Trick of Light

by Hunt-David

  He even attempted to recruit Bee for this purpose: "We had a good few weeks together, you and I," he told her, "but Mandy's the girl for me. Help me win her, Bee. Please."

  When Bee laughed he was taken aback.

  "She doesn't like you, Ram. Accept it and leave her alone."

  But he wouldn't. And when Maddy finally did meet someone she liked, he became coldly furious.

  The other boy was named Tom Dunphy. He was the same age as Maddy, also a performer, a recent recruit to the Great Western Circus, hired to play several heroic roles — Wyatt Earp in the O.K. Corral sketch, and Colonel George Custer in the big spectacle piece, "Custer's Last Stand."

  Tommy was an actor, not a shooter, though he fired off blank cartridges in his scenes. Ram, who was a shooter, hated him from the start, first because, being an actor, Tommy was far higher in the circus pecking order, and more important, because Maddy was attracted to him.

  At first their relationship struck Bee as brother-sister stuff. Tommy was pretty rather than handsome, had beautiful almond-shaped eyes, sensual lips, shag-cut golden hair that curled over his ears. He wasn't a good dancer or a particularly good kisser; in no sense was he a ladies' man. But there was a boyish sincerity about him that appealed to Maddy, a naïveté equal to her own. Even more attractive was his natural sweetness. Tommy was friendly, modest, self-effacing, generous and, perhaps most in his favor in Maddy's eyes, totally without guile.

  They became secret lovers. Those first weeks even Bee didn't know. They'd meet after evening performances, go off together on long walks about the fairgrounds, then disappear to quiet corners of the encampment or to empty compartments in the circus railway cars. Bee began to notice changes in Maddy, a new quietude, the way she glowed and sometimes sighed aloud. It was only when she saw them practice shooting together that she understood what was going on.

  It was a classic triangle: the beautiful girl, the pretty blond boy she'd chosen as her lover and the dark handsome boy who wanted her, was spurned and now smoldered in silent fury.

  Everyone in the troupe knew how Ram felt. He continued to tell his friends, with an insistence that belied conviction, that the reason Mandy Vail flirted with Dunphy was to make him jealous. He would win her, he promised; they would see. Why else did she evade his glances unless she was afraid she'd yield to him if she did not?

  Yes, everybody knew... except Maddy and Tommy, too wrapped up in one another to notice. Bee doubted that Tommy, as a featured player, was even aware of Ram's existence. As for Maddy, in her bliss she even forgot he was around.

  One day Ram left a length love letter for her, the silly, preposterous letter of a lovesick boy. It was filled with weakly expressed affection coupled with pompous pronouncements. It was all about him, not her, his distress, his needs, without any regard for feelings she might harbor or had ever professed. He accused her of playing him for a fool, taking up with another to make him jealous. But, he wrote, he was ready to forgive her now that the time had come to end the charade and admit to how she truly felt. "I'm the only man for you," he wrote. "We were meant for each other. There can be no other in your life." It was an obsessed, grandiose, lunatic letter, a little scary too.

  Maddy was upset by it. Showing it to Bee Watson, she confessed she had barely notice Ram lingering about the last few weeks, and had never encouraged him during the brief time they'd dated.

  "He's so egotistical. What am I going to do? I can't just ignore this, Bee. Or can I?"

  Bee agreed Maddy couldn't ignore the letter, that she had to send a message, something that would make Ram understand his cause was hopeless and he must henceforth leave her alone.

  "I don't want to ridicule him," Maddy said, "but everything about him fills me with scorn."

  Bee agreed. Ridicule was not the way. But a terse response was necessary. Ram had to be shaken out of his delusion.

  There was a famous story about Annie Oakley, probably apocryphal but a good vignette nonetheless. Idolizing Annie, Bee and Maddy both knew of it. And in these circumstances, it seemed to carry a relevant lesson.

  Sometime in 1887, during the stupendously successful season of Buffalo Bill's Wild West at Earl's Court in London, Annie received a written offer of marriage from a self-described French count. Enclosed was a photograph of the gentleman, along with writing to the effect that he'd surely commit suicide if she refused.

