"Is there somebody named Serrano?"
"Cross-eye? What a plug-ugly he must be. Rustles cattle. I've never set eyes on him, but I think he hangs out across the river. Say, what's this all about?"
"I want you to do something for me. Pulford, Cobb, Serrano. Find them. Go to each one and tell him I will be in the Constantinople at four o'clock tomorrow afternoon."
"Hey." Gillom sat down on the edge of the straight chair. "Hey."
"Just don't mention to any of them I have invited the others. And don't tell anybody else."
"Oh my God." Gillom hugged himself with excitement. "I get it. Oh Jesus."
"Four o'clock. Do they know about me?"
"That you're a goner? Everybody in town does. Jesus!" Gillom jumped up, tangled his large feet, and fell happily against the chiffonier. "I get it! They save you the trouble of doing yourself in! They do it for you! Oh, that's a peach!"
"The Constantinople."
Gillom propped an elbow on the chest. "O.K. I'll do it. Might not be easy tracking Cross-eye down, but I will, you bet. Say, what do I get for this?"
"What do you want?"
"You know."
"Well?"
Gillom licked his lips rather than chewing them. He liked the taste of himself much better now. "I want your guns."
"No."
"No? Then send somebody else. Send Thibido. Send my ma. You've got no choice."
"Don't ask for my guns."
"I ain't asking, I'm telling. I could take 'em right this minute, and you couldn't lift a finger. So it's the guns or go to hell, Mister J. B. Books. Or lay here and die by yourself. Or go over to the Connie and scare those hard cases to death. With your face, you could."
Books closed his eyes. "All right. They're yours. Later."
"Damn right they are. About five minutes past four tomorrow. Maybe not even that long."
"Hop to it, then," Books said. "And don't job me, boy."
Gillom grinned. "I won't. I wouldn't miss the looks on their faces. Oh Jesus."
The day warmed.
That afternoon he opened the windows and let warm wind blow the curtains and heard again the wheels of the streetcar as it passed the corner.
Two sweating men in dungarees delivered the headstone from Beckum, the undertaker. It was covered by a canvas, and Books was careful that Bond Rogers admitted the men and left the room before he uncovered it. The marble seemed to be of good quality, and the inscription had been cut as specified: "John Bernard Books 1849-1901." He had the draymen place it against the wall and when they had gone draped it with his Prince Albert coat so that she would not see it.
He then brought his Remingtons and bullets from the closet and, lying on the bed, cleaned the guns and reloaded, filling the sixth chamber in each.
Gillom entered, without knocking, just before suppertime, and found him asleep, Remingtons beside him. He tiptoed to the bed but no sooner had the youth picked up one of the guns than Books awoke. He put out a hand. Gillom gave him the weapon.
"Not yet," Books said.
"Not long," Gillom said.
Books pushed a pillow upright behind his shoulders. "Well?"
"I told them."
"What did they say?"
"Pulford nothing. Jay nothing. I had to go across the river to Juárez to find Serrano. He's got a wife and a whole litter of kids—they were crawling all over the place. I told him the Connie, four o'clock tomorrow. Then I got out of there fast." Gillom frowned. "The thing is, none of 'em said a word. I don't know if they'll really show."
"They'll show."
"Who says?"
"They are small men."
"Small hell. They're fast. I know for a fact Jay and Pulford are, and Cross-eye's mean as sin."
"One deals. One drives a creamery wagon. One rustles cattle. They are small potatoes, and this is the best chance they will ever have to be big. They will show."
"Maybe."
"Now you can do two more things for me."
"Not for you. For the guns."
"Send me a barber in the morning. And shine my boots tonight."
In the moonlight through the windows he squinted at his watch, the watch he had already sold to Steinmetz. It was after one o'clock.
He thought: Today.
He pulled on the lamp, drank from the laudanum bottle, and estimated three fingers remained. It would see him through, although it afforded him only the most fleeting respite now. He had not urinated for thirty-six hours, and he had slept this night, fitfully, in the leather armchair for fear he would be incapable of getting out of bed in the morning.
