Lucky Billy

by John Vernon

  "And you're still angry about it?"

  "I've calmed down a little. I'm sick of all the fighting. It still gets to me, though. You wouldn't know it sometimes because I make a lot of jokes. I'm not really a killer. I may be a general spiteful fellow, I've never been satisfied anywhere I was, but I have got some pride. These newspapers don't know the first thing about me. 'I le will go down in history.' Well, if that's true, they better get it right. I'm not a cold-blooded tough. I want things to square up, that's all I want. Those people that killed Mr. Tunstall ought to pay."

  "Attorney Chapman, too."

  "The same damn men."

  "Yes, your former friends."

  "That rankles me, too. I made it up with them and look at what they did."

  "I understand. You'd like your name to be cleared. You don't wish to be a scapegoat." Wallace smiled, the dreamy eye glowed. All at once his heart melted. "I'll level with you, Mr. Bonney. 'Kid.'" He held up some scribbled pages. "This is not the information you've given me. That is stored away in here." He tapped his forehead. "No, this is part of a book I am writing. This is where my heart lies. I have been writing it in my spare time in Santa Fe since becoming governor. Writing it in the Palace of Governors. Ha! Palace! Have you ever seen the place? Hardly a palace. But it has been my"—he sniffed—"my portal to a different world. The second door from the west end plaza-front opens into a spacious passage. Take the first left-hand door in that passage, pass through my office, and there is a room with one small window, grimy walls, undressed boards, and rain-stained cedar rafters. The ceiling bends beneath the weight of many tons of wet mud. Palace! I submit to you, this so-called palace is more like a cave. A place built when William Shakespeare was alive! It leaks on rainy clays, I must have a fire to counteract the damp. But once there, at my rough pine table—not unlike this one—I am the Count of Monte Cristo in his dungeon of stone, lost to the world. I lock the door, bolt the windows, and bury myself in these very pages." He rattled the foolscap. "I know no happier way of passing the time in these dangerous wilds. It takes me so completely out of the present world."

  Wallace smiled at Billy.

  "My book is what they call a toga novel. The hero is a rebel and a fighter. He's much like you—impetuous. And he also seeks revenge. It is nearly his undoing. He is a Jew, you see, and the Jews are rebelling against their Roman oppressors. His father's long dead; he has inherited the estate; they were quite rich. Judah Ben-Hur—for that is his name—searches for another father in the course of the narrative. Various elders essentially adopt him: Quintus Arrius, a Roman; Balthasar, an Egyptian. I realize these names mean nothing to you. He comes into his own under their love and guidance but never manages to expel the hatred from his heart. Like you, Ben-Hur finds himself in a predicament. He hates a man who had been his closest friend when they were young, a Roman named Messala. This man turns on Ben-Hur, has him arrested. He sells him into slavery, confiscates his wealth, imprisons his mother and sister. And when the chance presents itself—I shall not go into details, but my hero, through the agency of a father figure, regains his freedom from slavery—when the chance presents itself, Ben-Hur crushes his former friend, his great strength and cunning leaving his antagonist a cripple for life. And note the exquisite irony, 'Kid.'" Wallace couldn't help placing Billy's sobriquet in quotes. "Messala had made his former friend a slave, and the latter acquired his strength as an oarsman on a Roman galley. Are you following the sinuous turns of my plot? Now he uses that strength to defeat his antagonist in a chariot race. While overtaking Messala, he snags the Roman's wheel with the iron-shod point of his axle. In the ensuing violent crash, Messala almost dies. Of course, he lives on to plot against his enemy but his power is diminished. There you have my story, or the extent of it thus far. I've researched it impeccably. It has a charming picturesqueness in its descriptions of scenery, persons, and customs. Its philosophy is sound and its moral and religious tone is pure. And it teems with adventure as well, 'Kid.' Adventure and love. In her jocular manner, my spouse refers to my novel as 'Christ and a horse race.' The Christ, you see, appears in my book. A daring feat for a novelist."

  "A horse race?" said Billy.

  "Yes, exactly." Wallace grew excited. Smiled, widened his eyes. Dry spittle webbed the corners of his mouth and he wiped them with his forefinger and thumb. "You would enjoy it thoroughly. You're a horseman, are you not? 'On, Altair! On, Rigel! What, Antares! Dost thou linger now? Good horse—oho, Aldebaran. Well done! Ha, ha!'"