  Annie, it's said, shot out the eyes in the suitor's portrait with her revolver, scrawled "Respectfully Declined" across the bottom and mailed the picture back.

  What Maddy said she liked about Annie's response was the combination of contempt and personal esteem. The bullet holes represented a highly emphatic "NO!" while the word "respectfully" showed a lady's regard for a gentleman's feelings however absurd.

  Thus, in emulation of her idol, Mandy Vail tacked Ram Carson's handwritten letter to a corral post, marked off thirty paces, turned on her heel and emptied her Winchester into it, creating a large X of bullet holes across the paper. She then retrieved the punctured document, carefully refolded it, scribbled a brief note to the effect that she was in love with another, and asked him as a gentleman to kindly leave her alone.

  In retrospect, Bee felt, the rebuff was too harsh, but then both Maddy and Ram were young and the whole affair smacked of boy-girl melodrama. Another mistake, Bee admitted, was Maddy's assumption that Ram Carson was a gentleman.

  Her response to Ram's love letter was deeply wounding, especially as word of it spread around the troupe. Ram had acquired enemies. When they heard how Maddy had X'ed his letter with bullets, they reminded him of his boasts and taunted him for his failure to win her heart.

  He couldn't take his hurt and anger out on Maddy, or even on Bee, whom he believed to be the Svengali behind Maddy's atrocious act. They, after all, were merely girls; a man could only fight a man. He thought about beating up Tommy. No doubt he could do it; he was far stronger and good with his fists. But, he reasoned, administering a beating, however pleasureful, would only win sympathy for Tommy, drive him further into Maddy's arms and ensure that he, Ram, would be fired from Great Western.

  There was another means to redeem his honor, he decided, a way far more meaningful and poignant. Maddy, being an expert shooter, respected good shooting performances by others. Moreover, she'd been teaching Tommy how to shoot. If Ram could lure Tommy into a shooting match and win, he could prove he was the better man in the very field in which Maddy excelled. Victory in such a contest might not win her back, but it would be sweet, would defeat Maddy and his rival and thus partially settle the score.

  Impossible, of course, to understand how the final plan evolved within Ram's brain. But, Bee believed, there must have come a point when, brooding over his humiliation, seeking a suitable revenge, he realized a conventional shooting contest wouldn't do. Such competitions were usually good-humored affairs in which defeat was lightly taken and hands were shaken at the end. Ram required something darker and more serious.

  "I think what occurred to Ram," Bee says, "as he nursed his wounds in his roustabout's bunk, was something like this: Sure, to beat Dunphy in a shooting match would be fun, but not nearly painful enough. This guy and Mandy have got to be made to hurt. So what about a real man-to-man gunfight, a duel? Call him out, face each other with pistols, fire at will, may the best man win."

  As Bee says this I start to tremble. Heat rises to my head as the hidden symmetry starts coming clear. To calm myself I take another slug of Bee's honey. Then I remember Agnes Fontaine speaking of rumors of a deadly duel in Ram Carson's past. Could this have been the one, with Maddy the inciter?

  It was all madness, of course. Bee imagined the paranoia swirling inside Ram, the brooding over and nurturing of the injustice inflicted upon him, the crazed sparkle in his eye as he devised his scheme, the satisfaction as he contemplated his vindication.

  The troupe was performing in California at the time, working the Central Valley along the railway line north to south: Redding, Chico, Sacramento,
Stockton, Modesto, Merced, Fresno, Bakersfield.

  It was just outside Stockton that the duel took place. Maddy had left the circus several days before on a two-week visit home to Wyoming. Her mother had fallen ill, her father had called on her to help and Maddy, a loving and obedient daughter, arranged a special leave what management, then fled to her ailing mother's side.

  Ram must have calculated this was the time to strike. With Maddy around, there was a chance she'd intervene and stop the fight. Or worse, if Ram knocked Tommy off, she'd step in and face off with him herself, in which case Ram would certainly be killed.

  He also must have calculated the insult extremely carefully, for it was essential that Tommy Dunphy be riled up enough to fight. From what Bee heard, the offense was brutally delivered in front of others just after a morning rehearsal of the O.K. Corral sketch in which Tommy starred.

