Doc Read online

  “What’s the matter, Wyatt?” Mattie asked anxiously. “I do something wrong?”

  “Forgot to brush my teeth,” he said.

  When Kate got back from Bessie’s in the morning, Doc was scabby and pale under his bruises, but he was sitting at the table, practicing with a deck: split, square, pivot.

  She looked at him, brows up.

  “A heavenly sleep … did suddenly steep … in balm my bosom’s pain,” he recited.

  Kate took off her hat and tossed it on the bureau before lifting the half-empty bottle at his elbow.

  “I’m fine,” he insisted, putting some strength behind his voice. “Sore is all.”

  The basin in the corner was filled with sodden handkerchiefs. Most were stained pink. The ones at the bottom of the pile were darker.

  “Temporary,” he told her. “I hit the ground hard. Bound to be some minor blood vessels torn.”

  “McCarty told you to stay in bed,” she reminded him.

  “Trust not the physician! His antidotes are poison, and he slays! Tom McCarty doesn’t know one damn thing about tuberculosis that I didn’t tell him my own self.” He cut the cards and showed her the nine of clubs. “How much have I got in that carpetbag of yours?”

  “Six hundred and change.” She sat on the bed to unbutton her shoes.

  “Does that count what I won on Dick yesterday?”

  She nodded. “But not what I just made.”

  They had sworn off fear, but the fall was sobering. Last night, when the bleeding was worst, they’d agreed that she should keep her earnings separate. It was a matter of pride for Doc, and he wanted her to save something. Just in case.

  “We can shave forty-eight dollars a month off expenses if we rent a house instead of livin’ here,” he said. Divvy, tumble, riffle … “I don’t suppose you can cook.”

  Pulling off a shoe, she looked up. “You had slaves. We had servants.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Riffle, arch, release … He cut again, right-handed. Nine of diamonds.

  “Grier,” he said after a time, watching her undress.

  “Not worth it. Word is the family’s cut him off—” Doc was staring. “D’accord,” she said with a shrug. “When?”

  “Get me some easy work first. I’d like to take four thousand into the room.”

  “Scared money don’t win,” she agreed, arranging pillows against the headboard. She climbed into the bed and laid her head back. “What’ve you got against Grier anyway?”

  “It’s a family matter.”

  “Don’t be mysterious with me. It’s tedious. He get some cousin pregnant?”

  “Oh, nothin’ so melodramatic. The captain’s family is the front half of Grier and Cook Carriage Company, up in Connecticut. My father ordered a buggy from them, just before the war. I helped pick it out. Model Number Thirty-three … Had a lever for raisin’ and lowerin’ the top from the inside. One hundred and sixty dollars. Cash. Paid in advance.” Hands now lax in his lap, he looked out the window. “The war broke out before the buggy was delivered. Grier and Cook started makin’ gun carriages for the Northern army.”

  “Smart move,” Kate remarked. “There’s money, and then there’s money.”

  “I imagine they did well for themselves.” Shuffling again, he cut left-handed. Nine of hearts. “Anyway, Eli Grier was stationed in Atlanta during the occupation. My mother—You have to understand: Sherman’s men stole whatever wasn’t nailed down or red-hot, and they wrecked the rest. Took a Yankee dollar to buy a few damn radishes in those days, and nobody had hard currency anyway. We were all hungry, but Mamma was just wastin’ to nothin’.”

  “A hundred and sixty federal dollars would have been a fortune.”

  “Indeed, but my father wasn’t willin’ to swallow his pride and ask for the money back,” Doc said, voice soft with unattenuated bitterness. “Probably had his second wife all picked out by then … So Uncle John went to Captain Grier to ask if our family’s payment might be refunded. Grier promised he would arrange for the money to be returned.”

  “And it wasn’t.”

  “Not a penny.” There was a long silence before Doc said, “He forgot all about it, most likely. A man with a bad conscience would have remembered my uncle’s name.”

  Your mother would have died anyway, Kate thought, but she wasn’t going to say so. She watched the cards dance in his hands. When he cut the deck again, she cried, “Wait! Nine of spades?”

  He showed her the card. She laughed, low and cynical.

  “And I thought you didn’t cheat!”

