I await word from him and you as to how you are faring. I know that he will urge you, as I have, to come home. The family unanimously wishes this, for all are frantic with worry over your welfare.
None more so than I. And yet, given the tone of your last letter, I wonder if that matters to you at all.
You seemed to suggest there is nothing for you here. You discuss the family as though we were little more than a troop of specters, floating about the hazy edges of your memory. Worse, we seem to serve as mere reflections of your severe disappointment with yourself.
How wounded I was by those words. How could you say such things? You speak of being relentlessly alone, but are you so incapable of realizing that your isolation is purely a matter of choice? I love you with all my heart. Which is why I insist you must come home, you must.
Cicero speaks of the strangely tender love of family, and how it inspires and strengthens the courage for the duties of life. I beg you, avail yourself of that courage, that tender love. Return to us. To me.
You are not alone. I am with you every moment, every hour.
No, I did not come in the flesh, but open your heart and soul to my words here and you will feel me in the ineffable nearness of spirit. Let that embolden you to turn away from darkness and death and come home. I am waiting to greet you with every drop of love in my heart.
With unrestrained devotion,
Mattie
***
September 2, 1877
My Dearest Mattie:
First, let me assure you that I have managed to cheat death and am on the mend, owing in no small part to the care and concern of our good cousin George. I have told him more than once he would make a good nurse, or wife, and he has yet to strangle me, which no doubt counts as one more testament to the steadiness of his character.
As for the moral defective, to use your term—it is not inapt—who inflicted the wound, his name is Henry Kahn. He is now a fugitive, not merely for trying to murder me, I’m told, but also on charges of forgery.
As for our quarrel, it concerned his claim, made in public before several other men, that he had caught me skinning cards while dealing poker.
When a man who is an utter fraud accuses you of being a cheat, the affront feels especially insufferable.
I demanded he retract the accusation, which was baseless in every regard. He responded with an even more egregious lie—that I had played capper in a confidence scheme that had fleeced a traveler from Ohio of fifty dollars.
At that point I lifted my walking stick and caned the man right there in the street, demanding he admit the falsity of his statements. This drew a crowd, as you can imagine, and the mob attracted the police. In short order we were both taken into custody, charged, and released.
Sadly, that was not the end of the matter. Later that afternoon I came upon the wretch again, but before I could so much as offer a reproach he drew a pistol and fired.
The bullet entered my side, carving a nasty little track through my penetralia, if you will excuse the word play, and I drifted several feet before collapsing.
Meanwhile, the odious Mr. Kahn fled, being not just a liar and a fraud but a coward. He has been on the run ever since.
I drifted in and out of consciousness for several days, but managed to stay on this side of the veil until George arrived.
I have read your letter at least twice daily, often more frequently than that, ever since George presented it to me.
Do not worry. I have betrayed no confidences. Your reputation as “steadfast spinster”—speaking of words that can break a heart—remains unblemished.
That said, when I learned the family was sending someone, I cannot help but confess that I hoped, with all my heart, it would be you.
Poor George. If only you could have beheld the expression on his face when he noticed the disappointment in mine.
As for what you wrote, it pains me to reflect you would think me so shallow and calculating as to court mortal injury with the sole, insidious intention of luring you west.
Please know that while death hovered at my bedside, two things hardened into stone-like certainty: the desire to live, and my love for you.
Over and over, those two things inspired me to resist the urge to relent, surrender, and drop beneath the surface of the unending darkness I so frequently observed, like a sea of oblivion, stretched out before me.
However, as my strength returned, I came to realize that these two certainties, to live and to love, did not coalesce. On the contrary, they revealed a fundamental, even tragic contradiction.
If there is one thing I’ve gathered from experience, whether during the war or at Mother’s sickbed or out here in the railheads and cow towns, it is that there is nothing to distinguish a good life from a bad life, there is just life, and it must be lived.
I cannot help at times but wonder if your Romanist faith is not a kind of armor against the terrible ambiguities of a life lived simply, fully, honestly, without pretense of nobility or purpose. When I lingered near death, and felt the immanent, infinite coldness entering my core, I found no solace whatsoever in pieties. Rather, what comfort came to me arrived solely through the relentless will to defy the odds and continue the meager reckless enterprise of my existence.
Incidentally, I cannot and do not take exception to the intemperance of tone in your letter. On the contrary, rather than finding it callous or harsh, I cherish the fire, the anger. I know well, and miss profoundly, the generous heart in which that rage is forged.
However, I also suspect that your anger offers evidence of a need to hack at the bonds that have lashed us together all these years, and to free yourself at last—from this unwholesome and vexing situation. From me.
You may argue against that interpretation, but the more I reflect on your remaining behind in Georgia, and your justifications for doing so, the more I realize that my lust for the raucous noise of bareknuckle life cannot be reconciled with what you consider the dutiful light of holiness and home.
