I suck the last drops of cream from the first canister until the CO2 dribbles like the air let out of a balloon. I switch to the second canister.
Twilight vacuums the dust from sight. Voices abate like an audience as the curtain rises. An orange dusk frames the dark blue building beyond. The looming structure spreads tall and wide obscuring any other view out of the window spacious as it is. As evening fades to night, it’s like an empty movie screen filled with rows and rows of darkened windows. As apartment lights pop on, it draws all your attention. If the curtains are opened, you search for the instigator. Someone undressing? No, it’s too early for that, maybe later. Just people coming home from work: a coat draped over a chair, a briefcase dropped to the floor—gnored in the next room by a shadowy figure lit dimly by the flickering light of a T.V. “What’s for dinner, honey?” “Fix it yourself, I’m pooped—I work too, you know!”
With each light switched on, each apartment reveals a different life of waking, working, eating, defecating, arguing, demanding, not getting, accusing, sleeping, and waking once more to start the process of dying all over again—the only benefit being that, as you get older, the days go quicker and the sensations of the mind and body mercifully dull.
Third canister.
More doors opening and slamming shut, more lights snapping on, more tired bodies slumping down in seats, more beams of infected light streaming into my living room over the folded pages of this world like stars illuminating the skyscraper husks tumbled over in the slow earthquake of time’s passing. As I sit in the darkening gloom surveying my domain, the lights begin to irradiate my skin. Each apartment across the way casts its accusatory beam like search lights locating an escaped criminal and adds its voice to the muffled murmur rising once again from the floor.
I pop the top of the fourth and last can.
Can I pick out words or would the voices find me if I only could relax long enough? Can I will myself into the deep meditative state required to hear the unsaid. Can I calm my nervous heart—give into fear like diving into the wreck? I concentrate on the beating of my heart, absorb its rapid rhythm, each pump, each squirt of blood seeking the farthest reaches of my body—shoulders unhitching, stomach untightening over my belt, head pleasantly dropping forward naturally askew giving in to gravity. I’m finally sinking into weightlessness. I feel myself evaporate into the air like rubbing alcohol.
A voice distinguishes itself from the din.
Do it.
Do what? I gaze out fuzzily over the rumbled swell and beyond into the chasm between this building and the next in whose pit the garage roof beckons. Glaring lights stab my eyes like a prisoner during interrogation. I lose focus as the room turns into a blinding white light. Like a pressure chamber, the air grows heavy, too thick to breathe, compressing me into a tight throb.
Define yourself!
How?
“Yes, the Kid and I did paint the town red a time or two, although I must say that I never did see him imbibe any bug juice. He told me that as a boy it had caused him to insult his mother, so he never had a drop since. Now of the ladies, he did indeed have his fill. It was said of the Kid that he had ‘a querida in every plaza.’ I personally heard tell of Lily Huntress in Roswell, Emily Schulander in Las Vegas, Fredericke Deolavera in Anton Chico, and in Fort Sumner, Abrana Garcia, Nasaria Yerbe, and Celsa Guitierrez, just to name a few. There was a rumor that he was with Celsa’s sister Apolinaria, Pat Garrett’s wife, just before Garrett shot him. Since the Kid went to Maxwell’s bedroom to ask if he could cut a piece of the calf hanging in the courtyard, that would make it Garrett’s wife that gave Billy the appetite.”71
Get a job …
What can I do?
a wife …
How can I support another when I can’t support myself?
a few kids maybe …
How can I look into trusting eyes when I can’t trust myself?
a house in the country …
How can I be a professional, a husband, a father—I can’t even be me?
a dog, a cat, a two-car garage …
“But many close to the Kid said that he went to Fort Sumner to marry Paulita Maxwell. If that is the truth, I am not surprised that Garrett was talking to her father secretly in the old man’s bedroom with the lights out. What father wants his daughter to marry an outlaw?
Pat had two deputies posted outside, but they did not recognize the Kid as he passed by. They figured Billy was Mexicano. By then he looked it. So when the Kid stumbled into the secret meeting, the old man must have been scared half to death. When the Kid asked Pete in Spanish about the strange gringos, the old man knew Garrett did not understand. Instead of answering the Kid, Maxwell said to Garrett, ‘That’s him!,’ so Pat plugged the Kid on Pete’s word.”