  “I don’t!” There was a sly, crooked smile. “But I could.”

  “Anybody but me sees you do that, you’ll get yourself shot again,” she warned. “Bring me a drink, will you?”

  He set the deck aside, poured, and stood carefully. “Nectar for Calypso,” he said, handing her the glass. “We are a little short on ambrosia just now.”

  She sat up in bed, and slugged the bourbon down, closing her eyes to feel the liquor’s warmth and forget about the night. Doc slid in behind her and began to rub her neck. She leaned forward, bracing against the mattress, surrendering to the sensation as he worked his way down her back.

  “Sternocleidomastoideus … splenius … rhomboidei, major and minor,” he said, thumbs pressing. “Has anyone ever told you what a lovely trapezius you have?”

  She snorted. “We’re lucky Texans take off their spurs.”

  “Barbarians, to a man … These latissimi dorsi are unquestionably the most beautiful I have ever laid eyes on.”

  She smiled, eyes closed. “You’re mad.”

  “That’s the rumor … Sweet Jesus! Just look at you!” he murmured. “Round and soft as a ripe peach … Lie back.”

  “Mon dieu,” she whispered after a time. “C’est merveilleux!”

  “My hand skills have always been considered exemplary.”

  She giggled.

  “I can stop if you’re too tired,” he offered.

  “Stop, and I’ll shoot you myself.”

  “I wonder what the odds are,” he mused. The numbers seemed to come to him from nowhere. “Eight to five,” he decided. “Against.”

  “Against what?”

  “Me dyin’ of consumption ’fore another bullet finds me.”

  She twisted around and looked at him, eyes serious. “Don’t talk like that, Doc.”

  “No hope, no fear,” he said with a grin, kissing her with each word. “And I am not … dead … yet.”

  Chinaman’s Chance

  Every Wednesday, Jau Dong-Sing went to the post office in Wright’s General Outfitting to mail a letter and a few dollars to his father in Kwantung. Since arriving in San Francisco back in 1859, Dong-Sing had written each week. He nearly always sent money, too.

  In the beginning, he hoped to elicit a reply. My health is good but I am lonely, he wrote. I yearn for news of home. Though he would not have said as much, Dong-Sing desired to be acknowledged for his contributions to his family’s well-being. He also wished to be reassured that the money he sent had not been stolen during its long journey from America to his family’s village in China.

  Letters from home were rare. Paper and ink and postage were too expensive for his family to buy often. When Dong-Sing did receive news, it was never happy or encouraging. Your uncle died. The crop is poor. My joints are stiff and I suffer at night. Everyone is hungry. Yes, we received the dollars. Send more next time.

  And Dong-Sing did.

  He had prospered in America. It didn’t take much capital to establish a laundry, and you could make good money if you worked hard. When Dong-Sing moved to Dodge City, in ’75, he built a shack near the river using scrap lumber. With a total cash outlay of $5.47, he bought kettles, and washtubs, a stove and irons. Then he went from saloon to saloon to announce in the only English words he knew, “I wash! Two bits!”

  By the end of his first week, he had doubled his investment. At full capacity, he could clean and press forty pi
eces of clothing a day. He charged twenty-five cents per garment, which was less than the Irish washerwomen at the fort wanted, and his skill in ironing was unsurpassed. Pretty soon everybody preferred China Joe’s washing. His business grew and grew. Now there was plenty of hotel trade, which added bed linens to his work. Families were moving into town, too. Ladies like Mrs. Hoover and Mrs. Wright didn’t do their own washing anymore.

  I already have two helpers and it is time to hire more, he would write home this week. Tell two strong boys in our village if they come to San Francisco, I will hire them and bring them to Dodge.

  It seemed crazy to import laborers from so far away, but white people wouldn’t work for a Chinaman, and Americans were too lazy anyway. Doing laundry was arduous. You had to haul water and stoke the fire with cow chips, all day long. Sheets and clothing were rubbed with yellow soap on ribbed-tin scrubbing boards, then dumped into giant tubs of boiling water and stirred with a big wooden paddle. Heavy, hot, sopping-wet cloth had to be lifted, wrung, hung to dry, and ironed. Even with his helpers, at the end of the day Dong-Sing was too worn out to speak or eat.

