Deadwood

by Pete Dexter

  Boone closed his eyes and dropped his head back onto the mattress. "Get me a pillow," he said. "I got torpid fever, I need a pillow to rest my head."

  Swearingen looked at Boone's face, which was pasty and white. "You ain't the color for torpid fever," he said. "You're supposed to be yellow . . ."

  "In a pig's ass," he said.

  Swearingen cracked the door and looked outside. The boy wasn't there. "I need fluids," Boone said.

  Swearingen picked up the bottle of Tutt's Pills and read the symptoms of torpid fever out loud off the label. "Loss of appetite, bowels constive, pain in the head with a dull sensation in the back part, pain under the shoulder blade, fullness after eating . . ." Boone groaned and held his stomach. "... A disinclination to exertion of body or mind, irritability of temper, low spirits with a feeling of having neglected some duty, weariness, dizziness, fluttering at the heart, dots before the eyes, yellow skin, headache, and constipation." He put the bottle back on the floor. "See there?" he said. "It said yellow skin. You're the wrong color."

  Boone glistened with sweat. "I got it," he said, "or I got something worse. Get me fluids."

  "I got something better," Swearingen said. He took all the money out of his pocket—it was close to four hundred dollars—and laid it on the bed next to Boone. "All you got to do is get up," he said. "Put your pants on and shoot one pilgrim, then you can go right back to bed."

  Boone lifted his head far enough to see the money. "I can't shoot nothin' now," he said. "I got spots in front of my eyes."

  Swearingen had a vision of the boy's face, it appeared through the hole in the Gem's door. He heard his wife again. He went upstairs. He decided to strangle her after Boone shot the boy.

  "I should of killed him when I had the chance," Swearingen said. He thought of how the boy had looked with the knife in his mouth and his britches pulled down. He'd felt generous after it was over, and now the boy was back to revenge himself.

  Boone was still looking at the money. "That's a rule to live by," he said, "always kill them when you got the chance, or it's a law of nature that they'll come back to kill you."

  Swearingen suddenly couldn't draw enough air into his lungs to breathe. The room seemed cold, and he had to piss. "I'll give you five hundred," he said.

  Boone groaned. "Five hundred dollars don't do any good if I'm dead from torpid fever," he said. He put two fingers on his left wrist and felt his pulse. He moved the hand from there to his forehead. He said, "I never felt like this in my life."

  Swearingen cracked the door again; the boy hadn't found him yet. "Let me stay a while," he said. "If you start to die, I'll go find the doc."

  Boone's good eye narrowed. "How long?" he said. It struck Swearingen as a peculiar question from a man planning to die.

  "A day," he said.

  Boone picked up the money and held it in front of his face, like a relative he was trying to recognize from his deathbed. "One day," he said, "but don't mess nothin' up." He put the money on the mattress and lay flat on his back, on top of it, and closed his eyes.

  There was one window in the cabin. Swearingen stood beside it and looked outside. From that angle the Hills appeared steep and dangerous. The window frame had warped in the fall rains, and stuck when he tried to pull it open. He tried again, resetting his feet, and it came up two inches and stopped.

  Swearingen checked the bed, but Boone hadn't moved. He unbuttoned his pants. The crack in the window was a foot lower than his peeder, and he stood there a minute deciding how to get it done. If he was alone, he would have just taken a step back and pissed. There was something about Boone May, though, that you didn't want to piss any distance across his floor, and so Swearingen moved closer to the window and bent his knees—as much as he could, standing against a wall—until his peeder was even with the opening.

  He looked behind himself once more—Boone's eyes were still closed—and let it go. And when he looked back out the window— it couldn't have been two seconds—the boy was standing six feet tall on the other side, holding the book under his arm, watching him. "You can't hide," he said.

  Swearingen began to run, but couldn't stop himself pissing. He yelled, no words, just the sound. Urine hit the window, the walls, his shoes. Swearingen hated to have piss on his shoes. The boy held the book up in front of him, and Swearingen saw a picture on the cover of a snake with wings. He yelled again, and heard Boone moving on the bed.

