The Shootist

by Glendon Swarthout

  Unexpectedly he put out his hand. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Rogers."

  Their fingers met but did not twine. "Good afternoon, Mr. Books."

  He opened the door and, for the first time since he had gone for a drive in the country with mother and son, stepped into the world.

  He blinked. Light blinded him. Din deafened him—the rumble of a wagon, voices, a train whistle in the distance. He stood bewildered. Finally he put on his Stetson, and holding the pillow tightly under an arm, moved cautiously across the porch to the steps. He paused. He must descend them. He had left the house door open. He must not waste himself going back to close it. He squinted. The street corner he judged to be nine rods away. Weak as he was, and drenched with sweat, and in such pain that he ground his teeth together till they squeaked, he could walk nine rods.

  He descended the steps—one and—two and—three and— four and—five; then paused again on the wooden sidewalk. The nape of his neck told him she was watching from a window.

  He started. Once he had unlocked his legs, once he heard the familiar cadence of his boot heels on the sidewalk slats, once he was convinced he could indeed negotiate the nine rods, he opened himself as wide as he had the door of the house and let the world in. The day was buoyant. A ship of tropic air had voyaged inland from the Gulf of Mexico with a freight of spices, and this day on the desert was informed with a balm and sensuality that made him long to cry out, not with pain but with delight. He could not remember an afternoon more beautiful than this. It seemed to him that he had never before been so alive.

  He reached the corner in two jerks of a lamb's tail, or thought he did, and waited there, nodding approbation of his feat as old men nod.

  A little girl, her hair done up in ribbons, trotted along the street, rolling a hoop before her.

  "Good day, madam," he said, and doffed his hat, and bowed.

  She caught the hoop and stared at him, then gasped and ran away, frightened, clutching her hoop. It was his cachectic face.

  Waiting, he listened. After a time it came to him, the high ringing sound, iron on iron, like that of clapper on bell, louder now, and drawing nigh.

  Gillom Rogers climbed through the west window and made straight for the armchair. He tore open the envelope, unfolded the sheet of paper. He read the note to his mother. He counted the money, grinning. Then, putting money in one pants pocket, envelope and note in the other, he climbed out the window and skulked along the back of the house, turned, and stationed himself at a point from which he could spy on the corner and the man there.

  Serrano, or El Tuerto, or Cross-eye, as he was more often called, entered the Constantinople at three fifty-one, accompanied by a man named Koopmann. There was a man at the bar, and the barkeep, and a pimply kid wearing two guns seated at a table in front of the wine booths at the left rear corner of the saloon. Serrano and Koopmann stepped to the bar and bought a drink. The barkeep was barely civil to them, his attitude implying that the Constantinople catered to a better class of patrons. On another occasion the pair might have taken umbrage at the slight, but they had bigger fish to fry this day.

  Serrano chose a table dead center of the room, back to the wall. Koopmann sat beside him. Cross-eye pulled a Peacemaker from his belt and laid it in his lap, while Koopmann did likewise with a Navy Colt. Koopmann had for some time had business associations with Serrano, and the latter had enlisted his support this afternoon on both material and personal grounds. If he, Serrano, were laid low, he had argued, Koopmann was incapable of rustling cattle successfully by himself, so it behooved him to see that he, Serrano, retained his health and his acumen. His personal reasons El Tuerto put as logically. Some gringo cattlemen had recently declared their intention to kill him if he did not kill J. B. Books if J. B. Books did not kill him. And since he did not care to chance being killed by J. B. Books, notwithstanding the celebrated gun man's physical condition or state of mind, or by the gringo cattlemen for that matter, he declared his intention to kill Koopmann if he, Koopmann, did not assist him in killing J. B. Books.

  They sipped whiskey. Koopmann, a big, clean-shaven man, wore flowered suspenders and a derby hat. Serrano watched the front doors with his right eye and with his left, the exotropic, watched Jay Cobb.

