Doc

by Mary Doria Russell

  “Miss Isabelle,” he said tentatively, “I wonder if you would act as our interpreter a little while longer? I would like to say something else—something personal—to the boy.”

  Which was a disappointment because Belle had been thinking that Dr. Holliday might ask to call on her. Naturally, she agreed to translate and was surprised when the dentist braced against his desk and lowered himself carefully onto one knee so he could look Wilfred in the eye.

  “This is a terrible world,” he told the child, “full of tragedy and sorrow. You have been thrust into manhood too early, but your first thought was to protect your womenfolk. That, sir, is a mark of nobility.”

  He glanced up at Belle, who added Dr. Holliday’s definition of nobility to the list of indictments against her father, and then told Wilfred what the dentist said. She did not know all the words, so she substituted “sadness” for “tragedy and sorrow,” and told Wilfred that he was a good boy to take care of his sisters.

  Within the hour, when she got home, Belle would dash upstairs to her bedroom, retrieve her diary from its secret place in a drawer beneath her underthings, and write in a looping girlish script, I knew that Wilfred was grieving, but I did not truly understand how Alone he must have felt until this very morning when Dr. Holliday laid a kind hand on Wilfred’s shoulder and told us about the day his own dear Mother died. It was so Sad! That poor man! That poor little boy! I nearly wept!

  Indeed, by the time she had finished translating the story of Dr. Holliday’s loss for Wilfred, mere interest had ripened into full-blown infatuation, and Belle was blinking away tears as she watched the dentist struggle to his feet. Of course, if it had been her father who moved so awkwardly or coughed so often, the girl would have been annoyed and disgusted, but since it was Dr. Holliday, she didn’t mind the cough at all, and his lameness seemed romantic, and she wondered if he had been wounded in the war. Then he made a joke about not turning Catholic because he’d never be able to get off his knees the third time the congregation dropped a curtsy to the Lord, which made her laugh. She was thrilled by Dr. Holliday’s magnanimity when he refused payment for the consultation, and flattered when he said that seein’ her pretty self on a fine mornin’ like this was all the compensation he required, and touched when he said that it had been an honor to meet young Wilfred.

  He did ask if Belle would be so kind as to take a letter to her father’s store and post it for him, which she was more than happy to do, and she offered to bring back any mail that might be waiting for him. He thanked her but said he ought to get out into the sunshine more and that he would probably walk down later on when she decided. That was she’d help her father straighten up the stock that afternoon, just in case Dr. Holliday did come by the store.

  Watching him while he sat at his desk to address the envelope, Belle made up her mind to say something that she’d been thinking for some time now.

  “It was wonderful—what you did for Johnnie Sanders.”

  Dr. Holliday looked up.

  “I heard that the wake was a great success,” Belle said. “I wanted to attend Johnnie’s funeral, but Daddy wouldn’t let me out of the house until it was all over. Daddy always talks about how important gumption is, but Johnnie was the smartest, hardest-working young man in this town, and yet Daddy didn’t even like for me to speak to Johnnie when he was working at the store. All Johnnie Sanders ever needed was somebody to give him a chance and he’d have made his fortune, but Daddy acted as though just lending a book to a nice boy like that would simply ruin my reputation! You treat everyone with respect, Dr. Holliday, even China Joe. I admire that very much.”

  Dr. Holliday looked at her as though he were truly surprised by what he was hearing. “You are too kind,” he said with soft conviction. “I do not merit your admiration, Miss Isabelle.”

  He was such a gracious, modest person—shy about accepting her praise, not full of himself the way cattlemen and railroad tycoons and army officers were.

  Being a gentleman, Dr. Holliday walked Belle and Wilfred to the door and wished them a good day. Outside, Wilfred saw the Riney boys and they ran off to play. Belle watched the children absently for a little while, then went on home, where she spent a short time in her room, wrote a few lines in her diary, and left the house again, surprising her father when she showed up at the store and volunteered to work that afternoon.

