Lucky Billy

by John Vernon

  "Hello, Bob."

  After that, the upshot merely took minutes. Billy hobbled to the armory, put his shoulder to it, softest thing he ever struck. Doors opened before him! He looked around at the Springfields, the Remingtons, an old Henry, a fine selection of holsters. He picked out a holster for Bell's Colt's and here was a Winchester and there the .50-caliber Sharps with the octagonal barrel that suffered from wind drift. But the thing that caught his eye was dinger's Whitneyville. Double-barreled, loaded, propped against the wall, ready to right all the wrongs of the universe. He grabbed it and bunny-hopped to his cell—Lawrence Murphy's old bedroom—and waited at the window.

  "Hello, Bob." The voice smooth and playful. Below, the big ox freezes on the spot. Approaching the courthouse, he never thought to look up. What lovely revenge, what head-splitting joy! Billy has killed men before, he fully expects to kill them again, but it's never the same from one murder to the next. It's different each one. These two, ushered in by an internal free fall, by a rope snap signifying re-lease from control, are the product of seven long days of vigilance. Bob standing there below just ten feet away with a load in his pants, or so the Kid surmises. The carbine hanging from his fist; too late to raise it. Billy thrusts out his tongue and almost bites it in half, watching dinger squirm like a bug on a pin, though he doesn't move at all, he internally squirms. "The Kid has killed Bell!" somebody yells out back—maybe Gauss—and Bob's response comes just before or just after the blast from the Whitney strikes his chest, his right shoulder, his arm, his cheek and neck—rips off his ear, pulps an eye, cracks his jaw, unfingers his hand—turns his body flesh, his bones and mapped blood into a fountain of Olinger-slop, as though thrown from a pail. Both barrels, thirty-six buckshot, all that smoke, the Kid can hardly see. Then he hears it: "And he has killed me, too." As the smoke clears, he spots the shadow of blood and fat stretching more than twice Bob's length behind his sprawled body. The man was just hog fat.

  Now what? He's not happy or content, if anything more livid. He smashes the shotgun on the windowsill, splintering the stock, and throws it down on dinger's corpse. "You son of a bitch, take that with you to hell." If he could kill him again he'd gladly do so. He stops, thinks. "And save me a place." He clanks back to the sheriff's room, steps out on the balcony, looks down at the crowd beginning to assemble. "Hold it right there," he shouts at Bob Brookshire, waving Bell's pistol hip-high. He never has liked Brookshire. "Cross the street and I'll kill you." So Brookshire wisely stays across the street with J. A. LaRue, Sam Wortley, and others, any one of whom could draw a bead on Billy but evidently cannot summon up the spunk. Below the balcony, it appears, ever)' Mexican in Lincoln has gathered to watch. Godfrey Gauss, too—he catches Billy's eye—and Mrs. Lesnett. The Kid finds himself speaking. He paces back and forth. Every movement he makes pounds and rattles his chains. "Olinger, I don't care. Nobody liked him. Was there a single one of you liked that gorilla?"

  No reaction from the crowd. His voice feels funny. He has no control over how it sounds. Is it loud or soft, can they even hear him? They're all maddeningly quiet.

  "I could never see where he was an asset to any community. But as far as Bell goes, I did not want to kill him. I told him to surrender—" Billy's little white lie. "—But he refused. It was him or me, and so it was him. And that's that. I done him up. I'm sorry he's dead but I couldn't help it. Anyway, he's famous now. His claim to fame is all wrapped up for being someone I shot."

  No one says a word.

  "Don't all speak at once. Whoa. Calm down."

  They look perfectly calm watching him from below.

  "Somebody here got an ax or something I can use? I can pry off these irons?" Gauss leaves the crowd and walks around the courthouse while Billy keeps on talking. "I'm worked up so watch out. If anyone tries to stop me I'll kill him. You know me. I shoot first and ask questions later. It feels like I weigh a ton, my mind's racing all over. I got to take a piss but I can't in front of people. I feel like ... I feel ... Do I look all right to you? A little pale around the gills? I'm not going back to that snake hole in there." He nods to the room on the corner of the courthouse. "Thank you, Dad." Gauss tosses him a pickax and Billy sits and puts clown his pistol and works on a leg iron. "These fucking things are strong." He inserts the pick into the first link, fused to the iron, and works it back and forth. "All right. Hold on. This goddamn head's loose." He holds the head of the pick, not the handle, but because of the manacles has to lean forward and twist to one side. "Dad, get me a horse. Maybe one of Judge Leonard's." Gauss walks off. He scurries up the road.