- Add Casey72
I open my eyes and make out the phantom grey ceiling above. The wooden floor pounds my head. I must have slipped off the chair. How long was I out? The apartment building across the way is completely dark. A purplish glow emanates from the sky above. The newspaper sea squirms ever so slightly. I close my eyes and put my head in my hands. A metallic voice rises over the din as the echo of typewriter keys slap crisp paper.
“Last night’s rainstorm claimed at least two lives when a car traveling northbound on the West Side Highway spun out of control and crashed through the guardrail in upper Manhattan shortly before midnight.”73
Tears warm my palms.
“The car tumbled down a densely wooded embankment into southbound traffic lanes before finally coming to a stop. Fortunately, no other vehicles were involved, but both the driver and passenger, husband and wife, were pronounced dead at the scene. The two victims’ names are being withheld until surviving family members can be located.”74
I wipe them over my face in an ecstasy of righteous remorse.
“They are survived by a five-year-old son.”75
The phone rings.
Chapter Twelve
The Lincoln County War raged on with a life of its own. It drained the county’s resources, led all the key participants to financial ruin, and left widows and orphans in its wake.76
It was Billy the Kid who first heard the horses, maybe a mile off. He made out the distant rumbling with his ear pinned to the floor of the McSween living room. The way they pounded, Billy calculated, they must be weighed down with something. In this territory a force of that size only carried one thing: guns and lead. His first instinct was to run, but they were already surrounded by Jimmy Dolan’s collection of cutthroats. He turned to wake Brewer, then feeling stupid, slapped his knee. Brewer cashed his chips in last April during the shootout at Blazer’s Mill. Billy still couldn’t believe the shot by Buckshot Roberts when Brewer stuck his head up Just above the logs. Every bounty hunter west of the Pecos had wanted their hides since Dolan put a two-hundred dollar price tag on each Regulator. Old Buckshot never collected, however. Charles Bowdre saw to that.
But who could this mass of riders be? were they citizens and local ranchers who supported their struggle to rid the valley of The House? If not, then who?77
Outrages were committed on both sides, yet without exception the five-day siege of the McSween household along the main street of Lincoln in the very center of town had an especially perverse element.78
The phone rings as I stand before the threshold of freedom. I must get out before the answering machine clicks in or risk ill fortune. I throw caution to the wind, swing open the door, and leap out. Miraculously, the coast is clear. I lumber quickly down the empty hall, my rug-padded footsteps the only sound. The elevator opens immediately upon my touch. Empty! I take a deep breath before entering to protect myself from foul odors caged within. I descend smoothly holding my breath. Please make it without stopping—10, 9, 8, 7, 6 (my lungs scream for air), 5, 4, 3 … 3! No, it’s stopping! Who would get in on the third floor? I can barely contain my agitation. I’m forced to exhale. I hold my nose and breath through the mouth. The car slows and bumps to a halt. Th
e door hesitates, then opens …
Billy took his ear from the floor and looked around the McSween living room. He could find few remains of the original Regulators. Middleton was still recovering from the chest wound he received at Blazer’s Mill where George Coe had his trigger finger shot off as well. Hiding out while he learned to shoot left handed, George was joined by his cousin Frank after he had escaped jail just before Dolan could hang him. Neither were In the mood for a big fight. Billy’s closest compadre, Fred Waite, had gone back to Indian Territory to rejoin his Choctaw brethren and with him went the Kid’s dreams of starting a ranch. Bowdre had returned to his wife, Manuela, to protect her from Dolan’s raiding parties after his gangs razed San Patricio where her young cousin, Allamanda, had been raped so brutally, she bled to death.
