The Last Ride of German Freddie (2 page)

“You'd better hope you never have to shoot it,.” Freddie said.

“If we win the election,.” Brocius said cheerfully. “I probably won't”

*

Even the drinking water must be carried to us on wagons, Freddie wrote in his notebook a few hours later. The alkali desert is unforgiving and unsuitable for anything but the lizards and vultures who were here before us. Even the Indians avoided this country. The ranchers cannot keep enough cattle on this wretched land to make a profit—thus they are dependent on the rustlers and smugglers for their livelihood. The population came because of greed or ambition, and if the silver ever runs out, Tombstone will fly away with the dust.

So why, when I perceive these Cowboys in their huge sombreros, their gaudy kerchiefs and doeskin trousers, do I see instead the old Romans in their ringing bronze?

From such as these did Romulus spring! For who was Romulus?—a tyrant, a bandit, a man who harbored runaways and stole the cattle—and the daughters—of his neighbors. Yet he was noble, yet a hero, yet he spawned a great Empire. History trembles before his memory.

And now the Romans have come again! Riding into Tombstone with their rifles in the scabbards!

All the old Roman virtues I see among them. They are frank, truthful, loyal, and above all 
healthy
. They hold the lives of men—their own included—in contempt. Nothing is more refreshing and wholesome than this lack of pity, this disdain for the so-called civilized virtues. They are from the American South, of course, that defeated country now sunk in ruin and oppression. They are too young to have fought in the Civil War, but not so young they did not see its horrors. This exposure to life's cruelties, when they were still at a tender age, must have hardened them against pieties and hypocrisies of the world. Not for them the mad egotism of the ascetic, the persistent morbidity—the 
sickness
—of the civilized man. These heroes abandoned their defeated country and came west—west, where the new Rome will be born!

If only they can be brought to treasure their virtues as I do. But they treat themselves as carelessly as they treat everything. They possess all virtues but one: the will to power. They have it in themselves to dominate, to rule—not through these petty maneuverings at the polls with which Brocius is so unwisely intoxicated, but through themselves, their desires, their guns ... They can create an empire here, and must, if their virtues are to survive. It is not enough to avoid the law, avoid civilization—they must wish to 
destroy
 the inverted virtues that oppose them.

Who shall win? Tottering, hypnotized, sunken Civilization, or this new Rome? Ridiculous, when we consider numbers, when we consider mere guns and iron. Yet what was Romulus?—a bandit, crouched on his Palatine Hill. Yet nothing could stand in his way. His will was greater than that of the whole rotten world.

And—as these classical allusions seem irresistible—what are we to make of the appearance of Helen of Troy? Who better to signal the end of an empire? Familiar with Goethe's superior work, I forgot that Helen does not speak in Marlowe's 
Faustus,
 she simply parades along and inspires poetry. But when she looked at our good German metaphysician, that eye of hers spoke mischief that had nothing to do with verse—and the actor knew it, for he stammered. Such a sexual being as this Helen was not envisioned by the good British Marlowe, whom we are led to believe did not with women.

I do not see such a girl cleaving to Behan for long—his blood is too thin for the likes of her.

And when she tires of him—beware, Behan! Beware, Faustus! Beware, Troy!

*

Freddie met Sheriff Behan's girl at the victory party following the election. Brocius' election strategy had borne fruit, of a sort—but Johnny Behan was rotten fruit, Freddie thought, and would fall to the ground ere long.

The Occidental Saloon with filled with celebration and a hundred drunken Cowboys. Even Wyatt Earp turned up, glooming in his black coat and drooping mustaches, still secure in the illusion that Behan would hire him as a deputy; but at the sight of the company his face wrinkled as if he'd just bit on a lemon, and he did not stay long.

Amid all this roistering inebriation, Freddie saw Behan's girl perched on the long bar, surrounded by a crowd of men and kicking her heels in the air in a white froth of petticoats. Freddie was surprised—he had rarely in his life met a woman who would enter a saloon, let alone behave so freely in one, and among a crowd of rowdy drunks. Behan—a natty Irishman in a derby—stood nearby and accepted congratulations and bumper after bumper of the finest French champagne.