He took up the Daily Herald for Tuesday, January 22, 1901, the day he had ridden into El Paso. The paper was dry and brittle. He had read everything in this edition, all eight pages, every news story, every advertisement, every joke, every line of filler. For once he had got the whole good out of a newspaper. For lack of anything else to do, he reread an item on the front page in the column centered under the great black headlines:
London, Jan. 22—The Privy Council has drawn up the proclamation announcing the accession of Edward Prince of Wales, to the throne. The royal apartments in Buckingham Palace are being made ready for the reception of the court. Members of Parliament are arranging to meet in special session. The funeral arrangements are planned. The theaters are scheduled to close for at least a week. Dressmakers and ladies' tailors are fairly swamped with orders countermanding colored costumes and ordering mourning gowns. Hatters are laying in a big stock of deep hatbands. Stationers are getting mourning edge stationery. Drapers are being employed, and all are rushed with work. Orders have been prepared prescribing the period of mourning for all the official departments, the diplomatic and consular service, and the army and navy at home and abroad.
He folded the newspaper and placed it on the rack under the library table.
He thought: Well, Victoria, Your Royal Highness, old lady, old girl, we are about to get together. I will not make as big a splash as you did. I do not expect they will sell much drape, but there may be a minute of silence in the saloons. I have never read what a man is supposed to do when he is presented to you. Kiss your hand, I imagine. But you will know a gent when you meet him, you will recognize blood as blue in a way as yours. I will show you my guns, if you like, and we will drink tea and talk. You were the last of your kind, and they say, Dobkins and Thibido, that I am the last of mine, so we have a hell of a lot in common. I see by the paper they have made a smart of money out of you turning up your toes. Well, they are trying to do the same with me. Your life meant considerable, I guess, and mine did not, but maybe my death will. We will see shortly. Maybe we did outlive our time, maybe the both of us did belong in a museum—but we hung onto our pride, we never sold our guns, and they will tell of the two of us that we went out in style. So today, old girl, a hair after four o'clock, at the palace. You be dressed in your best bib and tucker, Vickie, and so will I.
Deciding to drink to his impending audience with the Queen, he groaned himself out of the chair to the closet, opened the bottle, changed his mind, and poured the last of the whiskey into the washbowl. He would let today stand on its own two legs.
As he sat down again, the pain receding, the third line of the poem recited itself to him: "For he on honey-dew hath fed…"
He thought: Oh, I have fed on honey-dew. On wine and whiskey and champagne and the tender white meat of women and fine clothes and the respect of strong men and the fear of weak and the turn of a card and good horses and the crisp of greenbacks and the cool of mornings and all the elbow room that God or man could ask for. I have had high times. But the best times of all were afterward, just afterward, with the gun warm in my hand, the bite of smoke in my nose, the taste of death on my tongue, my heart high in my gullet, the danger past, and then the sweat, suddenly, and the nothingness, and the sweet clean feel of being born.
The barber's name was Gigante.
He nodded, he smiled, he nodded, he smiled, but could not utter a wo
rd. He was terrified. When, in the process of shaving, he applied a cold towel rather than a hot, and Books let out an oath, he jumped. Books ordered him to trim his mustache, and the hair in his nose, and the hair in his ears. After shearing the gun man's long hair, Gigante took from the pocket of his white jacket a whisk broom, brushed the clippings from his customer's shoulders to the carpet, got down on hands and knees, brushed the clippings on the carpet into a pile, took a paper sack from another pocket, brushed the pile of clippings into the paper sack, and rising, clutched the sack to his chest.
"How much do I owe you?" Books asked.
Gigante could scarcely speak. "Dollar."
"You owe me ten."
"Ten?"
"For that sack of J. B. Books's hair. You will sell it for twenty. So give me ten."
The barber dropped the sack, gave him ten, picked up the sack.
"Thank you," said Books. "Thank," said Gigante.
It was noon. He would have liked to inspect himself in the mirror to see what the barber had done, but that would mean getting out of the chair and going to the mirror, and he had to hoard himself. Judging that there was enough drug left to put him under till two o'clock, he drained the bottle. He had been unable to take nourishment for a day and a half, and he had told his landlady not to bother with lunch for him. He lay down on the bed.
