Epitaph (24 page)

“You ever do anything legal about Mattie?” Virgil asked Wyatt.

“I let her use my name, is all.”

“Well, kid . . . time to fish or cut bait.”

Morgan kept quiet. He knew how unhappy Wyatt was, but Morg himself had found things to admire in Mattie Blaylock. She'd been thoughtful about cooking soft foods when Doc was working on Wyatt's teeth back in Dodge. And when Doc himself was so sick that winter, Mattie was a good nurse to him.

“That's a hell of a thing to ask!” Virg cried, bringing Morgan back to the present.

“I'm just trying to figure it out!” Wyatt was saying. “Don't make sense to me why a man would cheat if he had a fine woman at home.”

“Well, I can tell you why
I
don't.” Virg jerked his head toward the house. “Allie would know I'd been up to something before I took two steps into the house and she'd strip the bark off me. What about you, Morg? You ever get a little something on the side when you're up in Tucson?”

“Well, I suppose I could if I cared to,” Morg admitted, “but I'm not a good liar. And it's like . . . like I'd have to pull some kind of shade down between me and Lou. Maybe that's how women know if you're tomcatting. They can tell when you pull that shade down.”

“Yeah,” Wyatt said. “Fine. That's why men
don't
go to whores. What I'm asking is why men
do
, if they got quality right there in their own bed.”

“Just don't know when they're well off” was Morg's opinion.

“James?” Virg said. “You're the expert, I guess.”

James Cooksey Earp was the first of the five sons born to Nicholas and Virginia Earp and the most conventional of the brothers, in a thoroughly unconventional way. Nineteen when the war began, he'd enlisted in the Union Army and lost the use of his left arm for his trouble. James had lingered near death for a full year in an army hospital. When he finally turned the corner and began to heal, he counted himself a lucky man, for he emerged from that travail as husband to a Nashville madam named Bessie Ketchum. Overseeing a big, busy brothel like the one she and James had run back in Dodge City was beyond her now. Bessie had retired. Serving beer for a nickel a glass to Chinks and drifters certainly wasn't what James had expected when he and his brothers set out for Tombstone, but if anybody had asked him about how things had turned out, he would have shrugged with his good side and said with genuine cheer, “Can't complain! It's a living.”

“Why would a man with a fine woman go to whores?” he asked, repeating Wyatt's question. He followed with one of his own. “We're talking about Behan, right?”

“No! Well, maybe, but . . . Just in general, is what I want to know.”

“Lots of reasons.” James stood, stretched, and spit over the porch railing. “Sometimes a man can't get all he wants at home. Or he might like things his wife don't. Or maybe she's sickly, like Bess. Or she don't want more kids, so she lets him know it's just as well if he looks elsewhere for his needs, long as he keeps quiet about it.” He sat down again. “And sometimes, things look good to visitors, but it's a different story when the door closes. People get tired of each other. Or maybe it was just bad from the start and when they figured that out, it was too late.”

For a while, they all just sat there, smoking in the darkness.

“How's Mattie now?” James asked.

“Sleeps a lot. But when she's awake . . .” Wyatt shook his head.

In fifteen years of tending bar in bordellos, James Earp had seen a lot of whores come and go. Many died young. Suicide. Disease. Murder. Some just sort of disappeared into the alleys, sucking off cowboys and soldiers and miners for drink money or drugs. A few, like Mattie Blaylock, managed to find a man decent enough—or stupid enough—to take them in. They'd set up housekeeping with him before he knew what was happening.

“Wyatt,” James said quietly, “you've kept her off the street for a couple of years. That's gotta count for something.”

EVERYONE'S LIFE WAS HARD,
one way or another. That's what Curly Bill Brocius had observed. People found ways to soften things a little. Some ways were better than others. In Bill's experience, opium was the best of all.

The first time he lifted the canvas flap and peered into Ah-Sing's hop joint, he was surprised to see a white woman lying full-length on one of the low, quilt-padded pallets. Her eyes were vague as she gazed up at him, and he wondered if she was among the services on offer.

Ah-Sing beckoned to him. “You new, yes? Come in! Come in!”

The woman touched Bill's leg when he ducked inside, passing near her. “It's so good,” she warned, “don't even try it once.” Bill looked down at her, confused, but Mattie Blaylock was too far gone to say more.

If he'd cared to, Ah-Sing could have explained—though in Cantonese, not English: “Euphoria is the poppy's first gift, gently vanquishing the soul's distress, mercifully muting the body's pain. What follows is a gorgeous floating languor.
Be warned
: To experience that sensation even once is to desire it again and again, forever. To be deprived of opium's beneficence is to endure first longing, then anguish, and finally torment.”

Of course, Ah-Sing said no such thing. He was a businessman. Repeat customers were the main source of his income. “She crazy,” he told Curly Bill. “You only addict when you smoke three pipe a day.”