  Bob was always glad to have Belle behind the counter. Cowboys bought a lot more merchandise when a pretty girl was writing their orders down. Usually, he worried about the drovers flirting with Belle, but not that day. She seemed as cool and remote as snow on a mountaintop, and maybe a little distracted, though her father put it down to a young person’s ordinary self-absorption and didn’t give it another thought.

  Belle herself would never tell a soul that she had spent the afternoon of June 10, 1878, dreamily cataloging a dozen different reasons why it would be perfectly proper for a young lady to extend a dinner invitation to a fine gentleman like Dr. Holliday without asking her mother’s permission beforehand.

  Nor would she ever reveal why, at four-fifteen that afternoon, she left her father’s store in tears.

  After seeing Isabelle Wright and Wilfred Eberhardt to the door of the hotel, John Henry Holliday returned to his office to tidy up before leaving for the day. When his instruments were dried and put away, he checked the supply of ether and wrote a reminder to himself about reordering brushes. Then he locked up and turned the card on the office door over to read: J. H. Holliday, D.D.S. In case of emergency, inquire at the front desk, Dodge House.

  “Morning, Doc. Hot one today,” Deacon Cox predicted when the dentist passed through the hotel lobby.

  “I fear you are correct, sir,” Doc replied. “We could use some rain.”

  On his way upstairs, John Henry made a mental note to inquire about moving to a smaller room now that Kate was gone. Perhaps farther toward the back of the hotel, away from the street noise, and on the ground floor, so he could avoid the climb. He’d make Mr. Jau happy and ask for something with a nine in the number, and no fours or sevens.

  “When do you sleep?” Father von Angensperg had inquired, and John Henry had an answer now. After office hours, he returned to his room and slept through the heat of the day. At eight or nine in the evening, he would rise, dress, have something to eat. Unless Tom McCarty called upon him for help with a surgery, he worked the tables through the night.

  At dawn, he washed up, changed his linen and his shirt, had a light meal, and opened No. 24. Patients were most likely to arrive early in the day, after a night when a tooth had given them a sample of hell sufficient to overcome their fear of dentistry. If no one showed up, he passed the time reading, writing letters, or napping in the reclining chair. It was not ideal, but it felt good to establish a routine, if not a practice.

  His initial weeks in Dodge had been busy, for the most miserable cases came in to be treated as soon as they heard a dentist was in town, even before he was officially in practice. Since then things had slowed down considerably, and this morning was typical, which is to say, he had made no money at all.

  Take Morgan’s brother, for example. Wyatt was missing teeth and had a mouthful of caries, but the odds were about seventeen to one that the man would become a patient before a toothache got so bad that he was ready to kill or die. Even then, he’d most likely agree to the minimum, putting off the rest of the work until there was nothing to do but yank the crumbling wreckage out of his jaw and hope that infection did not go on to kill the poor soul outright.

  Then there was that pathetic little Eberhardt child … John Henry Holliday could only hope he was never so desperate for income that he’d find it possible to charge an orphan twenty-five cents to pull a baby tooth.

  Maybe Kate was right. This was an exercise in futility.

  He pushed the thought from his mind, and pushed Kate from his mind as well, for he was done with her, he was sure of that. Miss Kate was not without redeeming qualities, but six mont
hs with her suddenly seemed symptomatic of every bad move he’d made in the past five years, and he would not miss the commotion and disorder she brought into his life.

  Kate was probably laughing at him right now, thinking him a gullible fool for letting her stalk off this morning with a carpetbag full of money. In fact, he’d known exactly what she was doing and wished her joy of it. He calculated his capital loss at just under nine hundred dollars and reckoned that generous pay for six months of services rendered, considering that it was on top of room and board, not to mention the wardrobe and dental care he had provided.

  His conscience was clear as he opened the door to their room—his now, quiet and empty. He felt free to make what he could of himself here in Dodge, and thought briefly of Belle Wright as he hung up clothes and straightened the belongings Kate had flung about in the maelstrom of her departure.