Perhaps, then, the possibility of us must give way to the reality of you and me—individual, apart, alone. I can no longer resist the impression that, like separate planets, we circle in irreconcilable orbits around a common sun. I observe the light and feel the warmth as you do. If only that could draw us nearer.
I cannot end there. It sounds too small and defeatist, and you have always provoked me to a more expansive, honest, and manly disposition.
Let me simply repeat, then, that above and beyond everything else, the nearness of death reawakened my awareness of just how much I love you. Nor do I disregard or wish to minimize your generous admission that you love me as well, and with all your heart. How strangely odd and ill-fated, this longing, this beautiful and tender sorrow. Perhaps someday, somehow, one of us will find a way to make it count for more than words from afar.
With unrelenting devotion,
John Henry
PART III
Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
~ Baruch Spinoza
CHAPTER 28
Lisa woke with the sensation of parchment sealed to her cheek.
She’d rushed from her meeting with Elan Wingfield to the county law library, only to doze off in the middle of her research—trying to anticipate the arguments Littmann and Rankin would throw at her, thinking through her counter-arguments. Apparently, the topmost page of the volume that had finally won the war of wakefulness had sealed itself to the side of her face, moistened by sweat.
Gingerly, she lifted her head. The thin, brittle page detached, peeling away inch by inch. Glancing around, she wondered who might have noticed, wondering as well if the ink had left an imprint, a blur of words across her cheek like a faded tattoo—worse, had she been snoring?
Only three other researchers occupied the vast, hushed room, planted at monitors, surrounded by books, and they seemed far too absorbed in typing and reading and massaging their temples to pay much mind to her plight.
Curious
ly, that realization prompted a sudden, childlike loneliness, as though she’d been exiled to some invisible corner of space, like some barely discernible planet circling a nameless sun.
The notion returned her to the final dreamlike images that had drifted through her mind just before snapping awake. She’d revisited her lovemaking with Tuck—late last night, early this morning, whenever it had taken place—throwing herself into it more willfully now in the safety of her mind, biting his shoulder, pounding her fists against his chest and arms, scraping his back with her bright red nails, weeping as her orgasm broke and she finally, gratefully surrendered to who he was, how she felt, and the thousand little disasters lurking in the shadows.
She dropped her face into the cooling softness of her hands, thinking: Oh get over yourself—at which point the image of three gallows on a mountain rose once again in her mind’s eye.
She shook off the mood, chafing the drowsiness from her face with her palms.
Checking her phone, she discovered that neither Tuck nor Rayella had responded to any of the texts she’d sent throughout the afternoon. Where were they, what were they up to? What was so important that they couldn’t answer back?
And what about Rags and his leatherneck legionnaires? Every time she tried to imagine why they were here, what they were up to, her pulse began a manic jig.
Maybe they’d just all gone out for Mexican—enchiladas and pozole and margaritas by the pitcher. Playing darts. Bitching about lawyers.
Sure. Or maybe they’d all sprouted wings and flown to Oz.
Opening her email app, she saw Nico had sent a message with an attachment—an affidavit from a filmmaker, one of Nico’s clients, assessing the intangible value of the stolen letters.
The filmmaker placed their worth in pure conceptual terms, as the basis for a documentary or a miniseries or a feature film, at nothing less than $100,000 dollars, bare minimum—regardless of whether the letters were genuine or not.
The story alone, not just about Doc and his cousin but how the letters were presumably destroyed, then somehow reappeared—in the hands of a former slave who stayed with the family for decades despite being freed—then vanished once again in the Depression, only to pop up now by strange chance: It was just the kind of shaggy-dog history-tinged true-story soap opera that made Hollywood suits fall all over themselves in a froth of acquisitive glee.
This eliminated the problem of meeting the $75,000 threshold for bringing the lawsuit in federal court, the weakest element of her argument. Every muscle in her body softened just a little, bathed in a sunny wave of relief.
Leave it to Nico, she thought, smiling as she read though the affidavit again. And yet shortly that same odd loneliness descended. She found herself wishing once more, even more intensely, that he could join her in court tomorrow, sit beside her at the plaintiff’s table, a friendly face, that rakish, heart-melting smile.
Someone in her corner, the invisible one at the edge of space.
***
Tuck pulled up to the hotel with Rayella beside him, the two of them having exchanged scarcely a word or even a glance the entire drive. Tuck tried not to imagine what had happened to Giordano after they’d left, and figured the girl shared the same state of mind.
Lodging the car in park, he said, “You go on in. I’ve got a couple errands I need to see to.” Rayella didn’t move, not even to turn his way. Her backlit profile, small and soft and plain, reminded him just how young she was. “There some problem?”
“You tell me.” She glanced down at her hands, flexing them open and closed in her lap.
“Not sure I understand.”
“Oh, I think you do. I think you understand real well.”
A couple appeared from the stone walkway leading back toward the hotel lobby—sweethearts, maybe even newlyweds, judging from their laughter, their locked arms, the absence of sunlight between their hips.
