Lucky Billy

by John Vernon

  Cinchweed, sage, yucca, grass, cholla. As they climbed, the brown grass rattled when they passed, the clear air grew warmer. Dick Brewer rode ahead, then came Frank McNab beside Bill McCloskey. Fred and Billy followed with the captives close behind, and the other Regulators brought up the rear. They passed rising hills, the Kid looked around, he'd been here before. Blackwater Draw never did seem to start before it deepened around you; a furrow in the earth, the stray lost cliff, some cottonwoods and junipers springing from folds. The snakes in his head made his thoughts scatter. When he saw the cottonwoods clustered in arroyos he thought of pubic hair that grows in damp creases; of human bodies and their soft folds, of their foggy, vague, futile resistance to force. Skin was a barrier for the eye, nothing else. The softest touch kills. If it wasn't for the atmospheric pressure, Fred once had told him, you would likely explode just from swatting a mosquito.

  A cuesta lengthened on their right, a high yellow cliff slapped up against a raise, as they ascended a parabolic valley toward Blackwater Holes. Here, a damp gouge defined the draw's shifting axis, now east and now south, and cottonwoods nubbed its ill-defined banks, and growing shadows crossed them. Averting his eyes, Billy registered the sun edging steadily toward the gray-blue Capitans. He saw, looking back at Morton and Baker, sunlight casting their shadows in the dust their horses raised and thought all men are shadows—one of Fred's saws. Here we are in shadowland, even shadows have shadows.

  He swiveled back and faced west just as a jackrabbit crossed Fred's path, one ear standing up stiff as a wiping stick, the other flapdoo-dling nearly to the ground. You could just see the light shining through his raised ear as the rabbit disappeared into the brush. It would shine through your hand. All at once the light collapsed. The sun slipped behind Capitan Mountain and its yellow-orange glow darkened the peak, steeling its outline. It was late afternoon. Rising moisture in the air. Spokes of sunlight behind Capitan's helmet wheeled into the sky, and the mountain turned into air and white fire. The larger peak behind outlined Sunset Peak in front, its volatile shadow containing it perfectly, exactly like a helmet on a darkened head, and the posse stopped, awestruck. With a smile, Frank McNab shot McCloskey in the ear, the red gout of blood spat by his other ear sparkling in the sun, suspended in air, the intact portion of his hair catching fire, McNab saying as he shot, "You are the turncoat that has got to die before harm can come to these fellows, are you?"

  He was talking to a corpse. As McCloskey fell his horse bolted. Morton and Baker spurred their blown mounts, clinging to their necks, and Billy fired wildly, his heart going crazy. At the head of the valley, where a pair of inlets formed Blackwater Draw, the seep from a spring had muddied the ground, and this slowed the fleeing horses. Too late, boys. You should have seen the willows. Billy raced up and, calming himself, fired through Baker's thigh, through his saddle, through his horse, whose eye-whites ballooned as he folded going down. The horse landed on Baker, pinning his legs. Then the Kid fired at Morton who, on his mount, had just spun around, dropping his jaw. The ball shattered his teeth, severed his tongue, and drove into his brain before he could scream. He landed in mud.

  Billy dismounted, approached Frank Baker, took off his hat, knocked the dust from his pants. He did feel calmer now but just to be certain he stuffed the hat into the armpit of his gun hand and held out the free hand with its palm down, staring it into level immobility. Without lowering the hand, he walked slowly toward Baker, tongue jutting from his mouth, and pointed his pistol. The hat dropped. Legs pinned by his horse, Baker was propped on one shaky elbow, pale as milk, but he sneered at the Kid. The man whose face supported the Darwinian theory waved his free arm, both defiant and cowed, his meaty paw rubbing a notional canvas as though to erase his puny assassin. The first shot ripped the flesh between his thumb and finger, baring the bones. The thumb hung limp. An artery was shred. Still waving back and forth, his hand became a hose. The second pulped his eye, and blood from the eye filled the hairs of his beard, gluing them together, and ran down his neck. Only when he seemed to grasp that he was dead did he collapse.

