Lucky Billy

by John Vernon

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Photo

  Tintype

  1. April 28, 1881

  2. April 29, 1881

  3. 1877

  4. 1878

  5. 1878

  6. April 1881

  7. 1878

  8. 1878

  9. 1878

  10. May 1881

  11. 1878

  12. 1878

  13. 1879

  14. 1879

  15. May 1881

  16. 1867

  17. May–July 1881

  18. July 1881

  AFTERWORD

  For ANN,

  and in memory of

  PATRICIA WILCOX

  Copyright © 2008 by John Vernon

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from

  this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Vernon, John, date.

  Lucky Billy / John Vernon.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-0-547-07423-8

  1. Billy, the Kid—Fiction. 2. Outlaws—Fiction.

  3. Southwest, New—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3572.E76L83 2008

  813'.54—dc22 2008017924

  Printed in the United States of America

  Book design by Victoria Hartman

  Map by Jacques Chazaud

  DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  The tintype of Billy the Kid is reproduced courtesy of Palace of the Gover-

  nors (MNM/DCA), negative number 128785.

  Excerpts from the letters of John Tunstall, Robert Widenmann, and Huston

  Chapman, cited from The Life and Death of John Henry Tunstall and The

  Lincoln County War: A Documentary History, are used by permission of the

  author, Frederick Nolan, and, acting for the family, Hilary Tunstall-Behrens.

  The letter written by Lew Wallace to Billy the Kid in chapter 13 is reprinted

  by permission of the Indiana Historical Society, the Wallace Collection.

  Tintype

  THAT'S HIM. They say that's his picture. The cocky little cowboy strikes a tintype pose, probably assisted by a hidden stand whose metal collar restrains him for the long exposure; you can just see its leg behind one foot. Still, he looks draggle-tailed. This may be more attitude than posture. I picture his mother propping him up with a death-grip on the back of his neck, though his hips nonetheless appear to sling forward, his arms to bow apart, his insolent mouth to slackly unhinge, as though most of him were an irrelevant sack hanging from her clenched hand. But Catherine had died in 1874, six years before this picture was taken, and a species of coat stand with one projecting pincer-arm had to substitute for her. She never saw him as we do, when we gaze at this picture, with his front teeth so prominent he could eat pumpkins through a fence, as a wag once said—or with arching black eyebrows, sticking-out ears, scraps of black hair hanging down his neck. He surely didn't own that weaponry when she was living—the holstered pistol, the cartridge belt, the Winchester rifle on which his hand rests—because when she died he was only thirteen and he hadn't yet become Billy the Kid. The side-creased hat looks as though he's been clubbed on the head by a washboard. The sweater, though, two sizes too large, could be a hand-me-down—he did have an older brother—and the shirt. The shirt! On its placket just visible through his buckskin vest is what appears to be an anchor with a rope loosely coiled around its shaft, and does that not make it one of those ubiquitous sailor shirts that doting mothers used to buy for their sons? It could be the same shirt he'd worn as a boy.

  The Anthony four-tube camera had a six-second exposure and produced four images, for which the Kid paid twenty-five cents. Two survived. One disappeared years ago. The other was given to the Lincoln County Heritage Trust in 1986 by the descendants of Sam Dedrick, a horse trader at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, where the picture was taken. But the Trust displayed it under bright lights, a serious blunder, and the tintype darkened, and all we have now are reproductions of a vanished original. Even the scratched and spotted surface is a copy of a scratched and spotted surface, as are the marks of the tacks on the four corners and the photographer's corrosive thumbprints at the bottom. The only known image of Billy the Kid, then, the one you are looking at, is a shadow of a ghost, a photograph of a perished tintype of a young man who perhaps had it taken in the first place to prove that he wasn't a figment of his own imagination. But what was he thinking of, to tilt his head like that and pooch out his jaw, looking every bit like Comer Pyle, thus defying our attempts to make him a figment of ours? He looks nothing like the Hollywood Billies, the Robert Taylors, Buster Crabbes, Paul Newmans, Kris Kristoffersons, or Emilio Estevezes.