  "What sort of names are those?"

  "Arabian. They are Arabian horses. 'Ben-Hur! Ben-Hur!' shout the common people, cheering on the race. Among the Romans under the consul's awning, it is a different story. 'By Hercules!' says one. 'The dog throws all his weight on the bits.'"

  "The dog?"

  "Let me put to you a question, Mr. Bonney. Ben-Hur has had his revenge; his enemy lies broken. But the Romans still govern his beloved homeland. He secretly raises three legions of Jews and trains them to fight and drive the Romans from Judea. But one evening he receives a letter from a friend. The letter tells him about a new king, a savior, who will lead the Jews from bondage. Imagine his disappointment, then, when he finds this man dressed not as a real king but as a common carpenter, with sun-scorched hair and ordinary sandals. What should he do? The question to me is hardly academic. This is the fork in my story right now. Should he fight against the Romans or follow this so-called king in the desert?"

  "I know what you're driving at. It's Jesus, right?"

  "Exactly! The Christ!"

  "Well, he had his revenge, he might as well go ahead and repent."

  "It's not a matter of repenting. The Romans occupy his land."

  "Why not kick them out first then follow Jesus?"

  "Is that how you would do it? Remember, this king is his spiritual father. He's been searching for a father all his life."

  "I don't know why he'd do that. I never missed having a father myself. Fathers be fucked. All they ever do is put in a gay time and crawl out the back window. If they run into money, that's it right there, you never see them again. I'll tell you what you ought to do. This Ben ought to make a secret meeting with the emperor. The emperor gets himself up as an ordinary man and sneaks out of his palace and meets him in a shack like this one here. It's late at night. Midnight. Just a lantern on the table. And your Ben shows up and the emperor waiting there offers him a bargain. I'll leave you alone if you turn in the rebels, that's what he could say. It depends on if Ben is still in it for revenge or if he's for himself now. Sometimes there comes a time when your best friend is yourself and to hell with all the rest. Jesus Christ doesn't have a damn thing to do with it. Some people won't let you live your own life. You have to haul freight or make yourself an arrangement. Once you discover there is no hell, your job is to make it soft on yourself, hot for everyone else. Give that a try, Governor. That's how you could write it."

  "What's that noise?" Wallace jumped up. The Kid grabbed his Winchester, Wallace warily padded to the door. "Singing," he announced. "Someone's singing outside." He unbarred the door, swung it open, peered into the night. In the dark outside, illuminated by torches, a handful of Mexicans, women and men, serenaded the shack. Wrapped in serapes, one man played a guitar, another sawed on a fiddle. The young women wore long silver earrings and silk-embroidered shawls; ringlet curls hanging from their piled hair had been pasted to their foreheads with wet sugar.

  Por la luna doy un peso,

  por el lucero un tostón

  Por Bilicito famoso—

  mi vida y mi corazón.

  Wallace and the Kid stood at the door. "So you're a hero, is that it? A man of the people?" The governor's eyebrows wedged across his nose.

  "They're my friends."

  "An object of tender regard, I suppose. A good brave boy?"

  Billy shrugged.

  "Our meeting tonight was supposed to be a secret. You were not to breathe a word."

  "Well, I told them. Just in case.
"

  "You're the one not to be trusted, then. How can I know you'll keep our bargain?"

  They stared at each other. Wallace filled with disgust. The three-day journey from Santa Fe, this filthy shack offensive to the nostrils, the snoring justice of the peace. When you consort with blackguards this is what you get. He'd already, in his mind, begun washing his hands of the cherubic "Kid," then he thought of Pontius Pilate. Don't be too hasty, General. When vacillation raised her six drooling heads he called himself general to precipitate resolve.

  As for Billy, watching this fatuous man, he thought of all the chances he'd let slip. The chance to stay with Tunstall instead of racing past him the day he was murdered. The chance to kill Dolan when they stood back to back in the street the other night. James Dolan's grin was sheer you-be-damned; his life's purpose was making other people feel worthless. Dolan wouldn't keep their so-called pact any more than a sieve keeps water. "Go ahead and arrest me. You'll see what I do. I'll be at Gutiérrez's place near San Pat. Send Kimbrell with men you can depend on. I'll testify when the court meets in April."