  The others rode up and fired into the bodies. Their communion of lead. Not much that Dick Brewer could do about it now. His shots were the last two, one for each corpse. The Kid remounted, they rode back to McCloskey, Billy raving all the while about why McCloskey did it, went and got himself shot, he should have known better, he wasn't altogether vile. A sharp hand at monte. Too bad he turned tail. "Fucking Judas," Billy said in a spasm of bitterness. His shoulders and arms were trembling again, enough to beat the band, he couldn't stop them if he wanted.

  Then he slowly withdrew—retracted his soul—a process that entailed his eyes hooding over and narrowing to slits, his mind contracting to a hard little stone, his body feeling annoyed at every little fidget from his scared horse. It would not be that awful to be the only person left alive in the universe.

  Henry Brown rode off to catch McCloskey's horse, the rest on their nervous mounts looked down at his body. From where McCloskey lay they could peer up the valley to the other two corpses draining into earth, and to Baker's horse kicking, the shadows crawling toward them, Capitan on fire, the rest of the world having gone into hiding inside hills and rocks and crepuscular grass and sparse trees and willows. If you sent your eye out it wouldn't see things, it would see light and water moving through folds of matter. One of McCloskey's eyes was wide open, the other closed, telling fibs.

  All at once Billy felt an afflatus. He swelled like a bladder, rose in the air, his edges expanded and touched the horizon, and now he looked down at the others from above. He spotted Fred Waite looking angry and confused, swiveling his head—staring off into the distance. And Dick Brewer impassive, John Middleton grinning. And the others on horses who sensed their impatience and swung around repeatedly, anxious to return to Lincoln like their riders, who would tell their fellow citizens what had transpired here once they got their stories straight.

  9. 1878

  War

  BILLY AND THE REGULATORS rode on to Francisco Gutiérrez's sheep camp, and Dick Brewer promised him money from Alexander McSween if he'd bury the bodies—bury them fast. But it wasn't fast enough. When the word spread, Sheriff Brady and his deputies rushed to Blackwater Draw and counted eleven bullets in Morton's body, one for each Regulator—the same number in Baker's—and found McCloskey's brains still dripping from the single hole in his head. Gutiérrez and his sons had just begun the graves. In Lincoln, the Kid and the other Regulators spread manure for the populace. The captives were shot while escaping, they said, and Morton himself shot Bill McCloskey before making a run. Later they heard about Brady's response. Morton shot his best friend? the sheriff sneered. Shot him with what?—he was being held a prisoner. With a gun he had hidden about his person, was the story. That would have to be a derringer, Brady concluded, and derringer exit holes at close range are large and ugly. McCloskey's, he said, was small and clean.

  It would be laughable, said Brady, this story they've invented, if it did not involve such bloodthirsty deeds.

  The Regulators made their way to San Patricio and holed up there in Dow's store. They couldn't stay in Lincoln. The governor himself, Samuel B. Axtell, had revoked Squire Wilson's appointment as justice of the peace, and Widenmann's as deputy U.S. marshal, thus invalidating their arrest warrants. The Regulators were no longer a duly authorized posse, overnight their stripes had changed, they were a gang of assassins. Now Dolan rode herd on his sheriff, William Brady, to stir his stumps pronto and round up these so-called Regulators and arrest their employer, Alexander McSween. And if they try to escape, you know what to do.

  Word reached Dow's store that someone—John Chisum? Alexander McSween?—might not object if Sheriff Brady were killed and might even remember the five hundred dollars he'd squirreled away in an old shoebox, which he just might award to the execution-ists. The Kid and his chums, bunking at the store in a backroom, sat on empty barrels and lip-chewed this rumor. The killing got easier each ti
me, Billy knew, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but this Brady reward, he asked the others; now, whose idea was it? Chisum, the respected rancher and businessman? Alexander McSween, the esteemed attorney? McSween was their overboss. What was really driving him? With a criminal charge of embezzlement against Macky, a civil process of attachment still in effect, and the sheriff and a patrol of soldiers scouring the area, trying to flush him out, Mac had informed them he was pushing the limit. And his wife was back, Brewer pointed out, back from St. Louis. Both of them holed up at Chisum's ranch. She's the whip hand, said Billy. She eggs Macky on, she must be the one. And five hundred dollars! The McSweens don't even have five hundred dollars.

  "How do you know?" asked Dick.

  "What if Chisum's backing him?"

  "Chisum plays his cards close."

  Fred Waite asked, "When did that woman come back?"

  "Sue McSween arrives when and where she pleases."