  Nothing like Billy Conlon, either, the boy who stole my three-speed Schwinn bike when I was ten years old, then had the chutzpah to offer to search for it with me and our playmates. As our posse scoured the backyards and alleys of north Cambridge, he looked up at my face—like his namesake, he was short—and framed his desire to "find" what he'd taken as a thrilling adventure; this was the Wild West and we'd string up the horse thieves. For a moment, his eyes were convincingly plaintive but, slipping to the side, they lapsed into cunning. Billy Conlon, too, had an exigent mother (and a missing father), a tall, indolent syrup of womanhood who wore shoulder pads, hairnets, and high heels, and who often poured herself across her shabby couch and asked her son to scratch her back in his friends' presence. When I'd all but despaired of reclaiming my bike and lay on my bed sulking one day he brought it to my door, having found it, he said, in the marshes beside the Dewey and Almy Chemical factory where Route 2 made its swing into Boston, the same industrial wasteland at the edge of our neighborhood where he'd once tortured bullfrogs and turtles. His mother had made him return it, I guessed. And, talk about brass, he expected a reward, despite having gouged his initials on the fender!

  He was always Billy the Kid in our games, for unlike the tintype Billy he looked the part: gash of black hair across his freckled forehead, fetching grin, not too big a nose, no buck teeth, close dark Irish eyes. His face was a cherub's. Yet, he'd set his room on fire; he'd forced his sister Nancy to drink range oil and eat an entire package of Ex-Lax; he would fight anyone at the drop of a dime. And later, when I'd finished college and had begun writing novels, I heard that he'd stabbed a man on the street, viciously killing him, exactly as the first Billy was said by his nemesis and friend Pat Garrett to have done (because the man verbally abused his mother). And that's when I learned to look back on my childhood as though it had become an abandoned film set, a back lot obliging my fond inclination to sentimentalize bad behavior. Or a discarded comic book, or a Big Little storybook, for I read everything then, I even read torn newspapers on the street and labels of cans of peaches in the store, and pictured myself as an extra in the story that the Billies of the world acted out in books and movies.

  Most longings fizzle. The point about Billy was he always died young. He did not have to make emotional adjustments, watch his language, rearrange his priorities, wonder what was stirring inside him, be punctual or dignified, harbor guarded intentions, or care what people thought of him. Those of us who color inside the lines and wash our hands before eating and finish our vegetables and floss and remain faithful to our spouses—we nice, regular people who shrink existence to the size of a nutshell and live out our biblical three score and ten with diminishing zeal—where would we be without him?

  1. April 28, 1881

  Escape
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  HELLO, BOB."

  Bob Olinger looks up at Billy in the window and freezes on the spot. He's a large man of vinegar aspect, a burly, dumb, squint-eyed giant with red hair, curiously infantile features, meaty hands, reeking breath, and, the Kid knows, a heart of pure lead. Two years ago he murdered Billy's old friend John Jones by shaking Jones's right hand with his left and squeezing it tight, which prevented Jones from drawing, and shooting him cold. Now he's a deputy sheriff in Lincoln. There's just no keeping some men down. For the record, his first name is not Bob but Ameredith, inflicted on him by a patriotic mother who wanted a girl. It was only yesterday that Bob had told the Kid he had no more chance of escaping under his guard than of going to heaven. Thanks for the aviso, Bob. From his perch in the window, Billy spots the prisoners Bob had escorted to the Wortley Hotel across the street watching from the hotel grounds. They won't flee, he knows, even after Bob's killed, for unlike the Kid they are trustees, they've even been allowed to wear their weapons at the courthouse, since their acquittal is all but assured. No court in New Mexico will convict five men for killing four others who'd fired on them first in a dispute over precious water rights—not when the accused men's alfalfa fields needed irrigation. They're being held at the courthouse in the room still referred to as Mrs. Lloyd's room, named for Lawrence Murphy's former housekeeper. And Billy's being held, or was long enough for him to savor the irony, in the late Lawrence Murphy's bedroom, for the Lincoln County Courthouse not that long ago was the Murphy-Dolan store, headquarters of the Irish ring against which he'd fought for the last four years. They'd started this mess. They'd killed John Tunstall. Dolan and his crew had once disarmed the Kid right here in the store and made him eat crow, and now look at him! It was the only two-story building in Lincoln, that's why he can look down at poor Bob for a change instead of the latter toploftily sizing up his famous prisoner shackled to the floor before kicking his slats, as he'd done every morning for the past seven days when it was wake-up time.

