"That's true."
"The end of an era, the sunset, you might say. You're the sole survivor, Mr. Books, and we're thankful for that—I mean, your reputation is nationwide. This morning's story went out over the wires, and every daily of any consequence will run it. But it's only a teaser. They'll want more. Papers in the East in particular—a colorful figure like you is a hero to the dudes back there. New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington—they'll run every word we send. Between us, Mr. Books, we can really put El Paso on the map."
"You're going the long way round the barn, Mr. Dobkins."
"Yes, sir. Well, sir, I would like tremendously to do a series of stories on John Bernard Books, the last shootist."
"A series?"
"Yes. How long will you be with us?"
"Not long."
"Oh. Well, I have a list of questions here." The reporter pulled a small note pad from his pocket. "I've made them up in advance—we could start today, right now, and get together again tomorrow."
"What kind of questions?"
"Let me see." Dobkins opened the note pad, took out a pencil. "There's been so much cheap fiction about gun men, as you know, Mr. Books. Dime novels, myths, downright lies, so on and so forth. I thought I'd get down to brass tacks for once—you know, the true story, the facts—while you're available, before anything happens to you. I mean, I hope nothing does, but—"
"The questions."
"Oh yes. Well, for example, we'd start at the beginning— your young years. What turned you to violence in the first place."
"Go on."
"These aren't questions so much as subjects. Then I'd want to cover your career factually—the statistics, you might say. How many duels you've had. How many victims."
Books nodded.
"I'd like to delve rather deeply into the psychology of the shootist—no one's ever done that seriously. How important is the instinct of self-preservation? What is the true temperament of the man-killer? Is he the loner they say? Is he really coolheaded under fire? Is he by nature bloodthirsty? Does he brood after the deed is done? Reproach himself? Or has he lived so long with death for a companion that he is used to it—the death of others, the prospect of his own?"
Dobkins was extemporizing. Carried away by rhetoric, he seemed unaware that his host had risen and moved to the closet. Books pushed aside the curtain and reached with one arm.
"Finally, I'd like to take one of your duels as an example and dissect it step by step, shot by shot. And afterward, how did you feel inwardly, when you came through unscathed? What were your emotions as you looked down upon your foe, mortally wounded, eyes glazing, breathing his last? What were his dying words? What did you reply? Oh, I see this as a splendid climax—we'll have the reader glued to—"
Dan Dobkins swallowed the rest of his sentence. His eyes glazed. He stared into the muzzle of a gleaming pistol.
"Open your mouth," Books said.
He opened his mouth. The barrel of the Remington was introduced to his tongue by an inch or two.
"Close your mouth. Don't bite down. Make believe it's a nipple. Suck."
Dobkins did as ordered.
"Now," Books said quietly. "Notice I have slipped the safety. This gun has a hair trigger. One fit or fidget and Mrs. Rogers will scrub your brains off the wallpaper with soap and water. Now put your pad and pencil away. Careful."
The reporter was careful.
"On your feet and start backward, toward the door. Don't shake or shiver or breathe—just suck. All right, move."
Dan Dobkins moved in slow motion, trembling, to his feet and commencing a kind of glide backward. He closed his eyes. His Adam's apple convulsed. He moaned.
"I'll open the door. You keep going. Through the entry. Easy."
Barrel in mouth, eyes closed, moaning, the reporter backed through the door and along the entry, Books following step by step. As they passed the parlor, Mrs. Rogers flew to her feet from the sofa. "Mr. Dobkins—Mr. Books, how dare you! What in heaven's name—"
"Be still, ma'am," Books warned. "We're in a touchy situation here."
She froze, hands stopping her mouth.
They reached the front doors. Reaching for the knobs, Books opened both doors and with his left hand spread them wide. He straightened, slipped the barrel of the Remington slowly from the reporter's mouth. Dobkins opened his eyes.
"Turn around."
"Please, Mr. Books, I beg—"
"Turn around."
Dobkins turned.