Doc Scurlock was up to his old tricks “recovering” stolen cattle. Chisum’s stock detective Frank McNab and poor Ab Sanders ate their last breakfast together, bushwhacked by the Three Rivers Boys who joined forces with Dolan because they hated Chisum for owning the best grazing land. They weren’t the only gang to work for Dolan now that Murphy had drunk himself to a slow death, and they weren’t the only ones to give up ranching to rustle Chisum cattle, rebrand It, and sell It to Dolan so he could fulfill his bloated U.S. Army contracts. Kinney’s Santa Ana bunch, Jesse Evans’ gang, Frank Wheeler and his San Nicholas Spring rustlers, Sheriff Peppin and his “deputies,” countless bounty hunters and hired guns, It was no wonder that the last of the McSween faction, just a handful of those brave or foolish enough to stick It out to the end, were holed up at the lawyer’s house In Lincoln surrounded by hoards of well-armed and ruthless men.
Then who could those riders be?79
The five-day siege of the McSween household is considered by historians as the climactic end to the Lincoln County War. The war’s denouement, however, would last years. With certain participants the war was never over. Many would seek revenge long after the smoke cleared. One in particular, Robert Olinger, vowed to avenge his friend Bob Beckwith killed on the last night of the five-day siege. He placed the blame squarely upon Billy’s head, and it was Billy’s head he vowed to get.80
I’m shocked at her beauty: small, five foot two, maybe ninety pounds, with blue/black hair, ebony eyes, and tanned skin like a palomino pony. An ashen cross on her smooth forehead marks the day. Light wisps of hair float along the curve of her neck as she enters the car without looking up. Turning gracefully, she corners herself. She must be Mexican, possibly of Indian blood. Ah, noble Native American stock blended with the proud blood of Conquistadores. The harsh elevator light circles above her like a halo. I try to catch my breath without breathing heavily. As we begin our descent, I melt into the paneling.
The riders were on the outskirts of Lincoln by now and If they weren’t friendly, it was only a matter of time before Dolan’s men shot them up like snakes in a pit. In spite of the sand bags they had piled up behind the windows and doors, the McSween home was no fortress. Mrs. McSween had gone through great lengths to furnish her home with the style and grace befitting the home of a big city lawyer, as if by example, she could lead Lincoln from being a dusty cowtown into becoming a great metropolis. Now, even the piano that Mrs. McSween had insisted on playing to bolster their spirits, was riddled with bullet holes. It was the first piano in these parts, was it doomed to be the last?
Still, the Kid regretted nothing. In spite of all the setbacks they had suffered, there were also a few great victories. Morton and Baker, members of the “posse” that “attempted to arrest” Tunstall, had got their just desserts and McClosky too, that traitor. Billy knew all along that McClosky wore the Dolan brand and was just waiting for an opportunity to expose him. Expose him he did. He exposed his guts for the vultures to chew on. Of the other posse members, Hill got his while trying to rob an Immigrant family with Jesse Evans. They didn’t figure on the old German defending himself. Too bad the German aimed his shotgun low on Jesse as he ran off, but with his britches full of lead It must have made the ride home a painful one. Manuel Segovia, that phony Indian, wasn’t as lucky. Too bad Billy wasn’t there when José Chavez y Chavez turned his toes Into daisies.
And old Sheriff Brady was on his way to arrest McSween with another “legal posse” when the Regulators bushwhacked Brady and his deputies right there on main street. All escaped but Brady, which only made sense since he was the only one they were aiming at anyway. Billy even got his Winchester carbine back, the one that Brady confiscated the last time he had arrested him. A bullet dusted Billy’s leg on both sides after he jumped the fence to retrieve the rifle, but that was the rifle Tunstall had given him. He’d have taken a bullet through the heart trying to retrieve It. He had to lie In his own blood beneath the floor of the old Tunstall store while the posse tore It apart looking for him, but It was well worth the effort. With the 16 shot repeating rifle, his new revolver (a Double-Action Colt Thunderer!) and his old dependable Peacemaker, he’d either escape or make peace with his Maker trying. He would have liked to finish Murphy off himself if that low-down bone-plumber hadn’t drunk himself Into a death stupor. Unfortunately, Dolan was still alive and kicking and would stop at nothing until he finished off McSween and every last one of his followers.