  15. May 1881

  Escape

  LEW WALLACE, WHAT A BLOWHARD. Riding north along the Pecos, Billy admits he should have seen it coming. When he broods on Wallace, as he can't help doing now, halfway between John Meadows's little ranch and John Chisum's enormous one, the urge claws his heart and he has to choke it off, the urge to go to Santa Fe and take the second entrance from the plaza-front and knock on the door to the left in that passage and walk through the general's office into his cave with the single window and the weight of many tons of mud overhead and the rough pine table where the flannelmouth governor writes his darling books and tap him on the shoulder and when he turns around blow off his head.

  He'd be guarded.

  I know. It's too late for that now.

  He sweet-talked you, Henry.

  He never intended to hold up his end.

  And you held up yours.

  Shows you what a sucker, Ma.

  Cotton drifts on the air from the trees along the river. Pronghorn tracks through a muddy draw lead to the water, high and fast from spring rain. Beyond the road ahead, black anvil clouds rise above the horizon. The cotton's everywhere, on his clothes, in his mouth. It scoots in lacy throws across the wagon road, thickens to folds. Iron-trunked cottonwoods growing high beside the river produce the thready stuff.

  He testified as agreed against James Dolan, even Colonel Dudley. And Dolan was indicted, though his venue got changed to Doña Ana County. And once Billy'd spilled the beans and his own case came up, District Attorney Rynerson, a Dolanite, challenged the governor's right to grant him immunity, and Wallace never fought it. By then he was back at his palace in Santa Fe. The Kid got indicted for Sheriff Brady's murder, also Buckshot Roberts's, and was held under house arrest at Juan Patrón's in Lincoln. Holed up in his backroom, writing Ben-Hur. A Tale of the Christ, how could Wallace be bothered with a cocky pistolero in a starving desert where romance never flowered and Christ never walked? I wrote to him, Ma. I bugged him on his promises and never got so much as a thank you, no thanks. So I skinned out.

  And look what it got you.

  It bought me some time before Garrett caught me. It got me where I am. As long as I'm alive.

  It brought you right back to a stealing whoring life.

  Don't forget passing counterfeit money.

  You never listened to me. You were always stubborn.

  Don't start, Ma.

  I want this, I want that. I want a piece of bread. You didn't ask for it, you screamed. Don't say I want, Henry, I said, be polite, say please. Please, Mother, may I have a piece of bread? I want it, I want it, I want it, you'd scream. I remember your brother got tired of your screaming and knocked you down and straddled your chest arid there he was braining you on the kitchen floor. Say please, he's screaming, say please, say please! I had to pull him off. Remember that?

  No.

  Would you listen for a minute? No, Mother. No, sir. No, ma'am. You never listen.

  No, Mother.

  I always felt hard done by. You never would listen. Wash your hands, say your prayers. Don't touch that, it's filthy. Eat your fish, mind your manners, dress warm, clean your nails. I'd take you to the fish market and people would say, What a pretty young man. I've never seen such a pretty young man.

  That's enough, Ma.

  Lot of good it does him, says I, he's the devil incarnate. A boy that pretty? It isn't possible, they'd say.

  Mother, please.

  Then once you stayed in bed all day. Remember that?

  Yes, ma'am.

  You were eight years old, maybe seven, I don't know. You would not get out of bed, not that day nor the next. I had to pretend I didn't care at first but after a while I couldn't help myself. Get out of bed, I said. Say please, you said. Please, I said, Henry, please get out of bed. I'll think about it, you said.

  Mother.

  I was peeling you spuds. Boiled them up the way you liked. Never any coal. Cold stove, cold rooms. Is that why you did it? You were cold, so?

  Mother, that's enough.

  I was at my wits' end. Don't get up just to make me happy, I said. Do it because you want to get up. I cried, I paced the floor. You were such a cruel child. At last you said, All right, then, I'll get up. Happy, Ma? I shook my head. Are you doing it for me?—well, don't. It's all right, Ma, I'll do it for myself, I want to get up. Don't eat dirt, I said. Our people don't eat dirt. I was bringing you food, if you remember. Serving your majesty. Eat some more peelers. One day, you jumped off the table in the kitchen just to see if I'd catch you. Watch this, Ma! Made a lump this big. Yours truly had to heat up a razor and cut out the lump. Remember that?

