We continue down the alley, until Lavender stops at one of the small shacks, opens the door—it’s not locked—puts her plunder on a table, and lights a lantern. She turns it down real low, smiles at me standing at the door looking stupid, and, laughing, pulls me inside. She slams the door shut. It bounces back open a crack, but she doesn’t bother to close it tight. She’s busy opening her bottle and her package. Bottle opened, she pours whatever it is into a glass. She shoots it down, coughs, and refills it.
Lavender looks at me, grins, and finds a glass on the floor. The floor’s dirt. With a grunt, she picks it up and places it on the table.
“Want some?” She holds the bottle up.
“Sure,” I say, forgetting my vow to remain sober this night. As she pours I remember to ask what I should’ve asked first. “What is it?”
“What keeps me going.” Lavender laughs. “Elixir Mariani. The nectar of the gods.” To my surprise she can read. She holds the bottle’s label near the dim light, reciting: “Nourishes, fortifies, refreshes, aids digestion, strengthens the system.” She sets the bottle down, giving me a grin before she says: “Young as you are, I don’t think your system will need no strengthenin’, but this’ll sure cure what ails you.”
At first I sip the liquid from the filthy glass, but then shoot it back so Lavender won’t think I am just some stupid Texas cowboy. Somehow, I manage not to cough. Or die.
“Careful, tiger,” she says, but she refills my glass. “They used to make it with wine. I like the liquor one better.”
“I’ve had plenty of liquor,” I tell her.
“With cocaine?” she asks.
I don’t know what cocaine is. I do know that the Elixir Mariani hits me harder than the few drinks I’ve nursed all this night.
“It’ll make a lover out of you,” Lavender says, as she kills her drink and begins to pull off her dress.
I swallow both my fear and the Elixir Mariani as I watch, my mouth open. There wasn’t much of a dress on her anyway, and she’s not wearing any unmentionables. She kicks off her slippers. She’s just standing there, stark naked, and I’m trying not to let on that I’ve never seen a woman’s breasts before, or …
“Sugar.” She takes the empty glass from my hand, drops it back onto the dirt floor, grabs my hands, which I’m sure feel clammy, and guides me to the bed. She pushes me down onto it.
The rest of the evening comes more in bits and pieces, some of it likely imagined, some of which I remembered months, even years, later.
She steps over my right leg, straddles it, and starts working on my boot. “You Texans and your spurs.” Giggling, she gets the boot and sock off. Next she’s working on the other boot. She drops them both on the floor.
Turning around, she has to stop to catch her breath. “C’mon,” she whispers. “Willie ain’t always understandin’ or patient.”
I guess I slipped the suspenders off, but I’m all thumbs. Lavender helps, and she knows what she’s doing. My pants are off, then my summer underdrawers. She doesn’t bother with my shirt, which is perfectly fine by me.
* * * * *
I know I have to get Lavender away from the Devil’s Addition—away from Willie—away from this life. It’s not one for her. My heart has never beaten this fast before, and I’ve never felt this way. A million thoughts race through my mind, but they always come back to Lavender.
On the bed, which now feels like the clouds of heaven, I watch her as she sits on a stool, the lantern bathing her in golden light. She smokes her cigarette, crushes it out, and sips from another bottle, a small one, not the Elixir Mariani.
“What’s that?” I ask.
She corks the tiny bottle, and pushes it aside. “Laudanum. Elixir Mariani to lift you up. Laudanum to bring you down. A beautiful pair.” She stands—it takes her three tries—and comes back to the bed, sits down beside me, and asks: “You got a dollar?”
“I-guess-so.” The words come out like one.
“I’ll take it now, then, Talkin’ Boy. Willie won’t like it if I don’t bring him his dollar.”
I don’t care much what Willie won’t like but climb off the bed, find my pants, and show her my purse, jingling it before I pull out a silver dollar. A few more coins spill out. I empty the purse and drop it on my pants.
“You ain’t exactly flush, are you?”