  He would ask Jau Dong-Sing to deliver Kate’s detritus to Bessie’s house as soon as possible. What Kate did next was none of his affair. She could leave town and get a fresh start someplace new, or she could drink the money up and go back to work for Bessie Earp.

  Either way, we’re even, John Henry thought as he undressed. She is still a whore, but she is better off than when we met.

  “A necessary evil.” Bessie Earp had heard that hackneyed phrase all her life, and it made her want to spit. Well, which is it? she always wanted to ask. Can something necessary be evil? Can something evil be necessary?

  Without prostitutes, Necessity claimed, the filthy impulses and ungovernable desires of men would have no other target than respectable women, for prostitution drains away the sins of Christian society, as a sewer carries filth from a city.

  Well, then, Bessie wondered, why not treat the girls who do Necessity’s ugly work with some respect? Why not give them the small dignity of a ditch digger or a street sweeper?

  Because, Evil replied, their own lust is to blame for their degradation. They are unredeemed sinners, these soiled doves, these fallen women. They are drunkards and drug fiends. As long as they ply their dirty trade, their wages will be ill treatment, appalling disease, and short, unhappy lives.

  If the doves are soiled, who dirtied them? That’s what Bessie wished someone would ask. If the women have fallen, who pushed them? But reformers would go just this far and no farther: lament the sin, but ask no questions.

  And so in every city in America, a corrupt farce played out before a respectable audience eager for cautionary tales of female depravity. The police arrested the girls and marched them down public avenues to be stared at by jeering crowds of nice people. Judges levied fines and sent the girls out penniless, with no way to pay for their next meal except go back to whoring. Politicians railed against unrepentant wickedness to win votes. And later that night, all of the bastards—cops, judges, and pols—were in the house, winking and jovial, collecting their cut of the brothel income and taking some out in trade.

  “No harm done, right, Bessie? There’s an election coming up. Gotta put on a show for the rubes.”

  Who could you complain to? To what court did you bring your suit when the judge beat the girl? Who’d jail the extortionist if the chief of police said it was legal for the house to sell liquor one week, drank with your girls the next, and arrested you for it the third? How do you change the laws when the johns can vote but the girls can’t?

  “Honey,” Bessie’s mamma used to say, “politicians and judges and coppers are money-grubbing thieves. They’ll screw you, and rob you, and win elections for doing it, but there’s no way around them. Smile and pay the sonsabitches off.”

  The sheer shameless duplicity drove Bessie to fury, but there’s no one more pragmatic than a whore. Bessie had learned the facts of life at her mamma’s knee, and the facts were these. Men like to fuck. If they have to, they’ll pay to do it. Women like to eat. If they have to, they’ll fuck to earn their bread.

  In the 1840s, when Bessie’s mother went into business for herself, Nashville was pleased to call itself the Athens of the South, for all its early industries were lofty ones: publishing, education, religion. Soon, however, railroads converged on the city. A new suspension bridge linked the region’s agricultural lands with markets in the North. Paddle wheelers by the hundreds steamed up and down the Cumberland River, each carrying moneyed men. And in the center of the action sat Smokey Row. Handy to the waterfront and the tracks. An easy walk, downhill, for senators and congressmen.

  When Nashville fell in ’62, a hundred thousand Yankee soldiers came to occupy the city. Within months, miserable Southern prostitutes had accomplished what gallant Southern soldiers never did: the complete destruction of an invading Northern army. Smokey Row put a third of the occupiers into hospitals with syphilis and gonorrhea, but when the Yankees tried to expel the girls, each hooker’s place was immediately filled by two new women willing to trade the certainty of starvation for a high probability of disease and early death. Finally a Union provost marshal got fed up with high-minded hand-wringing over the Necessary Evil and instituted a system of licensed prostitution.

  And that, by God, made it safer for everyone.

