Epitaph

by Mary Doria Russell

  Bright-eyed but white-faced, the dentist sounded as though he’d run for miles when he said, “I can . . . only get away with that . . . trick once in every town. I . . . save it for . . . emergencies.”

  Wyatt leaned over and poured Doc a drink, which was another shock, for Josie had never seen Wyatt touch liquor.

  “You need another?” he asked when the dentist drained the glass.

  Doc nodded and was about to say something when Wyatt went still.

  And so did all the other men in that room as they followed Wyatt’s gaze and saw Johnny Behan’s girl standing at the door.

  IT WAS ONLY A MOMENT—with everyone around them hushed and motionless—but for that one moment, Josie Marcus and Wyatt Earp were all alone, eyes locked, smiles fading to a deeper kind of recognition.

  I knew it! she was thinking, jubilant. I knew it all the time!

  No, he was thinking. No, no, no.

  But he knew, too. He always had.

  Doc Holliday reacted first, reaching for his cane, determined to be on his feet in the presence of a lady. “Why, Miss Josephine! If you don’t look a picture! Will you join us?”

  “Please, gentlemen, don’t get up,” she said, giving Doc some cover and favoring all of them with a sort of generalized smile.

  Breaking out of his trance, Wyatt asked, “You looking for Johnny?”

  “Why?” she asked. “Do you suppose he’s worth finding?”

  There were hoots of surprise and approbation. Doc Holliday beamed like he’d just won another thousand-dollar bet. Even Wyatt reacted, snorting and looking away.

  They all think Johnny treats me poorly, she realized. It’s not just Doc—

  That was when they heard the gunshots.

  “Hell,” Wyatt said wearily. “Now what?”

  Virgil rubbed his hands together like he was about to tuck into a good meal. “C’mon, boys! Let’s go see what the idiots have for us tonight!”

  They did not hurry, but neither was there any discussion of jurisdiction. Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp headed out the door, followed by several men Josie did not recognize. Doc belted down the second shot of bourbon before he hobbled toward the lobby, tipping his hat as he passed.

  Josie herself stood still for a time. Thinking about what had just happened. Reconsidering her decision to leave town. Then she, too, left the music room and crossed the lobby to the hotel doorway.

  The gunfire seemed to have stopped, but Mr. Bilicke came to her side. “Don’t go out there, ma’am,” he warned. “It’s just drunks shooting at the moon, I expect, but the bullets can come down anywhere. I once saw a girl killed that way in New Orleans.”

  Out on Allen, the crowd was quiet, so it was easy to hear Marshal White shout, “I am an officer! Give up that pistol!”

  The answer was clear as well: “Fred, I swear! That wasn’t us shooting! We was just on our way over to Ah-Sing’s place—”

  “Give me that pistol! Now, damn you!”

  The report of a gunshot echoed off the buildings.

  There was a stunned silence. A strangled cry of “I’m hit!” Shouts of outrage.

  Virgil Earp roared, “Back away! All of you! Back away!” And the injured man began to scream.

  Josie clutched at Mr. Bilicke’s arm. “Who is it? Who’s been shot? Please!” she begged. “Please! Go find out who’s shot!”

  He took off and she turned from the door, hands pressed to her lips. Pacing the lobby. Listening to that awful high-pitched, inhuman wail. “I’m hit!” she heard over and over in her mind, but the voice was so distorted, so crazed with pain. “Not Wyatt,” she prayed. “Not Wyatt. Please, God. Not Wyatt.”

  “Josie!” she heard, but she was weeping with fear by then, blinded by tears, and only felt Johnny Behan take her arm.

  “Josie, why did you leave Albert alone? What are you doing here by yourself? Tonight of all nights! My God! Don’t you see how dangerous—”

  “Who is that, screaming?” she cried. “Who’s been shot?”

  “Fred White,” Johnny said, bewildered now. “What are you so—?”

  “Oh, thank God!” she sobbed, sinking to the floor. “Thank God. Thank God.”

  “Jesus, Josie! What a thing to say! What’d Fred White ever do to you?”

  But the girl was hysterical, and there was no point talking to her. “Never mind,” he said patiently, lifting her to her feet. “Come on, honey. Albert’s waiting for us. Let’s go home.”

