Epitaph

by Mary Doria Russell

“Musta been an off day for Doc!” the wags cried. “He just winged you!”

  Milt accepted the gibes with a smile, though he would not know for weeks if his hand could be saved. If Wyatt Earp was not the kind of man who angered easily or often, Milt Joyce could go him one better. Milt was not the kind of man who got angry at all. He would, quite simply, get even—with Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp, both.

  No matter how long it took.

  WOMEN OF TROY

  WRETCHED, HEADSTRONG GIRL!

  COME ON, JOSIE!” JOHNNY URGED. “TRY AGAIN. You’re not hurt—”

  “How do you know? I might’ve broken something!”

  “The best thing to do when a horse throws you is to get right back on.”

  “No!”

  Head down, Johnny Behan planted fists on hip bones and stared at the soft sand of the raked corral, trying to get a grip on his reaction. Josie hadn’t really been thrown. To be thrown, you have to be mounted and get tossed off. Josie had her boot in the stirrup and was on her way into the saddle when the pony pivoted away from her. She hit the ground, but it was just plain falling, and not very far at that. She might have been a little shaken up, but Josie could make Greek tragedy out of burnt toast.

  “You said you wanted to learn to ride, honey,” he reminded her. Admittedly, an edge might have come into his voice then because she hadn’t just said she wanted to learn to ride. She announced it. She declared it. She proclaimed it.

  First she told him, weeping, that she had “lost the baby.” He was properly sympathetic but knew they’d been careful and reckoned it was more likely that she was just a few days late. She mooned around for a week before informing him that learning to ride would console her and cure her melancholy. Soon “the baby”—if indeed there had ever been such a thing—was forgotten and all conversation in the Behan household began to focus on Josie’s sudden need for a horse. A pretty little bay pony had come up for sale at the Dexter Stable. Josie wanted it. She would need a handsome tailored riding habit, as well. And the charming veiled hat that went with it. And boots and a sidesaddle.

  She wheedled. She begged. She stormed and sulked. He had not enjoyed a moment’s peace—or a single toss in bed—until she had it all. And now it was “Well, I changed my mind!”

  Why, John Harris Behan asked himself, why does this kind of argument always happen in front of Wyatt Earp?

  Face expressionless, eyes on the horse he was cantering on a line in the next pen over, Wyatt was doing his best to make it seem that he was unaware of the Behans’ argument, but Josie had briefly understudied for a speaking role in the Markham troupe and she could make her voice carry.

  “Come on, Josie,” Johnny said. “Try again.”

  “No! I don’t want to,” she insisted, brushing sand off her skirt, “and you can’t make me!”

  “Listen to yourself!” he whispered fiercely. “You sound like a child!”

  “And you,” Josie replied, loud enough for the back row of a theater in Chicago to hear, “you sound like a mean old man!”

  Wyatt smothered a laugh.

  “You want the little brat, Wyatt?” Johnny called. “She’s all yours!”

  It was more a threat than an offer. He didn’t mean it, but Josie went off like a mine charge, and then it was “Lincoln freed the slaves,” and “I don’t belong to you, John Behan,” and “You can’t give me away.” He shot back, “That’s right—because nobody would take you!” Finally, rather than listen to more of her nonsense or hit her in public, Johnny dropped the pony’s reins and walked away.

  Stamping her foot, Josie yelled, “Stand and fight, you coward!” But Johny didn’t even glance over his shoulder, and she snarled in exasperation, “Oh! That man!”

  “It’s a bad match,” she heard Mr. Earp call.

  She turned, glowering at him. “I’m sure that’s what my mother would say!”

  He looked confused. Then he said, “Oh. Well, maybe. I guess. But . . . I meant the horse.” He let his own animal slow to a walk and came to the fence between them. “A small rider isn’t necessarily better off with a little horse like that,” he told her, his voice quiet and factual. “A bigger mount can be a better fit.”

  She joined him at the fence and looked up, neck craning. He was nearly a foot taller than she was, and a good six inches taller than Johnny Behan. Eyes mischievous, she tilted her head. “Is that so?” she asked. Bold as brass.