  For a good fifteen minutes Billy works on his shackles and succeeds in snapping the short chain linking them—no more baby steps. The manacles are harder; he'll need Gauss's help. Gauss, below, now holds Billy Burt's pony, saddled and bridled. The Kid jumps to his feet and tucks the chain in his belt and leaps in the air and kicks and whirls around as though at a baile, and the skittish pony tries to pull away from Gauss. "He's on his way to hell," Billy announces, waving at Olinger, "and me, I'm free." He grips the balcony and leans out and shouts. "Freedom beats all! That's what makes this country great! I'm as good an American as anybody here. It's not many countries you can be free in anymore. I'm free and white and my blood's red and no one can stop me. Give me some room, for Christ's sake. Give me room, give me room!" His wild eyes dart everywhere searching the crowd, which backs off as though he might actually leap. "And this fucking country can easily spare men like Bob Olinger. My only show was to kill the stupid bastard. You ought to thank me for it. The town's a safer place. Alls I ever wanted was a fair shot at getting those bastards that murdered Mr. Tunstall. Mr. Tunstall was good to me. He gave me a horse, a saddle, a gun. He brought some class to this place and what did they do, they shot him in the back. Then I hired to Macky Sween who never paid me a penny and they killed him too and I hired to John Chisum and he still hasn't paid me. These jackleg lawyers and mealy-mouthed cattle barons do everything on tick, understand? If you owe them, why, it's everything you got. And if they owe you they punch a hole in a barrel of kill-me-quick red eye and offer you a swallow, thank you very much. Then it takes two days to straighten up again for business. They don't want you to be free. Isn't that right, Annie?"

  Mrs. Lesnett just stares.

  "Then they say I killed Brady. Well, it wasn't me. It was somebody else named Billy the Kid about the same size as me. Why am I the only one that stood trial for Brady? I'm for myself now. The hell with them all. I'm on my own hook. Hold on. Don't move." Wrists still manacled, he waves his gun at the crowd, at the sky, across the street, then twists his body and holsters the gun and grabs the pick and exits the balcony. He races clown the stairs and through the old store and out the front door, eyes searching the world when he's out on the street. "Help me with these bracelets, Dad." With the pick, Gauss and Billy break the chain on his manacles. Gauss holds the pony but when he tries to mount, his hanging chains spook the animal, who bolts up the road. "You. Alex." Billy points the gun across the road at Alex Nunnelly, one of the trustees. "Catch that horse and bring him back."

  "Hell, no. That would make me an accomplice."

  "Well, you can just tell them I forced you to do it." Alex reluctantly starts up the street. "Move!" Alex runs.

  As Alex shacks the horse Billy scans the crowd and spots José Sanchez and walks up and shakes his hand. "José." He hugs Godfrey Gauss, pecks Annie Lesnett on die cheek, and now a queue has formed: all die Mexes in Lincoln line up to shake his hand and nobody smiles. "Hey. Buck up. Go ahead, dance for joy." Even Bob Brookshire joins the line and manfully, somberly grasps the Kid's still-manacled hand. "Don't beat the drums or nothing." Then, festooned with chains but liberated—free!—Billy mounts the skittish horse and canters out of town. "Tell Billy Burt I'll send his pony back!"

  They mill in the street and watch him trot off. And is that singing they hear? Yes, the Kid is strangling "Silver Threads Among the Gold" and Annie Lesnett tenuously joins in with a muffled
quaver. At last they come to life, they're beginning to talk. A few even laugh. They glance around, shake their heads. There ought to be a band. Look, he's waving his hat. "Adios, boys!"

  Then he's gone.

  Five miles west of Lincoln he turns up into the Capitans, hardly conscious of direction. It's the trail to Las Tablas. Spring snow along the horse path, a soft hum in the air. The hum, he discovers, comes from his own throat. Must be the jitters. The hums are indulgences, little throaty grunts that rise through his spine with each thud of the horse and pleasantly vibrate inside his glutchpipe, and they work to calm him down. This is how famous outlaws mosey out of danger. Hum, sing, leap. Whoop 'em up, Liza ]ane!