  BLACK BLOOD FLOWED FROM HIS WOUNDS

  YOU DO NOT GET USED TO IT, MORGAN EARP thought.

  The shit stink of ripped intestines. The flare and smoke of clothing set alight by a muzzle flash. The sound of a man’s screams rising higher as you try to beat the flames out with your hands . . .

  This was the second time Morgan had seen an officer gut-shot at close range. Three years ago, up in Dodge City, it was poor Ed Masterson. Now it was Fred White. Two men his own age. Both gunned down by drunks.

  Screaming in the dirt. Writhing in agony on a public street.

  Ed had died within the hour, but Fred was lingering, and that was bad luck. There’s nothing worse than gut pain, that’s what the doctors said. And poor Fred was suffering a special kind of horror. Somehow, one of his balls had been torn off by the bullet as it passed down and out of his body.

  When the sky began to lighten a few hours after the shooting, Morg sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

  Lou whispered, “Did you sleep at all?”

  He shook his head.

  “Is it your hands?” she asked. “Do the burns hurt?”

  He ignored the question and pulled in a shuddering breath. “Help me get dressed, will you? I’m going over to see if . . .”

  To see if Fred was dead yet. To find out if the suffering was over.

  ACROSS THE STREET AND DOWN THE BLOCK, Doc Holliday had lain awake all night as well. Lame and breathless, he’d arrived just after the shooting. Wyatt already had Curly Bill Brocius under arrest. Attention had shifted to the excitement of a potential lynching. Virgil and Morgan backed the drunken crowd off and the Earps were making it clear that Fred White’s assailant was going to reach his cell alive, but the mob went with them toward Tombstone’s jail, leaving Fred on the ground in the darkness.

  Only a slack-jawed young miner remained, watching blood well out of the marshal’s belly. “Go to the hospital,” Doc said slowly and firmly. “Get Dr. Matthews or Dr. Goodfellow. Go, son. Now.”

  The boy’s eyes focused and he took off.

  “Help me,” Fred was saying, his voice as small as a child’s now. “Please. Help me.”

  Planting his cane, John Henry Holliday lowered himself, kneeling at the side of another healthy young man he had not expected to outlive. “Squeeze my hands,” he told Fred. “Hard as you can. Harder! That’s right. Do you have family, Marshal? Is there someone we should tell?”

  “Help me,” Fred begged. “Make it stop. Help me.”

  That’s all he would say, and that’s what John Henry Holliday would hear long after Fred was lifted onto a stretcher and carried away.

  Help me. Make it stop. Help me.

  At dawn the next morning, the dentist sat up and coughed and poured himself a drink. Then he lit a cigar, staring at his bruised and aching hands while he smoked.

  VIRGIL EARP SLEPT THAT NIGHT, but there was no rest in it for him.

  When he jolted upright a little past dawn, Allie was awake and sitting in her rocker. She had learned to get out of bed as soon as Virg started to mumble, for he would soon begin to thrash about, and he was a big man whose unconscious blows could be dangerous. He’d bloodied her nose once, and another time, he tried to strangle her while tangled in a nightmare about Fredericktown. Of the battle itself, she knew only that James had been wounded there and that Virgil had carried his brother off the battlefield, arriving at the hospital tent so soaked in blood, the surgeon thought Virg was wounded, too. The boys made the story sound like that was a good joke, but Allie k
new better.

  Slowly Virg lost that awful look of frightened confusion. Blinking, he saw her in the corner and rubbed his face. “Sorry, Pickle. Fighting the war again.”

  “I’ll put the coffee on,” she said.

  Morgan came by a little while later, dark circles under tired blue eyes.

  “Still alive,” he reported.

  “Christ,” Virg said.

  Allie asked, “You want breakfast, Morg?” He shook his head, so Allie just poured him a cup of coffee. “I’ll be over with Lou,” she said and left the house, knowing the brothers would want to be alone.

  Elbows on the table, they stared into their mugs. It was a long while before Morgan spoke. “Maybe Wyatt’s right. Maybe prohibition ain’t such a bad idea.”

  Sitting back in his chair, Virg looked out the window, toward town. “It’s not just drunks,” he decided after a time. “It’s drunks with guns.”