  The streetcar turned the corner a block away and, like a small boat upon a lazy river, glided in dignity toward him, drawn by a somnolent mule yclept Mandy by all El Pasoans. The car was small, seating but twelve passengers, and painted bright yellow with black trim and lettering: TRANVIAS DE CIUDAD JUAREZ above the windows, the numeral 1 in the center, and El Paso & Juárez along the side. Exit was over a platform at the rear, entrance at the front, up two steps onto a platform where the boatman, or conductor, sat upon a three-legged stool, sombrero over eyes, reins in one hand, cashbox beside him.

  As though it knew he wished to board, the streetcar stopped. Books mounted the platform, noted the "5¢" on the box, located the nickel in his pocket, and dropped the fare.

  "I want to go to the Constantinople."

  This was too many syllables for the conductor, a Charon of advanced years and innumerable miles behind the mule.

  "The Connie?" Books tried.

  "Ah. Con-nee. Si, señor."

  Books entered the car and, placing his pillow upon the bench, seated himself. There were no other passengers. The conductor clucked, the car moved.

  He had never ridden on a streetcar and, had it not been for his suffering, might have enjoyed this modern means of transport. The mule plodded, the roadbed was smooth, the roll of four iron wheels upon iron rails produced a not unpleasant monotone. On his stool the driver dozed, reins in hand, resting in peaceful certitude that neither buggy nor bicycle nor eccentricity of nature would stay his partner from the slow but sure completion of his appointed rounds. It seemed spring, but it was not, for the mulberry trees along the street did not as yet show bud.

  The car stopped, and another passenger boarded, paid her fare, and seated herself near Books but opposite. She was dainty, and blond, in her middle twenties, and he believed her at once the loveliest girl he had ever seen. He twisted sideways and put an elbow out the window, the better to admire her. There was dew upon her lips; under his gaze her lashes beat like wings. She wore a long dress of lavender silk, with leg o' mutton sleeves. White lace foamed from her cleavage to her throat and garnished her skirt. She crossed her legs, affording him a glimpse of white stocking, a shapely ankle, and white high-button shoes. Adorning her blonde tresses was a hat of white straw which bloomed with lavender carnations. She carried a white parasol upon which no drop of rain would presume to fall. She could have been the darling of the town's most affluent family or the costliest jewel of a parlor house—it was impossible to say. To the critical observer, her beauty might have been flawed by the livid bruise upon her cheek, but only a little.

  A block behind the streetcar Gillom Rogers followed, keeping interval with steady pace.

  Since the afternoon was unseasonably warm, the doors were open and, entering the Constantinople, Jack Pulford stopped short.

  The barkeep looked at him, then at Jay Cobb, then at Serrano and Koopmann, then at Pulford again, and aware, suddenly, that an event of some enormity was about to take place upon his premises, froze, glass in hand, polish cloth in glass.

  The gambler stood almost at attention. The Constantinople was new, prices were higher than elsewhere, and he had expected to have the saloon, except for the barkeep, to himself. The three patrons looked at him, recognized him. He looked at them. The young two-gun tough he did not recognize, nor the man in the derby. Serrano he did. He took in their positions, too, relative to the doors behind him, to the archway at the rear, and to each other. He reflected. Maturity whispered that discretion was the better part of valor, impulse shouted to turn and walk out while there was time. Instead, having made a choice, he stepped left and took a chair at a table in the front so that he had a full sweep of the room.