  Each week, Nashville’s working girls kept an appointment at a quiet office in a secluded part of town. One by one, they went into an examination room that had good light, a nice bed, a table, and all the necessary appliances for a private examination. If a girl showed the slightest sign of disease, she was sent to a well-run hospital, where she was treated by an army doctor, provided with decent clothing, and given instructions in hygiene and comportment. When she was clean, inside and out, a medical officer declared her fit for duty and she was given a certificate to present to customers. Disease rates plunged and stayed low for the rest of the war. The system even made a profit, its whole expense covered by the girls’ weekly license fee of fifty cents apiece.

  The Yankees went home after Appomattox. Smokey Row went back to business as usual. By then, Bessie’s mother had died and Bessie herself had married James Earp, a Yankee boy who’d first laid eyes on Bess when she was hanging out laundry in the courtyard of Hospital Eleven. James might have been looking down on her from a second-story window in Hospital Fifteen, but that was the only way he looked down on her. They were both being treated for the same thing, and James Earp was no hypocrite.

  And no matter what anybody thought or said, he was no pimp, either.

  Even after he and Bessie married, she ran the house, for James was an easygoing, broad-minded man who nearly always deferred to Bessie’s commercial judgment. That said, it was his idea to head west in ’65, out where there was no law to make criminals of Bessie and the Nashville girls they took with them.

  James had no real use of his left arm, for his shoulder had been shot to kindling during the war, but he could still run the bar and he had a nice way of keeping things peaceful in the house. No matter where they went, Bessie kept back money to pay doctors for exams, and set a room or two aside for girls who shouldn’t be working. Local johns appreciated knowing that they wouldn’t carry the pox or clap home to their wives, and they paid extra for the peace of mind. James made sure that Bessie’s place got a town’s best transient traffic, too, politely directing filthy miners and stinking cowhands elsewhere, but welcoming visiting industrialists and cattlemen.

  When things got civilized enough for politicians to rail against vice, Bess filled envelopes with cash and smiled when she handed them over, while James made plans to move on to the next boomtown. Wherever James and Bessie opened shop, two or three of his brothers were on the police force. If things got rowdier than James could manage, there was always some signal that would bring Morg or Virgil in fast to settle things down. Even Wyatt came running, although after he got religion, he hardly ever looked Bessie in the eye anymore and left the house again as soon as he was able.

  Into this smoothly running business, one woman came and went like the goddess Discord: unpredictable, disruptive, exhausting. Kate Harony, Kate Fisher, Katie Elder … Who knew what her r
eal name was? In Wichita and Ellsworth, she had worked for Bessie; here in Dodge, she just used a room in the house and gave Bess a percentage of her income from private clients. Kate was good company when she was sober and lent tone to the proceedings, for she was able to speak to eastern businessmen with charm and poise, and to wealthy foreigners in their own languages. Katie could be sharp-tongued, but some men found that exciting, and they asked for her, special. Trouble was, she drank when she was bored or scared, and picked fights when she was drunk. Bessie wouldn’t have put up with Kate’s behavior in anyone else, but James had always liked the girl. There was something underneath her snappish belligerence that made him feel protective and tolerant.

  “She’s gonna get us in real trouble this time,” Bessie had whispered when Kate showed up at the house that morning. “Talk to her, James. I can’t do it.”

  James kissed his wife’s forehead and patted her behind. “You ain’t so tough as you make out,” he said, but even he waited to speak to Kate until the liquor wore off. Sometimes it’s better to strike when the iron is cold.

  When he found her at three that afternoon, she was sitting, slumped, at the kitchen table, aching head in her hands. James poured coffee for them both and sat down across from her. “Katie,” he said quietly, “Bess says your carpetbag is full of money. Where’d you get all that cash, honey?”

  She wouldn’t look at him, which was as good as a confession.

  “It’s Doc Holliday’s, isn’t it,” he said.

  “Most of it,” she admitted. “Not all.”

  “There’s an election coming up,” James told her, sitting back. “Reform’s looking to slap a bunch of vice laws on us here. Dodge has been good to us, Kate. We’re trying to keep a lid on things. If Holliday asks Morg to press charges, George Hoover will say we’re harboring thieves.”