  It took him a moment before he got the joke. “I—I didn’t mean it like that,” he stammered. “Honest, I—I’m sorry if you thought—It’s just that little horses can be more skittish, and . . .”

  She would have teased another man mercilessly, but she could see that this one was genuinely mortified. And in what was, perhaps, the first truly adult moment of her life, Josephine Sarah Marcus realized that joshing was more likely to wound Mr. Earp than prod him to banter.

  “That’s a beautiful stallion,” she said to change the subject. “What’s his name?”

  It was an innocent question, but he stood mute for a time, as though he were trying to decide what to tell her. She expected a lie and, indeed, his eyes slid away.

  “It’s— His name . . . His name is Dick.”

  “Oh, my,” she said, blinking. “This just keeps getting worse!”

  “I— He was already named. When I got him. A Texan named him . . . that.”

  “Just the sort of vulgarity I’ve come to expect from Texans,” she said lightly. Glancing at the horse again, she added, “I believe I’ll call him Richard, if you don’t mind.”

  He smiled at that, and she felt as though she’d accomplished something, even if she wasn’t quite sure what.

  “A horse’ll move away from pressure,” he told her, lifting his chin toward her pony. “That’s why you fell.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When you put your foot in the stirrup, you took too long getting on. The saddle started to haul down on her from the left, so she moved off to the right. Johnny shoulda gave you a leg up.”

  Tying Richard to the fence rail, he ducked under it and said, “C’mon. Try again.” Standing next to her pony, he leaned over, linking his fingers. “Just step into my hands like they’re the stirrup.”

  He didn’t seem embarrassed or self-conscious about this, so she did as she was told. An instant later, she was sitting four and a half feet off the ground.

  He bent to guide her left foot into the iron, careful to hold her boot by its heel. A hint of his previous discomfort reappeared. “Now, I guess . . . you hook your, um, knee around that pommel.”

  She tried, but the skirts of her riding habit were bunched beneath her. In an effort to rearrange the fabric, she stood up a little on her left foot, which was in the stirrup, but quickly sat down when the pony started to pivot.

  “Away from the pressure,” she observed, and then she went still, struck by a thought. “That’s why fences work! I always wondered why such big animals don’t just push these flimsy little fences over and escape, but they’d feel the pressure and move away from it!”

  He looked impressed. “Never thought about it, but you’re prolly right.”

  He watched her struggle to balance her weight while attempting to straighten her skirt and helped as best he could without being too familiar.

  “Sidesaddles are foolishness,” he decided. “Johnny should take this thing back and get you a regular one. My sister Adelia rides astride. No reason why you shouldn’t. And you should prolly just wear, um, trousers. Like you did. When you danced. In that play.”

  He could feel the blood rise in his face. To change the subject he handed the reins to her. “Don’t haul on the horse’s mouth. Just put pressure on the neck—”

  “Of course! To go right, you pull the reins toward the right because that puts pressure on the left side of the neck, so she’ll move to the right, to get away from it.”

  He liked that she caught on quick. Saved him a lot of words. He liked how she lit up when she got the hang o
f something, too.

  He kept her on the horse for almost an hour. Then he said, “That’s enough for now. Let it sink in some.”

  SHE FOLLOWED HIM as he led both horses back into the barn. “You are remarkably chatty this afternoon, Mr. Earp! I don’t believe I’ve heard you say more than a few words before.”

  He flipped the stirrup leather up to unbuckle the girth. “I had a bad tooth. Been bothering me since June. Doc Holliday pulled it. I feel better now it’s out.”

  She watched him lift the saddle off her pony, admiring the easy way he propped it against his hip and carried it, one-handed, to the rack. “Johnny says Doc Holliday is dangerous and ought to be run out of town.”

  “He won’t say that if he gets a toothache! You see a brush around here anywheres?” he asked. “If people would just put things back in the same place every time . . .”

  She stepped up onto a stool and looked around. “Over there,” she said, pointing. “On the shelf by the harnesses.”

  “Doc’s a real good dentist,” he told her when he came back with the brush. “My teeth used to hurt all the time, but Doc fixed me up good, back in Dodge.”

  She hopped off the stool and sat down to watch him brush her pony down. Long, slow strokes, firm and rhythmic. She liked the way he moved.