But his mind was wandering, what about these riders? He put his ear back to the floor. The horses had entered the town and slowed to a walk.81
If Billy had died along with so many others on that fateful night, no one would have ever heard of “the Kid.” Yet the desperate boldness that was to characterize his deeds, whether he was portrayed as an outlaw saint or infant rascal, gave ample fodder to the Santa Fe Ring-dominated papers that supported Dolan. Every issue featured tales of the infant rascal’s “outrages” against humanity. It wasn’t long before the dime novels began to pick up on America’s growing interest in “Billy the Kid, the Boy Bandit King.”82
Carefully, I breathe in through the nose. A light fragrance of spring flowers fill the elevator car. Tightly, she grasps a large basket of laundry in her slim arms. What her foremothers lovingly carried to a river bordered by lush grasses and singing birds, she now hauls to a hot pipe-lined basement in the thundering bowels of the Tower of Babel. Instead of birds whistling in the whispering winds, furnaces and other strange machines rattle and pound. Instead of the sweet sound of rippling water taking her mind away as she hand-washes each shirt with love, washing machines slush soap and spin. Instead of cottonwoods swaying garments tame amid the happy chatter of señoras sharing the past as señoritas wax upon the future, dryers flop clothes as patrons fight for folding space. I want to reach out and touch her, maybe say something just to let her know I understand, I feel her pain, I …
I pull back my latex-gloved hand and hide it behind my back.
Billy looked over to Tom O’Folllard, a recent recruit, Just a boy, but at heart a true Regulator. He had drifted west of the Pecos, a small time thief and latched on to Billy with a desperation born of orphan need. It was an act Billy understood well being saved from the Jesse Evans gang by Frank and George Coe when they offered him their cabin for a winter of hunting bear and learning the ways of the West. Tom followed Billy everywhere. No man or beast was more loyal. He even rode with Billy to guard his horse during romantic rendezvous. With a sudden flush of affection, Billy determined that he would get Tom out safely, no matter what the cost.
“Tom,” Billy whispered.
O’Folllard awoke instantly at the sound of the Kid’s voice.
“Listen carefully, Tom. Tell me what you hear?”
They listened together. Billy wondered with sudden hope if the riders could be his missing pals leading a posse of citizens and native New Mexicans to free them. He listened to the horses hooves for telltale gaits, but didn’t like the sound of It. The hooves had a relaxed gait, a lazy lope, like a large mass of riders under control, no rush, no worry, the way men ride when they’re sure that the enemy Is pinned down, can’t escape, and they’re just riding In to help finish th
em off. Only one mass of men rode like that, the cavalry, and If so, they weren’t riding In to disperse the Dolan gang which had the McSween house completely surrounded. No, the cavalry wasn’t riding in to save the McSween gang from a bloody slaughter, they were riding In to see that the job got done.
“I don’t like it, Billy, there must be a hundred riders,” Tom said nervously.
“Don’t you fret none, Tom. How many traps have we wiggled our way out of? I’m going to get you out if I have to carry you on my back. Do you trust me?”
“You bet I do, Billy!” Tom declared.
“Good,” The Kid smiled. “Now wake up McSween, Chavez, and the others. We got some planning to do.”
As Tom dutifully crawled off, Billy peered through the window. The soldiers poured down the street. At the end of the long column, he could make out a gatling gun.83
Following the fall of the house of McSween and the cause he championed, and in the aftermath of death and anarchy that followed, Billy the Kid made his name. Like a baptism by fire, Billy leaped out of that flaming building an obscure teenager and landed into the history books as the most famous desperado in the annals of the old southwest.84
At least Commander Dudley would allow Mrs. McSween safe passage out. Maybe she could even argue our case, show him the papers we got on Dolan, plead for protection Instead of attack …
No, Billy knew that was wishful thinking. There was only one law In this territory, and Dolan owned It, and there was also only one way out: guns a-blazln’.85
I pull my eyes away and try to focus up at the descending numbers. Nonchalantly, I sneak a peek at the curved mirror in the corner giving me a wide angle view of the car. I see my enormous presence obscuring her slight figure in the background. Although she hasn’t looked at me once, I feel she must hate me. I’m everything most base and vile to her: a fat, ugly gringo who wants only one thing, and it’s not conversation. How can I change her mind? No, it is impossible. I’m not the ideal ambassador to change any Latin American señorita’s mind about the gringo. I only confirm the worst, regardless of intention, noble or otherwise.
Billy’s Blues Page 8