Freddie offered Behan his perfunctory congratulations, then made his way to the bar where he saw John Ringo crouched protectively around a half-empty bottle of whisky. “I have drunk deep of the Pierian,” Ringo said, “and drunk disgustingly. Will you join me?”

“No,.” said Freddie, and ordered soda water. The noise of the room battered at his nerves. He would not stay long—he would go to another saloon, perhaps, and find a game of cards.

Ringo's melancholy eyes roamed the room. “Freddie, you do not look overjoyed,.” he said.

Freddie looked at his drink. “Men selling their freedom to become 
citizens,”
he snarled. “And they call it a victory.” He looked toward Behan, felt his lips curl. “Victory makes stupid,.” he said. “I learned that in Germany, in 1870.”

“Why so gloomy, boys?.” cried a woman's voice in a surprising New York accent. “Don't you know it's a party?.” Behan's girl leaned toward them, half-lying across the polished mahogany bar. She was younger than Freddie had expected—not yet twenty, he thought.

Ringo brightened a little—he liked the ladies. “Have you met German Freddie, Josie?” he said. “Freddie here doesn't like elections”

Josie laughed and waved her glass of champagne. “I don't know that we had a 
real election,
 Freddie,” she called. “Think of it as being more like a 
great big felony.”

Cowboy voices roared with laughter. Freddie found himself smiling behind his bushy mustache. Ringo, suddenly merry, grabbed Freddie's arm and hauled him toward Josie.

“Freddie here used to be a Professor of Philosophy back in Germany,” Ringo said. “He was told to come West for his health.” Ringo looked at Freddie in a kind of amazement. “Can you picture that?”

Freddie—who had come West to die—said merely, “Philology. Switzerland,.” and sipped his soda water.

“You should have him tell you about how we're all Supermen,” Ringo said.

Freddie stiffened. “You are 
not
  Supermen,” he said.

“
You're
  the Superman, then,” Ringo said, swaying. The drunken raillery smoothed the sad lines of his eyes.

“I am the Superman's prophet,” Freddie said with careful dignity. “And the Superman will be among your children, I think—he will come from America.”

“I suppose I'd better get busy and have some children, then, Ringo said.

Josie watched this byplay with interest. Her hair was raven black, Freddie saw, and worn long, streaming down her shoulders. Her nose was proudly arched. Her eyes were large and brown and heavy-lidded—the heavy lids gave her a sultry look. She leaned toward Freddie.

“Tell me some philology,” she said.

He looked up at her. “You are the first American I have met who knows the word.”

“I know a lot of words.” With a laugh she pressed his wrist—it was all Freddie could do not to jump a foot at the unexpected touch. Instead he looked at her sternly.

“Do you know the Latin word 
bonus
?” he demanded.

She shook her head. “It doesn't mean something extra?”

“In English, yes. In Latin,  
bonus
 means ‘good.’ Good as opposed to bad. But my question—the important question to a philologist—“ He gave a nervous shrug of his shoulders. “The question is what the Romans meant by ‘good,’ you see? Because  
bonus
 is derived from  
duonus,
  or  
duen-lum,
 and from  
duen-lum
  is also derived  
duellum,
  thence  
bellum.
  Which means 
war.”

Josie followed this with interest. “So war was good, to a Roman?”

Freddie shook his head. “Not quite. It was the  
warlike man,
  the bringer of strife, that was good, as we see also from 
bellus,
  which is clearly derived from  
bellum
  and means handsome—another way of saying  
good.
  You understand?”

He could see thoughts working their way across her face. She was drunk, of course, and that slowed things down. “So the Romans—the Roman warriors—thought of themselves as good? By definition, good?”

Freddie nodded. “All the aristocrats did—
all
  aristocrats, all conquerors. The aristocratic political party in ancient Rome called themselves the 
boni
—the good. They 
assumed
 their own values were universal virtues, that all goodness was embedded in themselves—and that the values which were not theirs were debased. Look at the words they use to describe the opposite of their 
bonus
—
plebeian,
 common, base. Even in English—'debased' means 
made common.”
He warmed to the subject, English words spilling out past his thick German tongue. “And in Greece the rulers of Megara used 
esthlos
 to describe themselves—'the true,' the real, as opposed to the ordinary, which for them did not have a real existence.” He laughed. “To believe that you 
are the only real thing.
 That is an ego speaking! That is a 
ruler
—very much like the Brahmins, who believe their egos are immortal but that all other reality is illusion ...”