  “People always seem to get the wrong idea about Doc,” he was saying. “Brings some of it on himself, I guess. Thing is, he’s not strong, and gamblers have to carry a lot of cash, so . . .”

  He stopped brushing and looked to see if she understood.

  “So if you look easy to rob . . .” she said.

  He nodded and went to work on the pony’s mane.

  “Why doesn’t he just be a dentist then?”

  “Too sick, most of the time. Consumption. He can still pull a tooth or something quick like that, but he can’t make dentures or do fillings or anything, like he did up in Dodge.” To her astonishment, he pulled his front teeth out to show her the bridge. “Thee?” He put the teeth back in. “He used to do things like that, but it’s finicky work and his cough got real bad. Winter in Kansas was hard on him. His cousin Robert’s a dentist, too. Doc’s still hoping to get better and go back home to Atlanta so’s they can work together, but . . . I don’t know. He’s worse than when I saw him last. And getting hit on the head set him back.”

  “I heard about that. You like him, then?”

  “He can be hard to get along with, when his chest hurts. But he’s quality.” Finished with her pony, he led the little horse into its stall. “Him and my brother Morgan are friends. They’re readers,” he said, as though that explained it.

  “How is Doc now?”

  “Side of his face is all bruised up, but he’s thinking straighter.”

  “He gave me a piano lesson once. I’m afraid it was wasted on me. I’m just a dunce about music, I guess.”

  He stood motionless for a time, and when he spoke again, his voice was soft with remembered awe. “Doc played piano at a party this one time, up in Dodge . . . Never heard anything like that before. It was real pretty.”

  Thoughtful herself, Josie watched him brush Dick down, his motions calm and unhurried, the animal drowsing beneath his hands. “Johnny and I still owe you a dinner. Do you like cake, Mr. Earp?”

  “Sure. Everybody likes cake.” He looked away for a moment, then back at her. “You don’t have to ‘mister’ me. Wyatt’s fine.”

  “Friday, then,” she said “Come by around sunset. Wyatt.”

  “WE ALL HAVE OUR VICES,” Dr. J. H. Holliday had observed during Wyatt’s first visit to his Dodge City dental office. “Sugar is yours.”

  There are a lot of ways a tooth can go to hell in the utter absence of dental care; in 1878, Wyatt Earp’s mouth provided horrifying examples of most of them. It took six weeks of steady work to deal with years of accumulated damage: pulling teeth too decayed to salvage; filling those that were still fundamentally sound; fabricating a bridge to replace the missing upper centrals. Wyatt’s father had knocked those out when Wyatt was seven, but most of the destruction was self-inflicted, for if an opportunity to sweeten any kind of food or drink presented itself, Wyatt Earp took it. He mixed molasses into every spoonful of breakfast oatmeal. He poured maple syrup over his pancakes and his bacon. He drank a lot of coffee and loaded every cup with sugar. He carried rock candy with him and sucked on it while he was out exercising his horses. Nearly every evening, he visited a soda fountain or an ice cream parlor. And in the autumn of 1880, the assault on his enamel got worse.

  The Behans’ kitchen window looked out over the street, and whenever Wyatt happened to walk by, the seductive fragrance of baking sugar reached out to him. Josie often noticed him passing, and it was natural that she would offer him a taste of whatever she had cooling on a rack. Orange jelly cake, sponge cake, spice cake, honey cake. Apple cake in layers. Sometimes she fried crullers or doughnuts, and she always dusted them with powdered sugar. She baked cookies, too. Gingerbread, hermits, and Boston creams. And every morning, there was fresh bread. Thick, warm slices dripping with butter, fragrant with cinnamon, crusty with sugar crystals.

  There was nothing secretive about this. Johnny Behan knew and approved. A successful stint as a southern Arizona sheriff was key to achieving his ambitions; Josie understood that it was important for Wyatt to trust Johnny’s judgment and to believe in his goodwill. That autumn, Johnny himself often urged, “Come by for supper, Wyatt.”

  The answer was nearly always yes, for Wyatt found it close to impossible to say no to Josie’s cooking. He liked Johnny, too. The older man was friendly and helpful and never made Wyatt feel awkward or ignorant, the way Wyatt’s own brothers could sometimes.