  "And she's egging him on? She's a Lady Macbeth?"

  "Who's that?"

  "This haggish woman that washed her hands of murder and it wouldn't come off."

  "Is that history, Fred?"

  "Maybe Sue's putting up the five hundred dollars."

  "Sue McSween?" said Jim French. "Sue puts out, she don't have to put up."

  Inertia. No one knew what to do. Then wheels began to turn as though of their own accord. At John Chisum's ranch, McSween climbed into a buckboard with his wife—Chisum and some traveling merchants followed in a second wagon—and drove west to Lincoln for the commencement of the April term of court, to give himself up. If you fought in the courts as opposed to the wilderness, at least like the gods the law could be wheedled. But ten miles from Lincoln the weather grew sleet}' and Sue insisted that they put up in La Junta. And up the road in San Pat, Billy Bonney roused the others and, minus Dick Brewer, who didn't like the smell of this, they loaded up and snuck out and soft-pedaled it to Lincoln, tying gunny sacks around their horses' feet when they reached the edge of town. The new twelve-foot-high defensive wall Macky had started around his house was still unfinished in back, and the Kid stepped across the footers and knocked. On the last night of March, in solid dark raked by horizontal sleet, he was met by Rob Widenmann at the kitchen door. "Where's Mac?" asked Rob.

  "Still at Chisum's," said Billy. He and the others brushed past Rob, swaggered through the kitchen, and landed in the parlor, muddy boots and all, where John Middleton said, "I suppose all you got is skink?" Rob replied, "Hardly," and found the Pike's Magnolia that Sue McSween kept hidden in her desk, for her husband was a teetotaler. Only Billy and Fred didn't drink. The rest of the boys freely blew it in, although in perfect silence; it wouldn't do to betray their presence in Lincoln.

  "Brewer did not come?" Widenmann asked.

  Fred said, "No."

  Billy bucked monte with Fred at a table. Fred was El Montero. Middleton sat before Sue McSween's organ and drummed the cover on the keys pretending to play; he couldn't play regardless. Rob Widenmann drew an imaginary bow across the fiddle wedged beneath his chin, flexing the bow arm like a swan's neck, and Frank McNab and Henry Brown danced—cantered back and forth, swung each other around—but slowly, miming stateliness and pomp. Candle-and lamplight cast their shadows on the wall. Fred showed the gate and the Kid shoved a button across the table toward his expressionless friend. They weren't playing for money; Billy had found Sue McSween's cigar box of buttons on her desk. He spotted a young girl at the far door watching the silent musicians and dancers; it was Pearl, he knew, Reverend Ealy's daughter. The missionary from Pennsylvania and his brood still lived in a wing of McSween's house. Her eyes were wide open. He wondered what she saw. Crusaders for justice or bloodthirsty savages? Bloodthirsty savages make a lot of noise, so Pearl must be watching justice take a breather. Jim French leaned his head against the wall, closed his eyes, and softly hummed—the only sound in the room. When he opened his eyes, Billy saw he was smiling and beckoning to Pearl but she shook her head and vanished. Around two A.M., the Kid asked Widenmann, "Have you got any spoons?"

  "How many?"

  "Seven."

  Widenmann held out a fan of spoons as the gang filed out the back door with their rifles. Each chose a spoon—his ticket to hell. "Harry's grinding wheel is still in the store," said Rob. "Beside the axes." They crept through looming cottonwoods to Tunstall's shuttered store and saw overhead that the clouds had blown out. The cold dry stars sliding above them just skimmed the bare branches. Rob unlocked the store, relocked it behind them, lit an oil lamp. Billy went first; he sharpened his spoon, Fred cranking the wheel. When Widenmann cracked the back door open, Tunstall's dog, Punch, in the corral barked and howled to beat all, and Rob ran out there and pretty soon the dog stopped. Outside, Billy saw he'd tethered the animal in the far corner before his food dish, then muzzled him; so much for the food. Surrounded by a six-foot-high adobe wall, the corral was attached to the back of the store, extending beyond it to the east. This was where Tunstall had kept his prize mounts, where Brady and the Dolanites had first set up camp to attach the Englishman's merchandise and horses. East of the store, the high thick wall for about twenty feet faced Lincoln's single road, and here by starlight the Kid stretched himself out on the ground and set to work. Adobe, he knew, was thick and heavy stuff but somewhat yielding to patience. Using his spoon, he gouged a porthole in the wall, and the others as they exited the store with their sharpened spoons spread out along the wall and followed suit, a hole for each man. The only sound in the night was the scritch of digging spoons in the dried mud, straw, and clay, plus their whispered curses. Your hole, Billy said, must be large enough to sight an accurate bead but not so large as to be seen from the road.