  Yes'm.

  You were brave, so, I'll say that. Lay there while I cut, never shed a tear. That's the stubbornness, too. Was it Josie or you got the coals down your sleeve? You were swinging the censer at mass, remember? And the lid was loose and two or three coals fell down your sleeve? High mass, if I recall. Of course this would happen right at the consecration and you couldn't cry out or stop swinging the incense, even as the coals burned through your flesh.

  Ma. That's enough.

  You must have thought then that God was sending you a message. I remember the shock on your cute little face. And that was just a taste. A few coals, that's all, not the fiery pit itself. I'm burning up, Ma. Make it stop. Make it stop. Mother, may I cry out? May I shoot that man, Mother? Shoot them all, Henry dear, every last one, what difference does it make? Clean your gun, child...

  A drumbling of earth comes from the road behind him. He finds a break in the sandy bluff above the river and descends through the carrizo. Dismounts, holds the reins. The hammering of hooves grows louder, breaks the air. Through the cane, he spots ten or fifteen Apaches under care of their agent, whom he doesn't recognize. Ever since Victorio lit out to old Mexico, those Apaches left behind have simmered down. They sit on their mounts upright as posts unswervingly watching the road before them. Presumably on a buffalo hunt. A hunt for the sacred buffalo whose once-flood of meat has dried up entirely. Still, it has to feel good to get out for a change.

  Further north, approaching Roswell, he spots a lone figure ahead on the road. This lump approaches strangely, without growing larger. The Kid begins to realize he's walking—unhorsed—not even driving a buggy; hence his slow rate of inflation as he nears. He brokenly flap-steps. No threat, Billy senses. A peddler, he sees, pushing his cart. He's dressed odd, too. Chinese sun hat, linen duster, bandanna, sturdy black shoes. The bandanna's been raised across his nose and mouth but he pulls it down, exposing his face, as Billy draws closer. He looks as though both of his eyes have been blackened. Then the Kid sees it's just a pair of tinted spectacles. "Good day," he says, smiling. Short man, long coat. Wide nose, crooked teeth, a rash of black bristles. The two-handled cart on wheels is a cross between a trunk and wheelbarrow.

  They've both stopped. "Good day," the Kid answers
.

  "I suppose you're another one of Chisum's cowboys?" His croak-infested voice sounds querulous, amused.

  "No."

  "You're a friend of Mr. Chisum?"

  "Not no more," says Billy. "You're coming from there?"

  "It's another ten miles."

  "I know how far it is."

  "Now I see you up close, I can tell you're not a cowboy."

  "How so?"

  "No leggings, no gloves, no rope. Nor, these." He removes his spectacles.

  "What's those?"

  "Dark nippers. Tinted specs. The latest thing, essential for cowboys. I sold bushels of these at Mr. Chisum's ranch."

  "Why would anyone buy such a thing?"

  "So as not to squint."

  "What's wrong with squinting?"

  The man widely smiles. "You're a sly devil, ain't it? Tell me—no. Let me guess. You've cowed before, haven't you? You're not a cowboy now."

  "That's the state of the case."

  "You've done your share of squinting, in other words. A hat doesn't help. It shows on your face."

  "Shows how?"

  "Gullies across the forehead, young man. Lines at the eyes. How old are you, son?"

  "Old enough."

  "Damage from the sun has caused men not much older than you to go blind."

  "I enjoy to squint. What would I be without my facial squint? I wouldn't know myself."

  "Squinting's not half of it. Sunbeams, dust. They molder the eye-strings, canker the ball. Spectacles like these are a salve for the eye. One day, you'll waken up and find your very sight decayed, like a cloth. You'll no longer see through it, you'll merely see the ragged ends." He opens the lid of his box on wheels revealing tinted glasses on a velvet display board.

  "That all you sell?"

  "There are ribbons, pins, needles, buttonhooks, and other such sundry underneath. It was a glad day in this starving country when i found products I could sell to the male sex, too. Men outnumber women here ten to one."

  "How much are the glasses?"