  THINGS WERE VERY QUIET in the Behan household that morning. Which, in Johnny’s experience, was not a good sign. Usually Josie yelled her head off when he stayed out late. This morning she was acting like he was invisible. Elaborately busy in the kitchen. Keeping her back to him as she worked. Her eyes elsewhere if she had to turn in his direction.

  When he tried to find out why she’d gone downtown alone last night, all she said was “I don’t want to talk about it.” I don’t want to talk to you, she meant, and to make her point she was chirpy and affectionate with Albert, ruffling his hair when he shuffled into the kitchen rubbing sleep crust out of his eyes.

  “What would you like for breakfast, sweetheart?” she asked the boy.

  “Pancakes, please,” Al mumbled.

  “Sounds good to me!” Johnny said heartily, but Josie gave no indication that she’d heard him. “Get dressed and run uptown for the newspapers, son,” Johnny said, handing Al a dime. “Marshal White was hurt last night. I want to find out how he is.”

  As soon as Al left the house, Johnny came over and wrapped his arms around her. “C’mon, honey!” he whispered, rubbing himself against her backside. “We’ve got just enough time.”

  She went stone-still. He let her go. She started pouring pancake batter without a word.

  “Guess I’ll go get dressed,” he said.

  When he returned from the bedroom, Al was back, wide awake with exciting news to convey. “Marshal White’s still alive, but everybody says he’s hurt real bad. There’s a big crowd outside the jail, and everybody’s mad. Mr. Earp and his brothers are guarding the door.”

  “Wash up, Al,” Josie said.

  Johnny busied himself with the papers, laying the Epitaph out on top of the Nugget. He liked to know what the opposition was saying about any given topic before he read something that might more closely reflect his own opinions.

  Josie brought a crock of butter and a can of syrup to the table. Albert’s stack of pancakes was neat, symmetrical, and perfectly browned. Johnny’s were, predictably, a little burnt.

  I suppose I’ve got it coming, he thought.

  Josie sat down across the table. Posture perfect. Eyes on her plate.

  “John Clum has some very flattering remarks about Wyatt,” Johnny told her, for it was his policy to acknowledge good things about his political rivals, and that was still how he thought of Wyatt Earp on the morning of October 29, 1880.

  Laying her fork aside, Josie reached for the Epitaph and read the lead article. When she finished, she looked up and met his eyes. “That’s not flattery. It’s just accurate reporting.”

  This was Johnny Behan’s first real clue, but it didn’t quite sink in.

  OVER AT THE JAIL, Wyatt Earp had spent the night guarding the five prisoners arrested in connection with the shooting of Fred White. Four of them were jammed into the main lockup, but Curly Bill Brocius was in a cell by himself and he kept asking, “What have I done? I have not done anything to be arrested for! Why am I in here?”

  Wyatt didn’t bother answering. Brocius wouldn’t remember the answer and didn’t seem to know he’d asked before. That was interesting to Wyatt, for he’d buffaloed his share of idiots up in Kansas but hadn’t spent time with them afterward. He didn’t know about this kind of befuddlement until he saw how fogged up Doc Holliday was after Milt Joyce hit him.

  “Jesus,” Brocius moaned, face in his hands. “Why’d you hit me like that?”

  That was a new question, so Wyatt answered it. “Because I decided not to shoot you.”

  Which would’ve been within the law. Better than two hundred men heard Fred White identify himself as an officer and order Brocius to hand over his weapon. Bill raised his pistol—not handle first but with the barrel toward the marshal. Shot him, point-blank.

  Brocius was stupid with drink, and just stood there looking at Fred on the ground, like he didn’t know what to make of it, but the gun was in his hand, still smoking. Any officer could have killed Bill on sight and it would’ve been justifiable, but in all his years as a lawman, Wyatt Earp had shot only one man, and he’d regretted it afterward. Disarm, subdue, arrest. That was Wyatt’s policy. Let the law take its course.

  “Jesus,” Bill said again. “Why’d you hit me like that?”

  HISTORY WOULD REMEMBER John Philip Clum as the mayor of Tombstone who sent the Earps and Doc Holliday striding toward the O.K. Corral on the afternoon of October 26, 1881. On the night of October 28, 1880, however, Clum was merely the twenty-nine-year-old owner and editor of the Tombstone Epitaph, mortgaged to the top of his prematurely bald head and teetering on the brink of a second ignominious business failure.