  He clams up and looks back. Keeps on looking back, eyes forever searching tree trunks, brush, boulders.

  He feels his tongue sticking out. Sees his stepfather, Antrim, coming at him with a shovel, then his mother's lips trembling—out of nowhere, these memories. Ma has that look, the one preceding tears, the expansion of face as before a pot boils. I must obey my mother.

  Won't Garrett be floored! And Lincoln without authority of law, having lost its two deputies, so there's no one to chase him. Just the same, to be safe, Billy moves off the trail and rides inside the maze of tall ponderosas, thick enough to stop the undeviating bullet. The comfort of these trees, the firs and ponderosas, cannot be overstated. Real trunks for a change, the sort that reach for the sky, instead of the empty grasslands and desert whose rare stunted pinons in folds and arroyos hardly reach a man's shoulders.

  He usually sees these mountains from below. Sees them pull their green fabric tight to their bulk like disgruntled sleepers, shorting the foothills, completely baring the llano.

  The chains spook his mount but what can he do? The climb into the Capitans now begins to taper off but the Kid's horse won't give up limping, bad actors can't stop. Then comes the ridgeline folding into the canyon down the other side and the pony opens up. And the Kid, the young hotblood brimming with funk, the hard case, the desperado, the tough little pine knot, the canny pistolero of the sure aim and sixth sense, finds his mind racing as he descends, as it looks like he really and truly has escaped, racing and skidding and hopping around like spit on a hot stove. Que hombre, what a man! Muy seiõor—very much the gentleman. God knows he didn't want to kill Bell, who treated him fairly, but he had no choice. Oh, my goodness. The Kid has killed Bell.

  Yes, he killed me, too.

  What the Faber-pushers won't say. What the rag sheets won't print! Well, I'm short, they can't figure me out. My lack of facial hair is a deficiency that nature is still laboring to correct. Don't laugh. Let's slay that little shit, he looks like a nancy, wait till I give the signal. But fate decreed otherwise as the saloon lights blazed brilliantly in the pitchy inky darkness and the stranger fogged out. Last night you boys had "Billy the Kid" creeping around here, did you know that?

  He knew the shooting would disturb the poor children in the orphanage. He'd once rescued a prayer book that a little girl had dropped—there you go, sweetie.

  That frank, open countenance. Look at me, Ma! Note the roguish snap about the blue eyes, the brown curly hair, the slight but wiry frame clad in common garments. Hell, I'm just a person. A boy. I'm sort of normal for my age. I like to go to bailes and other such affairs where there is lots of noisy fun. At times I feel like smashing things. Everything tastes the same. Quite a handsome-looking lad and with an eye for the ladies, relaxed, light-hearted, playful with children, gallant to the viejos, attentive to his ma. You'd of been proud to know him. The tender heart of the coolest young outlaw who ever trod the trackless west—this Claude Duval of the wilderness—this good-natured Knight of the Road, always cheerful and smiling—

  William H. Bonney, Billy Bonney, Billy the Kid, Kid Antrim, the Kid, El Chivato, William Antrim, Henry Antrim, Henry McCarty, Henry McCarthy, Patrick Henry McCarthy, what a prodigy of cognomens! And with each new name a piece of past washed away, with each one his selfhood loosened its grip. My goodness, there were days I never even existed.

  How do you like it, Bilicito?

  Don't move. Just like that.

  Oh, Chivato, it's so beeg.

  You think this one's big, you ought to see the '73. Single action, sure, but good Christ—it's got a .45-caliber center-fire cartridge and the goddamn barrel's near eight inches long!

  What will Garrett do when he finds out? He will sit down and smile and be perfectly collected and eat himself inside. I'd like to see his face. Or Governor Wallace, I could pull for Santa Fe and lay for him there before the news arrives. He's the big toad in a small puddle, or so he thinks, but he is about as estimable as a heap of shit. The man is swelled up over his position and needs to be taken down a buttonhole. All of them do. To see their tongues hanging out, their petrified jaws—

  They'll be on me like a stink. Let them come. Let them come. Who was it betrayed me to Garrett in the first place? Who told him where to look?