  Yesterday, when Sheriff Garrett left for White Oaks to order up the wood for the Kid's gallows, he'd double-checked Billy's shackles, called his deputies in, Olinger and Jim Bell, and warned them to be especially vigilant. If he's shown the slightest chance, if he's even allowed the use of one hand, if he's not watched at every moment, he'll effect some plan to murder the both of you and escape. Lip-labor, said Bob after Garrett left. The sheriff ought to save his spit. Bob's response to his boss's absence was to gloat over Billy, to taunt him all the more. Wake up, dearie, potty-time, dearie, can I get you something, dearie? The Kid in turn had greeted the two deputies at breakfast that morning, Ameredith and the more pleasant Jim Bell, with a cheerful "Morning, girls." They passed the time by playing poker in the sheriff's office. "I never did enjoy killing a person," Bob said as he dealt.

  "I did."

  "But I'd love to kill you. It would give me great pleasure."

  "Is that so."

  Bob poured himself his first midday whiskey. Usually when the bottle was half drunk he offered Jim some. And Jim in turn, if Olinger had to use the privy, would wait until Bob had left the room and, clue to the short chain on the Kid's manacles, hold the bottle to his mouth. Is there kindness in hell? Jim asked Bob, "What do you mean you never did enjoy it?"

  "I never had a weakness for it. It didn't take with me."

  "Didn't take?" Billy said. "You make it sound like the cow pox."

  "What is it then, sweetheart?"

  "It's just pulling a trigger. You're the messenger, that's all. The bullet was assigned and fired long ago, before you ever come along."

  Bell said, "That's a crazy idea."

  "What about you?" Bob asked Billy. "Was your bullet assigned?"

  "Everyone's was. You can't duck it, either."

  "You've ducked plenty."

  "They weren't mine."

  "In other words, do I have this straight? The bullet you dodge isn't yours. But the one you don't is. That's—there's a name for that. It's un-American. No matter what you do, it just had to be. That's a piss-ant philosophy."

  "I'll tell you why," said Billy. "My stepfather said it. Your bullet's coming after you all through your life. It follows you around, takes every turn you take. Spend too long in any one place, sleep too much, it's bound to catch up."

  "I myself sleep a lot."

  "It's best to keep moving. Look out!"

  Olinger jumped up, knocking over his chair. He threw his cards on the table. "You little cunt-garbage," he hissed. "Back to your hole, maggot!"

  "Shoot me, Bob, and get it over with."

  "I'll get it over with! I'll get it over with!" With one arm, he grabbed Billy's chains and dragged him out the door to the head of the stairs. The other held his ten-gauge Whitneyville shotgun. "Go ahead. Run." He released his prisoner, opened the shotgun and looked inside the breech, then closed it with a shlang.

  "How can I run with these shackles?"

  "You'll run if I tell you." He kicked him in the ass and Billy slid down the stairs, protecting his face by skidding on his elbows, and managed to break the fall halfway down. Then he turned and mounted the steep flight of stairs with baby steps enforced by the heavy shackles. "I was hoping you'd do it," said Bob. "If you'd of just reached the landing I would have blasted you to hell. I'd love to see you make a run for it. They would have to collect the little pieces in a jar."

  "I wouldn't give you the satisfaction."

  "In that case, my satisfaction shall be watching you hang. I'll be right in front with a smile on my face."

  "That's a he and you know it. You never smiled in your life."

  Mrs. Lesnett on her walks past the courthouse heard these daily altercations. She'd once hidden the Kid in a grain bin in her barn during the Lincoln County War. When she walked by that afternoon, Bob, to cool off, had wandered out onto the balcony and lit up a cheroot while Bell and the Kid, with Bob's half-empty bottle to pilfer, resumed playing cards inside. Bob shouted down, "Annie! Mrs. Lesnett! You ought to come to the hanging. Watch his neck stretch. You used to cook for him, ain't it?"

  "He's a nice boy."

  "And your husband didn't know. You hid him in a mash barrel, I heard, lest the Dolans burn you out."

  "You should mind your own business."

  "Well, come to the hanging. It will be fun."

  And from inside the courthouse Billy's voice shouted: "If I'm not there they can't hang me!"