He paused, words frozen in his mouth, as he saw the identical, quizzical expression in the faces of both Ringo and Josie. They must think I'm crazy, he thought. He took a sip of soda water to relieve his nervousness. “Well,” he said. “That is some philological thought for you.”

“Don't stop,” said Josie. “This is the most interesting thing I've heard all night.”

Freddie only shook his head.

And suddenly there was gunfire, Freddie's nerves leaping with each thunderclap as he ducked beneath the level of the bar, his hand reaching for the pistol which, of course, he had left in his little room.

Ceiling lathes came spilling down, and there was a burst of coarse laughter. Freddie saw Curly Bill Brocius standing amid a grey cloud of gunsmoke. Unlike Freddie, Brocius had disregarded the town ordnance forbidding firearms in saloons or other public places, and in an excess of bonhomie had fanned his modified revolver at the ceiling.

Freddie slowly rose to his feet. His heart lurched in his chest, and a kind of sickness rose in his throat. He had to hold onto the bar for support.

Josie sat perfectly erect on the mahogany surface, face flushed, eyes wide and glittering, lips parted in frozen surprise. Then she shook her head and slipped to the floor amid a silken waterfall of skirts. She looked up at Freddie, then gave a sudden gay laugh. “These 
men of strife,
 these 
boni,”
she said, “are getting a little too 
good
 for my taste. Will you take me home, sir?”

“I—” Freddie felt heat rise beneath his collar. Gunsmoke stung his nostrils. “But Mr. Behan—?”

She cast a look over her shoulder at the new sheriff. “He won't want to leave his friends,” she said. “And besides, I'd prefer an escort who's sober.”

Freddie looked at Ringo for help, but Ringo was too drunk to walk ten feet without falling, and Freddie knew his abstemious habits had him trapped.

“Yes, miss,” he said. “We shall walk, then.”

He led Josie from the roistering crowd and walked with her down dusty Allen Street. Her arm in his felt very strange, like a half-forgotten memory. He wondered how long it had been since he had a woman on his arm—seven or eight years, probably, and the woman his sister.

In the darkness he sensed her looking up at him. “What's your last name, Freddie?” she asked.

“Nietzsche.”

“Gesundheit!” she cried.

Freddie smiled in silence. She was not the first American to have made that joke.

“Don't you drink, Freddie?” Josie asked. “Is it against your principles?”

“It makes me ill,” Freddie said. “I have to watch my diet, also.”

“Johnny said you came West for your health.”

It was phrased like a statement, but Freddie knew it was a question. He did not mind the intrusion: he had no secrets. “I volunteered for the war,” he said, and at her look, clarified, “the war with France. I caught diphtheria and some kind of dysentery—typhus or cholera. I did not make a good recovery, and I could not work.” He did not mention the other problems, the nervous complaints, the sudden attacks of migraine, the cold, sick dread of dying as his father had died, mad and screaming.

“We turn here,” Josie said. They turned left on Fifth Street. On the far side of the street was the Oriental Saloon, where Wyatt Earp earned his living dealing faro. Freddie glanced at the windows, saw Earp himself bathed in yellow light, standing, smoking a cigar and engaged in conversation with Holliday. To judge by his look, the topic was a grim one.

“Look!” Freddie said in sudden scorn. “In that black coat of his, Earp looks like the Angel of Death come to claim his consumptive friend.”

The light of the saloon gleamed on Josie's smile. “Wyatt Earp's a handsome man, don't you think?”

“I think he is too gloomy.”

She turned to him. “
You're
 the gloomy one.”

He nodded as they paced along. “Yes,” he admitted. “That is just.”

“You are a sneeze,” she said. “He is a belch.”

Freddie smiled to himself as they crossed Fremont Street. “I will tell him this, when I see him next.”

“Tell me about the Superman.”

Freddie shook his head. “Not now.”

“But you will tell me some other time?”

“If you wish.” Politely, doubting he would speak a word to her after this night.

“Here's our house.” It was a small place that she shared with Behan, frame, unpainted, like the rest of the town thrown up overnight.