  In the mornings, though, when he was fresh, he planned letters in his mind as he worked. When you do laundry for people, you learn things about them. You know the size and shape of your customers. You know their habits. You know what people eat and drink from what they spill. You know who is so poor he must have his clothing mended again and again. You know who is so careless of money he leaves coins in his pockets.

  Don’t keep the coins, his father would advise. You will be called a thief and punished.

  Dong-Sing knew that, and he had always returned the money. Some Americans thought he was such a dumb Chink bastard, he didn’t know enough to keep the cash. Others admired his scrupulous honesty.

  Big George Hoover had to have a pair of panels put into the side seams of his shirts and vests to make the buttons close around his belly. He is going to run for mayor again.

  Who is Big George Hoover? Dong-Sing’s father would wonder, but he would think, If he is fat, he must be rich. Make friends with him. Get on his good side.

  Dong-Sing didn’t need a letter from his father to tell him that.

  George Hoover was one of the men who left money in his pocket the first time he brought clothes to China Joe. Mr. Hoover was impressed by Dong-Sing’s honesty. The investment of a few coins—returned instead of kept—had paid off handsomely. Soon Big George would build a bank right down the street from Wright’s General Outfitting; he had warned China Joe about Bob Wright’s bad accounting practices even before Johnnie Sanders was killed.

  Knowing things about people is not the same as understanding them, Dong-Sing would admit in the letter he planned to send next Wednesday. Americans simply didn’t make a lot of sense to Jau Dong-Sing. In China, a smart but poor boy like Johnnie Sanders could have studied hard and taken the civil service test to become a bureaucrat. Everyone would have been glad to know him. In China, if a rich man needed a favor, he could go to the bureaucrat who used to be poor and say, “Hey, my good friend! Nice to see you doing so well! I got a problem with some business dealings. Can you help me out?” In America, when Johnnie Sanders tried to better himself, he was killed.

  In America, it is dangerous for a colored man to have money, so I pretend I am poor, Jau Dong-Sing wrote when the nigger boy was found. I keep my money with George Hoover, and not in Bob Wright’s safe.

  Why don’t you join a tong? his father must have wondered.

  Certainly, that would have been Dong-Sing’s preference, but it took twelve men to make a tong. There were only four Chinese in all of Kansas, too few to club together for investments.

  Dong-Sing was still a little nervous about doing business with George Hoover, but so far the arrangement was working out well. It was George Hoover’s suggestion that he and Jau Dong-Sing enter into a silent partnership to build small rental houses up on Military Road. Already they had three, with plans to build a fourth. Nobody knew the capital was China Joe’s, and that’s the way Dong-Sing wanted it. Big George orders the wood and supervises the carpenters so white men do not become envious of my wealth, he wrote in his mind.

  Renting to Wyatt and Morgan Earp was Big George’s idea, too. He pointed out that they were Republicans and Methodists, and Wyatt was Reform like George. Dong-Sing appreciated that the Earps didn’t get drunk and break things, but he didn’t like the idea of taking the Reform side against Mayor Kelley and Bob Wright and a hotel owner like Deacon Cox. After Wyatt arrested Bob, Dong-Sing got even more nervous about the factions. The Earps might lose their jobs. Then Dong-Sing would have no tenants for two houses.

  “You say yes to Doc,” Dong-Sing insisted, even though George didn’t like how much Doc drank. “He good tenant! You say yes!”

  Doc likes noodles now. He is a friend who helps me with English, Dong-Sing planned to write soon. Everyone says I sound like him when I talk, and I am proud. I have not told Doc that I am his landlord. I don’t think he would mind renting from a Chinaman, but he might tell Kate and she cannot be trusted. Last week they had another fight. Doc told me to take Kate’s things to Bessie’s house, but I made an excuse and waited. Kate always returns and Doc always takes her back.

  Who is Doc? His father would wonder. Who is Kate? Who is Bessie?

  When you do laundry for people, you know who sleeps alone and who has taken a lover. You know who is pregnant and who is not. You observe the coming and going of semen and blood, Dong-Sing thought. You can read in these stains the stories of people who hardly notice you and never speak when they pass you in the street.

