Doc Read online

  “What is that song?” Morg asked after a while.

  Doc looked up, puzzled.

  “The one you were whistling.”

  “Was I—?” Doc thought for a moment. “Oh! The Rondo from Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.”

  Morgan knew what a violin was, anyways. “You play fiddle, too?”

  “Not by a wide mile,” Doc murmured, eyes on the mount. “When I was in dental school, I went to every concert and recital I could at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. Fell in love with that piece … I was studyin’ the score when we were learnin’ to make bridges. Comes back to me, I guess.”

  Must be hard on him, Morg thought, being so far from things like that. “Real pretty tune,” he said.

  “Indeed. You have excellent taste, Morgan.” Doc put the tools down and stretched out his back, then winced suddenly, like he was snakebit. He sat still for a time, but relaxed again and went on. “Our houseboy—Wilson?—he disapproved of whistlin’ somethin’ fierce. Always said it was common. ‘A low-class, cracker habit,’ Wilson called it, but Mamma encouraged the practice when I was a boy.”

  “Why would she want you to do something low-class?”

  “Helped me establish control over the orbicularis oris.” Doc gestured with a finger, circling his mouth. His hand dropped into his lap and he considered Morgan for a time, like he was deciding something. “I was born with a harelip,” he said finally. “The defect was repaired when I was a baby.”

  Morgan couldn’t help staring.

  Doc threw his head back and stared right back, like he was daring Morg to make fun. “It is nothin’ to be ashamed of,” he declared.

  And you could tell somehow: it was his mamma’s voice Doc heard when he was saying how it was nothing to be ashamed of, but he was ashamed—a little, anyways. You could tell that, too.

  Morg made himself stop looking at Doc’s mouth. “I knew a kid once who had a harelip. I didn’t know they could fix it.”

  “My Uncle John is a fine surgeon. You can—Oh, hell—Dammit! Some kind of—obstruction in the bronchus—I just can’t seem to—”

  Morg put the lamp down and waited again while the bourbon was administered and the coughing eased off. Since the fall on the Fourth, Doc had been drinking more than usual. He drank it a little at a time, though, and it didn’t seem to affect him beyond helping with the cough. His eyes stayed clear and his hands were steady when he went back to work on the denture. It was such finicky work, but he seemed to have all the patience in the world, doing it. Strange, for a man who’d fly off the handle so easy, otherwise.

  “I wouldn’t last five minutes doing what you are,” Morg said. “How can you spend so much time on something so little?”

  “It’s hours for me, but it’ll be in Wyatt’s mouth for years. The tiniest flaw will be a trial to him … We all have different gifts, Mamma used to say. I’ve watched you and your brother walk straight into a mob and wondered, Where do they get the sand? I couldn’t do what you do.”

  “You’ve got plenty of sand, Doc.”

  “Morgan,” Doc said, “I am doin’ my best … How are you and Mr. Dickens gettin’ along?”

  “I like him better than Dostoevsky,” Morg admitted. “Oliver Twist reminds me of Wyatt when he was a kid. I liked how Oliver stands up for himself and that other kid when they was so hungry. Wyatt was like that. He cannot abide a bully. Never could, even when he was little.”

  “And why do you suppose that is?”

  “Just his nature, I guess.”

  “You met Mr. Fagin yet?”

  “Yeah. Ain’t made up my mind about him. He’s good to feed all those boys, but he’s teaching them to be pickpockets, too. That don’t seem right.”

  “But that is just what makes Fagin interestin’. Raskolnikoff, too. Fagin does his good deed with a bad purpose in mind, but the boys are still fed. Raskolnikoff kills the old woman, but he wants to use her money to improve society. As Monsieur Balzac asked, May we not do a small evil for the sake of accomplishin’ a great good?”

  “I don’t know.” Morgan frowned. “It’s still an evil.”

  “And yet, that seems to be the principle behind the crucifixion. Sacrifice the Son, redeem humanity … Hold the lamp up while you’re chewing that notion over.”

  Morg tried, but it was too much to get his mind around. “I know what Wyatt would say. Fagin’s still a fence. Raskolnikoff was a murderer and a thief. Wyatt don’t care that James and Bessie run a decent house and treat their girls right. They’re still whoremongers.”