  As they finished, one by one, the men dropped their spoons and leaned back against the wall, rifles in their arms, to sleep off the Pike's Magnolia.

  Dawn. Faint light in the sky but a shadow on earth, as though the sky itself had cast it; then a fading gray felt; then whiskey-colored air; then the cold-pressing sky weakening to blue. "Rattle your hocks," William Bonney said, and six rough-looking customers clawed sand from their eyes, unglued their tongues, rubbed their leaden brows. Some were still drunk, which helped them endure the taste of rotten spit. The Kid, however, was sober as a judge and tense and disgusted by his rank comrades. Someone had to do it. Someone had to keep an edge and narrow his bead and maintain cold ideas as to leveling the score.

  Lincoln woke up. Lying at his porthole, Billy watched the town stir, smelled the charcoal, heard roosters. A wagon chirped and rattied up the road, hissing through puddles left from last evening's sleet. Odors hung in the air. Sweet piñón smoke, smell of coffee. Sheep and goats bleated. From the west end of town, a commotion of legs and barking dogs and good mornings moved in their direction but the store blocked his view. Widenmann, at the far wall of the corral, kept watch standing on a barrel. "They're coming," he announced.

  Billy levered his rifle. Five echoes followed. To those behind the wall it was a bone-crushing sound but on the street no one turned, not Billy Matthews nor George Peppin, carbines cradled in their arms. "Hold your water," said the Kid. Then came George Hindman and Sheriff Brady twenty feet behind, Brady's red face beaming like a lantern as he marched through his town. Reaching to his chin, entirely embracing the bottom half of his face, his mustache resembled a well-fed rodent. A familiar Winchester lay across his arms, and Billy flushed—it was his, the one the sheriff had sequestered when he threw him in jail. He dug his boot-toes in the dirt. Brady's little procession, he knew, was headed for the courthouse to post a notice for the April term of court, and the first-water fools weaved around puddles trying not to muddy their freshly shined boots. A waste of polish if you're dead. The sun found a notch in the hills to the south and raised the soggy road just as Brady's coat jumped like a sack of frogs, his arm flipping funny, and the Kid realized they'd already fired. And who gave the order? Apparently no intentionality was involved. All of them had fired and from their po
rtholes it was easy: Brady and his men were half-pint figurines, gewgaws on a shelf, and they shattered into bits. They fired again, and this time the noise and smoke slammed against the wall, obscuring Billy's porthole. People were shouting. Brady, he saw through drifting dust, sat in the road. Someone had rushed out and lifted George Hindman and held a cup to his mouth. "Oh, Lord," Brady groaned, trying to rise, then all fired a third time and Hindman was ripped from his ministrant's arms while closer to their wall Brady fell back. Close or far, it didn't matter. Hindman lay still. Later, Billy learned that a stray bullet had crossed the road, sped over a field, found Squire Wilson hoeing his onion patch, and passed through his buttocks.

  Brady half sat, half lay there kicking. Dark bloody flowers aghast in earth around him. On an impulse, the Kid hurdled the wall and ran into the road to recover his rifle, the Winchester Mr. Tunstall had made him a gift of. And as he ran out and as Jim French followed, as they beelined for the street, William Brady, who'd ridden in from his ranch that morning; who was born in County Cavan the eldest of eight and took communion habitually from the age of seven and crossed the ocean from Ireland, joined the Union army, served in Texas as a sergeant for a five-year hitch, then reenlisted for another five years, only to be discharged when the Civil War started; who joined the Second New Mexico Volunteer Infantry as first lieutenant, rising to command of Fort Stanton by war's end; who was mustered out as a captain with a brevet of major; who married Maria Bonifacio Chaves Montoya and fathered nine children, the ninth still in her belly on this April morning; who served as sheriff, U.S. commissioner, and Lincoln's first elected representative in the territorial legislature; who was forty-eight years old; died.