He heard hoofs, nearing. Leaping from the brush, he leveled a Remington at the rider and ordered him to throw down his wallet. The man was thin and elderly and had a claw hand for a left hand, cocked perpetually at the wrist, the fingers stiff and splayed. Reining up, he reached inside his shirt. Books waggled his gun in warning. "I ain't armed," the rider croaked. "You be careful of that nickel-plate." Slipping a purse from inside his shirt, he tossed it. Books let his eyes follow, and therefore did not see the antiquated cap-and-ball pistol which appeared suddenly in the horseman's good hand, nor did he hear the explosion because the bullet exploded in his abdomen, crazed through the vitals, was deflected by the spine, and lodged, spent, in the socket of his left hip. He dropped the Remington and fell to his knees.
"My God, you've murdered me!"
"Bring me my purse."
"I can't! My God!"
"Bring it, you young bastard, or I'll put another one through the same hole."
One hand grasping the purse, the other stopping his stomach as though it were a barrel with the bung out, and blubbering, staggering to the horseman, Books handed up the purse.
"Thankee," said the rider, putting away purse and weapon and taking reins.
"You won't leave me here!"
"Won't I?" The old jasper considered him. "I'll do you a favor, though. You've got a bellyache you ain't a-going to get shet of. You can die slow or now. If you hanker, I'll kill you."
"Kill me!"
"If'n I was in your fix, I'd be obliged. I'm a fair shot, as you see, and you look to me as if you've sucked the front tit long enough."
Books backed off and sank to his knees again and began to wail like a child. His mouth hung open in shock. Saliva dripped from his chin.
"Suit yourself," said Claw Hand, turning as he rode on. "Don't try to hold nobody else up before you die, Sonny. You ain't worth a damn at it."
His wails and the spittle on his chin woke him. It was past three o'clock, not two.
He hauled himself off the bed and began to dress as rapidly as the damage done to his innards by the old man's bullet would allow.
He put on the white shirt she had washed and ironed, and the gray bow tie. Back to the wall, he tugged on his pants, then sat down again to grapple with socks and the black lizard boots the boy had shined.
That done, he stood before the mirror and contrived, without acknowledging in the glass that ghastly stranger who claimed to be kin to him, to run a comb through his hair and his mustache.
His vest, which he got from the closet, hung too loosely about his ribs. The guns sagged. He had lost that much weight. Cursing under his breath, opening and banging shut the drawers of the chiffonier, he found a safety pin, removed the vest, and pinned a fold in the back, then put it on again and was satisfied. He wound his watch and dropped it in a vest pocket.
He next put on his black Prince Albert coat, in so doing uncovering the headstone. Opening the top drawer of the chiffonier, he took out the money cached there, brought it to the library table, and sat down. There were two hundred dollars from his horse, the photographer's fifty, the undertaker's forty, fifty from Steinmetz, and ten from the barber. Emptying his wallet except for a dollar—that and the nickel in his pants would be sufficient, he was sure, unto the day—he added the bills to those on the table and counted. The total came to $532. That was what he had to show for his half century: five hundred-odd dollars. He had won more than that up in Oklahoma once, in one hand, on a pair of treys. From the table drawer he took the envelope and sheet of paper he had asked of her the preceding day, telling her he might send a letter to a friend. Using the table top as surface, he penciled a note:
Mrs. Rogers:
Use this money and send the boy away to school. See that
Beckum bureys me proper and uses my headstone. 1 have
sold my things to the secondhand man so give them to
him.
J. B. Books
Folding the sheet around the money, he stuffed it in the envelope, licked the flap and sealed the envelope, and standing, placed it upright against the back of the armchair.
He stepped to the center of the room. Raising his right hand and arm, sliding the hand inside his coat, he drew the Remington from its holster on his left side: once, twice, thrice. He did not try for speed but for fluidity of movement, the arm rising naturally, the fingers closing easily and surely about the handle, the withdrawal smooth, the entire gesture as unstudied and reflexive as though he had reached for and brought forth a cigar. He then did likewise with the Remington on his right side: once, twice, thrice.