  It was a hot, humid summer day. The rehearsal had just finished. Tommy and the other actors, dirty and sweaty from their work, pulled themselves off the ground, flicked the dust off their clothes, then started toward the dressing area to change out of costume and shower.

  It was at this point that Ram interjected himself.

  "Hey, Dunphy," he yelled. "You draw a gun like a girl."

  People turned. Tommy stood frozen, then looked around to see who'd spoken. When his eyes met Ram's, he broke into a smile. "Very funny," he said.

  "No," Ram replied, "isn't funny. It's true."

  Ram approached, then stopped, spread his legs in a gun-slinger stance and continued with his taunts.

  "I think you're a girlie-boy, Dunphy. You act mighty girlish in the way you draw. Way you play patty-cakes with Mandy Vail too. She's your boyfriend, right? That how it goes?"

  Tommy kept smiling. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. Who is this guy? One of the roustabouts. What's his problem anyway?

  Tommy wasn't one to seek confrontations. Off stage he was gentle and shy. Still, aspersions upon his masculinity and gross disparagement of Maddy could not be borne. People were watching him. He was a featured player; he played heroic roles. He knew the man facing him was trying deliberately to provoke him, but he couldn't let such insults pass.

  "Who the hell are you?" he demanded.

  "I'm Ram Carson. You're girlie-boy Dunphy, right?"

  There was a sneer on Ram's face, the sneer of a playground bully. Tommy understood that this was serious.

  "You need a lesson in manners, Carson."

  "You the one to give it to me, girlie?"

  "You look kind of girlie there yourself."

  "Guess we should settle this then. You don't box, so a fistfight wouldn't be fair. But you draw and shoot, least you pretend to. So let's see who shoots like a girl. Let's settle this with guns."

  Again Tommy looked about. He'd just received a challenge issued in the manner of a western movie, the town bully calling out the hero on Main Street

  , townspeople assembled to see which man backed down.

  "Whatsamatta? Afraid to shoot without little Mandy around to help? You're a chicken-livered coward, ain't you? Cluck-cluck-cluck!" Ram delivered the jeer in a barnyard falsetto.

  Mocked beyond endurance, Tommy rushed at Ram, who sidestepped, causing Tommy to plunge headlong into the dirt. Ram leaned down, gave Tommy his hand, helped him up, brushed him off.

  "You've been challenged, Dunphy. If you're not too chicken to take it up, send a friend to speak to mine." Ram indicated his best buddy in the crowd. Then he laughed, and strode back to his job.

  Word spread quickly around the circus. Bee, appalled at the prospect of a gunfight, immediately sought Tommy out.

  "He didn't seem like the boy I knew," Bee tells us. "It was as if his personality had totally changed. Suddenly here was this cocky kid, all juiced up, full of himself, raring to fight.:

  "'Carson made a big mistake calling me out,' he told me. 'In the show I draw a gun and fire at people every day. And under Mandy's coaching, my shooting's gotten pretty slick.'"

  "'But this is real, Tommy,' I reminded him. 'Not a show. You're an actor, Ram's a fighter. He's jealous of you 'cause Mandy likes you. That's what this is all about.'"

  Tommy told Bee he knew all that, had been so informed that afternoon. Which was all the more reason to go through with the duel — not just to defend his own honor, but Mandy's too. Anyhow, it was too late to call it off. The seconds had met. Everything had been arranged..

  "Frankly," he told her, "I think Carson'll chicken out. He knows I can shoot, but he thinks I'm a coward. When he finds out I'm not, he'll apologize, you'll see. And if he doesn't — well, I'll just shoot him down."

  There was no reasoning with him. As far as Bee was concerned, both guys were behaving like little boys. Ram had played cleverly on Tommy's pride, and now, it seemed, Tommy had psyched himself into thinking he could take Ram on.

  There was a part of her that found the situation ludicrous, believed that the duel couldn't and wouldn't take place — that someone would have sense enough to stop it or that the boys themselves would call it off.

  Later, she would hate herself for not taking the affair more seriously, for being so maddened by Tommy's posing that she didn't to the circus management and, failing their intervention, to local cops. Later she learned she wasn't the only member of the troupe who felt this way. Eisenhower was President, this was the United States of America. A real gunfight just seemed... impossible.