After that first amazing night, Bill tried not to visit Ah-Sing's tent more than once a month. Well, twice a month sometimes. It was hard to keep track, for rustling did not run to a schedule, and Bill Brocius was a busy man. Organizing the crew for Old Man Clanton. Leading the raids if the old man did not take charge himself. Getting the cattle distributed to the most cooperative ranchers. Paying off the boys. Keeping the peace among them, and keeping them out of Tombstone while they drank and gambled away their cut of the profits. It was a wearisome sort of life, marked by constant belligerence and endless strife.

All burdens of responsibility fell away when Curly Bill entered Ah-Sing's world. Even before he lit the pipe, its warmth in his hands was enough to calm him. Soon, he felt like he was wrapped in soft down pillows, though he lay on a hard wooden pallet. His limbs grew heavy even as he seemed to float, dissolving into the air, mixing with the smoke.

Bliss was best experienced without the distraction of companions, so it became Curly Bill's policy to visit Chinatown only when he was alone. Everything might have turned out different if he'd held to that rule the night Fred White got hurt.

Looking back, Curly Bill himself was inclined to blame Little Willie Claiborne for what happened. Claiborne was eighteen, same as Billy Clanton, and when those young fools got to be friends, Old Man Clanton hired Claiborne to handle the remuda. Claiborne was pretty good with horses, but Curly Bill had taken a dislike to the young braggart from the start.

“Well, now,” the little redneck had drawled, “this gang's already got itself a Billy Clanton and a Curly Bill. I'm the youngest, so I reckon y'all can call me Billy the Kid!”

It was presumptuous, giving yourself a nickname like that—trying
to make out like you were a famous outlaw when you were just an obnoxious young cracker who thought highly of himself.

“Billy the Kid?” Ringo scoffed. “You mean Billy the Baby Boy.”

Claiborne bristled and started talking about how tough he was. There was laughter in response, so he said he'd killed lots of men, but anybody could see he was making it up as he went along.

“I killed as many as Billy Bonney, by God,” Claiborne hollered, “and I'll kill more if anybody says different!”

“Little Willie,” Ringo decided. “We're gonna call you Little Willie.”

The nickname stuck because it was fun to see how stirred up Claiborne got whenever you called him that. Which Frank McLaury did as often as he could, because he wasn't the low man anymore. To get some of his own back, Little Willie Claiborne started ragging Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton about going into Tombstone after they'd stolen Wyatt Earp's horse.

“You gonna let that sonofabitch scare you?” Claiborne would say. “Why, he ain't so tough! I killed me lotsa men tougher'n Wyatt Earp!”

Didn't take much of that before Claiborne had the boys ready to ride into Tombstone and dare them law-dogs to do something about it. Curly Bill couldn't order Old Man Clanton's kid not to go. He also knew that if something happened, he himself would get the blame, so he decided to go along and keep those young fools out of trouble. He figured he'd corral the boys over at Ah-Sing's place and put a pipe in their hands. Next morning they'd all ride out of Tombstone without Fred White ever knowing they were in town.

God's honest truth: What happened that night was just an accident.

I
T WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT BUT ALBERT BEHAN WAS SITTING
on the edge of the bed, watching his father's girlfriend get ready to go out. She had a tiny glass jar with pink stuff inside and ran the ball of her little finger across it. After she dabbed some on her lips and cheeks, she turned her head from side to side to judge the effect.

“War paint,” she said, winking at his reflection in her mirror. “Hand me that hat, sweetheart. The one with the blue feathers.”

He hopped up and brought it to her. She put it way over on the side of her head and had to use a fancy pin to keep it from falling off. Leaning toward the mirror, she adjusted the little curls around her face. When she was satisfied, she stood and smoothed the wrinkles on her skirt and slipped into her jacket.

“What do you think?” she asked, tugging her sleeves down.

Dumbstruck, he nodded his approval. She looked nice even when she was just cooking or something, but when she was all fixed up, she was the prettiest lady Albert had ever seen. A lot prettier than his mother, who had lines in her face from frowning so much and never said anything kind to a person.

“It's really dark out there, Sadie.” That was the name he used when he wanted to remind her that he was her most special friend. “I could
go with you. If you like. We could protect each other. Like when we went out looking for Daddy.”

She smiled, pulling on her gloves. “Albert, you are the dearest thing, but I really need to go alone. Are you sure you'll be all right by yourself?”

“Sure, Sadie. I'm nine now,” he reminded her.

He was, in fact, a little nervous. Snakes sometimes came into the house because it was warmer inside at night.

“Sadie?”

“Yes, sweetie?”

“I love you, even if Dad doesn't.”

It just sort of came out. He thought it would make her feel better, but her face crumpled. “I'm sorry,” he said quickly, ready to cry himself, but she came close and bent to put her arms around him.

“Never!” she said fiercely. “Never be sorry for loving someone, Albert!” She pulled back to look him in the eye. “I love you, too. I always will, no matter what.”