"Bend over."
Dobkins doubled.
Books stuck the pistol under his belt, steadied himself on his left leg, placed the sole of his right boot solidly against the young reporter's fundament.
"Dobkins, you are a prying, pipsqueak, talcumpowder little son of a bitch," he said. "If you ever come dandying around here again, I will kill you."
He shoved with all his strength. Dobkins hurtled through the doorway and across the porch with such momentum that, striking the edge of the top step with head and shoulders, he somersaulted down the flight and tumbled along the wooden sidewalk until he sprawled in a striped heap halfway to the street.
She upbraided him. After the shove, he had gone down on one knee. It was the most savage, most unjustified thing she had ever seen one person do to another, she said, and if she were a man she would horsewhip him for it. Suddenly he reeled up, his face like chalk, and twisted, and fell heavily against a wall. He stood for a moment, head bowed in agony, then put the flat of both hands against the wall to support himself and began, hand by hand, to work his way along the wall in the direction of his room. She feared he might collapse. She came to him and touched his hip as though to assist him. He struck her hand away, muttering that he would tend himself. When he reached the open door he gathered himself, lunged, hands extended, and lowered himself face down upon the bed. She asked if he wanted her to telephone the doctor. He shook his head no.
"Very well," Bond Rogers said. "I'm sure you are in no more discomfort than poor Mr. Dobkins, lying out there on the sidewalk. And if you are, Mr. J. B. Books, it serves you right."
Hostetler found him supine upon the bed, his head pillowed.
"You all right?"
"Yes."
"What happened?"
"I kicked a reporter out of here. It damned near tore me in two."
"Excitation of the cells. You can't do that kind of thing any more, you know."
"I know now. Here, I'll get up."
"No, don't. You lie there and I'll sit by you."
The doctor closed the door behind him and took the armchair by the bed.
"First things first, Doc. I forgot to ask. How much do I owe you?"
Hostetler smiled. "You're a man after my heart, Mr. Books. They usually ask that last, if they do at all. Oh, make it a dollar for the drug and four dollars for the two calls. Don't get up."
"In the closet, in the coat pocket, my wallet. Help yourself."
"I will later." From his bag the physician pulled a book bound in brown leather. "I promised to bring you this. Bruce's Principles of Surgery. There's a section on carcinoma you can read if you wish. I've turned down the page corner." He laid it on the library table. "Now." On the table he set a twelve-ounce bottle filled with purplish liquid. "Here you are. Your medicine."
"What is it?"
"Laudanum. A solution of opium in alcohol."
"Opium? Can't that get to be a habit?"
"It can. An addiction, in fact. But in your case—" The doctor shrugged.
Books scowled. "Yes. What's it taste like?"
"Terrible. But there's a consolation. You'll likely have dreams."
"Dreams?"
"Amazing dreams. Perhaps you'll even have visions. Are you much of a reader?"
"No."
"I confess I am, since we're in private. There's an English poet, Coleridge—Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He took opium habitually for a time, as I understand it, and waking one day, wrote down a poem he had composed in his slee
p. Based to some extent on the vision he'd had. Quite a phenomenal thing. Kubla Khan, it's called. I can recollect the first two lines and the last four. Let me think." Charles Hostetler removed his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Ah, yes, 'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately pleasure-dome decree.'"
"Xanadu? Where's that?"
"Who knows? Some strange and oriental sphere of the imagination. Probably in the Near East. Khan must have been some kind of potentate. The last four lines I find unforgettable. 'Weave a circle round him thrice/ And close your eyes with holy dread/ For he on honeydew hath fed/ And drunk the milk of Paradise.'" He shook his head. "What it means, I'm sure I don't know, but it certainly has a lilt to it."
Books was looking at the laudanum. "The milk of Paradise—at least there's alcohol in it. What's the stuff for?"
"It's the most potent painkiller we have."
"Oh. How much do I take?"
"As much as you need. When you need it. Prescribe for yourself. A spoonful should do you at first."