  To cover his apprehension, he examined his finge
rnails. He smoothed a sleeve of his white silk shirt. He weighed, and decided against having a drink. He slipped and reholstered the Smith & Wesson on his right hip and was conscious that his palm was damp and reflected on that. Jack Pulford had come to the Constantinople willingly. He had felt at first that his own, earlier statement, prompted by what to him was a justifiable vanity, had left him no alternative. "There was a man," he had said to a full faro table with reference to J. B. Books, "I could've beat." And when the Rogers kid had delivered the challenge from Books before another full table therefore, he was caught in a squeeze chute: put up or shut up, make good his mouth or go crawl. But last night, pondering Books's motive, trying to divine his hole card, he had finally sorted out the hand. What he had received was not a challenge but an invitation, a plea almost, for help. Books seemed to be saying, Look, I am cashing in, chip by chip, and I am squeamish about hurrying matters along by myself, so meet me tomorrow at four o'clock and do my killing for me. I have heard there is no better man in west Texas for the job. So meet me at four, Pulford, and write your name in the history books. No one will remember that I was on my last legs, no one will suspect. All they will remember is that J. B. Books was faced and killed in a saloon in El Paso in 1901 by one Jack Pulford. That was it, that was the reason, the gambler satisfied himself. What else could a dying man possibly desire beyond a dose of merciful lead?

  So he had arrived as invited, ready to do business, and now this—a marked deck if he had ever seen one. If all Books wanted was an execution, why swell the guest list, why ask a drooling, double-gun idiot and low characters like Cross-eye and Derby Hat to the affair? They were obviously waiting for four o'clock, as he was. It made no damned sense.

  He drew his watch. He would soon have an answer. It was three fifty-five.

  Jack Pulford shot his cuffs. The Constantinople suited his taste to a t. In a day or two, he resolved, he would find out who had financed it and inquire what they would pay a faro dealer with his style.

  He glanced at the other three again, with disdain. He would win anyone's money, that was his profession, but when it came to high stakes, to life or death, he favored the company of his peers.

  The streetcar halted. The conductor pointed across the street. "Con-nee," he said.

  "Thank you."

  Books attempted to stand and lift the crimson pillow with him so that he would not have to stoop for it, but could not. When on his feet, he bent at the knees, picked it up, and took it to the forward platform, to the conductor.

  "For you," he said.

  The Mexican did not get his intention. Books gestured at the stool.

  "Ah!" The conductor accepted the pillow, placed it on the stool, and sat down again, smiling. "Es muy grande! Gracias, señor!"

  Books turned and moved back through the car, toward the exit platform. But rather than passing the lovely girl in lavender and white, he paused and removed his hat. He swayed.

  "Will you rise, ma'am?" he asked.

  She had been conscious of his admiration during the ride, had watched him as he presented the pillow to the conductor, but she looked at him bravely now for the first time, at his face, the face from which a child had fled, and drew breath. She rose. Her eyes filled.

  She knew.

  He took her in his arms and kissed her long and ardently. Men in their hosts, young and old, innocent and corrupt, had paid her for her favors, but she put her arms about him of her own free will as though to give him what she could in recompense for this, the last gift she guessed, of his manhood.

  He let her go and walked drunkenly to the rear of the car, to the platform, and put on his hat, and stepped down, one and, two and, felt the ageless earth beneath his boots.

  It was three fifty-eight.

  He thought: I will make them wait on me a little. It is such a beautiful afternoon.

  He leaned against a brick building, one of the largest in town, the recently constructed Myar Opera House. Beside him, a framed poster announced a concert that night by the El Paso Symphony Orchestra. The program would include, so he read, selections from Balfe's Bohemian Girl, Mascagni's Intermezzo Sinfonico, and Von Flotow's overture to Stradella.

  He thought: When I walk in there, they will think there is a lot of me to kill. They will be wrong. Tarrant owns my horse and saddle. The barber has bought my hair. The secondhand man will have my watch and such, my guns will go to the boy. The photographer has my likeness. My cancer, and my corpse, belong to Beckum. That reporter did not get my reputation, though. Serepta cannot sell my name. And the reverend went away without my soul. So I have kept my valuables. They will not be wrong after all, then, the three of them. There is still a lot of me to kill.

  Down the street, hiding in the doorway of a small cigar manufactory, Gillom Rogers waited, watched. Now and then he touched a trousers pocket as though to reassure himself that the money was there.