  Once approaching Las Tablas, Billy calms down and his palms begin to dry. The trees thin out, trail grows sandier. A cottontail at the base of a ponderosa is perfectly still, thinks no one can see him. Now it's evening, almost dusk. As the trees give out he can spot with greater keenness the brown-green plains below and the volcanic cones and blisters and domes, the ridges stacking up against the gray distance and the gray raised rim of the faraway horizon streaked with long shadows from the setting sun. The smells have changed, too. No more pine needle compost, moist pits of ghost rain. Now, rising with the heat against his descent comes the coal-oil cinnamon throat-scrape odor of the dry plains below. He rides down past needle rocks and flatiron crags with tall fins and flukes, as though, two thousand miles from the nearest ocean, without consideration of nature's proper arrangements, gray whales here had swum into the mountain and found themselves stuck.

  The brownish plains turn red. Like a grassfire: hot, quick, finished. On a crumbling shelf in the many folds of hills, the Kid spots the first cholla. Now it's junipers and pinons comfortably arranged with scalds of free dirt between isolated trees. Around a quick bend, the scratch-ankle town of Las Tablas emerges.

  2. April 29, 1881

  Garrett

  HUDGEN'S WAS A LONG-BAR brass-rail place. I've a sensitive nose and could detect each distinctive component of its smell: beer, sawdust, sweat, old leather, pipe tobacco, coal smoke, and gamey foodstuffs. On a table near the bar were stacks of sliced meat, piles of bread, pickled beets, boiled eggs, warm biscuits, a hog's head, and canned tomatoes sprinkled with vinegar and sugar. The beer came in washtubs in back of the bar, into which the underskinker dipped the frosted mugs, and towels hung from nails pounded into the tables to wipe the thick foam off your beard when you drank it. Sand and sawdust on the floor, cattle brands burned into the paneled walls, a painting of a thinly veiled odalisque, yellowed by smoke, on the wall behind the bar. I couldn't bring Apolinaria into this place. It wasn't just the painting; bean-eaters weren't welcome, especially women. Too many encounters with out-of-town miners. White Oaks was a mining community, they had the quality miners, the scabby gap-toothed ones. The ones that swung shovels at each other from underneath the earth and considered every Mexican to be fair game. Among the acts of aggression these gentlemen committed, one asked a man to pass the butter at this very saloon and, not being heard, he immediately drew his pistol and presented it to the man's head, saying, "Pass the butter, please." They thought I was to thank for this new civility. The marshal, Pinto Tom, when arresting malefactors took special care now not to hurt their feelings any more than was necessary.

  If asked, the men at my table would probably have called me the apotheosis of the changes that were sweeping the territory. The railroad, which ran all the way to Las Cruces. The Apaches, which gave up their war against the world. The bad men, who I supposedly broke of miswending and taught how to sing patriotic songs. Thanks to Pat Garrett, the Lincoln County War was over. Somehow I'd been credited not only with catching Billy the Kid but with wipin
g out smallpox, whorehouse manners, decayed people, and unbridled fornication. Folks paid their taxes now; I was in White Oaks to collect them. Also, to obtain the wood for his gallows. They'd offered to contribute all the lumber I needed and a wagon to carry it. This was what they called community spirit. The pillars were there, Pinto Tom, Joe Tomlinson, Fred Kuch, even Israel Jones, the parson who once accused me of being an atheist. A nullifidian is more like it. Also at the table was a drummer from St. Louis who wrote for the dailies as well as sold stoves, and he hadn't heard the story of the Kid's capture yet, so all of them would get it one more time tonight. Being seated at table leveled our disparities. You'd never have known the drummer was five-foot-one or I was six-six or Jones had a wooden leg. My legs being half of me, my fingers and arms came from the same tree and they were lengthy, too; that's what they called me, "Lengthy." The Mexicans made this into Juan Largo. At Port Sumner in the old days, I'd already told them, I was called Big Casino, the Kid Little Casino. We sometimes partnered up at the faro tables. At that time I'd just arrived, I was years from being sheriff. Likewise he wasn't yet Billy the Kid, he was Antrim, Kid Antrim. It was a newspaper man that gave him the sobriquet Billy the Kid. And that was only last year—not long before I collared him at Stinking Springs.