  The boy stood still, staring at him over the book.

  Swearingen got his peeder back in his pants and backed away from the window. Boone was sitting on the bed in his long underwear, his feet on the floor. He had the money he'd taken from Swearingen in his hand.

  "Five hundred dollars," Swearingen said, pointing out the window. "I'll get it for you as soon as he's dead."

  "I need fluids," he said.

  "The chance is now," Swearingen said. "All you got to do is shoot him, I'll go get five hundred dollars, more if you want."

  Boone stood up and walked to the window. He looked out, the boy looked in. Boone cleared his throat. "Could you get me some tea?" he said. "I got torpid fever."

  Swearingen looked around the room for something to shoot, but couldn't find even a squirrel gun.

  "I am here for the Lord," the boy said.

  Boone said, "The Lord don't want me to die," and then he coughed. He said, "That's why he brung you here, to save me." Swearingen stood by the bed, watching the boy over Boone May's shoulder.

  "I come to confront the evil side," he said.

  Boone May started to laugh, but it broke into a cough. He said, "What kind of evil are you hunting, son?" The boy didn't answer. Boone turned around and looked at Swearingen. "He's the evil side of something," he said. "But a missionary's first obligations is to minister to the sick."

  The boy stood quiet. Then he said, "What kind of tea?"

  "Hot tea with honey." The boy tried to look around Boone for Swearingen. "There's time for that later," Boone said, moving into his view. "When winter comes and everything's froze, there ain't nothing else to do but hunt evil. Right now, though, you could save a man's got torpid fever . . ." He coughed again, deep, and spit on the floor.

  "I'll be back," the boy said. "Evil cannot hide from good, for they are of the same Lord."

  Boone said, "Make sure they give you honey, it runs right through you without the honey."

  The boy left the window and Boone went back to his bed. He pulled the blanket back, and as he got in Swearingen saw the flash of a shotgun. "You got your gun in there with you?" he said. "In bed?" Boone closed his eyes. "How come you didn't just shoot him, you had your gun right there?"

  "I'm sick," he said, without opening his eyes. "How come you didn't shoot him yourself?"

  The panicky feeling returned then, the same feeling he got when the boy stood up and started across the street to the Gem. "I want my money back," Swearingen said. "That money was to kill somebody."

  As sick as he was, Boone smiled.

  Swearingen opened the door and looked outside. He saw the boy had probably gone to the hotel, if he meant to bring tea. He considered running the other way. "1 put a goose gun right on him," he said, as much to himself as Boone May. "But when I fired, he wasn't there. It's something spooky about that boy . . ."

  "I don't see the peril," Boone said.

  "You heard what he said, he come to do battle with evil."

  Boone sighed. "Did you think he meant to beat you to death with his book?" he said. And then he began to cough from deep in his lungs, and Swearingen sat down in the corner and listened to it until he believed Boone May was dying. And he knew, in some way he couldn't explain, that he was dying too.

  It was eleven o'clock Sunday morning.

  Charley was coming out of the grand union hotel on the way to Mrs. Langrishe's house and the party for Agnes Lake, wearing a necktie and a brand-new hat, when he saw the boy.

  "Malcolm?" The boy was walking through the front doors, carrying a tray of hot tea.
He had pressed a heavy-looking book between his arm and his side, and was in danger of dropping it all. Charley had last seen him lying in the back of the wagon, when Bill was alive. "Malcolm?"

  The boy stopped and looked at him, blinking. His face was thinner and older and glazed, but it was Malcolm, although he might not of known it himself. He stood still, holding the tray and the book, and stared into Charley's face. "I thought you'd gone back to Colorado," Charley said.

  The boy didn't answer. Charley had the sudden thought that he'd lost his tongue to infection. "Can you talk?" Charley said. The boy nodded. Things were moving in his eyes now. "Where you going with all that?" Charley said. He wanted to hear words from the boy's mouth.

  "To save a man from torpid fever," he said.

  Charley was washed with gratitude. "That's good," he said, and touched the boy's shoulder. The teapot rattled. "I'll report to your sister that you've recovered from your accident as good as new." Charley watched the boy to see if he knew he had a sister.