  He was in bed when he heard the gunfire down the street. Staring at the ceiling. Wondering how he was going to avoid yet another bankruptcy. He had, in fact, just told himself, firmly and resolutely, “The Lord will provide,” when the terrible eerie wailing began.

  Two minutes later, he was dressed and out the door. Two hours later, he was back in the press room, composing as he set the type and working as fast as possible. The town marshal was unlikely to live past noon and John Clum intended to wring every penny he could from the poor man’s death throes.

  Twenty-four-point type for the headline, he decided. Back it down to eighteen for the second deck.

  MARSHAL FRED WHITE

  PERHAPS FATALLY WOUNDED!

  Arrest of Shooter

  and His Companions.

  Pausing to wipe sweat from his face, the editor raised his eyes toward heaven, for this was the very sort of crime he’d been predicting for months. And he thanked God for it.

  John Clum was not a callous man. He was a newspaperman, which is similar but not identical. He was also dead broke—a related condition, but one he had reached as a result of a long series of unusually principled decisions. Dewy with idealism, he had come west when the elders of his Dutch Reformed congregation prevailed upon him to accept a post as Indian agent on the San Carlos reservation. Disastrously ethical, he failed to line his own pockets in that capacity and had resigned in protest of the government’s ill treatment of the Chiricahua Apaches, whom he’d found intelligent, congenial, and worthy of respect. Still determined to serve the Indians, he borrowed money from relatives, bought the Arizona Citizen in Tucson, and used its editorials to demand fair treatment for the Apaches, to criticize the army, and to condemn the venality of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

  What he had not taken into account was the fact that very few Apaches bought newspapers. White folks, who did, were frightened of Geronimo’s renegades and grateful to the army for its protection. They considered John Clum’s screeds unpatriotic and wrongheaded. Not to say annoying. And stupid.

  Subscriptions fell off. Advertising dried up. When he sold the Arizona Citizen to a less morally combative man in February of 1880, he cleared barely enough to pay his debts, but he had big plans for a fresh start in journalism in the silver boomtown that had sprung up seventy miles south of Tucson. This time, he vowed, he would avoid topics that antagonized people and pay more attention to advertisers. When he boar
ded the stagecoach, he already had a name and a wonderful motto for the newspaper he planned to found: “Every Tombstone Needs an Epitaph.”

  God will provide, he told himself, and his faith was rewarded when Millville’s ore magnate Richard Gird agreed to underwrite the venture with a $7,000 loan. A fellow New York Republican and an ardent anti-saloon reformer, Gird had admired John’s crusading Tucson editorials and was happy to back an uncompromising Dutch Reformed nondrinker whose principles aligned with Gird’s own.

  The business did well for a few months. Then Frank McLaury showed up with his screed about those army mules. The Daily Nugget benefited from John’s refusal to print that, while John Clum’s own newspaper lost subscribers and advertisers. This time, however, he understood what he needed to lure business back. Something to hammer on daily. Something that would make readers worry, so they’d feel compelled to protect their interests by being in the know.

  Crime, for example.

  Even before Fred White was shot, the Epitaph had played up Tombstone’s wickedness: the drinking, the gambling, the prostitution, the violence. “A dead man a day, served up with breakfast every morning!” his editorial proclaimed in June. He was proud of that memorable phrase, though the town wasn’t really that bad. Carousing was generally confined to the vice district out past Sixth Street, but his primary investor was an ardent prohibitionist, so it didn’t hurt to emphasize the role of liquor in every form of criminal behavior, whether actual or potential. At the same time, he had to be careful not to criticize the nicer saloons, like the Oriental and the Crystal Palace, or they’d withdraw their ads. Day after day, he had walked this narrow line. Night after night, he prayed for the Lord’s grace and mercy.

  And that was why John Phillip Clum lifted his face to heaven and gave thanks to God when Curly Bill Brocius shot Fred White. The incident would crystallize the region’s politics just days before an election. An honest Republican lawman had been gunned down while defending Tombstone’s law-abiding citizens from the enemies at her gate: a few hundred Democrats, many of whom were known criminals and none of whom subscribed to the Epitaph.