  A bolt of pain sheered through Books from hip to hip. He was stricken by a paroxysm of such terrible intensity that his knees buckled, that he clawed at the brick behind him with his fingers to keep from falling, that he clenched his jaws to keep from screaming in the street. Counterpoint to the pain, all four lines played through his mind in perfect harmony and tempo: "Weave a circle round him thrice/And close your eyes with holy dread/For he on honey-dew hath fed/And drunk the milk of Paradise."

  He thought: Well. I am fifty-one years old and I have finally learned some poetry.

  He checked his watch again. It was four-two. He put his back to the brick and stood erect and brought both arms close in to his ribs, and closer, until he had the fellowship of the guns. Then, through the sunlight of his pride, under the shadow of his agony, J. B. Books crossed the street and entered the Constantinople.

  He thought: Let them gawp. Let them conclude you do not give a good God damn.

  It was the right place. The Constantinople had more class than any saloon he had ever seen, and would deserve its fame. The barroom was long, with a ceiling twenty feet high, and suspended from it were four three-bladed fans which revolved slowly, cooling the room on this warm day, and which were powered, probably, by electricity. The floor was a mosaic of green and white tiles. The woodwork—bar, tables, chairs, wine booths—was mahogany bleached to a reddish hue and carved with intricate Moorish designs. The bar was perhaps thirty feet long, and fronting the mirror behind it, on shelves, were tiers of sparkling glassware sized and shaped for every libation, for whiskey and beer, for champagne and wine and liqueurs. The cash register gleamed, as did the bar rail, as did the cuspidors, as did the light fixtures, which were grapes of glass. Each table top was inset with shell and beadwork in stars and crescent moons. Beyond the bar, this side of the archway, was a billiard table. Inside the doors, to the right, was a mahogany booth, with a door of frosted glass and gilt lettering: "Telephone."

  It was the murals, however, the scope and subject matter of the murals, which stunned. They covered three walls, that over the bar, over the archway, and the full wall to the left. They depicted, in colors that whooped, in perspective that was fantastically out of whack, exotic scenes on the far side of exotic seas. There were domes and mosques and caravans of camels and pyramids and horsemen waving scimitars and minarets and palm trees and Sphinxes and tombs and dancing girls with navels as big as the tops of tin cans and boobs as pendant as hams hung on hooks and tents and oases on burning sands and dhows on rivers and dusty battles. The Constantinople had class, all right, but Books was in some doubt about the murals. They appeared to be the masterwork of a frontier genius who had been paid in alcohol or opium and who, by the time he had slap-dashed his visions and laid down his brush, had become either an addict or an irredeemable drunk. They spit in the rational eye. They kicked art in the ass.

  He thought: Well, it will not be where I was that will count. It will be what I did.

  Only then, after he had looked his fill, only then did Books acknowledge the existence of the others. Jay Cobb he could identify by his youth; Serrano by h
is plug-ugliness; Pulford by his attire and dealer's hands. The man in flowered suspenders and derby hat, Cross-eye's sidekick, he could not. One by one he considered them. He sensed their awe of him, and their unease. They knew why he had come, or believed they did, but none of the three principals, Cobb or Serrano or Pulford, understood why in hell the other two were here. And in their turn they stared at him, and waited, motionless, and stared. They were like actors on an empty stage, the five. The curtain had risen, the hour come. But they had no audience, save for one another, and even more bewildering, they had no play. They were assembled to take roles for which no lines had yet been written, to participate in a tragedy behind which there was no clear creative intent, to impose upon senselessness some sort of deadly order.

  Books gave them a cue. Stepping to the center of the bar, boot heels clicking on the tile, he turned his back to them.

  The barkeep slid along the bar to him, treading on eggs. He was a long drink of water called "Mount" Murray, and he had moved from the Acme to the Constantinople when the latter opened. The wages were better, the atmosphere higher-toned. Murray had noted them enter, first the four, now the man who must be J. B. Books. What he was about to witness he could not imagine, except that it would be slaughterous, and every instinct clamored that on the floor or under the billiard table or any damned where in that room would be a damned dangerous place to be.