  Mostly Johnny talked about the things a sheriff needed to understand. “Tombstone’s townspeople was industrialists and merchants. Northern Republicans, like you and your brothers,” he said. “They want law and order on the streets. That means getting guns and drunks off them.” Out in the rest of the county, it was independent ranchers, and most of them were ex-Confederates and southern Democrats. “They’re all citizens, Wyatt,” Johnny said. “And southerners don’t like anybody pushing them around or telling them how to do things.”

  Wyatt knew that. Hell, he knew Doc Holliday and how touchy the Georgian could be, but he didn’t see how that justified letting somebody get away with breaking the law. Just look at what happened with those mules! The McLaurys never delivered them, which showed the Cow Boys they could get away with rustling and act however they pleased and nobody would do anything about it. Curly Bill Brocius was getting bolder and Johnny Ringo was more belligerent all the time, and they were always backed up by five or six other toughs. When Fred White or Wyatt or Virgil arrested a Cow Boy, a lot of judges dismissed the charges. Even if a judge wasn’t intimidated or on the take, half a dozen men and a couple of whores would cheerfully perjure themselves to provide an alibi. Wyatt just wanted the law taken seriously, but Johnny always argued for moderation.

  “Tombstone isn’t Dodge, Wyatt! You were dealing with transients back in Kansas. You could buffalo drovers and they’d wake up with a headache and ride back to Texas. A county sheriff deals with local folks. They’re taxpayers, Wyatt. They’re voters! You have to be more respectful.”

  Wyatt could see Behan’s point. Even so, he’d think, I don’t care who they are. If they’re breaking the law, they’re breaking the law.

  Mostly he let Johnny’s talk roll off him, except one night when Johnny got on him about Doc Holliday. “It wasn’t sensible to go after Milt Joyce like that,” Johnny told him. “Milt’s an important businessman, and he’s talking about running for city council. Doc Holliday’s an outsider, Wyatt. He’s a gambler and a troublemaker, and he can only hurt you politically—”

  “Doc saved my life in Dodge,” Wyatt said. “I stand by them that stand by me.” And he walked out, right then, to make sure Johnny got his point.

  But he came back the next night anyway.

  Because it was
nice to watch Josie while she cooked. It was interesting how she’d stand still when she was getting started and talk to herself. “Scalloped potatoes in the oven. Steak in the fry pan. Stewed carrots in the pot.” She’d squint then and decide, “Scrub the vegetables first.” Sometimes she’d laugh to herself and say, “Oy! I sound just like Mutti!” Then she’d get the water into the pot so it would heat up while she sliced the potatoes and put them into a buttered pan and sprinkled bread crumbs over the top and put more little bits of butter over the crumbs so they’d brown up. After the potatoes went into the oven, she’d put the carrots into the boiling water with butter and eight spoons of sugar. Ten, if she noticed Wyatt was watching. She’d start the steaks last, and while the first side of the meat fried, she’d get the dishes ready. A few minutes later, it would all go out onto the table at the same time, hot and delicious. And there was always something sweet for dessert.

  He liked how she talked to little Albert, too, and let him help in the kitchen. She wasn’t hardly more than a kid herself, so maybe she remembered what it was like—wanting to be helpful but not knowing how. She always had reasons for why she did things a certain way, and he liked how she explained them to Al in a kind voice, instead of expecting the kid to figure it out on his own and then smacking him if he was slow or got something wrong. She’d say, “Try to make all the cookies the same size, or some of them will still be raw when others are done.” Or “Cut an X across the top of the bread dough. Otherwise, the crust will bubble up when it’s baking. Careful with that knife, sweetheart.” That’s how a parent oughta talk to a child, Wyatt decided. And it came to him that his own mother might have been like Josie, if Virginia Cooksey hadn’t married a mean sonofabitch who thought it was right and proper to beat the daylights out of everyone in the house, from his wife on down.

  Josie would read to everyone after supper, the way Morg did before bed when the brothers were growing up, but this was even better because Josie used different voices for the people in the book, so it was like listening to a play. Sometimes Al would ask questions about things in the books, and Johnny would answer them because he knew a lot about the world.