“Well.” I want to tell her how much I’ll be earning until Mr. Carroll sells the herd. That money can take her back to Goliad, away from the Devil’s Addition and Willie.
“’Course,” she says, “if you’d like to give me a little extra.”
I see two of her. One of the two Lavenders leans over and kisses me again. I pitch another dollar to her, then another.
“You’re a sweetheart. What’s your name again?”
“Noah.”
“Noah.” She laughs. “Yeah. The Ark.” She has it right now. She must love me. “Listen. I’ll see you around again, I hope. But you’d best be gone by the time I get back. Have a …”
She sees the tears welling in my eyes. She leans over, and she kisses away my tears, then finds my lips.
“I guess …” she whispers, her voice husky, and turns briefly to see the remaining money on the dirt floor. “Since you got an extra dollar …”
* * * * *
I sit up slowly in her ramshackle bed. All that energy I had early, that intensity, has vanished. I try to sleep, but can’t. I’m alone. My back aches. Instead of being alert to every damned thing going on, instead of being a god, I can barely move.
Maybe it’s because I’m … alone. Lavender’s gone.
The room spins around some, but I find my pants and pull them on. I’m going to throttle that cur-dog Willie. Then I’ll take Lavender back to Texas, or New Orleans, Paris, San Francisco, San Antonio, anywhere she’d like to be. But only after I kill Willie. Whipping him isn’t enough. He has to die. Standing now, I realize my underdrawers are still on the dirt floor. To get them on, I’d have to take off my pants again. “To hell with those,” I say. It’s a struggle enough to get my socks on. The boots? I don’t know how I got them on, though I’m aware that they’re on my feet. There’s my hat. And my poke. The poke feels a lot lighter. The damned thing’s empty. My hat weighs more than a steer.
I locate the door, I make for it but get no farther than the table. I see the bottle of laudanum, grab it, but it’s empty, so I toss it near the cans that serve as ashtrays that haven’t been emptied in months. In a corner, there it stands, that nectar of the gods, wonderful Elixir Mariana. There’s not much left, but I drink it down, and the sluggishness vanishes. Within a few heartbeats, I’m alive once more, with a million thoughts, two million memories, and visions of that goddess named Lavender, who I must rescue, wherever she is. I discover an open bottle of pills. Opium. I take one, washing my medicine down with Old Sachem Bitters and Wigwam Tonic.
Now, I can meet the day.
It’s still night.
Once I start down the alley, I remember Lavender’s warning, so I swing around and sprint past a few other cribs. The Devil’s Addition is full of life. A piano bangs away. So does a shotgun. Men and women laugh. Someone’s trying to sing. There are more pigs grunting in the cribs as I pass, and suddenly, I’m on something that passes for a street.
I curse Elixir Mariana. It never lasts long enough. I bellow for Lavender. I yell: “Where the hell did I leave my horse?”
I must be back in Abilene proper, because the whistle of a train practically bursts my eardrums.
“Shut up.” I scream. “Shut up. Lavender? Wes? Sam! Where the hell is everyone?”
Someone pushes me aside. I swing at him but wind up on the ground, scattering a pile of horse apples. A couple of cowboys stop me. I don’t know them. They don’t know me. No, they didn’t stop me. They’ve just walked past me, found their horses, and are mounting up. I back out onto the street once the
y leave and look up at the sign painted on the second floor. There’s no real second floor, though. It’s just wasting wood. If I had a hammer and a saw, I could turn it into kindling. That would make Erastus McDougal happy. Kindling for him to burn coffee and boil beans. I have my pocketknife, though. Maybe … sure … I could cut all that wasted wood down with my knife. If only I can figure out how to get up there.
I read the sign: Old Fruit Saloon.
That’s what I’m looking for. No, not really. It’s the Bull’s Head that I want, and that’s where I’ll find Lavender. Won’t I? No, they don’t want her in the Bull’s Head. Legitimate watering holes don’t allow sporting girls in anymore. But the Bull’s Head is just beside the Old Fruit. That much I remember.