  They met at dawn when everyone in the troupe was still asleep, four young men, the two duelists accompanied by their seconds, in a clearing in a eucalyptus grove not far from where the circus was encamped. Tommy, she understood, dressed to be seen, wore one of his costumes from the show, an elaborate gunslinger's outfit with handmade shirt, tooled holster, boots and spurs. Ram, on the other hand, dressed to kill, wore a tattered old T-shirt, faded jeans, a wrangler's jacket and a battered holster casually belted about his waist.

  The seconds had agreed on rules. The weapons would be .32 caliber, the same as Maddy used in her act. The combatants would stand facing one another separated by sixty feet, each one's gun loaded with a single round. At the count of three, each could draw and fire at will. Failing a hit, both guns would be reloaded, then the duel would proceed with the distance closed to fifty feet, and failing again, to forty. Between rounds, either combatant could call the fight off. An apology for his remarks by Carson or a concession by Dunphy that Carson's remarks were true would also constitute a stop.

  "I imagine them standing there in the morning summer fog," Bee tells us, "Tommy sweating, his heart pounding wildly in his chest with the realization that this time the fight would be real. Meantime Ram stands cool, heart rate normal, eyeing Tommy with the poise of a hunter awaiting his chance to kill. Neither boy willing to back down, each seeking satisfaction for his injury, the two bound together by shared feelings for the absent Maddy, who, were she present, would have instantly shot the guns from both their hands.

  "I imagine the early-morning chattering of birds perched on the limbs of surrounding trees. Tommy's tension as the seconds step back to make the count. The sense of inevitability that pervades him, the mood of doom. His belief that fate has drawn him to this encounter, and that fate alone will determine the outcome. Above all, the aura of unreality, that this isn't, can't be happening, that in a moment some person or force will intervene. And Ram, all the while measuring his opponent, feeling his weakness, knowing he holds his life in his hands and can take it at his whim.

  "The voice of Ram's second as he solemnly makes the count: 'One. Two. Three.' Each boy draws his gun, then waits for the other to fire. That would be each one's way of showing he's not a coward, that he can face up to a bullet without a flinch. Suddenly the sun breaks through the canopy. A beam of light, shimmering with fine dust, falls upon Tommy's face. It's like the sudden heat of the spotlight picking him out during the show. Unnerved, Tommy's hand begins to shake. Ram grins, taunting him with his smirk. Infuriated, Tommy fires wildly, missing Ram by fif
teen feet. Birds, startled by the explosion, break from the trees. Then the clearing goes still.

  "Ram again smiles to himself, lowers his gun a little, then raises it slowly. Tommy, understanding that this is real, wanting to run yet fighting his instinct to flee, stands stiff and rigid as a post. Ram's grin widens. Raising his gun further, holding it steady, he slowly squeezes his trigger. The roar. The bullet hurtling through space. Tommy, knowing he'll be struck, perhaps bending forward a fraction to facilitate the collision. The bullet smashing him square between his eyes. Tommy collapsing slowly to the ground."

  Bee sits back, shakes her head. She's been telling the story with such intensity she's out of breath.

  "So awful," she says, "so sad. Everyone who knew Tommy was heartbroken. This talented young man suddenly cut down..." She sighs. "The tragedy changed all our lives."

  Maddy, receiving news from Bee by telegram, never returned to Great Western. Instead, she stayed with her mother until her death several months later, the disappeared, never again to perform in fancy shooting exhibitions, and as far as anyone knew, never again to fire a gun.

  Ram Carson was arrested, charged with manslaughter. Later, through the intervention of a smart public defender, he was recharged with dueling under the California anti-dueling statute, pleaded guilty, received a five-year sentence, was sent to San Quentin, served three years and was released.

  Bee left the circus too, to return to England and her father's shop.

  "I wanted to make something of myself," she tells us. "I was determined to become the finest gun engraver in the world. Later some said I was." She shrugs. "I'm not sure. But I was good. Several times my father told me I'd surpassed him, and he was among the very best."