  “And I suppose it doesn’t matter that my mamma inherited her people. Or that she was a gentle mistress, taught by her elders that slavery was Athenian in its dignity and blessed by the Bible itself.”

  “She was still a slave owner,” Morg said quietly, braced for the reaction. Doc could be real touchy about his mother.

  “We are none of us born into Eden,” Doc said reasonably. “World’s plenty evil when we get here. Question is, what’s the best way to play a bad hand? Abolitionists thought that all they had to do to right an ancient wrong was set the slaves free.” He looked at Morg. “Trouble was, they didn’t have a plan in the world for what came next. Cut ’em loose. That was the plan. Let ’em eat cake, I guess.”

  He was muttering now, eyes on the bridge. “Four years of war. Hundreds of thousands of casualties … All so black folks in the South could be treated as bad as millworkers in the North! Pay as little as you can. Work ’em ’til they’re too old or sick or hurt to do the job. Then cut ’em loose! Hire a starvin’ Irish replacement! That’s abolitionist freedom for you … Heartless bastards … ‘Free the slaves’ sounds good until you start wonderin’ how Chainey and Wilson would make a livin’ when they were already so old they couldn’t do a lick of work. What was a little child like Sophie Walton supposed to do? No kin who’d care for her …” He looked up. “I doubt the abolitionists anticipated the Ku Klux Klan either, but here it is, makin’ life worse than ever for black folks.”

  “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” Morg said.

  “Infinitely sad, but damnably true.”

  Doc sat back in his chair and stared out of the window for a long time. “Bein’ born is craps,” he decided. He glanced at Morg and let loose that sly, lopsided smile of his. “How we live is poker.” Doc looked away and got thoughtful again. “Mamma played a bad hand well.”

  He shook the mood off and went back to work on the denture. Morgan lifted the lamp, feeling vaguely unsettled by the conversation. Naturally, Doc saw things different, being from the South. Still … there had been a lot of arguing about Emancipation, even in the North. Nicholas Earp was all for the war when it was to punish the secessionists. After the Proclamation, he wrote Newton and James and Virgil to quit the army and come on home. “I won’t have my sons risking their necks for niggers” was what he said, but the boys stayed on and fought to the end. And Wyatt tried to join up when he was fifteen, except the old man caught him both times and dragged him home again. Somebody had to get that eighty acres of corn in.

  “Doc? You think maybe it was the Klan got Johnnie Sanders?” Morg asked.

  Doc stopped what he was doing. “Never thought of that … He was friendly with Belle Wright. Sometimes that’s all it takes.” He turned the idea over for a while. “No. They’d have lynched him, I imagine. And they’d want a crowd for the occasion. The Klan enjoys an audience as much as Eddie Foy.” He sat still for a time, frowning. “I don’t suppose you recall … Was that army captain—Grier, the one with the Arab mare?—was Captain Grier in town when the Elephant Barn burned down?”

  Morg’s face went blank. “Hell, Doc. I don’t remember. Why?”

  “Just curious. Johnnie might’ve gone into the barn to bring out that horse.” Doc went back to his work and to Dickens. “So, now, what do you think about the odious Bill Sikes? There’s a pure bully for you, no redemption involved.”

  Morg didn’t answer. Doc looked up. “Struck a nerve, did I?
”

  Morgan’s face had darkened, but Doc was looking past him now. “Tell me about bullies, Wyatt. I wager you have made a study of the breed.”

  Morg turned and wondered how long his brother had been standing in the doorway, listening.

  Wyatt took off his hat and hung it on a peg. “They were beaten,” he said simply. “Ninety-nine out of a hundred still are, inside. A man beats his boy, he wants a son who won’t buck him. He’s trying to make a coward. Mostly, it works.” Face expressionless, Wyatt walked to the window and held the curtain aside, gazing back toward Iowa as he spoke. “That’s why a bully will fold. You just … look at him, the way his old man did. It’s not anger. It’s scorn. A bully sees that look? He’s nine years old again. Small and weak, like his pa wanted him. It’s all he can do to keep from crying.”

  Doc looked at Morgan, whose eyes slid away.

  “And the hundredth boy?” Doc asked Wyatt.