I push a man aside. He cusses me. I wave him off. I move on, not sure where exactly I’m going, and can’t recall what I’m supposed to be looking for. I weave between buildings, find another alley, or a vacant lot, or just Kansas prairie. I’m on another street now. It’s quieter. There’s the Bull’s Head. I stagger, fall, stand, and climb up to the door.
The damned thing’s locked.
I pull. I shove. I kick, but that just knocks me on my ass.
“Hickok!” I yell.
No, that’s not right.
“Lavender!” I sob. “Lavender. I love you. Where are you?”
Maybe I should go back to her home. Home? That’s no place for a girl like Lavender. Sweet, lovely Lavender.
Oh, my God. I left my underdrawers on her floor? What will Willie think? Willie. I’m going to kill that son of a bitch. I just have to remember how to get back to the Devil’s Addition.
Someone in the Bull’s Head will take me there. If the bastards will just let me in. I bang on the door.
A voice stops me. “The church is closed.”
I turn. Some bastard stands there. I tell him exactly what I think: “What?”
“I said, the church is closed. Come back Sunday. Services start at ten. They’ll preach and sing till two. Baptists, you understand.”
Yeah, I understand. He’s playing me for a fool. I’ll tear his head off. I’m fortified with …with …whatever.
“Lavender!” Screaming, I charge the man.
I see the badge on his vest.
I see the revolver in his hand.
I see … nothing.
Chapter Nineteen
I woke up, rolled over, fell onto a cold, hard floor, and retched. The stench repulsed me. A hellish light blinded me. My head throbbed, and I heaved and heaved and begged God to take pity on me, a poor sinner, and strike me dead. God turned deaf. There was nothing left inside my gut to vomit. And that, I somehow realized, was where the repulsive odor came from.
Demons from hell laughed.
One said: “He ain’t dead. You owe me six bits.”
“Pay you next month.”
My eyes opened, closed rapidly, squeezing tightly against the burning, blinding light. Slowly, my heartbeat lessened, the gagging stopped, and I could breathe. Someone had used my head as though it were an anvil in a smithy’s barn.
Headaches. Sick to my stomach. I’d felt that way after drinking too much before, but every damned joint and muscle burned like someone had drenched them with acid. My skin itched as though I’d wandered through a forest of poison ivy.
“Fetch him some water,” one of the demons said.
“If I do,” said the other, “I owe you just four bits.”
“Deal.”
Suddenly, numbing water drenched me, could’ve drowned me. Rolling over, spitting out the warm, foul water, I coughed and cursed as Lucifer’s minions giggled with delight.
“That was worth two bits,” one of the demons said.
Pushing the wet hair out of my eyes, I leaned over, only to retch at the odor from a slop bucket. I would leave, but first I’d have to stand, and when I tried, my boots slipped and slid against the wet stone floor. The back of my head struck something hard.
“Son of a bitch!” I yelled. At least, I thought I yelled. Turned out, no one could understand my muttering, and the effort of opening my mouth sent me doubling over with violent cramps.
Bells began to ring, and I tried to cover my ears. My wet hands did no good. “Stop,” I wanted to cry out, but feared the cramps might return if I did. The dry heaves resumed.
* * * * *
Silence. Blessed silence. Till a voice said: “Luke, if you rake that cup against those bars one more time, you’ll be hauling shit buckets for the rest of your sentence.”
“But Mikey,” another said, “he’s alive.”
I felt blood on the back of my head. My eyes finally opened, the light slowly dimming its brilliance, and the servants of Lucifer came into what might have passed as focus. A little man in striped britches and stovepipe boots, the left side of his face purple from the bottom of the eye past his beard-stubbled cheek, held a tall tin mug in his left hand. He leaned against the iron bars of a cell, and behind them stood a moderately built man wearing an unbuttoned vest and rolled-up shirt sleeves.
“I’ll be damned,” the man outside the bars said softly.
“How long has it been, Mikey?” said a voice off to my left. I turned to see another man. He lay on what passed for a bunk, feet crossed at the ankles, head propped up against a rolled-up bedroll. Bearded, he puffed on a corncob pipe.