  Playing poker with the deputies while wearing fifteen pounds of shackles was a cross to bear for Billy, a caution to Bell. Sheriff Pat Garrett had had the shackles special-ordered from a blacksmith in Santa Fe after capturing the Kid. No bolts or brads. Fused single-piece manacles connected by a short chain; leg irons also linked by a chain; and both manacles and shackles chained below and above to a permanent chain around his waist. Nights, the entire harness was padlocked to an iron ring anchored to the floor in his room. Days, he couldn't walk; he shuffled, he dragged, he heaved with both legs as though in a sack race. Eating, he had to lean into his plate, affording Olinger the chance to push his face into his eggs. He couldn't deal monte with his hands manacled, it impeached their smart pace, so he and the deputies stuck to poker. To show, he seized his cards in his teeth and spit them onto the table face-up. Bell's complaints about seepage on his cards were taken with a grain of salt. Better slobber than boredom.

  Bell and the Kid were still playing cards when it came time for Olinger to walk the trustees across the street for their supper at the Wortley. When they were through Bob would saunter back first, carbine hanging from one hand, with the Kid's and Bell's meals in a box in the other. Neither Bell nor Billy talked. Poker could not dispel the tedium, just give it method. Everything about waiting to hang was tedious. With a finger, Bell rubbed his ear-to-mouth scar, the result of a dispute over cards in a mining camp, which had gentled his temperament—at least that's what Billy thought. Unlike Bob, who wouldn't hesitate to ear down their prisoner if he looked at him wrong, Bell never lorded it over Billy
. When the Kid announced he had to use the jakes, Bell pulled out his Colt's Army and waved him to his feet and followed behind as Billy awkwardly bunny-hopped toward the stairs. The leg irons allowed just enough tormenting slack to take baby steps down; one foot found the tread then the other caught up. Halfway to the bottom, the Kid grasped the banister and gave it his weight and went two legs at a time, and this new protocol spiced his day, Bell couldn't help grinning. At the door, the Kid paused and Bell stepped out first and looked left and then right then led the Kid outside to the privy, Billy hopping with a festinating shuffle.

  "Can you free my hands? I'll have to wipe myself." Bell unlocked the short chain that linked the manacles to his waist.

  Hollow-eyed Godfrey Gauss, gray of face and beard, was hoeing his vegetable patch near the fence. He'd once been a coosie for Billy's boss, the late John Tunstall; now the county employed him to keep the courthouse floors swept and the windows clean and to lock up at night. He gestured Bell over, reached in his coat, and pulled out a slip of paper. "That order came in," he said.

  "Which order?"

  "The spit cups." He held it up. "'Three dozen spit cups which we hold subject to your order. Bill herewith enclosed.'"

  "Does that mean they're here?"

  "In Mesilla," said Gauss.

  "Then it didn't come in."

  "What do you want me to do?"

  Bell glanced beyond Gauss's shoulder at the privy. "Wait till Garrett gets back." The door was hanging open. He looked over at the courthouse where Billy's after image vanished inside, spilling forward bent in half, humping it to beat the band. Halfway to the building, Bell heard his prisoner's chains thump and rattle up the steps. He ran for the stairway, which was already empty and eerily silent, and took the steps flying three at a time, his last lunge whipping him into the hallway where the world came crashing down. He was on his hands and knees. The whang in his ears had a logic, he felt: it pulsed with each blow, flashed orange and yellow. Each time he pushed up, a manacle hammered the back of his skull but couldn't crack the hard nut. Always the thickwit, as Pap used to say. But he had to push up, if he were closer to the source of the blows the force would lessen. This coolheaded observation gave him hope. He raised up again, something slipped through his hip, it felt like a hand sliding out of a glove, then he knew it was over, his gun had been taken—it all happened too fast—so he didn't resist the kick down the stairs, despite not much oomph, the Kid's legs were still hobbled. The first shot completely missed, and Bell was still rolling. The second missed, too, but shattered off the wall where the stairs made their turn and nearly sawed him in half, for at last poor Bell had managed to stand—nearly made him two people, a top one and a bottom one, weaving out the door while carrying himself like a vase on a pillar. He was coming apart at the seams, Jim Bell, and felt like the village sot with his mortifying groans. My little body. These vasty wilds. He spilled through the yard into Gauss's arms and died.