  “We can go either way. Kill the old man, or try to become a better one.” Wyatt dropped the curtain. “You ready for me?”

  “Just about,” Doc said. “Have a seat.”

  “A very natural appearance.” That’s what Dr. J. H. Holliday had promised, and that’s what he delivered.

  It was just as well that neither Wyatt nor Morgan inquired about the provenance of the teeth themselves, for Wyatt’s new ones were among the hundreds of thousands collected from battlegrounds, sorted by type and size, and made available for restorative dentistry for many years after the war. With John Henry’s sketches and detailed measurements to go by, his cousin Robert had found a pair of upper centrals that matched Morgan’s closely.

  “It’ll feel strange for a while,” Doc warned, making the final adjustment, “but a couple of days from now, you’ll think they were never missin’. You still need to be careful when you eat. Don’t bite into apples. Slice them up like you’ve been doin’. And don’t take up smokin’ a pipe. Too much torque’ll deform the mount … And if somebody’s likely to hit you in the mouth—”

  “Right! I’ll be careful! Can I look now?”

  “Not yet. Say ‘Mississippi.’ ”

  “Mithithi—Oh, hell, no!” Wyatt cried, sitting up in the chair. “Doc, thith—”

  “Hush, now,” Doc said. “Morgan, you laugh, and I will slap you flat. It’s goin’ to take some practice, Wyatt. Don’t let the tip of your tongue touch the teeth. Bring it down and back, just a hair. Try it again.”

  “Mizzith—Hell! Mizziss—”

  “Damn your eyes, Morgan!” Doc wheeled, coughing, and pointed to the door. “Go wait in the lobby!”

  Chastened but still grinning, Morgan left the room, though he stayed in the hallway to listen, out of sight.

  “Pay that pup no mind, Wyatt,” Doc was saying. “Try again. Just the tip of the tongue … Curl the tip back a little. There you go! Yes! You’re already doin’ better.”

  This went on for about ten minutes, with time out for Doc’s cough. When Wyatt was getting it right about half the time and seemed confident that he’d get the hang of it, Doc told him, “Now try ‘fifty-five.’ Bring your lower lip up to the teeth. Just rest the lip against them … Again. Good. Yes! Better! That one’s easier, isn’t it … Now try ‘very vivid.’ It’s the same movement but voiced. Put your hand on your throat. Feel the vibration?”

  “You should be in bed,” Wyatt told Doc, who was coughing again.

  There was a clink of glass on glass. Doc must have been pouring himself another drink. The desk chair scraped back.

  “Not yet,” Doc said, sounding breathless but serene. “Take a look.”

  Morg moved closer and peered in through the crack between the door and its frame. For a while Wyatt sat still, and Morgan found himself thinking, Poor soul—like Doc always said—poor soul, he can walk straight into a mob, but this …

  It was about then that his own vision blurred, but Morg could hear the barber chair creak and footsteps as Wyatt got up and went to the mirror.

  Blinking hard, Morgan wiped his eyes and tried to remember if he’d ever seen Wyatt look—really look—at himself that way. There was a small, embarrassed smile, and then a broader one …

  In the past weeks, while Doc worked toward this moment, Morgan had often thought about how relieved and glad he’d be to see his brother made whole again. Now the moment had come at last, but it wasn’t how he thought it would be. Instead of happiness, he felt a great weight of something like grief pressing on him. Sadness for all the years Wyatt’s smile was gone. Anger, too, remembering how Nicholas Earp had tried to make cowards of all his sons.

  It came to Morgan that Nicholas must have been a beaten boy, too, and that meant Grampa Earp was, as well. Which was no surprise, really, when Morg thought about that mean old man. How many sons were in that chain? Morgan wondered, and grief gave way to the pride he’d felt the day his brother Wyatt stood up to his first bully and put an end to a chain of vengeful, frightened, beaten boys.

  Wyatt turned from the mirror. “Doc, I don’t know what to th—I don’t know what to say.”

  “Sure, you do, Wyatt: Mississippi. Fifty-five.”

  Morgan shifted so he could see Doc, whose eyes were filled with pleasure and satisfaction and … love, almost. All mixed.

  “Go on, now,” the dentist said softly. “Take a ride on that fine horse of yours, Wyatt, out where no one can see or listen. Practice makes perfect, y’hear?”