  Dong-Sing was shocked when he realized that Mattie Blaylock was Wyatt’s girl. Dong-Sing had used Mattie himself a few times because she was so cheap, and because he wanted to see what a white woman was like down there.

  Working on the wrong side of the tracks, Jau Dong-Sing had plenty of opportunity to observe the flesh trade, and it confused him. In China, good fathers had the right—the duty, even—to sell a daughter in order to feed the rest of the family. In America, daughters ran away from their fathers and whored to feed themselves alone. In China, when a wife grew old and unattractive, a rich man would take a concubine or two into his household. Here, rich men used the same girls as any lousy young cowherd who stank of dung and sweat. George Hoover had married a prostitute, and Doc was a gentleman but lived with Kate, even though she still sold herself.

  The news about Wyatt and Mattie is all over town now. Everyone thinks this is a good joke, Dong-Sing wrote in his mind. Wyatt is embarrassed, but he has been a long time without a woman.

  Wyatt didn’t even recognize Mattie Blaylock when he saw her a few days after dropping her off at Bessie’s that night. She was clean, and her hair looked nice, and her eyes were clear. She was wearing a different dress, too.

  China Joe had traded it to her for a ride, but Wyatt didn’t know that. There was a lot Wyatt didn’t know, including why his sister-in-law wouldn’t give Mattie a job. He figured that out when he caught a dose off the girl, though it would remain a lifelong mystery to him why he never fathered a child except with Urilla. Mattie herself would never tell Wyatt how she got the idea of coming to him that first morning, either. (“Idiot. Just move in with him!” Big Nose Kate had said. “A man like that won’t throw you out.”) All Wyatt knew was Mattie showed up at the house one morning after he got off work.

  “Bessie told me you paid for my whole night,” she said. “I’ll work it off.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” he told her.

  “Don’t take what I don’t earn,” she said, head up. “I’ll pay it off in cash if you give me some time, but I’d rather do it this way. James says you’re widowed. I reckon you loved a girl once, you won’t be mean to one now.”

  There didn’t seem to be a good way to tell her no. It helped that she didn’t look anything like Urilla. Mattie was dark-haired, and sturdy, and didn’t seem likely to get sick, though later on he found out she had bad headaches
with her monthlies.

  After his first time with her, he couldn’t hardly think about anything else. With the long drought over, he welcomed her when she came back the next day. He got bullyragged about it a lot, but he got bullyragged about not doing it, too, so he ignored the laughing, and the jokes, and the snide remarks. A few extra cowboys got bashed for mouthing off. Otherwise, he kept his temper.

  James was merciless. It was rich: Wyatt being with a whore after he was so uppity about Bessie, whose husband was, James pointed out with immense satisfaction, lawfully married to the woman he lived with, unlike some brothers he could name.

  And Wyatt wasn’t the only Earp living in sin, James noted. Virgil had left his wife to fight in the war. Afterward, he let her think he was dead but hadn’t divorced her, which meant he couldn’t marry that little Allie he was with, down in Arizona. And now Morg and Lou were shacked up, too, because Lou was a Mormon and her parents refused to let her marry a Methodist.

  Morg had started calling Lou his wife anyhow, and in his opinion, Wyatt ought to be satisfied with what passed for marriage in Kansas.

  “Mattie’s not such a bad person,” Morg said one morning when he and Wyatt were over visiting Doc. “You know, if things had gone a little different, even Lou might have wound up a whole lot worse than a dance hall girl.”

  “Say what you will about Mormons,” Doc murmured, lying in bed but paying attention. “They are very fine dancers.”

  Doc had been up and around right after the fall on the Fourth, carrying things to the rented house and helping Kate fix the place up the way she wanted it. It was too much, too soon. Tom McCarty diagnosed overexcitement and ordered him back to bed for a few days. The rest was doing him good, but Doc enjoyed having visitors, no matter what Kate or Doc McCarty thought, so Morg and Wyatt stopped by a lot.

  “How long ago did Urilla die, Wyatt?” Morgan pressed. “Is it nine years now?”

  “Eight,” Wyatt said, halfway between stubborn and sad. “I promised to love her all my life, Morg. I meant to keep my word.”