"Later?"
Hostetler put on his spectacles. "You'll require more and more. It will have less and less effect, I'm afraid."
The two men were silent. A dwindle of sunlight touched the bottle on the table between them, refracting a purple image upward onto the crystalline lampshade, where it nested raucously among the blue, brown, and green birds of paradise. The silence was one of mutual reticence. Books did not care to ask, Hostetler had no desire to respond. So they waited, each for the other. It was the doctor who broke a path, even though oblique, for both of them.
"I haven't much of a bedside manner," he admitted. "Never have had. In a case like yours, I'm damned if I can be cheery. And poetry's no help."
"You're sure it's cancer."
"Unquestionably. I wish I could do more, Books, but I can't. Someday we'll lay the monster low, I'd bet on it, but that's in the future, probably long after I'm gone myself. The present is where we are now."
Books unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. "You said last time I can still be up and about a while yet. For how long?"
"I don't know. But you will. One morning you'll wake and say to yourself, 'I can't go out any more. I couldn't even dress myself. Here I am, in this bed, and here I'll stay.'"
They were silent again.
"God damn it," Books said.
"Yes. God damn it," said Hostetler.
"A hell of a way to go," Books said.
"A hell of a way to go," said Hostetler.
Books laid a hand on the Principles of Surgery, then withdrew it. "You told me it would be a hard death. How hard?"
The physician closed his bag, stepped to the closet, reached inside for the coat, and brought out a wallet. "How much did I say? Five?"
"All right, Doc. How hard?"
"Five, yes. Beware of morbidity." He replaced the wallet and pulled the curtain.
"I want to know, Hostetler. What will happen to me?"
Hostetler tucked away his own wallet, came behind the leather chair, and picking up his bag, placing it in the seat, put both hands on the back. He was a short, stoutish man of sixty or so, with short gray hair and benign blue eyes. "Unless you insist, I'd rather not talk about it."
"I insist."
Hostetler pursed his lips. "You will waste away. The process will be slow at first, then rapid."
"Waste away?"
"Loss of flesh. Known as 'cachexia.'"
"What else?"
"The bones of the face become prominent. The skin takes on a grayish cast. You will be a pretty awful sight. No one will dare tell you, but you will. Pretty awful."
"What else?"
"There will be increasing severity of pain. In the lumbar spine, in the hips and groins."
"What else?"
"Must we go on?"
"Yes."
"Your water will shut off progressively. The bladder will swell because you can't unload it. You will gradually become uremic. Poisoned by your own waste products, due to a failure of the kidneys."
"That all?"
"By this time the agony will be unbearable, and no drug will moderate it. Hopefully, you will become comatose. Until you do, you will scream."
"Jesus Christ."
Charles Hostetler picked up his bag, walked to the door. His look for the first time was severe, almost angry. "I regret you forced me to be specific, Mr. Books. If you need me, telephone. Good day, sir."
He banged the door behind him. He opened it again at once, re-entered, and closed the door apologetically. "I'm sorry I was short with you. There's just one more thing I'll say. If you stop to think about it, we have considerable in common. Both of us have a lot to do with death. I stave it off when I can. You inflict it when you have to. I am not a brave man, but you must be, by virtue of your avocation. Well, you can be braver now than you have ever been, and it won't help you a tinker's damn. This is not advice, not even a suggestion, just something to reflect upon while your mind is still clear." He studied his shoe tops for a moment. "If I were in your circumstances, I know what I would not do."
"What?"
Charles Hostetler listened, as though to take care he were not overheard. "I won't put it in so many words. It runs counter to the ethics of my profession. But I would not die a death such as I have just described."
"No?"
"I would not. Not if I had your courage. I would not. And especially your skill with weapons."
Books stared at him.
"Good-by."
Books stared at him. "Thank you."
