in the place watched as he left.

For a long time, Morgan sat openmouthed, trying to think of some way to help. Nothing came to mind.

The bartender brought a whisk broom and dustpan over to the piano, and knelt to sweep up the broken glass.

Shoulda seen it coming . That’s what Wyatt thought, though he heard it in his father’s voice. Walked right into it, you stupid pile of shit .

Seven of them, waiting for him in the saloon. Bartender, gone. Off in the corner, just one man playing faro. Nobody else in the place.

He’d been warned. Twice. Dog first, then Bat. So Wyatt had started wearing a sidearm pretty regularly, and went as far as loading heavy-gauge into the shotguns behind the bars in every saloon in town. But the weeks passed. Nobody else came at him and … He let his guard down. He got sloppy. His shift was almost over, and he was distracted.

They had his gun before he took two steps past the door.

He’d been thinking about Mattie Blaylock, confused because it didn’t start out so complicated between them. Mattie did her job and Wyatt did his, but somewhere along the line, he went off the tracks, and he was damned if he saw where. Like in Topeka, he noticed she was looking at a necklace in a store window. He went back the next morning to buy it for her, and it wasn’t cheap, either, but instead of being happy, she asked, “What’s this for?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I thought you’d like it.”

She wore it once, and it looked pretty on her, too, but after that she put it away.

Then, last night, before he left for work, he told Mattie that Big George Hoover had invited them over for dinner on Sunday. He thought Mattie would like to wear one of the dresses Doc Holliday had helped her pick out, and maybe that necklace from Topeka, but she acted like Wyatt was asking her to do something unreasonable. She looked at him like he was some kind of idiot even to think about going to dinner at the Hoovers’.

Wyatt asked if it was because Margaret Hoover used to be—well, Maggie Carnahan, and maybe that brought back bad memories or something. Mattie just shook her head like he was so stupid, it wasn’t worth trying to explain it to him. Hell, he thought. I might not be the smartest man in Kansas, but I ain’t that dumb.

Course, it turned out that was exactly how dumb he was, but at the time he was thinking that any effort to be good to Mattie seemed to ricochet back at him. She’d look suspicious and annoyed. “Why are you acting so nice?” she’d ask, like she knew he was faking. And it had just occurred to him—right when he was walking into that saloon—if you think niceness is a fraud, then maybe you think only meanness is real. So maybe Mattie would be happier if he belted her and called her a low, shameless harlot because she’d believe that, except the idea of hitting a woman—

He never finished the thought, suddenly aware that he’d just been surrounded, disarmed, and was about to be killed with his own pistol by a heavyset, middle-aged man with eyes like stones.

“I guess things’re different when you’re not up against a kid half your age and half your size, eh, Earp?”

I’m dead, Wyatt thought, weirdly calm, but certain this was no bluff.

“He don’t look so tough now, do he, boys?” the man was saying.

There was a murmur of grinning agreement, and one of the cowboys said, “He sure don’t, Mr. Driskill!”