The man behind the bars said: “Five days, I think. I’d have to check the register.”
“Five days,” said the man on the bunk, tapping his pipe against the stone walls now. “Judge ought to reduce our sentence, Mikey. It don’t … what’s that they call it? Fit the crime? I mean, we’ve had to live with that … him.”
“So have I,” said Mikey, maybe a deputy or a sheriff.
“But not as close as us,” said the one with the tin cup.
“Can you at least take him out and clean him up, Mikey?” the pipe smoker asked. “We’ll make it worth your while.”
“No bathhouse would let him through the doors,” said Mikey.
That conversation would be related to me several days later. All I heard at that time was sobbing, my sobbing, and I really didn’t know why I was crying.
* * * * *
The clothes I had bought with Hardin were ruined—no need to go into more details. I had no hat. Where I had left or lost mine, I couldn’t even guess.
When I could finally move around without cramps, when my brain started to focus, when my moods didn’t move from raging violence to sobbing fits, when I could speak without slurring my words, when my skin stopped itching and I no longer suffered from the trots, I bathed downstream from the bridge that crossed the fork, scrubbing my body—the best I could with iron manacles biting into both wrists—with lye soap. Deputy Mikey sat on the bank, drinking a bottled pilsner that almost made me vomit. A towel was draped on a bush on the bank. Clothes that weren’t mine were piled on the grass between the fork and the deputy.
Eventually, I started out of the water, but stopped, waist deep, staring at Mikey.
“I cannot avert my eyes, lad,” the deputy said. “You are under arrest.”
“What if someone crosses the bridge?”
“I’ll order them to turn their heads in the name of law. But I don’t think I’d have to order them.”
“You’re a Kansas son of a bitch,” I told him.
“Missouri,” he said. “I just work in Kansas.” He tossed the bottle into the river.
With my bare feet on the grass, dripping wet, but at least smelling better than I had, I held my shackled wrists toward him.
“I can’t pull a shirt on with these.” I shook my shackled wrists.
Slowly he rose, fished out a key, and worked the lock. Freed, I massaged my wrists until I could feel my fingers, and pulled on the itchy muslin shirt. The underdrawers fit all right, but the pants were too bi
g; however, the attached suspenders would keep them up. I still had my boots, which I had scrubbed clean while sitting on the bank before stripping and bathing. Woolen socks felt like sandpaper. The hat was a baseball cap, dingy white, stained from tobacco juice, with two red stripes across the front.
Once the boots had been stamped onto my swollen, itchy, but clean feet, I asked: “Where are my spurs?”
“You had no spurs when you were arrested,” I was told.
“Thieving Kansas son of bitches,” I told him.
“I made the arrest, bub.” Mikey’s eyes chilled me. “You calling me a thief and a liar?”
I held out my wrists to have the manacles returned.
“You plan on escaping?”
I frowned. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Good. We’ll leave the irons off.”
My lips parted, but no words came out.
“What do you say?” His voice was mocking, like a mother demanding something from an unruly kid. His smile, though, seemed genuine.
“Thank you.” I sighed with relief, rubbing my wrists.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty,” I told him.
“How old?”
I turned and spit on the grass. “Sixteen.”
“We need a name to write down. Since you’ve been screaming when you’re sleeping and doing that for what seems like eternity, it would be nice if we could write down something other than ‘crazy kid.’”
I pouted. He waited. I had to give him credit for his patience.
“Noah,” I told him. “Noah Benton.” It never occurred to me to use an alias.
He waited.
I rubbed my temples and sighed. “It’s my real name.”
He asked: “Just what the bloody hell were you doing?”
I sniffed, fearing I’d break into tears. “I just … I don’t … hell, I don’t remember anything.”
That’s when the deputy laughed. He pushed back his hat and held out his hand. “My name’s Williams,” he said. “Mike Williams. Special deputy. Mostly I run the jail for Jim.”
“Who’s Jim?”
“The marshal. James Butler Hickok.”
The Fall of Abilene Page 12