That night he could not sleep for pain. He got out of bed, pulled on the lamp, sat down on his pillow, picked up the book Hostetler had brought, and examined the title page. The author of Principles of Surgery was "James W. D. Bruce, Professor of Surgery in the University of Edinburgh; Surgeon to the Royal Infirmary." The volume had been published in Philadelphia by Lea and Blanchard in 1878.
He found the turned-down page corner and opened the book to the section headed "Carcinoma." He read the author's definition: "This is the occult malignant tumour, whose open condition is termed Cancer." He continued to read, slowly, until he came to this passage, and finished it:
The cachectic state of system becomes more and more aggravated; sleep is gone; appetite fails; emaciation is great, and still increasing; the sallow, wan, cadaverous expression of face becomes more marked; the whole frame grows bloodless; a malignant hectic, as it may be termed, is established; and life is gradually exhausted, in much physical misery.
He slapped the book shut. He could read no more of it. But something, the shutting perhaps, caused an access of pain so excruciating that he sat forward, fists on forehead, and rocked himself. When he opened his eyes he saw the bottle on the table. What was it Hostetler had said? A spoonful should do him at first? He reached for it, uncapped, tipped, and swallowed what he judged was a spoonful of the laudanum. It had a bitter taste. He capped the bottle, replaced it, sat back, waited. Relief came within minutes. It was not so much a cessation of pain as an overture, warm and seductive, throughout his pelvic region, of insensitivity—this accompanied at the same time by a slow flood of euphoria. He was laved, as though by pleasure. He rose from the chair easily, without discomfort, for the first time in two months. He grinned like a boy.
He pulled out the light, got back into bed, settled himself, grinned again, and slept.
He dreamed. He did not have a vision. He dreamed of the gunfight in the restaurant in Bisbee, Arizona, the only scrap in which he had ever been wounded. The two men who had thrown down on him, the men he had killed, were faceless now; he had never seen them before that night, when they had earlier exchanged insults with him at a monte table in a saloon. He had not even known their names. But it had not been either of them who hit him, it had been a third party, a complete stranger, a drunk, a spectator as uninvolved as a spider on the ceiling, who lurched up from a table and a meal and drew and felled Books with a bullet in the belly and walked out of the restaurant picking his teeth. Bo
oks had long ago learned that the outcome of most gunplay was unpredictable. Too often, when weapons were pulled and working, it was not the principals who had their way. It was some nobody, some butt-in with a secret compulsion to use a gun once in his life on another human being or to die spectacularly, some six-fingered bastard who couldn't when sober hit a cow in the teats with a tin cup, who rushed from the wings and directed the last incalculable act of the drama. Bat Masterson had said you had to have guts, proficiency with firearms, and deliberation. In short, you had to be professional. He hadn't mentioned the eye you had to have in the back of your head for the dumb-ass amateur. But then, Masterson had always been full of shit.
He dreamed, too, of Serepta, of making love to her and of the sound which issued from her open mouth as she neared her coming. It was like the mourning of a dove at first, an elegy for youth and strength and beauty being spent, and in the spending being lost forever; then swiftening, rising in pitch and power as she achieved orgasm, it was as though her heart were in her mouth, pulsing a song of life for him, an ululation at once tragic and exultant: la, la, la, la, la, la, la. He had never heard another woman make such a sound in sex.
He woke.
Pain woke him.
He pulled on the lamp and squinted at his watch. The laudanum had given him almost four hours.
"You'll need more and more," Hostetler had said. "It will have less and less effect."
He debated hitting the purple bottle again, decided against it.
He thought: That was a peculiar thing, Hostetler saying it before I thought of it. I would have later, probably, but I am glad he did now. There is nothing yellow about it. It makes good sense. A man is a fool to die slow if he does not have to. And I will know when to do it, too, Hostetler said I would. There will come a day. On that day I will take care of it. I am damned if John Bernard Books will go screaming.
He put his right hand on the congenial steel of the gun under his pillow, his left on that of the one at his side under the covers. He had slept with his guns for years. He wondered which of them he would use.
The Shootist Page 4