“I think I’ve explained myself,” Tuck said. “Whatever you and your boyfriend may think is going on, behind the scenes or what-the-hell-ever, like I’ve got myself an agenda or somehow even planned this disaster, the truth is—”
“The truth?” She managed to spit out the word without raising her voice. “That’s funny.”
“Now listen—”
“Here’s the truth, you wanna hear it. I ain’t leaving your side. Not now, not later. Not till this thing is settled and done.”
“What—you gonna share my bed?”
“If it comes to that. Slept in worse places.”
Tuck couldn’t help but laugh at that. “This your idea? Or—”
“Don’t really see how that matters, do you?”
The amorous couple lurched toward their car, and Tuck felt sadly envious as the woman spun the man around, leaned him back against the trunk. Shortly that envy hardened into something else, a feeling on the dark side of hope.
Tuck returned his focus to Rayella. “So that’s how this is gonna be?”
She let silence answer for her.
“All right then,” he said, finger-drumming a taradiddle on the steering wheel. “Yeah, I want to head out to Littmann’s ranch, the Bristlecone. I want to be nearby in the morning when Rags and them come down off the mountain. No telling what they might run into, and I’m not just talking about three or four boneheads working security.”
She seemed to turn that over in her mind. “Like what? I mean—”
“That’s just it, I don’t know. But I want to be close in case anything, anything at all, comes up. Like I said, I grew up around here, I know these people, I know the terrain. And, given what’s happened, I feel obligated.”
She sat there perfectly still, barely even a sign she was breathing, the window beyond her hazed with late-day light.
“Here’s the problem,” he said. “Your lawyer’s most likely gonna want you in that courtroom tomorrow. Her case gets ten times stronger with you there in person, tell the judge everything they did to you. Show that cut and bruise on your face.”
She let out a ragged laugh. “If I cared even a little about what’s gonna happen in court,” she said, “I wouldn’t have let Rags and them…” She let the rest trail away and glanced down into her hands again—open, closed, open. “Know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” he said, remembering Giordano strung up and naked. “Guess I do.”
“Kinda hard to just turn around now, take back what’s happened.”
“True enough.”
“So what else is there to talk about?”
The newlyweds, sweethearts, whatever they were—they’d taken their public necking to the next phase, the woman straddling the man now, hiking herself up onto his hips, grinding herself against him as they kissed, her hands locked around his neck. Nothing says romance, Tuck thought, like a public dry hump at sunset.
“I’d planned to sleep in the car,” he said. “If you want me to find you a motel—”
“Car suits me fine. Like I said, I slept in worse places.”
Oh, I’ll bet you’ve got some stories, he thought, studying the outline of her face—button nose, double chin, jaw locked tight. Tough little bird.
She’s gonna need to be.
CHAPTER 29
Meredith heard his footfalls thundering toward her as she sat in the sunroom, her back to the doorway, looking out the high plate-glass windows as the day’s fading light warmed the harsh, striated face of the mountain range. Even blurred, the ancient massive wall of rock, less than a mile from the house, reassured her.
Coming to a stop behind her, he said, “I believe you have something of mine.”
No matter how courtly his tone, she thought, he can’t hide the needy, put-upon ego. “I’m not sure I know what you mean, Gideon.”
He rested his hands on the back of her chair. She could feel the pressure.
“Oh, I think you do. You know—those documents you signed for without consulting me.”
His breath smelled of coffee clouded with mint. “You weren’t answering y
our phone. I thought—”
“You could have waited.”
“It seemed important. And, from what I gather, that’s true.”
He tapped his left hand against the chair back, his wedding band striking the wood. “It’s nothing, I assure you. Now once again, they’re where?”
She fluttered a hand toward an end table across the room. He went and picked up the papers, dog-eared and battered from earlier, when she’d flung them against the wall.
He read as he sauntered back, then took up position in front of her chair, blocking her view. “Have you looked at this?”
“Some,” she said. “Here and there. You know, just for the sake of discussion.”
“Is there something to discuss?”
“You tell me. Have you turned on a TV or radio yet this afternoon?”
A flicker of trepidation slipped across his eyes. “How could I?”
“The lawyer who filed those papers asked that the proceeding be sealed, but someone apparently already leaked it to the media.”
Some clerk at the courthouse, she imagined. So many were Hispanic or Indian, and they hated who he was, what he claimed to stand for. He’d explain that away, of course, by saying their kind always side with the losers.
His trepidation acquired a smile. “My money’s on the lawyer. Old trick—ask for confidentiality then sneak word to the press and play innocent in court.” He resumed glancing through the pleadings. “No worries. I’m sure Don was contacted for comment. He’ll let them know this is just a shakedown.”
“Oh, good. The children will be so relieved.”
The smile withered. “You let me worry about that.”
“I’m sure they’ll wonder about these reports you were involved in beating a woman, tying her up, robbing her.”
He held up the papers. “There’s not one word of truth in this.”
“Well, there’s a comfort. Not one word. My.”
The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday Page 14