  The men he worked with didn’t notice. If anyone had asked Chuck Trask or John Stauber, for example, they might have said Wyatt was quieter than usual the next few days, or that Dick Naylor was getting an awful lot of exercise.

  Women saw a difference. He seemed a little less flinty and remote, and they were glad to see him loosen a bit. Morgan’s girl, Lou, told Wyatt that he looked real nice. And Mattie didn’t complain when he left her alone to go out riding and work on his words. Bessie said it was money well spent and didn’t give Wyatt a hard time about how he should have paid her and James back first. Kate seemed prickly about it, but even she admitted that Doc had done a remarkable job.

  Mabel Riney asked straight out, “What’s changed, Wyatt?” Her husband, John, was sleeping off a drunk, and she was working the tollbooth while Wyatt waited around for a cattle company due to come across the river. “Something’s different,” she said, “but I can’t make out what.”

  “Got my teeth fixed,” he told her.

  “Lemme see,” Mabel said, like he was one of her sons.

  He smiled, sort of, but looked away, coloring up like a boy. It was sweet, how shy he was about telling her.

  “Doc Holliday done that?” she asked, impressed.

  He nodded.

  “How much he charge?” she asked, and whistled when he told her.

  “It was a lot,” Wyatt agreed, “but my teeth always used to hurt. Not anymore.”

  They passed the time awhile, Mabel asking things and Wyatt answering. He told her a lot about ether, which was horrible and made you think you were smothering, but then you didn’t feel it when teeth were pulled or drilled, and you just had to eat soft things afterward while you healed up.

  When the cowboys got to the bridge, Wyatt was all business again. Mabel took the tolls, same as usual, but started thinking about going to see the dentist herself, because she had some teeth that had been bothering her for years.

  Which was why, even without an advertisement in the Ford County Globe or the Dodge City Times, Doc Holliday’s business picked up quite a bit that summer. Word got around because women talk.

  Eventually even Mrs. George Hoover overheard about Wyatt’s teeth, though no one told her directly. Few Dodge Citians spoke to Mrs. Hoover, not even other Methodists. Whores envied and resented her. Men who’d fucked little Maggie Carnahan—before Jesus saved her and Big George married her—didn’t hardly know how to act around her. And certainly, no Democrat would give Margaret Hoover the time of day.

  She was used to her isolation and took a bit of pride in that evidence o
f her higher calling and strength of character. She had come a long way since drifting on the sea of sin and liquor that had once carried her so far from the Lord. She found it difficult to remember New York these days. She was such a greenhorn then! So foreign, so trusting.

  And so much of her previous life seemed nightmarish to her, lived as it was in moonlight and in shadow.

  “How old are you?” the Old Mister asked when she first came to work with her cousin.

  “Thirteen, sir,” she said, dropping a curtsy, just as she’d been taught.

  “Old enough for a lover,” he said. Then he cackled at her confusion.

  He liked to watch while she dusted or polished or swept. In long, empty hallways and silent rooms, he would stand half-hidden in doorways, a small smile on his withered old lips.

  He thought it was great fun to startle her, to make her jump. Wary, she learned to notice the musty old-man odor of stale, sweaty woolens, and cigarette smoke, and booze, and piss. Trying not to shudder, she would call out, “Morning to you, sir,” just to let him know she wasn’t fooled.

  Sometimes he would speak in low, hushed, secret tones that she almost didn’t understand—so new she was from the old country, so unfamiliar with the speech of Americans. When she could make out the words, what he said made no sense.

  “When you live with me, I will love you and punish you,” the Old Mister mumbled one quiet afternoon. “I will kidnap you, and you will give yourself up to me, and you will wear no clothing while you scrub floors, but I will feed you sweets … Here. Drink this. Go on. It’s only a little.”

  Repulsed. Intrigued. Frightened. Intoxicated. Maggie hardly knew what she felt, except she wished she’d never left Belfast. She was so lonely, and the Old Mister was the only one who seemed to like her, and she liked the liquor. Sweet port, it was. Warming in the cold damp winter. So warming that it was possible to ignore an old man’s cold, bony hands.

  “Any port in a storm,” Old Mister would mumble. Then he’d giggle, like he’d made a joke.