He went to the closet, got his gray Stetson, blew dust from the brim, reshaped the crease, tried the hat on, took it off.
Picking up the crimson velvet pillow he had stolen from the whorehouse in Creede, Colorado, he moved slowly to the door, and for a moment rested his forehead against it, dizzy with exertion. Under his longjohns he was dripping wet. He tried to calculate the number of days this room had been his home but could not. He peered sideways, at a framed picture on the wall. The setting was a woodland glade, and a tranquil pool about which, gazing at their reflections in the pool, knelt several nymphs, clad just diaphanously enough to reveal their rather buxom charms. They were not alone. Spying upon them from the foliage was a gang of half-men, half-goats, with horns and hoofs and hairy legs and tails, who appeared to him to be working up a lust to leap and lay hell out of the nymphs.
He thought: Nobody will ever believe I could have done this today and neither by God will I.
He left the room.
Had he turned and looked around it a last time, he might have noticed the shadow in the lace curtains at the west window.
He entered the Constantinople at three forty-one, having sneaked through alleys and side streets to avoid encountering the marshal or his deputies. He wanted ample time to make ready. Since the saloon was new, it had developed little patronage as yet. There were only two men at the bar, and the barkeep. He walked to the bar, bought a shot of whiskey, and carried it with him to the left rear corner of the room. Here he stood, uncertain whether to sit in one of the three wine booths built into the corner or at a table. It occurred to him that the walls of a booth might obstruct his vision, if not of the front doors, then of the archway at rear center, which opened into the gambling room, and he seated himself therefore at a corner table in front of the booths. From this vantage he would have the front doors in full view and could keep an eye, at least peripherally, on the archway.
He cupped the butt of each Colt's, one holster tied to his left thigh, one to his right. He was ready, whatever that meant. The knowledge of gunplay he had accumula
ted in his twenty years was scant, as it was of girls and kings and arithmetic and cows and prayer and mountains and everything except how to draw and fan and fire a revolver unerringly and how to hate himself and how to deliver milk and cream and butter. He touched a pustule on his neck. He would not have bet a dime of the money he had taken from his father that Books would actually show up at four o'clock, but as he lifted the glass to his lips, so palsied was his hand that he spilled some of the whiskey. It was not fear. It was an almost childlike hope—hope that this first, this best, perhaps this only chance he would ever have to distinguish himself in any way would not elude him, that the great assassin would in fact appear, and that he, Jay Cobb, could shoot him dead.
Hat in hand, pillow under arm, he stopped in the entry, facing the parlor. "Mrs. Rogers," he said.
She rose too swiftly from the sofa. She had waited there for him, seeing nothing, hands folded in her lap, counting with the clock, all afternoon.
"How grand you look," she smiled.
"Thank you. So do you."
"Thank you."
They kept that formal distance from each other which may be more intimate than an embrace.
"Dry process cleaning is—is very good, isn't it?" she asked.
"Yes. It is smelly, though."
"That's the naphtha."
"The naphtha."
The clock ticked. She knew what it had required of him to dress himself, to leave his room. He knew how close she was to the tears he had forbidden. Silently, each entreated of the other a sacrifice, and a grace, which was humanly impossible.
"I am going to a saloon to have a drink," he said, taking masculine initiative. "I have not been out for a long time."
"How nice," she smiled. "Indeed you haven't. And you have a beautiful day for it. It's very warm. We're having what we call 'false spring.'"
"Oh?"
This exchange left them mute again. Her words to him, on the day of his arrival, worked like worms within the darkness of her soul: "I'm glad you're not staying long, Mr. Hickok. I don't believe I like you." And later: "You are a vicious, notorious individual utterly lacking in character or decency." For his part, he recalled with chagrin his underestimate of her at the beginning. The West was filling up with women like her, he had observed to himself, and he would not give a pinch of dried owl shit for the lot of them. Trapped in self-reproach, each deferred to the other.
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