  "Report that I have become a disciple of the Preacher Henry Hiram Weston Smith and the Bible of the Black Hills," he said.

  "Preacher Smith's dead," Charley said. The boy nodded, as if that were the whole point. "What kind of religion is that—the Bible of the Black Hills?"

  "It is the Bible of the two sides of the Lord," the boy said. "I have found the evil now, and it cannot hide."

  Charley looked around him, at Deadwood. "It isn't the evil side of things that's hard to find," he said.

  The boy nodded again. "First," he said, "I have to minister to the sick." He started off in the direction of the badlands. Charley watched him a minute, making up his mind, and then started out after him.

  He fell in beside Malcolm and walked fifty feet trying to think of something else to say. "Where is this dying man?" he asked.

  "In his cabin," the boy said.

  "How do you know it's torpid fever? It could be something else . . ."

  The boy walked past Nuttall and Mann's and turned left before he got to the Bella Union. The ground was firmer off the street, slippery and wet, and had a thin coat of pine dust. Charley saw the cabin then, and put a hand on the boy's shoulder to stop him.

  "How did you find this patient?" he said.

  The boy stopped walking and looked at him. "I followed the evil side of the Lord," he said.

  Charley scratched his ear, fought off a vision of Matilda. "The Lord doesn't get sick," he said gently. "He doesn't live in any jerry-built cabin in back of the badlands . . ."

  The boy agreed with that. "He lives in the Gem Theater," he said. "It's the other one that's sick."

  Charley looked at the shack again. He took his hand off Malcolm's shoulder, and the boy moved two steps before Charley could stop him again. "Let me do it," he said.

  The boy looked at the tray in his hands. Charley said, "I'll take it in, in case you're not immune. I already had torpid fever . . ."

  The boy let Charley have the tray, and moved the book to his hands. Charley heard him walking a step behind, all the way to the cabin. Just before he got there, though, he turned around and held out his hand. "You wait," he said.

  The boy stopped and Charley moved his hand back, underneath his coat, and lifted and dropped the knife in its sheath, making sure it wasn't stuck. Then he knocked on the door, and a voice came from just the other side. "Who is it?"

  "Charles Utter," he said.

  The door opened an inch; Charley saw one eye and a beard. It was the whore man. The door closed, and Charley heard conversation. When it opened again, the whore man was standing in front of him, legs spread; it smelled like he'd wet his pants.

  "Where's the boy?" Swearingen said.

  Charley looked past him to the bed and saw Boone May's face, flattened against the mattress. There was a blanket pulled all the way up to his chin, hiding something, and he looked worse than most of the dead men Charley had seen.

  "Where's the boy?" Swearingen said again.

  Charley stepped into the room and Boone moved under the covers. Charley thought it was probably a shotgun, and stopped with Swearingen between himself and the bed. He was still holding the tray in his left hand.

  "I heard you shot it out with Handsome Dick, pretty," Boone said. He sounded frail as fall leaves.

  "I heard you were dying," Charley said. Swearingen moved one step, and Charley moved with him. He handed him the tray, watching Boone. "You'd best drink that while it's still warm," he said.

  Boone brought his hands out from under the covers and sat halfway up, resting his head against the wall. Charley saw the outline of the scattergun under the blanket. Swearingen put the tray in Boone's lap and stepped away from the bed. He looked out the window for the boy.

  Boone lifted the pot to his lips and drank everything in it. Then he picked up one of the cups.

  "You'd best keep the boy away from here," Swearingen said.

  Boone started to laugh, but it broke in his throat, and he spilled the tea from the cup down the front of his underwear while he coughed. When he stopped, he wiped himself off and looked at Charley. "Mr. Swearingen's got the idea that the boy is a messenger from the Lord, come to beat him to death with a book for the way he's lived."

  "That boy's gone soft-brained," Swearingen said. "Keep him away from me." He was still looking out the window.

  "He doesn't carry a thing but that book, whore man," Charley said, not knowing if that was true or false. "Anything happens to him, you got more than the Lord to settle with."

  Swearingen looked at Boone. Boone shrugged. "The man shot it out with Handsome Dick," he said, "and then spared his life. It was me, I'd let the boy alone."

  It was in Swearingen's eyes what he was going to do, and Charley saw it even before he reached inside his coat. And before Swearingen's knife came out, Charley cut him, elbow to wrist. His coat sleeve split in a clean curve down the front, and beneath that the shirt, and beneath that the flesh split too.

  The knife spilled out of the coat and broke when it hit the floor. Boone laughed. Swearingen bent over the split arm, little surprised noises coming out of him, and a moment later drops of blood began to pattern the floor in front of his feet.

  Boone stayed where he was. He made no move to put his hands back under the covers, he gave no appearance of any such thought.

  The knife felt warm in Charley's hand. Boone coughed; the only other noise was Swearingen breathing through his teeth as he rocked, up and down from the waist. It didn't feel like there was an idea in the room.

  "That boy never threatened anything but himself," Charley said, talking to Swearingen now. His voice was quiet, but it filled the air. Swearingen didn't answer. Charley turned his back on the whore man and moved toward the door, watching Boone. Boone was looking sicker again, and put his head back on the mattress to rest. Charley wondered what it felt like, to carry a head that size around on your shoulders.

  He stopped at the door and considered Swearingen again, knowing he ought to kill him. Boone looked the same direction, holding the same thought. "You forgived more trespassers than Jesus Christ," he said.

  Charley stepped outside and closed the door. He heard Boone cough, and then spit. He looked down at the knife in his hand and wiped the blade with his fingers. There was already blood on them. It had settled into the joints and begun to dry.

  He put the knife in the sheath, lifting it once to see that it wasn't stuck. Malcolm was standing on the spot where he'd left him, holding the book against his chest. "Did you see him?" he said.

  "I saw them both, and I delivered the tea."

  "Did you see the evil one?"

  Charley started to walk back toward Main Street, the boy stayed where he was. Charley backed up and took him by the arm. "Don't come here again," he said.

  The boy followed him back into the badlands, thinking thoughts Charley did not like. Without knowing what they were, he didn't like them. They walked south, up Main Street, the boy half a step behind. Every now and then he looked
behind him.

  Charley knew the boy would go back; turning evangelist hadn't changed how he was.

  They passed Wall Street, Gold Street, Lee Street, and Shine. At the far south end of town Charley stopped and looked the boy over. "Where do you sleep?"

  Malcolm pointed up into the hills, in the same general direction as the Bottle Fiend's cabin, but in a politer district of the hill. "Preacher Smith's house," he said. "But not on his bed. I sleep where he told me."

  "Do you read the Bible?" His thought was to send him home to read, that had a safe feel to it.

  The boy shook his head. He patted the book in his hands, though. "I carry the Bible," he said.

  Charley saw the snake-head angel on the cover.

  "It ain't meant to read," the boy said. "Preacher Smith's dreams is in here of the evil side of the Lord."

  Charley looked at the book, and at the boy. He wondered what kind of dreams the preacher had, and if they were anything like what happened to him. "I got something to do," Charley said. "Bill's widow is here and I'm invited to attend her reception." The boy blinked, nothing else moved. "You remember Bill?"

  Malcolm nodded. "I didn't forget things," he said, "I only forgot how I fit into them." He said that like he was reading it out of his book.

  "Something happened to you," Charley said, and the boy froze. "It doesn't matter," Charley said, watching his face. "You didn't die . . ." Charley saw the boy had rung the alarm bells, and stopped what he was saying. "There's no hurry to sort things out," he said. "For now, why don't you go back to the preacher's digs and rest?"

  "There is no time to rest now," he said.

  Charley grabbed him before he could move away. "Malcolm," he said, calmer than he felt, "stay away from that whore man."

  The boy shook his head. "It's no man," he said.

  "That's the second time you said that," Charley said. "And I will tell you what I said before. That kind does things when they turn bad that nobody else would think up."

  The boy blinked. Charley turned him slowly in the direction he had pointed before. "Go back to the preacher's now," he said.